Spring break fun

It's over. One milestone down, only a few more to go. My final spring break is over.  I have been a student all my life, and now I am only down to 4 weeks and then one semester left in school.
Three of my closest friends were all on missions trips. Two others went home for break. My dear friend Dawn was one of my only close friends that remained in Tulsa with me.
We were both sad that our final spring break was going to be filled with working overtime and having no wild adventures. But we did promise ourselves that at least one day would be dedicated to having fun.

So on Tuesday March 17, she and I and her little sister Lun, got in the car and drove 3 hours to explore Petite Jean Sate Park in Morillton Arkansas.

I first visited Petite Jean in June 2 years ago, when I was in Arkansas researching the baby Melissa McGuinn case. Her mom told me about the park and said I should try to check it out if I had some time on my way home. Sure enough, I did, and was very glad about it.

Now it's one of my favorite places to adventure "nearby".

Dawn and Luna had never been there. Luna thought we were in another country. She said along the drive, "This country has a lot less pollution than America." That made me laugh, and ironically 10 minutes later we drove by a nuclear power plant.

Once we arrived the fun began.

On the drive back home, we started out being our silly selves, dancing around and singing and teasing each other for various reasons.

But somewhere along the way, a giant rainstorm hit. It was totally out of the blue.
But it led to even more fun.
When we got to a red light, a song came on the radio about being in the middle of a storm. Singing got pretty intense then.

Burma

It's hard to believe that at this date 10 years ago, I functioned daily on less that 2 hours of sleep. I couldn't remember what it felt like to be sober. There was not a single clear spot on my stomach or legs where I hadn't cut. I had people threatening to kill me if I didn't show up every night for sex with strangers. I couldn't tell the truth to anyone, because I was buried in so many lies that I couldn't remember what the truth was.

 I've shared my testimony of coming to Christ countless times to many people. I was living a double life. I truly believed God was nothing more than another Santa Claus. "God" was a word to me. It was just a tool, used to make unruly people behave, with a promise of heaven or hell instead of toys or coal. My life revolved around pleasing others, and I got lost in trying to impress everyone. I was a bad ass to the rebel crowd, and a goody two shoes to the good people. I spent my days in church and and Christian school, and spent my nights sneaking out and breaking every rule I could find.

Since the night of my father's funeral when I was 11, to the night I almost ended it all when I was 15, my life was consumed with lies, deception, insincerity, and addiction.

All that changed when I cried out to God and he answered me, on 7/15/2005.

For the past few months, my friend Dawn and I have at separate times talked about Burma. I have said I wanted to be doing something very remarkable for the 10 year anniversary of God changing my life and I thought going to Asia would be a great way to celebrate my rebirth because it is one of two continents I have not been to.
Dawn talked about how this is her last year in college, and that she wanted to reward herself by doing something extraordinary this summer.
Then one day we got to talking about Dawn's birth country of Burma. She mentioned how much she wanted to go back and visit someday, as she hasn't seen it since her family came to America over 10 years ago.

That's when we came up with the idea, "Why not now?"

Since that day, we've talked about it as a "maybe some day", then we brought it up more frequently and spoke of it as "When we go to Burma", until now.

Now we've got a date set, and I took Dawn yesterday to apply for her passport. We have looked at making reservations at tourist attractions we want to see, and Dawn is in contact with an uncle who owns an orphanage, and a cousin who needs help running a free dental clinic.

We are in full on planning mode.





Stay tuned.

Sara

Many, many moons ago, I picked up my laptop, set it on my bed, and began typing a story that had been building inside my head since I was a small child. It was the story of a young girl, going away to a prestigious boarding school, and many experiences surrounding leaving the school. I finished writing the story while making the long drive to my new home in Oklahoma in 2012.

Since then, I have very sloooowly worked on editing and now submitting to agents for publishing, my story 'Visionary'.

Now that I am in my final year of college, things with my writing are taking off more rapidly, as I have more time to put in to it.

One key character in Visionary, is the teacher, Professor Sara, who the main character, Annie, grows very close to. Throughout Visionary, you can tell Sara has an interesting side story for her own experiences. Sara clearly has separation and anger issues that explode in the story, and Annie has an impact in leading Sara to recover from her problems. But not much is elaborated on how severe Sara's issues were, or how she learned to overcome them. My mom had pointed out in the past, that the story makes learning more about Sara very intruiging and suggested in the future that I write another story telling Sara's experience.

This January I began doing just that.

Sara starts out as a toddler in this story, and will go through the entire backstory to many of Sara's issues that are brought up in Visionary. From losing her parents, to being moved around in foster homes and mental hospitals, the story will develope to explain the reason for the skeletons in her closet.

I am 20 pages into it, and I had to share, because I'm excited about it.

The end.

My week in pics

While my week has been rather uneventful, I've gotten a few nice pictures.
This first one is the sight I woke up to on Saturday morning.
I laughed.

She was asleep like that.

And of course, my favorite thing about Oklahoma, the sunsets. After two weeks straight of overcast and snow, we got a few days of sunshine before the rain returned today.

 

Spring break is next week, and stores are having sales to make room for the new spring merchandise. I scored this 16 piece bedset originally price 119.99, on the clearance rack for 39.99. That's probably been the biggest highlight of my week.

I am currently waiting on the sheets to be done in the dryer before setting up my bed with it.

As I mentioned, spring break is next week. I plan on picking up a lot of hours at work, but on Thursday of next week, I plan on going on a day trip with some friends to Petite Jean State Park in Arkansas. I am looking forward to that.

I've been dedicating some time to writing, I had gone almost a year without doing anything, but in the past 3 months I have finished editing one story, and begun writing a new story. This new story is called "Sara". I will probably dedicate my next blog entry to sharing about it, if nothing more interesting happens between now and then.