Grateful on a January Evening

     The snow melted and today it was almost 60 degrees and I'm a little confused because it legit feels like spring.

     Something about January makes my creativity levels skyrocket. I can be empty of words for weeks and then crazy January weather hits and suddenly I'm plotting out novels and thinking about submitting magazine articles and writing poems, of all things! I remember last year one day late last winter when the snow was melted and I went outside and sat in the bed of my dad's truck and read a book for hours, inhaling the smell of manure from the field by the house and the tingling feeling of winter crossing over with early spring. :-)

     Sometimes I get anxious. It's weird because so many things I'm so chill about, and then I'll agree to do something and find myself in a whole new setting where I feel totally inept and inadequate, and I start to doubt myself. Will I be able to do it, what if someone doesn't like it, what if I mess up?

     ...But.

     My faith should not be in myself anyway. I'm just a little girl in a huge world I have no control over. I say stupid stuff and get nervous My faith should be in the Lord, who never doubts and never leaves and never fails. He's got this whole thing in the bag and a lot of times I just need to calm down.

     Besides, there are so many things to be grateful for. Gratitude is so much bigger than fear.

- church: that place where you can go and you know you'll be greeted with smiles and hearty handshakes you'll sit down in a pew with the people you love most in the world and the Word of God will be spoken and life will make sense again. I love my church so much. A year ago I wouldn't have thought I'd look forward to Sunday mornings so much. I get to stand up on the platform with a bunch of older folks and sing old hymns I don't even know and I love it.

- far away friends: they might be scattered all across the globe but I wouldn't love them more if they all lived in my neighborhood. (Though that would be really nice.) You all rock and if I didn't have you I'd be generally nastier. And I wouldn't get so much mail and that'd sorta suck.

- homeschool homies: every Tuesday night my sister and I hop in my truck and drive a sort of ridiculously long way to a tiny little house where nobody lives anymore and it's only lit up once a week when a bunch of homeschooler kids get together and dance reels and jigs. I've been surrounded by these people all my life but I had to get older to realize how much they mean to me.

- western miniseries: laugh if you want. But my television series make me happier than a lot of things. Have you ever stayed up late at night by yourself and watched episode after episode of a show just because you could? I'm listening to the soundtrack of Into the West and remembering those summer nights when my family went to bed and my sister was away at camp so I filled the void with frontier exploring, Indian traditions, gold prospecting, and building the transcontinental railroad.

- the squad: even if it's down to just the three of us, we're still going strong. There's no one I'd rather go bowling with on a Friday night.

- the surprises: and the beautiful fact that I'm always learning new things. Which is sometimes terrifying. But it's a beautiful thing when you really think about it.

   
     So I'll give thanks, because that's the least I can do.

     ~Emma

P.S. I'm eighteen in a week and two days! Whaaaat!

Reflections and stuff.

     I've been thinking -- because it's new year's, you know, and that's what you're supposed to do -- and tonight I'm sitting on the basement floor up against the freezer paging through all my journals from 2016. This year I filled four. Four notebooks full to busting of silly girl emotions and angry explosions and questions about life, some with answers and some still waiting on it. Going back and reading through, it's like seeing everything laid out in a clean perspective. Sadness after losing people and the ends of long-term crushes and emphatic proclamations of love for Orry Main and Joel Fleischmann. Looking back, I wrote about freaking everything. You'd be surprised at a lot of the things I wrote about. I thought about sharing some here but it's not going to happen. That's too embarrassing.

    2016 was super weird and kind of awful and all in all the most exciting year ever. Even in my little world things changed and happened. I wrote three books and spent three weeks with my best friend and started driving all over the place and saw Hunter Hayes in concert and traveled far and wide, and lost some friends but found so many good ones. Then I bought a truck and wrote another book, and flew on a plane for the first time and rode on a roller coaster, and learned that "it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go." {Randy Travis}

    In the big world beyond my farm I know there was a lot of tragedy. I don't know how many blog posts I've read and people I've heard say this was the worst year they remember. It's those people out there who've been hit hard and still look upwards that give me hope -- the ones who got flooded and banded together to help each other out and the ones who lost the people they loved most in the world and used it to bring truth and beauty to the world. The truth is I'm ridiculously blessed, and I think you are too. Because look. We made it through another year, we had good times in spite of it all, and here we're given another one.

The best parts were the sunny days, the long truck rides, the laughing over stupid things and being surprised by kindness and suddenly finding best friends and getting lost on dirt roads and screaming on the bleachers and dancing in the crowds.

     I don't know about this whole 2017 thing but I have the feeling it's going to prove itself a worthy challenge. What do you think? I'm looking forward to being employed and done with school and 18 so I can check out dvd's with my own library card. And maybe buying a new pair of boots. But we'll see how that employment works out.

   
     What was your favorite thing about last year?
     What did you do that you'd never done before?
     What are you looking forward to this year?

     ~Emma

Ten Everyday Things I'm Legitimately Scared Of

       
    Life is scary sometimes. We all know it. Everybody's got those few things they dread -- here's some of mine.

     #1 Calling people on the phone. Over the years I've gotten so I'm okay talking to people face-to-face, like, I can do it. But put some distance and a phone between us and everything changes. Suddenly I'm struck dumb with terror at the thought of picking up the phone and dialing. Especially for official stuff where I feel like I need to sound confident. The sad thing is, the more I do it, it never gets any easier! I think I inherited this dislike for the phone from my mother, who is (obviously) a lot older than me and still hates calling people. This means I am stuck with it for life and there is no hope for Emma.

     #2 Customs forms. My best friend lives overseas so every year early in December I waltz into the post office with my brown paper package all tied up with string, plop it on the counter and tell them I'm sending it to my friend in Belgium. Then they give you the customs form. Now after three years of this I know to expect it, but still it freaks me out every time because it's so stressful. Like, give us all your information on one tiny slip of paper so we can know exactly what you're sending in this box and exactly what it cost you and exactly why you bought it and exactly why you think you have the right to send something to your friend and does it contain anything liquid, fragile, or perishable such as perfume or lithium batteries? Would you please check yes or no? Yes? Okay, well, that will cost you about fifty dollars more. Priority mail? INSURANCE?

    And I'm over here like, "I'm an American! I have rights!"

     Yeah. It's bad.

     #3 THE DARK. So back in the olden days of my youth this was not so much of a problem, but a few years ago I watched this movie called The Village (I still hate my cousins for showing it to me) and it scarred me for life. Now I can't even walk up my own street in the dark without thinking about creepy red-cloaked creatures with claws and fangs popping out of the woods and snatching my clothes. It's actually really embarrassing. Last New Years' we were at some friends' house and a bunch of us kids went out for a walk after dark and I had to turn back by myself because the trees on both sides of the road were giving me heart problems, and the younger boys made fun of me. Then they made fun of me because I was so bad at playing the wii. Basically Emma is a wuss-bag and can't do anything.

     #4 Stopping at a red light on a hill in a standard vehicle. I LOVE MY LITTLE TRUCK TO BITS. It is my pride and joy. All the fears of driving a standard vehicle are mostly a thing of the past now...except those hills in town where you have to stop at a red light and you never know for sure if you'll make it before you crash into the car behind you and get sued. So far it hasn't happened. But it's winter now and there's snow. Bad bad bad.

     #5 Parking in the city. Where do I park? Everybody's already parked in all the spots! There's no place for me! Oh well, might as well just go home!
   
     #6 Boys. Actually I'm not that scared of them. Most of my closest friends are boys. It's only the really really hot ones that scare me, because how is a girl supposed to act? And just....why?
  
     #7 Betty's butter. Once my sister bought some homemade butter from an Amish lady and brought it home and made stuff with it, and the smell of it cooking for some reason was the grossest thing I had ever been subjected too. Even she was turned off by it and so she stuck the whole lump in the freezer where it remained for several months, haunting me every time I opened the freezer door. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.

     #8 Writing in birthday cards to people you don't know that well. And even to people you do know well, really. Besides the initial happy birthday and hope you have a good year does anybody know what to write in a birthday card?

     #9 Really intense homeschool moms. The ones that don't stop talking. Not targeting anyone here. But you know who you are and I think I should tell you, you freak me out.

     #10 Walking on ice in cowboy boots. At my grandparents' house they have this walkway that's basically a slip-and-slide in winter. One wrong move and, bam, permanent brain damage. Why am I wearing cowboy boots in December anyway? Wear real winter boots, dummy.

   

(Not my boots, my sister's. She got HH boots. She is now officially cooler than me.) (But I'm the one with the truck.)

     Can you relate? Do you have similar issues or am I alone in these?

     ~ Emma


     P.S. Western NY woke up to a white world this morning! Which means everything's gorgeous and we are going to be housebound for the entire day and maybe the rest of our lives! I am going to die! Have a nice day, everyone!

winds of winter and time and change

Growing up is weird. I thought so four years ago and I still think so. They say it gets easier and I think it does but it doesn't get any less weird. If you take a minute to think about it you realize -- you're doing all the things you only dreamed about before. Yesterday I was sitting on a hay bale wearing a jumper dress reading an American Girl book and today I'm applying for jobs, looking at colleges (wait WHAT), talking to people I'd never have talked to before and ramming around downtown in my little truck that needs inspection and insurance. It's just really weird.

When I was little, in the summertime, we used to go to pick up jam from our Amish friend at her house. Mama and Molly and Sadie and I would get in the truck and drive there, an excruciatingly long distance to an eight-year-old, now a jaunt down the road to me. We listened to The Hardy Boys on cassette tapes and talked about people like moms and girls do. When we got to Lydia's house it would be an hour earlier, because they don't change their clocks for daylight savings. It would be getting dark and the oil lamps would be lit. Molly would stay with Mama, probably because she felt like she should act grown-up as the oldest, but I didn't want to sit around in a dark house waiting while adults talked about stuff I didn't care about. There was a swing hanging from a tree in the yard, and Sadie and I always went out there and tussled over it, pushing each other, fighting over whose turn it was. I remember that swing very well because it was just a rope hanging from the tree with a board unattached and you had to put the board on the rope and sit on it before it fell off in order to swing on it. 

We'd swing and it would be dark. Across the road from the house there was forest and that was really scary to me. On this side of the road there was the house, and even though there wasn't much light, we were okay, because the road separated us. That other side was a different story. It was dark and scary and unknown. I never wanted to go over there, but it was okay, because I didn't have to. Mama was over here. Whatever lurked in the forest, I didn't have to worry about it because I didn't have to go there.

You don't have to go there when you're eight....but getting on eighteen, there's gonna be times when you will have to. I'm already sensing it and I haven't done anything really scary yet. I used to think if everything didn't stay the same I'd be so sad. I hated change. I hated it when we got new furniture. But now...time does educate you, maybe better than anything else can. Change is not only unavoidable, it's good. Things keep fresh when they keep moving. Change brings new opportunities down the river, and it brings new friends and new work and new things you find fun that you'd NEVER have tried before. Life rolls along fast as you can catch it.

I love the band Florida-Georgia Line. They look like bums and all their songs sound basically the same and sometimes their lyrics are dirty but sometimes they're profoundly beautiful and I love 'em. Last summer 'May We All' played on the radio so much it became sort of our theme song. (I say that, but our theme song will always be 'The Drinking Class'.) That song is crammed with wisdom but the best line, in my opinion, is the one about how "you learn to fly, if you can't you just free-fall". Because....well, what can you say? There it is. You do all you can to learn how to make it and you try your hardest, but if you can't you just free-fall and it's all good because ultimately you can't go too far wrong. Not if you've got your family and God on your side. (Which reminds me of another great FG Line song.....)

One day in the summer my two cousins and I were biking on the dirt road where Lydia used to live. We rode past her old house, now somebody else's house, and I saw that swing, the looped rope with the board lying on the ground just like always, and I remembered it for the first time in a lot of years. I wanted to stop and walk over there and pick up the board and set it down and learn to swing again. But for some reason it didn't feel right, so I didn't and I went to catch up with the others.

I'm excited now. It's going to be alright. But if you've ever felt like me and you're scared to venture to the other side of the road, the dark scary one, it's not as bad as you think and you'll rise to it. And while it's super ironic that I should be giving anyone advice about anything (it's okay, you can laugh), just relax. People aren't looking at you as much as you think they are. Go ahead and try your hardest, but if you end up free-falling, that's okay too. And don't ever, ever stop laughing at yourself, because laughter is your greatest weapon against all the vices you'll have. This goes for me too. ;-)

     Is it snowing where you live yet?

     Are you one of those people who hates FG Line or do you love them?

     What did you used to be scared of?

      ~Emma

Howdy-hey and welcome to Sugar Mountain.

 

        My name's Emma. If I'm not barefoot, I'm wearing cowboy boots. But I'm not a cowgirl, though I'd like to be. I'd also like to be beautiful and have a huge vocabulary and make people laugh. Sometimes I pretend I'm Miranda Lambert. (But I'm not.) Really, what I am is just a normal person who listens to too much country music.

     I was born in a little brown house. My mama already had one girl; I was the second. Another one would come two years later. I came into the world on a cold February day, and my daddy said, "Hello, Emma."

     I remember being seven and sitting up late nights at my desk with a light and a silly feather pen, writing stories as fast as they came to me. Once I read one of them at a gathering at my grandparents' house and my cousin laughed. (I did not appreciate it.)

     I grew up fairly unusual. Homeschooled, for one thing, and I'll let you make your own assumptions about that. (They're probably 50% correct.) There were good times and not-so-good and they almost all involved cousins and popcorn and old TV shows.

     I've made it to seventeen okay. These days I still live in the same brown house, on the same small farm with the yellow barn and the stand on the corner that my family runs. These days I listen to country music and work with my family. These days, I make plans and concoct schemes and do slightly illegal things from time to time and get away with them. These days I am grateful for my friends and I usually learn from my mistakes and I try to keep out of trouble.

    Telling stories is one of my favorite things in the world. I've blogged before, for a sizable chunk of my life, but that saw its day and we said goodbye to that chapter. But after knowing what it's like to have my words read by people, I'm missing it, and that's why I feel like it's time to start a new one. A new chapter, I mean. A new blog. So I can tell you stories. :-)

    This blog isn't about me. Well, sort of. (I talk about myself a lot, I guess. I try not to.) I just like to write. I can't keep it all inside. Mostly I write about things I know and love, which are my family and my Lord and my home, here on the stateline of New York and Pennsylvania where there are dirt roads and Amish and cornfields and hot redneck boys who drive loud trucks.

    So, if you like, stick around and I'll tell you stories.

     Welcome to Sugar Mountain!

      ~Emma