Adventures in Odyssey: Moments Like These (written in 2008)

August 16, 2018

I would only have a few seconds with them, and those seconds had to matter, to mean something – if not to them, to me. After a lifetime of devoted fandom that has only increased as I’ve moved out of the target age range, and after months of anticipation, I looked forward to walking through the autograph line, but with a sort of trepidatious anxiety. How could I convey depth of feeling and gratitude in one handshake and a few words? Soon it would all be over, they would be greeting the next person, and I would have lost my chance to tell them how much they had impacted my life.

It was the 20th anniversary of Adventures in Odyssey that was fast approaching. This now-popular kids’ radio program had announced a “birthday bash” to commemorate this momentous occasion, the highlight of which would be a live show in Colorado Springs featuring a dozen of the actors.

Alone in Africa {A Story of Waiting and Advent}

December 3, 2017

Two years ago, I flew to Nairobi for a dear friend’s wedding. It would be a whirlwind trip with only five days on the ground in Africa, my first visit to this continent. I would spend three days meeting Gracie’s new Kenyan family and friends, frosting cakes, and, finally, putting on a red dress and curling my hair to be bridesmaid. But for those first two days, I would take a bus to Mbale, Uganda, to meet Brenda and Remmy, my sponsored children.

My flight arrives late evening, and I only get a few hours of sleep before I have to get up to catch the bus. We drive as close as we can to the station, then make our way through the crowds, Gracie and her fiancée, Ken, seeing me safely on the bus before leaving.

Photo by Skydive Switzerland — *Photo by* *Skydive Switzerland*

The Sun and the Sky: Finding Magic (part 4)

October 23, 2017

When I first watched my skydiving video, I couldn’t help but cringe a little. Even now, I find myself wishing for the removal of some frames and the addition of others.

The angles aren’t great, I stick my tongue out at one point, and I’m gaping and gesturing like a child. I’m embarrassed that I’m embarrassed, because isn’t it enough that I went skydiving and it was magical?

I want to control the way I look when I’m feeling a lot of emotion, or at least control how I look in the images meant to capture that emotion and carry it out into the world. I want to look open but not too open, happy yet composed, and please no awkward facial expressions or ugly crying or anything else untamed, unkempt, unhinged.

The Sun and the Sky: Skydiving (part 3)

October 15, 2017

You will remember the buildup and the aftermath, but will you remember the freefall?

I’m worried that I’m already forgetting what it was like to skydive. Skydiving is not like riding a rollercoaster. It is not like anything but itself. I watch the video of me, plucked from a handcam, plucked from the sky. I see big-eyed surprise and wonder, then joy, then contentment on my face, but in some ways it feels like I'm watching another person. Fear, too, makes it hard to remember what came after the fear.

But I remember enough.

The Sun and the Sky: Eclipse (part 2)

October 1, 2017

I dreamed about the eclipse several times before August 21st. Sometimes they were happy dreams: The sky did strange things, things that would never happen in the waking world, but I was there to see them. Most of the time, though, they were anxious dreams: I wasn’t able to find a place to stay along the path of totality. Traffic held me at a distance until it was too late. The weather was bad.

And it wasn’t just my dreams that held a sense of dread. I, who had known about this event for ten years, I, who should have known better, didn’t think to find a motel until most of them were gone. The eclipse was still months away, and I was already doing it wrong.

It was no longer a little secret between the sun and me; now, everyone knew, and they were just a little bit faster.

The Sun and the Sky: Beginnings (part 1)

September 26, 2017

The first time a friend of mine went skydiving, I was 17 years old and relieved I was too young to join her. But I put it on my bucket list. I wasn’t sure if I would ever have the courage to initiate such an adventure, but I knew there would come a time when people I knew would look to the sky and ask me to come along, when there would be an opportunity to say yes or no. And I would say yes, I was sure I would, one day.

I was also 17 when the sky drew my attention in a different way. I found NASA’s website on eclipses, the world maps with the splashes of red and blue that can turn anyone into a dreamer. No one knows for sure what her life will bring even tomorrow, but I knew what the sun and the moon would be doing in 10 years' time, and I was determined to be there to see it. Long before anyone called it the Great American Solar Eclipse, I was joining my first group in the early days of Facebook and committing the far-off date of August 21, 2017, to memory.

The Learning Curve

May 31, 2010

... ["The bends in the road"] captures my outlook on life at this time. I’m nearing the end of my college career, and as that clear, defined end draws closer, so new beginnings approach as well… beginnings undefined and unclear, yet full of promise… a series of ‘bends in the road.’

When I wrote that, almost a year ago now, I had no idea how fitting the title "the bends in the road" would be even before "the end of my college career." Then, I looked forward to May 22, 2010 — graduation day — as the day I would round that first bend.

But I was wrong; it happened much sooner.

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