How Can I Keep From Singing

What tho' my joys and comforts die?

The Lord my Saviour liveth;

What tho' the darkness gather round?

Songs in the night he giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that refuge clinging;

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

                                                                 --Traditional Hymn (Version I like best by Mackenzie Tolk)

Note on the song: please, please, please listen to this song. Please. I cannot portray accurately enough how much this song resonates with the feeling behind not only this post, but just the last few years of my life. Also, Mackenzie Tolk is an incredibly talented singer and worth listening to.

[This was originally and the end of the "Beautiful Day" post, but due to length an the dramatic shift in subject content, I split the posts into two. You can read them in either order, they don't connect in any way, and unlike most of my posts, this one is less about my present life and more about how I got here.]

Between posting "Close the Distance" and this one, I've really thought about why I came here.  Actually, it's a question I've been asked many times, as well. "Why Virginia?"; "Why law school?"; "Why that school?"...the list goes on but the question is always "Why?" After I shot myself in the foot with last semester's academic performance, I realized that, if I'm going to succeed, I have to be able to honestly answer the question of why I'm here. 

Before I go into it, I'd like to preface that this next part is nearly exclusively impacted by the fact that I am Christian. I truly and completely believe in what Jesus taught. There are things I don't understand yet, and there are things I've learned and continue to learn over and over again. So, my point is, I don't tell this story with any hidden motive or meaning. It's just my story. It's me being honest.

  

So, when I started undergrad, I wanted to be a flight attendant and for reasons that didn't make a lick of sense, I was a music major. I didn't like it much. For as much as I enjoyed music and singing, it just wasn't the right fit for me. My first semester, though, I also took a Japanese class. I loved it. There weren't enough Tuesdays and Thursdays in the week to satisfy how much I wanted to learn. That professor also taught linguistics, and often referred to linguistic concepts in class. I got crazy obsessed with that, too. It wasn't long before I was a Linguistics and Japanese double major. My dreams of what I'd do with that, though, changed frequently. With my lack of direction and inability to stay focused, I wasn't doing great. Then, about the time I was finishing my second year, my life started to get bumpy. 

Enter God. Up until this point, God didn't matter to me so much. I had been involved in church and youth group on and off for most of my life, but it wasn't something I really cared about. Granted, for as much as I enjoyed things, I didn't really care about anything. I was selfishly motivated and hated change. I was charismatic and could make acquaintances easily, but I felt completely isolated. It took my life beginning to unwind for me to begin to realize that I couldn't keep living like that. I became a Christian because this belief in God gave me a better way to do things and something to live for. Faith changed everything. My life still had a bit of unwinding to do, but I didn't feel alone anymore.

Some time later, God said, "Go to law school" (I use the word 'said' loosely. It wasn't an audible voice, and I can't really explain how I knew that was what God wanted from me, but I did, and so I accepted that as fact). My responding attitude was something between: a real, "Sure, okay." And a more sarcastic, "Sure, let me get right on that." Eventually, my dream ended up becoming to go to law school. Nearly immediately after I'd decided that I was indeed going to apply, an Intervarsity (Christian organization on college campuses) staff worker told me about this school in Virginia called Regent University. As he told me, I knew, with the same certainty that I did about going to law school in the first place, that this was the school I would go to. When I got the chance, I checked out the website. I was pretty stoked. I just had to go to this school. 

There's a fairly significant fact I've been leaving out. Not purposely, but it just hasn't been as important for the point of the story thus far. But why I had to go to Regent requires this to fully understand its meaning. So, since about high school, I have been aware and passionate about the fight against human trafficking. Going to law school was not independent of this fight; I want to be a part of it. Between high school and about the middle of undergrad, while I got fairly apathetic about things, I stopped caring about the outside world, too. But again I say: faith changed everything. My heart and drive woke up and I just had to do something. Regent has this thing called the Center of Global Justice, dedicated to fight for religious freedom, the oppressed, the enslaved, the orphan, the widow....etc. Law and Justice. In one school. This was why I was stoked. This is why I went and moved two thousand, three hundred and seventy-seven miles away (according to google maps, my apartment and Kris's house are 2,377 miles apart, but the driving distance is closer to 2,700 miles). This is why I came here. To do something. So I can't say that I don't want this anymore; it was never about what I wanted. It's about that fact that I decided to care. 

There's a little more to the story. Well, a lot more, but I'm not comfortable sharing it over a public blog online. (More than happy to share in a more private setting). The gist of the rest is that I shouldn't have been able to get here. There are many reasons why my being here shouldn't have been possible. Miracle after miracle of opening doors, last minute decisions and so much mercy from people who love me, people who didn't like me very much, and people who have no idea who I am. 

I'm very thankful to God for my life and the opportunity to be here. In all honestly, if I left or failed out, I have no idea what I'd do with my time. All the things I planned out for myself don't hold weight anymore. I can't explain how deeply the desire to do something is rooted in my heart. So I hope that I remember that through the mundane and challenge of law school, I didn't come here to fail.

[Since my life is kinda the same everyday, and will be for a while, I might post more posts about life in general, similar to this one. I haven't decided. If I wait for interesting things to happen, I might not post at all. Haha.]