Update

At the stroke of midnight on New Years' Day this year, among clinking glasses with my family and saying "Happy New Year!", my heart skipped a beat as I realized that this was the first year where everything was not planned in my life. For most of us, from kindergarten through 12th grade, we know what our plans are for the coming year. We will go to school, play sports, join clubs and hang out with friends and family. However, after 12th grade, it seems like life is up in the air, especially when you don't where you are going to college.

I have been busy the past few months with scholarship competitions, dual-enrollment courses, AP classes, dance classes, traveling and other miscellaneous activities. Through these activities, it has become very hard to write on this blog; however, I hope to keep writing as time goes on and things settle down. The good news is that now that I know which college I am going to and have accumulated some scholarships, I do have more time than I used to to write. The bad news - looking at it from a time and writing perspective - is that I'm getting a job in a month or two.

So I'm not sure where God is going to take me these next few months, but I hope that I'll start having more time to write!

God bless,
Emily Silverwing

Welcome to 2016!

I know I haven't written much lately, so it feels sort of weird to making a post like this now. The last few months have been extremely busy with me attempting to balance school, dance, other obligations and just time to relax. I hope this year I will be able to write more here because I love and enjoy it.

2015 has officially drawn to an end, and 2016 is here, whether we are ready for it or not. The new year time has often been a time of reflection for me, to help me see how far I have come in the past year and where I want to go in the future. It allows me to really look at the positives and negatives of the year, and from that, I can determine what type of resolutions I want to make.

Looking back at 2015, I see a lot of change in my life - some it good and some of it not so much. Looking at the positives, first, 2015 was a year of growing up and change. I had to make some decisions that were hard for me, but despite it all, I was given the strength to persevere and it ended up alright.  I also made a new friend who has been there for me unlike any other person has been before. During the summer, I got my first job babysitting that helped me learn responsibility and work. Sometimes it was exhausting, but for the most part, I loved being with the kids. I learned that I am capable of many things I never thought possible, and that has opened up a world of opportunity.

Of course, this whole year wasn't perfect. Sometimes I doubted myself, and there have been some rough goings. There were times when my faith wasn't as strong as I would have liked it to be. There were many trials, yet despite them all, I have managed to make it through them so far. 

As I look onto 2016, I see lots of changes and trials coming. I will be looking at colleges - a new and sort of scary thing for me to be doing. It will all end up with me at the end of the year applying to the colleges I look at near the end of this year; I'm not sure I am ready for that. Transitioning from high school to college is something unknown to me. I'm hoping that by dual enrolling this year, it will give me a taste of college and help me get more comfortable with the college atmosphere. This year, there are also many tests that I have to take in the coming months for school that can determine some things like which colleges, scholarships and stuff. While I dread taking tests like that, I am hoping for the best from them. On top of all of this, I have to sort through daily life and daily struggles. Sometimes it seems overwhelming, but I know I will be able to make it because God will give me the strength to get through it and I am blessed with people in my life whom I can talk through things with.

This year, I am trying to look at the year as a fresh, clean slate with many new opportunities on it. I have started by making some small goal resolutions to work towards and then will progressively add to them throughout the year. While most of my resolutions are personal, one resolution I am willing and able to share is that I want to grow in my faith. This year, I am trying to be more active in my faith by praying more, reading the Bible, journaling and living my faith. One of my friends and I are going to be trying to work on this together, so hopefully that will make me more motivated to follow through. I think that once one has a firm foundation in prayer and trust in God, the other problems and struggles that they deal with will fall more in place and be easier to deal with. 

I pray that y'all have a very blessed 2016!

~Emily Silverwing

If You're Happy and You Know It...(Part 1)

Most of us have grown with the familiar tune, "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands." I have memories of doing this song at Vacation Bible Schools and daycare events when I was little. I always looked forward to the clapping my hands in response to the lyrics. It was easy to say I was happy! There I was, surrounded by my friends, in a place I felt comfortable. I had a family that loved me and was well fed. I had toys and clothes. I was sure that God loved me, no matter what. As we grow older though, what happened to that innocent joy and happiness that was so easy to acknowledge? Did it disappear? Or do the lives we live as we are older block the happiness that we once had easy access to?

So right now, take a moment to imagine the perfect day - a day where everything goes how you want it to. Maybe you wake up and you're not tired. Maybe you don't have to go to school. Maybe it's a day where you have no worries or stresses. Maybe you get to go travel the world and see astonishing sights, or maybe you get to go on a fall hike with your family and friends. Goodness, maybe you even get an unlimited amount of ice cream. Whatever your perfect day is, put yourself in that position and imagine how you feel. Are you content? Are you happy? What else do you feel?

Okay, now wake up. Let's get real: this day that you are imagining is just a dream. It isn't reality. Reality is what you are living right now, and reality can be hard. For some of you, you might be going through a broken relationship, maybe with your friends, a family member or a boyfriend or girlfriend. Others of you may be facing stress, confusion and the helpless feeling of just being lost. Issues in our personal life, in our families, at school and just in our community can drag us down. In the midst of our chaotic lives, we are looking and searching for one thing: to be happy.

We try to make ourselves happy in numerous ways. We wear the latest fashions. We are friends - or sometimes "friends" - with certain people who are "cool" or "popular". We listen to music. We go to certain parties and sometimes try certain things that people say will make us forget about life and help us"let loose". We look for love from a boyfriend or girlfriend. We eat food. We buy the latest technology. We watch movies and TV shows. We fill our lives with so much stuff in an attempt to make ourselves happy, but in the end, does it work?

Many of you reading probably have been trying to satisfy your hunger for happiness in many of the ways I listed above. These things that we are trying, they are what the world tells us will make us happy. Let's evaluate this for a moment. By filling your life with this stuff, are you truly happy? Sure, for the moment while we are doing these things we feel content and filled, but once they pass? Once they pass, we feel empty, like we want more. These things don't fill us and leave us complete. Once they are over, we face reality again. We feel like we have to refill the empty hole in our souls with more stuff that supposedly will make us complete. These things we fill ourselves with don't give us true happiness; they give us pleasure.

I want to take a moment to discuss the difference between "pleasure" and "happiness". By looking only at dictionary definitions of these words, we can begin to see the differences between these words. The Merriam Webster definition of pleasure is "a state of gratification" and "frivolous amusement"; the definition of happiness is "a state of well being and contentment" and "a satisfying experience". Now those definitions might be confusing, so let me explain them more in depth. Pleasure is a feeling that satisfies us - but only for a short amount of time. Once the source of pleasure leaves us, we feel empty, despair and a longing for more. In other words this satisfaction is only temporary. Happiness, on the other hand, fills us. Happiness is a feeling that completely satisfies our hunger for more and we feel content, even after the source of happiness leaves us. So which do you want: pleasure or happiness?

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This post is the first part of a bi-part devotional. The next segment will be up within the next week or so, so stay tuned for how you can begin to find the happiness that you long for.

Blessings,

Emily Silverwing

Washington D.C. - Days 4 and 5

I'm so happy to get the next two days up for y'all to see! So, one my fourth day on my D.C. trip, I was able to go into the actual city of Washington D.C.! It was amazing, especially because I rode on an underground Metro subway for the first time! These may seem small to everyone, but I was so excited to go on the Metro! I had heard of people riding on these, but never experienced it myself, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience! When I first boarded, it was early enough in the transfer for me to be able to sit in a seat. Unfortunately though, pretty much every time I sat on the Metro, it was next to a stranger. Now this isn't a bad thing, but the way people interact in a big city is WAY different from the small town I live in. Usually, what I am used to is saying hello to people walking on the streets or at least smiling in this direction. The people on the Subway hardly acknowledged each other, even the people they were sitting right next to! Most people were reading books, using their phones or listening to music, and on some rides, the car was nearly silent!

Now that I've ranted about that, let's get on to the more interesting stuff! So, on day four, I was able to see the outside of the Library of Congress, tour the Supreme Court building and the Capitol building! By a bout of bad luck, it just so happens that my camera died halfway through our walk through the Supreme Court building so I have no pictures to show y'all of the rotunda and stuff, but I HIGHLY recommend Google searching pictures of it. Anyways, on the fourth day we walked passed the Library of Congress but did not go in because not everyone that came to D.C. with me was above the approved age. (You have to be 16 or older to go into the Library of Congress.) After that, we were able to walk to the Supreme Court building - the third branch of our government. We didn't do too much here, but we walked through a hallway that had the history of the Supreme Court on it, saw the spiral staircase and were able to peek in at the actual court room. We mostly just stopped here to fill in time because we had to go over to the Capitol building.

Now, the visit to the Capitol building was very special because not only were we able to see the building and learn about the history of it, but we were able to actually personally meet a house representative from Michigan! We were able to go to his office and sit to talk with him for about five minutes! Despite what it sometimes appears, representatives are just normal people and can be very friendly. After talking to the representative, we got a personal tour from one of his interns of the place. We wore special pins to wear and were able to see different areas and skip past certain lines. There's so many parts of the Capitol building that I just loved! One thing that stood out to me was the number of statues of various people. Our tour guide said that each state was able to choose two people that they deem important from that state's history and send a statue to the Capitol. The statues are spread out throughout the building, but there is one room where a good number of statues reside. The room is technically called the "National Statuary Hall" but is often nicknamed "the whispering gallery". In this large room, there are certain places that you can stand where you can hear someone whisper from yards away - even in a noisy hall! Our tour guide demonstrated it to us, and it's crazy how clear the whisper was despite all the commotion in the hall! In this hall, there are also little marks were certain presidents had desks. Another favorite part of the Capitol was the rotunda, and I'm so disappointed that I couldn't get pictures! The painting on the walls and ceiling of this room is so intricate and just awe-inspiring. My final favorite part was being able to see the House of Representative chamber! The line to get into this room took HOURS to get through, and by the time we got to the chamber, the house was in recess. Still, it was amazing to see the room and sit in the balcony!

On the fifth day in D.C. I went to Fredicksburg, Virginia. In Fredricksburg, we went to the Lacey House which was a monumental part of the civil war. It used to be a family's home, but was taken over and converted into a hospital. We also were able to see a Union cemetery before finishing up the day with ice cream!

Day 4:

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

Fountain in front of the Library of Congress

Outside of the Capitol Building - It was under construction.

Outside of the Supreme Court Building

Part of the design on the Supreme Court Building

Spiral Staircase

Ceiling of the Supreme Court building

Day 5: 

Gardens leading up to the Lacey House

More gardens and outer buildings of the Lacey House

Lacey House from the back

Cannon at the Lacey House

More gardens

Pretty flower at the Lacey House

The Lacey House

Flowers on a tree at the Lacey house. I don't know what they are, but I love them!

Close up of the flower

Magnolia tree at the Lacey House

Trail leading to the cemetery

They are hard to see, but these are the grave stones in the cemetery.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! There's a few more days to put up!

~Emily Silverwing

Washington D.C. - Day 3

So, I've finally got day three of my trip to Washington D.C. ready to post! The rest of the days should be out soon! 

On the third day of my trip, I went to Jamestown and Yorktown in Virginia. Jamestown was the site of the first English settlers in the New World who were chartered by the Virginia company to come look for gold and riches. Instead, they were met with hardships such as disease, malnutrition and fatigue. The site of Jamestown today has four main areas for visitors to browse: an indoor museum, a replication of the Native America village, replication of the English settlement, and the port where the ships landed. Jamestown was amazing to walk through, and it was very interactive and kid-friendly. You were able to walk through the building and touch the things they had set out. In the Native American village, I was able to grind corn, sit in a hand-carved wooden canoe and scrap the fur off of an animal hide with a shell. In the English settlement, I was able to try on some of the armor people might have worn back then (and it was heavy!) and stand in the high pulpit of the church. 

Yorktown was the location of the Battle of Yorktown during the Revolutionary war where General George Washington defeated General Charles Cornwallis which started the end of the war. I didn't get to stay very long in Yorktown, but they had a museum that you could walk through and few videos you could watch in a theater. Their outside grounds were small, but they were interesting. There were a bunch of tents set up, a few buildings and a real garden that you could go see. I was also lucky enough to see a musket and cannon demonstration where kids from the crowd where able to load the cannon! They weren't able to actually fire it, but they could prepare it. 

Although I don't have any pictures of this, I also stopped in Williamsburg to eat lunch. We were going to attempt to stop at a tavern for lunch, but unfortunately we just missed them before they closed. Still, we walked around the town for a bit and saw all these old fashioned shops that had a certain charm to them. 

So that's about sums up day three! Here's some pictures of some of my adventures!

Jamestown

A view of a few of the wigwams of the Native Americans in Jamestown.

Another view of the Native American village.

It's hard to tell, but this is actually a hand-carved wooden canoe. It's hard to imagine actually being able to paddle in one of these!

A model of a Native American campfire.

The inside view of a wigwam. There were lots of handwoven baskets and animal furs.

We had to walk along a little path to get to the English portion of Jamestown. The main settlement was surrounded by a wooden fence like this one. 

An overview of the English settlement.

Another view of some of the settlement. I think that the houses are so quaint!

This is hard to see, but the little lump on the loft is a chicken. This was part of the schoolhouse and when I walked in there was a loud sound and a fluttering of feathers, and I was shocked to find some real live chickens in the schoolhouse! I can't imagine trying to learn with them wandering the place!

Another view of some of the structures.

This is the inside of the church. The pews had high, straight backs that looked uncomfortable, but the pew seating was actually really comfortable! On the right you can see the pulpit that I was later able to go stand on! It's quite the view!

This is one of the ships at the port. There were two ships there: a larger one and a smaller one. We were able to walk on and explore both ships. If I have anything to say about them, it's that they have some tight, narrow quarters!

The flag and mast on the larger ship.

Yorktown

One of the gardens in Yorktown.

A more green and live garden then the one above. 

A building in Yorktown with some white army tents in the background. 

A first view of Yorktown

This was the man who demonstrated the musket firing - uniform and all!

This is the inside of one of the little buildings in Yorktown.

Finally, here is a hat that hung on a nail inside the building above. Liberty or death? This statement was based on the quote by Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

That concludes day three of my trip to Washington D.C. I'm hoping and trying really hard to get the rest of the days up soon!

~Emily Silverwing