~~~

Even driving into the parking lot of a hospital, looking up at those bright windows and the dark doors, triggers it. The fear. The memory of waking up in a bed crying for Thai spring rolls, sending frantic texts to a friend in a drug-induced panic, sitting in a wheelchair as my dad pushed it down the street as we went to get food. 

Hearing a doctor say the c-word in relation to me. Having my entire life thrown into disarray. 

Then learning that what I had was not cancer, but something else. The relief, followed by the terror of the unknown. 

Last week, a doctor gave me the all-clear for six months. The surgery is past; the shame is gone. The fear lingers occasionally, but I no longer feel the same terror. 

I feel freedom.

~~~

What were they thinking when they looked at me? Them and their white sneakers, their laughter as they bent low over phones, discussing things of which they had no idea. Things that I did know, that made my blood boil. 

Sometimes I found myself wondering: Was I the problem? Was it really me who could never find the answers, who messed up the experiments, who was clueless about the class material? It was them, my brain hissed. They were the ones who set me to crying in the bathroom. 

Perhaps it was all of our faults. Perhaps I trapped myself in that darkness, putting myself on the edges by refusing to compromise. Perhaps they were the ones who did not reach out to the girl who had no idea how to socialize. 

Either way, leaving was one of the best things I could have done. 

And now, I feel freedom. 

~~~

Our church pews do not burst, but they are filled with people who turn their faces to the sky and raise their voices in praise. 

My dreams still haunt me, and yet the true faces of those I once feared to see no longer do. 

My heart breaks occasionally, but I stand on my own feet. 

Depression does not have the last word. The situations around us do not have the last word. Death and the grave and sin do not have the last word. 

"In this world you will have trouble," Jesus said, "but take heart! I have overcome the world." 

Not "I will overcome" or "I might overcome. No.

When Jesus said this, he had not yet gone to the cross; it was the night before his arrest, and he stood in the midst of his disciples, comforting them. Sin still held sway over all; the cup of God's wrath hung before Jesus' eyes, and he prayed for it to be taken away from him so that he might not have to drink it. 

And at that point: 

HE HAD ALREADY OVERCOME. 

If, at that time, Jesus had already overcome, how much more now, 2,000 years later in a world where we see his fingerprints everywhere?

If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed. 

And even when it doesn't feel like it, friend, if you know him, you are free. 

It doesn't always feel perfect. Sometimes the darkness presses close, and it's all you can do to stay on your feet. "In this world you will have trouble," Jesus says, and that is a promise. 

But then there is the second promise, so much stronger and more powerful, as true as Jesus' victory over death and the grave: "I have overcome the world." 

He's won. Let's believe that. 

Here are my top Spotify stats of 2018, according to their Wrapped feature:

My favorite NEW artists from this year, some that I'd never really listened to before the grandeur that was 2018, are (in no particular order):
-Zayde Wolf

-Sam Tinnesz

-Lorde

-Bastille

-Coldplay

-Owl City (shoutout to Lila Kims for screaming about him until I finally listened XD) 

-Scott Mulvahill

In short, it was an amazing music year and here's to even more music and new artists in 2019!

Here's some stats from Goodreads regarding my reading habits: 

-I have read 121 books this year.

-Some of those books were textbooks or from English class.

-A lot of them were ebooks and ARCs!

-My average rating was 3.9 stars.

-I have read 43,757 pages (What the heck)

-My most common rating was four stars (What can I say, I'm good at deciding whether or not I'm going to like a book) 

And I actually made a brief little vlog to talk about my favorite books of the year! It's pretty short (around five or six minutes, I think?) and I'm linking to it below ;) 

Here's the links to those reviews, too, like I promised:
Book #5
Book #4
Book #3
Book #2
Book #1

Here it is: my most favorite thing about this year, the thing I can't wait to talk about.

I've always been a writer, always working on stories and weaving little worlds with characters I hope seem real. But I think that 2018 is the year I became an author. 

The story of my heart, that I've been working on in one form or another, the one I'm constantly screaming about, the one that I love more than any other, finally fell into place this year. I wrote a story that I'm in love with. I don't mean the storybook kind of love, either-- this is a real marriage, guys. There's good days and bad days. There's days when I want to quit, when I want to throw in the towel, where I get sick of this story. And yet I will not give up on it. I love it. 

The Pentegreen series is the saga I have fallen in love with, and it finally exists on my computer, the first two books in fully drafted and partially edited glory, the third book in progress. The fourth one still only exists in my mind, but it's getting closer. And oh, I am in love with it. 

That's not the only story that claims my heart, however. I've been assaulted with plot bunnies on all sides for stories this year, and that's made me a very happy little writer indeed. There have been days when I've worried that once the Pentegreens are over, so will be my writing career. But there are other storie now, too. Stories about the Mafia meeting dragons. Alternate histories about World War II and what might have happened had Germany won the war. Dystopian stories set here in America. And one about which I will not be sharing details, as it's still very new, but it's huge and epic and I already love it.

But enough of all that. Let's not get ahead  of ourselves and talk about stories to come, but stick with stories that have been written. 

This year I wrote: 

-First draft of The King's Daughter which came to 120,433 words

-Second draft of The King's Daughter which came to 123, 741 words

-Got said second draft alpha read (!!) by some absolutely AMAZING frens who gave me the best advice and are helping make the in-progress third draft fantastic

-Third draft of The King's Daughter is currently sitting at 46,196 words (I'm hoping to hit 50k by the end of December) 

-First draft of The General's Children (Pentegreens book 2) which came to 130,481 words

-Second draft of The General's Children is currently sitting at 17,630 words (I need to write more but I'm too much of a wimp to write the next few scene because it involves badly hurting one of my sweet babies and I hate doing that to him) 

-First draft of The Winter's Chill (Pentegreens book 3) is currently sitting at 73,946 words (again, I need to work more on this one, but it's just such a tough story for some reason)

-My NaNoWriMo project this year was Watched, the first in a different trilogy, and it's currently sitting at 50,015 words (eventually I'm going back to it, but for right now it'll probably be a while before that happens)

-I started another story that I will definitely be going back to once I have a bit more of a plan for what I'm doing, a Robin Hood/the Six Swans retellling called Hood's Arrow, currently sitting at 15,169 words

-I edited another draft of my Rooglewood contest submission from last year, Ink Storm (now entitled Sweat and Gold), at 14,249 words. (I'll have some news regarding this little story in next week's post! Stay tuned. ;))

Because I want to have it on record, I added this all up to see how many words I wrote in all this year (this doesn't count all the random little scenes I wrote in seperate documents, the scribbles on sheets of paper, or any of my blog posts or magazine articles for my school, which probably add up to another 20-30k easily).

This has got to be a personal record for me. I've never accomplished ANYTHING like this, and just looking at these numbers makes me giddy. 

And I want you all to remember: WRITING A FEW WORDS IS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Every word you write is a word the world has not seen before. Last year I poured all my energy into a little novella, which I had hopes would be my first forray into the publishing world, and yet I didn't win the contest. I've been writing and writing at this series of mine for YEARS now with no progress. Sometimes it all seems pointless. 

But then it breaks through like this and you discover that you have characters you absolutely love, stories you can't imagine life without, and a world that makes you wonder how other people survive without their own little fantasy lands in their heads. 

Also, I had a looooooot of free time the first half of this year. Most of these words came from the period between January and June. Having a job + junior year of high school didn't leave much time for wordsmithing. 

Since y'all are my friends, I thought maybe I'd give you all a chance to read some snippets from this year's work. *hides under a blanket*

Snippets

~The General's Children

~Hood's Arrow

~The Winter's Chill

~Watched

~Sweat and Gold

~The King's Daughter

Best new movie of the year award goes to: 

Best movie theater experience:

Most tear-jerking movie of the year:

via Rotten Tomatoes

via Rotten Tomatoes

The word to sum up my 2018 is: 

growth.

In Conclusion

It's been quite a year. Not the hardest, not the easiest. Just another year. 

But I'm so grateful that God allowed us to have it. 

To 2019, friends. *raises glass of ginger ale* 

How was your 2018, friends? I know you're all putting up your own posts, and I'll be doing my best to comment on as many of them as I can. But I'd love it if you'd talk to me about your year! 

But then I stopped, and I looked at it again. 

And it hit me: I don't want to be the cynic.

At my workplace, I am hands-down the optimist, which is weird because I'm also a grouchy, angsty, whiny complainer who can grouse just as loudly as anyone else in there. But while my coworkers tend to be all grumpy all the time, I can usually find a bright side to things. At home, though, that attitude vanishes from me, and I'm left with only my cynicism.

Sometimes, I'm okay with that. I like to laugh, and I like to be sarcastic, and I like to be angsty. But there's too much about life that's beautiful to do that too much. God made his world full of beauty and truth and hope.

Our world is full of darkness. Bombs go off, women die in childbirth, wars are fought, kids are stolen off the street, people verbally rip each other to shreds...and that barely scratches the surface of everything that's wrong with Planet Earth. It would be so easy to be cynical, to let the darkness around us overcome us just like everyone else in the world. But we're called to something else. 

"You are the light of the world," Jesus says. "A city on a hill cannot be hidden." 

And that's you. That's me. That's all of us who are His. We are the light of the world! We're called to shine our lanterns into the dark. We don't take our candle and put it under a basket--what would be the purpose of that? No, we hold the light up high and let everyone see it. 

I strive to take this attitude in my writing and have for years. My books may be very, very dark. They may feature real horror situations within my alternate history and dystopia. The fantasy may contain torture and death. The protagonists mess up and make mistakes that affect everyone around them; my stories are full of real PTSD and depression. 

But we are also called to light. And hope. 

And so I always want to leave my readers with a sense that no matter how great the darkness, the light will overcome. The darkness of my stories is great--because my hope is that you will see as a result the still greater light. In my Pentegreen series, Esma endures hardship that makes me cry as I write it. But that's why, in the end (*spoiler alert*), she will triumph. I will never write a story with a tragic ending. You might see me kill off half my characters--my protagonist isn't usually immune to this, although I've never killed one of them (at least so far). But there will be victory over the darkness. 

That's why I write big, epic, sprawling stories--because the greater the scope, the greater the stakes, and the more hope and victory there is in the end. These are the stories I strive to give the world, and it's the kind of story I want my life to write. 

God calls me to be his light. And even though with man it may be impossible for me to show only hope and not succumb to darkness, with God, all things are possible. 

I'm going to seek to live a life of hope and light. Will you join me, friends? 

While I read the whole Hunger Games series, the middle installment is definitely the best...(because FINNICK AND JOHANNA AND OMG I LOVE THEM)


I guess I must really love the middle books in series or something...while I'm a huge fangirl for the whole Blades of Acktar series now, this one is my favorite of the four. And that's saying something.


My bestie actually bought me this book for Christmas a couple days ago! I'm SO INCREDIBLY HAPPY! I've read 3 Diana Wynne Jones books so far this year, but this one is my favorite. No competition. <3 Because HOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWLLLLLL.

These two are better when viewed as a whole rather than one book at a time. It's alternate history, asking the question "What if Hitler won World War II?" And it's heartrending and destructive and violent and gritty, but it's beautiful. Ryan Graudin's characters stole my heart. I can't really recommend them, but they're still wonderful for those who have the stomach.


I've found so many good indie-published Christian speculative fiction novels this year, and it makes me ridiculously happy. This story takes place in a dystopian America where Christians are persecuted, and it's kind of in the same genre as my novel Watched.


One of the few non-fiction books I've read this year that wasn't for school, and it's amazing. I can't really say much about it, but Jonathan has an amazing review here that you should definitely read if you're at all interested in this book.



This adorable little novella is a Cinderella retelling that takes all the cliches and flips them on their head. It's written by my dear friend Allison, and it's so incredibly good :)


Another novella, although I really wish that this one were a full novel. It's just too good to be so short. Kara Swanson is an author to watch.


Last but definitely not least is this one I read at the beginning of the year. It's a gorgeous, sweeping, heartbreaking story. You can find my full review for Rebellious Writing here.

Top 3 Classics

In my Christmas Carol post (last week), I mentioned how much I love Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This is his epic poem Evangeline, about the plight of the Acadian people in Canada when Britain expelled them from their land. It's a very American story, which is cool; I don't know how much I agreed with the characters' motives, but I did appreciate their devotion. Definitely recommend this as an easy-to-read story that's both a classic and a poem!


Heartbreaking. Eye opening. Pulls in classic tropes but often actually allows you to forget that they're tropes. Makes you cry. Definitely recommend if you feel like crying and being inspired to change the world.

Best Movies of the Year

Best dang movie of the year. Yeah, yeah, I know it came out last year, but who cares????!!! (Not me.) It's epic, it's heartbreaking, it's incredibly quotable ("I'm capable of running my own diagnostics!") and it's classic. Jyn and Cassian are two of my favorite fictional characters (and so are Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze; Krennic is a villain I love to hate; Saw Gerrara is my favorite dude to raise eyebrows at.) I just love this movie. It's so incredibly good. All the heart eyes.

Got to see this one in the theater. I'm not a huge fan of Lloyd (center, in black and green) on the show (please don't lynch me) but in the movie, he's...pretty darn epic. I love Lloyd now.  (Also, why is Cole not in that image? That's really bothering me now. Grrrr.)


Saw this one in the theater too and I love it. Lego Batman, y'all. There's really no way to go wrong with it. XD

A film that's grown on me with time, just like Benedict Cumberbatch. I loved it. It felt like Marvel, but still different enough to really make a splash.

Best superhero movie to come out this year. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I think I watched this one four times this year. I regret nothing, you guys. This is the best movie ever made. The best movie I've ever seen. It is so beyond good and you must watch it yesterday. (IF YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN IT TALK TO MEEEEEE ABOUT IT!!!!!) This is the story of William Wilberforce, England's greatest abolitionist. He was able to stop slavery without a war in Great Britain and his story is so inspiring for me as an activist.

Best Songs of 2017

Here's a playlist of my favorite songs this year. (Note: One of them, "Imperfection" by Evanescence, does contain one f-word, and "The Last of the Real Ones" has a d-word.) Other than that, I'm pretty sure they're all pretty clean.

Rather than talking a whole lot about each of these indivually, I'll just throw the playlist at you and let you listen to them. XD But please know that lots of Band Highlights posts are coming next year, dealing with all sorts of artists and my favorite songs by them.

Blogging World

Have some stats from me:

• This will be my 70th published post
• I have 53 followers on GFC, 16 on Bloglovin', and something like 6 email followers (supposedly I have 416, but most of those seem to be spam)
• I'm at 15,190 views all time
• My Top Five Posts:

An Open Letter to the LGBT Community

The "I Finished Watched!" Post

I am a Pro-Life Person, and Here's Why

The Cookie Book Tag

Why I'm Not Seeing Beauty and the Beast

I think we can all agree that the controversial posts are a good thing...
And thanks to Mary Kate for getting the Cookie Book Tag up there (mayonnaise!!!!)

Shoutout to my blogging friends whose links have brought me the most views:

Gray
Faith
and Lila!

as well as to everyone else who posted my link on their blog! It really does mean a ton to me and warms my heart every time I see my blog linked on someone else's site.

Writing

My Walk with God

I hope you all enjoyed this little look into my world this year! So much has happened, and yet the year has gone by like a blur. I'm so glad to have gotten to know you all, and I can't wait to make even more friends and content in 2018. God bless you all, and have a great New Year's! See you all very soon!

Chat with me! Have you seen any of these movies/read the books/listened to the music? What are your favorite books and movies of the year? Was 2017 a great year, a decent year, a crummy year...tell me all the things!!!!!!

So... yeah. 

I would love to be able to use this blog as an example of faithfulness on today's post, but that will henceforth be proven impossible. Because... I'm very unfaithful to it now that y'all know I have no schedule. XD This is turning into quite the ramble.

Let's get talking about this week's Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness.

It's such a hard one to master. Everyone loves a loyal, trustworthy, true-blue person. "Wish I could be just like so and so," we say. "Always there for me. Best friend a fella could have." But then we're not really sure how to get there ourselves.

It's nowhere near as simple as a lot of these other ones have been. Every Fruit of the Spirit is a struggle. This one, I think, is especially so.

It's dropping everything to rush over to a friend's house if she calls you in tears. It's showing up, day after day, to your sports practice, even when you know you're the worst player and your team will go on without you. Or in the inverse, it's showing up to sports practice even when the other players are all hopeless and even you can't save them from finishing last in the finals. 

The thing about faithfulness is that it requires nitty-gritty work, day by day. It's doing the drudge work that no one else wants to do. It's going to visit your grandparent with Alzheimer's, sitting by their bed and talking to them even if they don't even remember your name. It's changing your sister or brother or child's dirty diapers, day after day, no matter how much you'd rather they just potty train themselves. It's the times when you want only to run away from your life and do things to serve yourself, but you don't. 

Because no matter what the other person has to give to you, you are there for them. And nothing they can do will change your love for them. That's true faithfulness. And it's a model that was given to us by the only One who can ever get it perfect.

Only Jesus can truly love no matter what we do. He is perfect, and we are all so far from perfect. When he makes us free, we vow never to forsake him, and for a while as new Christians we are drunk on the joy of salvation. But then things get hard, and your honeymoon joy fades as you survey the fact that now you have to do life with Jesus. 

And like a wandering young wife, we can be unfaithful to our Savior. We wander off, tasting the world and its promises, spray painted with aluminum and yellow nail polish, chips of colored glass, that we're told are the same and much more beautiful than the King's silver, gold, and jewels. And we believe it, too! Over and over. I find myself drawn to the world every day, tempted to take its baubles. Vanity Fair is all around us. 

But no matter how unfaithful we are, Christ is always faithful.

And when we come crawling back through the mud to him, having lost ourselves yet again and crying for his grace, he never hesitates to pick us up. He cleans us off. His love does not waver. 

That's faithfulness. And that's what we are called to strive for. 

It's hard. But with God, all things are possible.

There's a lot of things that make this series one of my all-time favorites. {See: my domain name. Avast! The Florid Sword am I! } For one thing, it's just really well-written. For another, it invades my feels and makes me cry. (Note: I don't cry about books. Like, ever. Not once. But these ones... my poor heart.)

So here we go. A few little ways the Wingfeather Saga is amazing. 

Skree. The Dark Sea of Darkness. Glipwood Township. Torrborro. Dugtown. The Ice Praries. Ban Rona. Go ahead and get all your groaning over the cheesiness of them out now, okay? Please. 

They're real places. There's obvious culture everywhere in the world of Aerwiar (I know that name is kind of stupid, but there's a reason for it, and while it's silly, it MAKES SENSE). Different groups of people live everywhere. The world-building is incredible. 

I hope I've convinced you to try these books if you haven't already. If you have read them: What did you think? Are they not beautiful? What other Christian fiction do you think is satisfactory/well-written? Any predictions on where I'll go next with this series (read: suggestions because I'm flying blind here)? 

However, patience also has a double meaning. The second meaning is this big churchy word you've most likely heard at some point in your life:

Longsuffering. 

(Also and BTW: I will not be posting on Thursday or Saturday this week due to travel. But I will have another post on patience up next Tuesday! I also won't be great at replying to comments, but go ahead and leave them- I will still see them! If you want something to do, go over to  Adventure Awaits or Scattered Scribblings and vote in the fantasy Silmarillion awards! See you soon!)

When we don't know what's happening and the questions overwhelm us, it can be very easy to grow bitter at God. "I don't want to learn this lesson! Why are you doing this to me now, God? What in the world is the point of this?"

Rebecca Smallbone (aka St. James) definitely understands that pain. This is a song about the fact that even when we don't understand why something might happen to us, we can always trust God to know what he's doing.

The pain is real. You may not be going through a divorce like Nicole's parents were in the memory that inspires this song, but it's still cutting and real. No matter how small, it matters.

When you feel like you're alone, you're not. When you're gripping the pain so tight that your fingers burn because it's your only comfort, there's someone else who lays his hands over yours. You are never, never alone. It's time to let the pain go. Cast all your cares on Him, because he cares for you.

I think there are a couple other versions of this song, but this is probably the most emotional. The pain of today is so real, but one day, it will be nothing but a distant memory when we make it to the Home that was prepared for us. There is no pain or grief or violence there. Happily ever after is not a myth. For those of us who are in Christ, there is a real fairytale ending ahead, one that involves our Prince coming to save us, a wedding, and a ride off into the sunset forever and ever. It can be hard to look at the big picture when you're in the throes of the pain, but there will one day be no more of it. And we will live forever in joy with Christ.

This is a song by a Mormon, and I'm afraid I don't view Mormons as true brothers and sisters in Christ. Sorry to anyone here who might be a Mormon, or those who know those who are. :/ But one thing I do think they get right is in this song, the chorus of which goes, "Where do we go when our prayers are answered but the answer is 'No'?"

It's such a real question. God has promised that he'll never leave us, never forsake us, that he's always going to do what's best for us, that the prayer prayed in faith will be answered. But what if the answer that we receive is a no? The pain when you've got nowhere to turn but God and it seems like he's ignoring you or clearly refusing you is unmatchable.

But his ways are not our ways, and there is an answer. We may not see it yet, but God works everything for the good of those who love him. Just hold on.

This song is fairly old, but it's one of the most poignant I've ever heard. Even when you walk through the valley of the shadow, you're not alone. HE will never leave you, nor forsake you.

Have you ever heard the footprints story? Well, regardless of whether you have or not, here it is:

That's what this song is about. The fact that you'll never be alone, no matter how alone you feel. God will always be with you.

This is a song for when you think you're the only one. When the grief has you trapped in the basement, and you're afraid you'll never make it out. The people around you seem to have it all together, and they're all talking about how good the Lord is and you've got nothing.

Then you hear his voice. It may take a while, it may take days, weeks, or months, but no matter how deep the darkness is, that still, small voice will still coming breaking through.

And He says "Peace. Be still."

I know this is a lot of songs to just randomly kind of throw at you, so I, being the helpful flabbit that I am, made you a Spotify playlist where you can just listen to them all! I make lots of playlists and listen to Spotify basically 24/7, and I would not at all mind if you decided to shoot me a follow #ShamelessSelfPromo. Here you are! (Featuring some Honorable Mentions)