Hello everybody, and welcome to a post where Faith screams a heckin' lot because THE YEAR IS HALF OVER AND HOWWWWWW

I never read as much as I want, and this year proved no exception. This has also been a generally disappointing year reading-wise (I think I have about three five-stars total so far, gosh), but I'm hurtling through a written TBR pile and actually reading some books I'd meant to read for YEARS, and so I'm going to give you guys some highlights!!!!

As always: My Goodreads exists and you should probably follow it because it's a rollicking GOOD time. Full of snark. Full of sass. Full of loving on soft characters and hating on YA bad boys. FOLLOW IT. xD

All Goodreads reviews will be linked under the books!

Hello, everybody! It's no secret that I am a major fan of Planners, keeping track of my time, and ensuring that I always know how I'm going to use my time. I also have a million and one hobbies, jobs, commitments, and things to do. So today's post is going to be: how to manage all of that! (Or at least: how I do it.)

First off: My planner.



I currently have this Wonder Woman planner, and it's been the one I've used throughout this last school year. I plan to continue using it til I get to college, when I will revert back to my Passion Planner (which is AMAZING because it has everything organized by the half hour for the busiest bees, but I digress). My absolute favorite thing about this planner is the three different sections. I like to organize them as follows:

1. SCHOOL. I am actually doing summer school (one college class, I'm so far over my head, help) so I use this section to write down my assignments and, more importantly, WHEN I plan to do them. I use this in correlation with the app MyStudyLife, where you can upload all your assignments and then check to see what's due by the week. I find that especially helpful for tracking reading assignments when you don't want to pull up your syllabus over and over.

I also write down my piano practice and my workouts in this section, because I see those things as more school than anything. During the school year, this section was much more full of assignments for my 5-6 classes, but it's less full now, for obvious reasons. I expect to have MANY more such things in my planner once college starts.

2. WRITING. THis one could more generally be "the arts", because anything I see as related to my arts is in here. It starts off with my WIP tracker-- ItSF all the way across, a.k.a. my new WIP (If the Sky Falls, the sequel to Holding Up the Sky.)

Then I write down the book I'm currently beta-ing--while I'll typically have multiple beta projects in the works at a time, I try to only work on one per week, and only that one util it's done.

For the longest time, I would just write "art" in here instead of specifying which drawing I was working on. But now that I have so many projects and I'm trying to be way more serious, I'm trying my hand at assigning a certain project a certain day. It's especially nice now that I can try to use different mediums and different pads *wink wink*

Finally, I try to write down "Read" as an item on my to-do list every day. I also have to write down days when I plan to watch shows or movies, because I won't spend any time on those things (or I'll waste time trying to make decisions) if I don't. I have a firmly set TBR this year, and making my way through that is something I need to be intentional about. And then I have enough shows and movies I want to get through that I need to make a plan.

This is, in my opinion, the most important place in my schedule as a creative. For many of us, there isn't time in a day to write AND draw AND make music AND read AND watch something AND edit AND critique AND paint. Gosh, that's a lot just looking at it. But since it's my summer, I try to get as many of those things in as I possibly can, and I want to be intentional about it. Not just "Oh, maybe I'll write today, if I get time for it."

No, I've found that the best way to make time to write is to put writing ON YOUR TO-DO LIST FOR THE DAY. Make a list of things to do and MAKE SURE WRITING IS ON IT.

3. LIFE. This is the most general--I write down my meals on here (it's more fulfilling, somehow, to check those off after spending half an hour a day on each), my shifts for work, my chores, things that NEED to happen, my bills, my family time, shopping, and anything else I want/need to do in a day. Some days have WAY more than others. Sometimes I'll go through and add more stuff in after I do them so I can check them off.

So what do I want to say about this?

First off: PLANNERS DO NOT RUN YOUR LIFE. THEY ARE A WAY FOR YOU TO RUN YOUR LIFE. Making lists of your priorities, making to-do lists, getting things done: It should not dictate your every move. If there's something that isn't life or death (or the death of your grades) if you don't do it RIGHT NOW, if you aren't feeling it, don't do it. The world will not end. *Me, a Type A, breathes heavily into a paper bag*

Secondly: Organizing your life is NOT just for planning gurus and it doesn't take lots of time or lots of money. Buy a planner! Make a list! Check off each of the things! You don't need to have specific categories and you don't even need specific TIMES. Just put down that you're doing the things and then? During the day? DO THE THINGS.

Thirdly: you can do it, mate. Get in there and make a system that works for you. It doesn't have to look anything like mine--I know Passion Planners and bullet journals are super popular, but a simple little pad of paper and a pen can work too if that's all you want. You may have to try several different systems. I've had a different planner almost every school year. But if you give it a shot and you do your best: You can do it.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Do you use a planner? What are YOUR tips for getting things done? Is my system ridiculously complicated? Let me know in the comments!

Note: This post is adapted from my graduation speech...

High school has been a journey. It hasn’t just been academics, and it hasn’t just been life, but the two mingle together and I want to talk a little about both. Because these years were such a big deal to me, here are some highlights.
Freshman year. Ninth grade, 14 years old. A year of upheaval. I took nine classes because I thought it would be cool. I realized I had no idea how to be friends with girls my age. Medical scares. My first heartbreak. It was a year marked by loss, and yet full of growth. A year God used for good, even though at the time it was like walking through the valley of the shadow.
Sophomore year. 15 years old, and the easiest year comparatively. I don’t think any of you want the gory details about the time I spent crying in the bathroom that year, so I won’t share any *insert laugh* but let’s just say… I cried, a lot. I questioned, a lot. I ached. I bled. But I also laughed, and I realized that life was beautiful. I made friends. I started a blog. I started to grow in spirit, even though that was the point I stopped growing upward. And now here I am, stuck at 5’1”. *long sigh*
Junior year. 16 years old—first job, first college classes. I spent most of that year hunched over my computer. I learned how to manage my time and how to get up in the morning and how to make do on six hours of sleep. Still haven’t mastered making do on less than that, but don’t worry—college is around the corner. *laugh* I made more coffees than any person here could possibly drink in their lifetime, and I discovered, at age 16, an outpouring of something that would become the greatest love of my life so far—storytelling.
And now… senior year. I went into it declaring that it was my easy year. My year to grab a few credits I didn’t need, sack out, and make money. The first semester went off without a hitch. But then 2020 hit, and I don’t think I need to talk about the dumpster fire that has been 2020. Even without the outside trials, though, this would’ve been a hard enough year. Friendships shaken, some of my surest foundations ripped away, the weight of stress and decisions and money money money placed on my shoulders.
It’s been a year.

But here is the truth: God is good. In the midst of all this, God is good. Throughout high school, more even than the Pythagorean theorem or the square root of c or how to craft a thesis, that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned. That’s what will stick with me: He is good. Always.
I love my family. I love my friends. Thank you to the blogging community and to everyone who's touched my life. It's been beautiful and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Senior Year Playlist on Spotify
MY LIFE IN MEMES

I've been sitting on this news for MONTHS and now here it is: My Havok story The Devil Tries Again isn't just in the print anthology, it's in AUDIO!!!!

I'm so excited to share this news with all of you--Havok's narrator did an absolutely BRILLIANT job with my little Southern spaceport sci-fi duel, and I hope you enjoy listening! It's on Spotify, and I'll drop the links below:

https://gohavok.com/

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JtereSSBQD5sDH93bmynb

Give it a listen!!! I hope you enjoy :D

Hello everyone! We have reached the END of this series (who else can't believe how quickly five months went by? They were five months of utter insanity, but HEY, they're done now, thank God). And today it's time for the fifth and final love language: the art of GIFT-GIVING!

I feel like this is something that doesn't show up often enough in fiction, so finding examples of someone whose primary love language is the giving of gifts is kind of a difficult feat. I want to consider two different kinds of gifts: the big, massive gift; and the smaller, more down-to-earth, but constant kind of gift.

First: the BIG GIFT. The sort of thing that ends up being a MacGuffin or a story-driving device or something absolutely crucial. The first to come to mind is the Mockingjay pin of The Hunger Games. Another might be the mithril coat that Thorin gives to Bilbo in The Hobbit--remember that thought, because I'll be coming back to it. In The Fault in our Stars, August and Hazel give each other the mutual gift of a favorite book--and August gives Hazel his Make-A-Wish trip to fulfill one of her greatest dreams.

A quick side trail here would be the idea of a gift given by the villain, something sinister BUT that hides its sinister-ness (a word?) behind a guise of something innocent. Jennifer Nielsen employs this masterfully in The Deceiver's Heart, where the main villain, Lord Endrick, gives the main girl, Kestra, a necklace as a gift--seemingly harmless, but every time she tries to take it off, it causes her excruciating pain and ends up becoming a major part of the plot. Every gift that Madoc gives Jude in The Cruel Prince helps her survive in a harsh world--and yet it's all a reminder that he is not her true father, but an abusive man who hurt her and her sisters. In the Caraval series, every bit of help that one buys must be paid for in the most unconventional way--by sleeping for days, giving up a year of life, or giving up something beloved. (Faerie bargains, my dudes. One of my most favorite things).

We could probably go on this way for a very long time, but I think you get the idea. There are a LOT of stories that are set into motion or aided by the gift of something very valuable, very sacrificial, or very rare. This is truly a way to show the love between two people: we talked about sacrificing one's life last week as an act of service, but I think the gift of one's life--not dying for someone, but living for them--would also fall under this category.

Now I want to deal with the second category of gift giving, the one my friend Nicki Chapelway described as a "magpie" instinct--the kind of gift giving where someone sees something shiny and just immediately wants to GIVE IT to someone. This is something that I feel doesn't show up enough in literature, and we need to remedy that.

Going back to my comments on Thorin: I would say he's the first example to come to mind of a "gift giver", as well as the entire Hobbit culture in Lord of the Rings. Honestly, I think Tolkien himself was probably a gift giver, with the amount of that which happens in the series. Throin gives away gold and gems, gives people titles, and even offers one-fourteenth of the treasure in the Lonely Mountain to each quester (before, of course, the gold goes to his head). The Hobbits give each other presents on their own birthdays. We have so many examples of this love language in Tolkien--it's a shame more stories don't emulate this.

As I edit Holding Up the Sky, I'm working on incorporating the love language of gift giving more. The character who could likely be described as the true protagonist of the story, Daverby, is not a toucher, not smooth with affirmation, not good at telling anyone how he feels or doing anything nice for them--but he loves his girlfriend, Em, and wants to do things for her that she will like. His solution? He gives her things. Worthless things--at one point, he picks a weed off the road and puts it in her hair. He gives her his coat when she's cold. He gives her a home, safety, provides for her, and puts her needs above his own countless times. Dave's way of proving his love? Through little tiny gifts. And the reason that this matters is that when he buys her flowers, he pays for it with his own currency. Dave is a thief. He could steal all the money he wants to pay for this stuff--he could even steal the gifts themselves. But instead, he pays out of his pocket.

Daverby let go of her hand suddenly and ducked down on the path to pluck a flower that happened to be growing there. Its yellow blossom was larger than Emery might have expected from a common weed. Bowing low, he extended his hand and proffered it to her. “For the lady.”
She wrinkled her nose. “A weed.”
“Only the finest for you, baby.” He quirked his eyebrow.
Butterflies whirled through her stomach, but she kept her face hard. “You’re giving me a flower that you found in the middle of the road.”
He reached for her, and she offered no resistance as he tucked it behind her ear, stroking her hair back too. “The road doesn’t deserve to be adorned with a flower so beautiful. Only the most lovely woman alive deserves that.”

How much of this is true? I asked once.

Greetings, everyone! Yes, I know what you're thinking: Faith, you already did a post for Brooke's blog tour. But here's the thing: She got the thing up in ONE DAY and there were still a couple of places that needed filling. So I hopped in and took two, because she's AMAZING and she deserves to have the BEST blog tour.

Last week I did a spotlight and review post (you can read that HERE). But this week, I have an interview!

LES QUESTIONNES

Faith: What was the hardest thing about writing How We Rise?

Brooke: I think finding my voice was probably the most difficult thing. Finding who I was and what I had to say about whatever I'm writing about. But once you find your voice no one can take it away.


Faith: What was the BEST thing about publishing How We Rise?

Brooke: Realizing that this was, in fact, the story I was meant to write. Finding my purpose and bringing to life has been the best thing. But beyond that, I've met some amazing people in this journey that support and love me. I even met my best friend through this. Her name's R.F Gammon, don't know if you know her 😏😏😏😏


Faith: -_- okaaaaaay thank you I love you so much *sobs* <3 <3 Which character is your favorite of your own? (We all know it's Peter, but I need it from YOUR mouth).

Brooke: You know me so well. It's Peter.


Faith: Of course I know that ;) Now for some slightly random questions: Top 3 Fictional Ships?

Brooke:  Oooh okay Hawk+ Icarus from The Blood Race, Tessa+ Weston from 100 Days of Sunlight, and Alina + Mal from Shadow and bone.


Faith: I SUPPORT ALL OF THESE *sobs* Top 3 ships from your own books?

Brooke:  Ooh well... Some of these may or may not be canon but Raegan+Peter, Evie + Milo from my wip Broken Memories, and I'm going to have to go with... River + Audra from my wip The Storm.


Faith: *whispers* EVIE AND MILO ARE DA BOMB (and my favorite) okay so just for fun: Top 3 ships from MY books

Brooke: EASY BECAUSE YOUR BOOKS ARE FIRE 🔥 Drex and Dulci, Lissa and Tarek, and Greg and Ella 😏😏😏😏😏

Faith: love seeing exactly ZERO Pentegreens contenders on that list, and Daverby wants to point out that he's mad at being slighted, but...overall fairly solid and I support these choices xD


Brooke: Thank you so much, Faith, for having me on your blog. You're amazing and I love you. Let me take a second to tell you, Faith's readers, just how much this girl has supported me. When I decided this book was going to come out sooner and I had just three days to plan a blog tour, she simply said to give her two of the days and she'd post when I needed her to. Seriously this girl gave me the encouragement I needed to get this blog tour going. 💕💕💕😭😭😭

Okay so like....I'mma cry? I love Brooke so much, and I truly want to urge ALL of you to support her and read her book. It's just so beyond incredible, especially the characters, and I want her to succeed immensely on this blog tour and beyond. So go buy a copy of the book and check out her blog and send her some encouragement! She's going to go far, I know it. <3

Hey folks!!! Today was supposed to be a post about high school, but I decided to save that for after graduataion itself (haha) so today we're doing a Random post: The Music Tag (WHICH I WAS TAGGED FOR THANKS)

I was tagged by Nicole Dust and I will probably not tag anyone else so be prepared to steal this tag, wouldja?

THE RULES:
Write ten songs that come on shuffle (no skipping).
Write your favorite lyric from each song.
Tag some people.

I'm just doing my current "on repeat" playlist, because most of the songs on my "saved library" on Spotify are from 5 years ago when all I listened to was Hans Zimmer and Kristian Stanfill (help). Without further ado:

1. Coldest Water by Walking on Cars

2. Paradise by Coldplay

3. Just One Yesterday by Fall Out Boy

4. Hi-Lo by Evanescence

5. Lover. Fighter. by SVRCINA

6. Things We Lost in the Fire by Bastille

7. Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince by Taylor Swift

8. Atlas by Coldplay

9. Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey

10. Fourth Of July by Fall Out Boy

It is with the UTMOST pleasure that I bring you, today: THE BLOG TOUR FOR MY DEAR FRIEND BROOKE'S BOOK!!!!!

MY REVIEW

I have nothing to say

Nothing to encourage

There is a void within me

One that screams "I DON'T UNDERSTAND"

So many questions that will never be answered

Losses

Grief

Unknowns

Loneliness

Longing for something I will never see again

Staring at past me and laughing at her idealism

Reminding myself that once I dreamed of my last summer at home being a big deal,

That my graduation was going to involve FOOD and SPEAKING and FRIENDS

That I was going to go places

And prepare for college like thousands of others before

That the friendships I made in high school would last forever

And I fight it

And I fight it

And hope feels so hard to find

And I sink to my knees

And remember

Because even though it's not the way I hoped it would be

Even if things aren't perfect

Even if graduation will be in my living room over Zoom

Even if my entire life is Zoom now

Even if I can't go to college in the fall

Even if...

I can thank Him

I can praise

because His ways are not my ways

And he loves me

He will hold me fast


Thank you Jesus
Even when you see us just as we are
fragile and frail and so far 
from who we're meant to be 
so thank you Jesus
even when the pieces
are woven and spun
Dreams shatter and scatter like the wind
Thank you Even Then
~Even Then, Nichole Nordeman

Welcome back, everyone! Anyone else's mind blown that I'm already on the fourth post of this series? It's been infinite and yet SO FAST (at least for me). I think time is fake and we're all just hallucinating at this point.

Today's love langugage is ACTS OF SERVICE! Aka the one that is possibly THE hardest thing to write into a novel. Everyone loves kissing scenes, dialogue is easy enough to incorporate, and it isn't that hard to put in some gift giving...but acts of service? Really?

This post will probably be more of a ramble than most of these have been (but let's be honest, when do I NOT ramble?) There's a lot to unpack on this topic, so without further ado, I'm jumping right in!

One thing to keep in mind is that perhaps acts of service is more than doing the dishes or taking out the trash. An example that comes to mind is the recurring theme in the Lord of the Rings of characters carrying each other. Aragorn and Boromir carry Frodo and the other Hobbits on their backs when the snow is too deep for them to wade through. Legolas and Aragorn take turns allowing Gimli to ride on their horses with them. And of course, in the big climax, we see Sam carry Frodo on his back in that iconic moment of "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you." That is possibly one of the most beautiful moments in cinematic history--and I would absolutely classify it as an act of service.

From this we see that this love language lends itself to all sorts of relationships. Nearly every example that comes to mind is a friendship, family relationship, or a begrudging, building relationship. However, with a little digging, it's not too hard to find some romantic examples as far. I'm keeping this mostly to big, popular books/movies, so y'all won't feel spoiled--although of course I'll mention the title of the book at the beginning of the paragraph, and feel free to skip the example if you haven't read it.

My treatise here is this: The main way Acts of Service manifests itself in books is through love showing itself as an action.


In Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, Katniss leaves the safe cave where she and Peeta are hiding and risks everything to go to a dangerous fight where she hopes she can acquire some medicine for his horrible wounds.

In Doctor Who's Family of Blood arc, Martha allows herself to be degraded and fall down the societal ladder all the way to the bottom, be rejected by the man she loves, and endure the risk of dying in order to keep the Doctor safe.

In Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor, there's a moment where the female lead throws herself out into what comes down to a war zone and ends up getting thrown in her room with no food for days--all to scream of coming danger to the male lead.

Sometimes it's not quite to the level of possible death. In the Mitford Series (the final book of which I am currently reading), there's a young couple who are trying to work together to create a life that they can both love. They talk together. Do the chores for each other. Put the kids to bed for each other. In the nitty-gritty of day-to-day life, they are there for each other, and they love one another. Their actions prove that louder than their words. The woman is terrified of being left behind, and her husband has a habit of running late. She's terrified every time he's late, and he ends up speeding to get to home in time, only to be caught by the police--an example of actions maybe going too far or taking a turn you didn't expect.

Because this is the thing about acts of service: They come with a sacrifice. The one doing the action is giving up something else. Maybe it's five minutes of time to vaccuum the rug before company comes. Maybe it's peace of mind as they watch the kids for the evening. Maybe it's risking life or limb to save the other. Maybe, just maybe, it's life itself.

To state the most significant example of this in any of my books would be massive, massive spoilers, but let me just say: both The King's Daughter and Holding Up the Sky have a moment with an action that becomes the ultimate sacrifice. The person doing it doesn't die in either case--but there's a question mark put on their life that they cannot escape now.

Actions should always come with a consequence. That makes the love language even deeper.

And it allows you a way to get into your characters' heads even deeper and see just how far they're willing to go for the one they love.

This is a tough topic compared to a lot of the love languages--but it's possible. You got this. So go out there and put some sacrifice and some love through actions in your books. I promise, they will be the better for it.

CAMP NANOWRIMO WAS A MESS THIS TIME AND I AM OKAY WITH THAT.

Ahem. That was probably a violent start to a not-so-violent post *shrugs awkwardly* Anyway...April was a deadening, horrible month mostly (except for my birthday, that was pretty great) so a lot of Camp NaNoWriMo got pushed to the back burner for me. I spent waaaaaaay too much of my month on drawing and not enough on writing, but at least creating was happening xD

I ended up dancing from one WIP to another. My stats include: These are not final, because I didn't want to wait until the end of the month to write this and I didn't really care if I "won" or not this time...

-A Havok short story
-Another short story for an anthology
-A few chapters of my novel Watched
-The first third (ish?) of Pentegreens book 4
-A little bit of a new story called Therapy Session (which I'm not saying anything about rn)
-Some of a short story for two side characters in Pentegreens

I set a goal of 80,000 words for Camp, thinking I'd just be editing Pentegreens 4 the whole time, but that's not what worked out. See, April was a really emotionally heavy month for me. As I kept writing the edits of book 4, getting into my villain's psyche and my protagonist's despair, I felt my writing spiraling, getting darker and darker and veering into levels that made it so I hardly recognized my own story. And at that point...I had to stop. I was able to make it a few more chapters in after that point, but I'm realizing that I very much need to slow down.

I've always liked to write books fast, especially my Pentegreens books, but I'm starting to think that it burns me out too fast to do that and it might be wiser to slow down. I wrote Holding Up the Sky over a three month period, and while it killed me to go that slow, I think I got a better quality book. AND it didn't run me raw--always a plus.

Anyway, that was a lot of backstory you didn't necessarily need xD The important thing is: I did not finish Pentegreens 4 this month. I know Clare is disappointed about that--sorry, Clare. I'm working on it. xD But hopefully there will be more before too long.

ALL THIS TO SAY! I've got some snippets!

“Hi,” I say after a moment, because I realize I haven’t actually greeted him.
He smirks. He’s usually more talkative than this, but I guess talking to me will do that to you. My mom always called him flamboyant, like the Mad Hatter. I never thought that was the right word to describe him when I was younger—I always thought he just had personality.
I look at him now and take in, for the first time, the bright red tie he’s wearing over his T-shirt. The T-shirt is a black band shirt for some metal-looking group.
Yeah, maybe flamboyant is a good description after all. I sigh.
“Hi,” he says after a moment. His voice has deepened since we were kids, and even though I’ve heard it since then, it still comes as a shock every time I hear it. “I hope you’re ready to talk. I’m very interested to hear this story.”
I glare at him. “Pushy much?”
“I could be pushier. Would you prefer that?”
“If you got any pushier, you’d be my mom.”
He laughs out loud. “Oh, I just remembered why I loved spending time with you so much when we were younger,” he says.
“Why? Because I’m such a riot to talk to?”
“You’re so grouchy! I love it!” He scratches his nose and then gives me a suddenly serious look. “But truly, Ella… I want to help you.”

(I'm writing this from a week and a half in the future, praying that this post will be entirely obsolete by the time it gets to you.)

(Note: it isn't. Oh well.)

It's been a wild couple of months, hasn't it? Time no longer has any meaning. It's like we were all saying we wanted time to slow down and then COVID came and slapped it all the way back to .25 speed. Wild times. Anyway...

Since I know you're all tired of hearing the word, I will try not to make a big deal out of it, and I'm hopeful that this post will help you even if it's not during the Dreaded Q! Today I'm sharing some tips that have helped me stay on a routine and have a schedule during quarantine, and I hope that you'll find it helpful too.

1. USE THE ALARM.

2. MAKE A PLANNER.

3. PRIORITIZE WHAT YOU LOVE.

Everyone sees the darkness.

Right now, it feels like that's all we're seeing. All we're breathing. Reality is darkness, and pain, and grief. Isn't it?

I long for peace. I long for an end to this pain. There's so much that hurts right now, and we're in a global crisis together. And for me, personally...there is pain that has nothing to do with Covid-19. I don't know about you guys, but I bet I'm not the only one.

Jesus has not changed, and yet everything has, and so there's a question mark that exists in my mind. I'm always ashamed of the question mark when it appears, for I am a Christian, and so I should never waver in my trust, correct? Am I not failing my Lord when I doubt him? Is that not akin to treason? I question his very character--yes, maybe he claims to never change, but...maybe it isn't true. Maybe he has changed in the midst of everything else falling apart. Maybe I can't trust him perfectly.

It is a lie. It is such a lie. And yet my heart thrives off lies, and I feed on them, swallowing them like chocolate. I should be obedient to my Father. I should not doubt him. I should allow my trust to overcome my fear.

But here is the truth: no one is strong enough to do such a thing in their own strength.

I turned 18 last week. Not a lot of fanfare thanks to the quarantine, but it was a nice day, and I don't mind having a slightly smaller celebration. I had a lovely day, tbh. But once the birthday festivities wear off and I'm left with just the knowledge that I'm older now, I'm left once again to the question marks.

Fear. Fear is back. For now I am an adult. I don't yet have to pay my own way, but for some reason, I could. I could do so much more. I could be working full time at this point. I could do so much with my life, and it's all because of that magic number and the fact that it's the 16th of April instead of the 15th. I am an adult now?

The question marks fill everything. As my relationships shift and change and fall apart. As my heart splits straight down the middle. As I am suddenly old, old enough to make my voice heard about who should lead my country, old enough to legally decide whether or not I want to abuse substances, old enough for this, old enough for that...

And I step back.

I breathe and it's full of water in my lungs

I'm bleeding and I can feel the blood trickling over my arms

I can't breathe

I'm drowning

NO

Because despite the doubt, despite everything...despite my uncertainty...

He is still good.

He is still God.

And he will hold me fast.

He forgives me, and he loves me. It is the great mystery of life: how could a holy God love a sinner who deserves eternal death? How could he forgive me?

And yet... he does.

And he will not let me go.

He is the certainty in a world full of question marks.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Soooooo I finished another novel because I'm like that apparently.

I FINISHED WRITING HOLDING UP THE SKY!!!!!!!!!

This novel ended up being even CRAZIER than I anticipated and the plot went all over the place and the characters are all berserk idiots who are going to get themselves KILLED if they aren't careful (or maybe just stolen away by monsters...MWAHAHAHAAAAAAA.)

In case you forgot, here's a blurb for this story (and it's updated from last time, so you'll want to read it *smirks*):