Periods of Life

I got to go home this weekend for Easter and usually a trip home results in an hours long coffee date with my mum. Obviously, this was the case this trip as well.

Throughout all the things that came up in our conversation, I started talking about my spiritual journey and I realized that it has been clearly defined by periods of learning.

I was a pastor's kid(PK) for the better part of my growing up years and that had a huge influence on not only my life in general, but my spiritual life as well. I spent most of my time trying to be the perfect pastor's daughter: doing everything right, being super involved, always volunteering, never messing up, doing everything a good Christian is supposed to do. I had a lot of genuine faith and I did believe what I said I believed, but there was so much that I didn't have a very good understanding of. I was deeply hurt by other Christians and by the church in my life. I wasn't accepted by them, I wasn't encouraged by them, and as I look back on it I can recognize that a lot of it was due to a lack of authenticity and a lack of grace. Christians in my life were not real and honest with each other, people didn't actually share of themselves with others. All my friendships were fake and shallow. No one really knew me as I struggled to even know myself.

When we left that situation and moved to Anderson, my heart was in a very bitter and a very angry place. I wanted nothing to do with the God that I had grown up with.

Another aspect of my conversation with my mum was the reason that God brought our family to Anderson. What was the purpose of bringing us to that specific community to only uproot 4 years later? Why the move at all? For my dad it was the opportunities it provided him to take care of his mom in her last days. His job and our location allowed her to be moved from Texas to a special Alzheimers home in Anderson and Dad was able to take care of her before she died.

But for me, being in Anderson was a time of healing. It was 2.5 years I had to allow God to work in my heart and life and prepare me for college and for the community at Purdue. If I had gone straight from Van Wert to Purdue, I probably would have strayed very far away from God and from my faith. At the very least, it would have continued to be fake and not life-penetrating. The people that God brought into my life for a time, the experiences that I had and the teaching I sat under while in Anderson brought me to a place of healing, to a place of acceptance, and a place of truer faith and trust in the religion I call my own; in the God I call my Savior.

It's still been a long process of healing and growth as I have been at Purdue, and it will continue to be so, but I am really grateful and appreciative of the time that God put in my life to prepare me for what was next. A lot of time in Anderson was spent in frustration because I didn't feel like I had enough time to do anything, to make good friends, to be someone there. But that wasn't the purpose. Understanding the process that God took me through allows me to be more patient with the struggles I am going through now. Just as I had things to learn in Anderson, and in Van Wert, I have things to learn here at Purdue that I know I will need farther down the road. My faith(and by that I mean the real, practical trust that I have to put in God each day) is being tested and tried a lot. It's a huge struggle for me to be able to relinquish control of how my life goes to the Master Planner. My heart is ready to learn though, and for that, I am truly grateful.

--Plus, God brought my best friend to school with me, so the time that I had in high school again just prepared us for a beautiful friendship to blossom here. :)

All Grown Up

Good news: I got a job for the summer here at Purdue! I will be a Lab Technician working in the Pilot Plant and Sensory Lab in the Food Science Department. I am very excited because this is a job that I really wanted and I am really looking forward to working on something completely new. Plus, both the pilot plant and the sensory lab are very hands on and I'm excited about that aspect as well. Plus, my boss is super friendly and a really nice guy. I anticipate learning a lot this summer. It's also a lot of hours, adult hours. Like 8:30am-5:00pm days. Another new experience to get used to. On top of taking a class in Indy. The summer will be rough, but hopefully rewarding.

Bad news: The job starts right after finals week, so I won't be able to go home for any amount of time. I don't get to go be a kid for a few weeks and enjoy the comforts of home before my family moves and it is no longer my home. When I told my mum, she said that she was happy for me, but very sad that I wouldn't be coming home. I'm sad too. Sometimes growing up isn't very fun. As excited as I am for new experiences and living in an apartment on my own and finally being responsible to pay my rent and cook my food, the thought simply terrifies me at times. At times I just want to be able to go back home and stay in my parent's house and know that they will take care of me. I don't want to think about budgets and living expenses and making good decisions. I just want to hang out with my little brother and sister and build massive forts in the living room and eat pizza for lunch every day.

Who knew that growing up would be so sad? That it would be a celebration as well as a mourning process? That it wouldn't just always feel right?

A Phoenix, Buried

If any of you came to X-Works this past weekend, then you might have enjoyed many of the pieces presented in the show. You might also have wondered what any of them meant! I know that most of modern dance is confusing to understand especially for those that are not exposed to the dance world very often. I personally try to not take a literal approach to my choreography for two reasons: 1. I want each person to be able to interpret it in their own way and have it affect them on a personal level rather than just taking away from it what it means to me. 2. It's a little terrifying to put out there all the personal emotions that often go into a dance piece, particularly this one, "A Phoenix, Buried".

However, I decided that I would explain the reasoning behind this piece to give you all a taste of what runs through my mind. Scary, I know.

So this is my explanation of why I made this piece and what it means to me.

This solo is actually an adaptation of a solo that was choreographed on me 4 years ago by my old ballet instructor, Tricia Graf. She gifted me this piece of choreography when I had to leave the school due to moving to Anderson in the middle of my sophomore year. Originally this piece came out of a lot of angry and frustrating emotions that I experienced during the move to Anderson and my attempt to push God out of my life during that time. As many of you know, my pushing God out attempts didn't work very well. I was going to youth group at Bethany Christian Church and just getting slammed in the face every week with the realness and authenticity of God and who He was. He had never left my side throughout the whole ordeal of the move, the continuation of my parent's rocky relationship, and the feelings of loneliness and hurt I felt . I was getting an overdose of God at that point in my life and it was the only thing keeping me stable.

Coming back to this piece 4 years later, I wanted it to be representative of my life again. But clearly my life has changed a lot in the past 4 years, so the ideas behind the dance would change as well. "A Phoenix, Buried" is about my struggle of meshing my old life(who I used to be, what I used to do, how people used to perceive me) with my new life. This is manifested in the mash of balletic and modern moves throughout the piece. Ballet represents my "old life" and Modern represents my "new life." This is also fitting because most dancers start their dancing career(as I did) training in ballet; it is the foundation most dance forms are built upon. In the same way, my life is built upon itself and I could not have gotten to where I am in my life now, without having first experienced the life that I did.

The dance starts with Ashley at the barre, in typical ballet fashion, but right from the start, you realize that this isn't a normal ballet piece. From the start you can observe the fight going on between trying to be one way, and having something else always seeping back in. This continues throughout the piece with thrashing, chaotic movements and floor work immediately followed by a series of tendus that are interrupted by contractions and contortions of the upper body.

The barre is also a very important part of this piece. In ballet, everything starts at the barre. You begin every class warming up at the barre, you use it to train, you use it for balance, you always come back to it. So in this piece, the barre is always there. Even if Ashley isn't dancing with it, or paying attention to it, it's always there. That foundation will always be there, and that small nagging presence of who I used to be will always be there, in the back of my mind.

The end is somewhat abrupt; the dance has come up to the present time, and the future is unknown. Therefore, the dance cannot continue until life continues to happen. At the very end, Ashley ends in a pose behind the barre, not in the center spotlight. To many this might look like a lighting error, but that is the way I wanted it. In the light is where she is supposed to be, but that ever present barre is keeping her from it. In the same way, the light is where I am supposed to be, but that presence of my "old life" all those expectations of who I am supposed to be, are keeping me from being where I need to be, preventing me from where I should be.

This piece isn't supposed to end with things all wrapped up in a pretty bow, that's not how life ever is. If I wasn't so aesthetically opposed to ending a piece with continual movement, that probably would have been a more logical ending to symbolize the continuation of life. I prefer to think that someone just pushed stop on the dance as if to say, "Well that's the snapshot that you get to see, tune in next time for the continuation of this story." And of course, there will always be a continuation, until I die. Then I can continue the dance in heaven, and won't that be beautiful! :)