All I could think of was when the disciples tried to send the children away and Jesus stopped them and said, "Let the little children come to me . . . for the kingdom of G.o.d belongs to such as these."
Oh, wow! I just looked up the reference for that verse. It"s in Mark 10:14. And do you want to know what verse 16 says? I couldn"t believe it. It says, "And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them." Jesus blessed them! He hugged them! That"s what I did today, too. It felt like such a tiny gift to give them as they left, but it"s what I had in my heart to give. I did the same thing for those orphans today that Jesus did for the children who were being sent away from him 2000 years ago. Amazing!
May 14
Have you noticed, DSF?
I have only three more weeks of cla.s.ses and then there"s a break for almost a month before the summer session begins. I"ve decided to stay through the summer session because I can gain more transferable credits than I could if I went home and went to summer school there.
I"ve applied to Rancho Corona for the fall. Katie is already there this semester, and she"s loving it. She said Sierra and some of her friends came to Rancho with Sierra"s brother in order to visit the campus and decide if they want to go there in the fall, too. It"s possible that Katie and Todd and Sierra and I will all be at the same school at the same time! Isn"t that wild? I never would have imagined that.
I don"t know what I"m going to do for my term break before summer session. I"d like to travel around, but I haven"t yet made plans with any of the other students here. I guess I could travel by myself and just go visit a dozen of my friends from school since they live all over Europe. But I don"t like traveling by myself very much. I did it that one time from England to Spain and that wasn"t my favorite experience. It was good, but it was pretty faith stretching, too. The best part was the end of the journey when I saw Todd.
May 18
DSF,.
I"m so b.u.mmed out. I got a "D" on one of my papers for my Critical a.n.a.lysis cla.s.s. It"s been my least favorite cla.s.s here and I don"t even think they have the same kind of cla.s.s in the U.S. I didn"t work very hard on it. It was only two pages, but it"s the first "D" I"ve gotten here. I could write it over and the professor said he"d average the new grade with the "D," but I don"t have time to work on it because all my other papers and projects for all my other cla.s.ses are due in the next three weeks. Then we have a week of finals and then I"m done until the summer session.
May 19
Guess what, Dear Silent One?!
You"ll never guess. I"m going to travel around Europe for three weeks during my break. And guess who I"m going with? No, not anyone from here. Give up? Katie and Todd!
Can you believe it?! My aunt once again is delighting in playing the role of the wealthy fairy G.o.dmother. She emailed me about my plans for my break and I said I hadn"t worked on making any arrangements yet because I"ve been so overwhelmed with all my final projects, plus we have more children at the orphanage than we"ve had the whole time I"ve been here.
So, dear Aunt Marti emails me back and says, "Don"t make any plans. All has been arranged." I thought she was going to buy me a ticket to fly home for a month the way she did at Christmas and I was going to tell her no thanks. It was hard at Christmas to step in and out of my life here into my old life. I certainly didn"t think I wanted to do it again when I only had the summer session and then I"d be home for good.
Then I got this screaming email from Katie. And I do mean screaming! She wrote the whole email in capital letters so it "sounded" as if she was shouting at me the whole time! Her email let me know that Marti"s surprise wasn"t a ticket for me to come home, but rather two tickets to Switzerland-one for Katie and one for Todd. Of course when I emailed Marti to thank her, she was so upset that Katie spoiled all the fun of her surprise.
I called my parents and talked it through with them and they"re fine with the arrangements as long as the three of us are traveling together the whole time. They don"t want Todd and me to go off by ourselves for any reason, but they said they trust him and they trust me. My mom got kind of choked up when she said that I was old enough to make my own important decisions and travel around and she was proud of all that I"d accomplished this year.
Todd called yesterday and he sounded really excited about the trip. Of course, he"d like to go back to Spain. Katie wants to go to Norway and I decided that more than anything, I"d like to see all that I can see of Italy. It"s been a cold winter and spring and I like the thought of being in sunny Italy.
Who knows if we"ll come up with a compatible plan before they both arrive here on the 6th of June. I checked out some maps and travel books from the library this afternoon. It"s going to be very difficult to concentrate on my studies while those travel books are sitting in the corner calling to me.
June 5
Our last page, Dear Silent Friend, I"m so sad that we"re on the last page. You have been my Dear Silent Friend for almost five years now. Todd and Katie arrive tomorrow. I had planned to go into Basel and buy a "sister" diary to take along on our travels, but I didn"t get to it. You won"t be too jealous, will you, if I share my jumbled thoughts with another diary? If I could add pages to you, I would. For all these years you have faithfully held my words, and you"ve invited me to come back anytime to read them. You"ll never know how much you"ve helped me to become who I am today. You"re a mirror. A treasure chest. A gentle reminder of good and bad times. And just as my Uncle Bob said when he gave you to me so many years ago, you became a real friend to me.
June 10
h.e.l.lo!
DSF, meet your new companion, your Silent Sister. Silent Sister, meet my Dear Silent Friend. I hope the two of you don"t mind being joined together this way with a couple of rubber bands. It"s just that I don"t want to lose either of you, and I figured if you stuck together like this, it would be easier to find both of you in my luggage. Sorry about the messy quarters there in the crammed bag. I didn"t know that Todd and Katie would decide we should go camping with Antonio and then hit the trains to Italy.
Since I bought you in Rome, SS, does that mean you speak Italian? I guess I won"t know, because I"m pretty sure you"ll be as quiet as DSF has been all these years.
The first thing I want to say is embarra.s.sing, but I don"t know how else to get this out. I"ve been acting like a brat, and I can"t stop it! Everything irritates me. I keep thinking if I just get a little more sleep, or if Katie and I would stop irritating each other, or if Todd would open up more, then I"d snap out of this. But I can"t seem to get back in sync with both of them. When I found out they were coming and we were going to travel around together in Europe, I dreamed about how wonderful everything was going to be. Why is it that I always over-dream?
Sorry to start off with such a downer as my first entry, but I need to figure out why I can"t move beyond this bad mood. I mean, I"m traveling around Europe with my two best friends! Why do all these old insecurities have to come along? I thought I"d grown past a lot of this stuff during my time in Switzerland.
Go ahead. Say it. Tell me to breathe, to relax, to take a chill pill, as Katie would say. Tell me to stop being so overly sensitive. Tell me it"s okay not to always feel like I"m in control of my life and every circ.u.mstance. Tell me I can trust G.o.d and trust my friends more than I have been. Tell me to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience while I can.
Okay. You can stop there. That"s enough to work on at the moment. We"re going to the island of Capri, and that"s stirred up all my memories of Rick because, when he was on this island on my 16th birthday, he called me. So what, right? It would only be a coincidence-if my emotions weren"t so out of whack. I"m going to stop now. Maybe Todd will talk with me about some of this stuff. Something has to change. That something is probably me.
June 14
Good morning, SS!
I have the best friends in the world. I really do. I"ve discovered that it takes me a while to adjust to change. No big surprise, right?
We"re on the train right now leaving Austria and on our way to Germany. I think my internal emotion-o-meter is finally reset back to someplace more in the middle. Finally! I loved our time in Salzburg. We had such a great day.
The charm of that happy city will never leave me. When we walked past Mozart"s birthplace this morning, I thought of how his music still resonates here in a timeless, majestic way. The tour book said that people lived in Salzburg five hundred years before Christ was born because of the salt deposits found here. That astounds me.
All Katie seemed to be impressed with was the number of fountains we found as we walked around yesterday evening. At every fountain that had a horse statue in it, she made us stop and listen to her sing, "Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray . . . ," etc. Poor Katie tried so hard to get Todd and me to stand on the edge of the fountains and sing with her, but we let her do a solo every time.
I think all three of us finally have found a way to let each of us be our unique self and not stress over it. We have a lot of travel time left. I hope the harmony keeps up. And I don"t mean Katie"s singing harmony.
June 19 (I think. I"m not sure exactly what day it is.)
h.e.l.lo SS, We have been on so many trains and walked so many cobblestone streets it"s all starting to mix together in my memories. I really thought I"d check in with you more often during this trip, dearest Silent Sis, but everything has sort of rolled into one long day and even longer night without much brain s.p.a.ce left to write about it.
We"re in Oslo, Norway tonight. Todd is at the end of the earth. Really, he is. He left this morning and took a train to a Norwegian town above the Arctic Circle. Crazy? No. That"s Todd. Right before he boarded the train he grabbed me and kissed me good. Katie called him "Captain Pa.s.sion." She and I started talking about kisses and how Todd and I have been so sparing with our kisses over the years. I thought about it the rest of the day while Katie and I took a boat tour of the fjords.
I have so much saved up inside my soul that I"m sure it will take me a lifetime to fully express physically my love to my husband. I want to save all of that until we enter into "holy matrimony." I think that"s part of what makes it holy. I think G.o.d honors virginity in a special way. When He chose to send His Son to earth, He did it through the body of a virgin. I want my marriage to be holy before G.o.d. For the first time I"ve begun to think that maybe I need a plan instead of just a.s.suming that"s how everything will go.
At this point in my life, I a.s.sume I"ll marry Todd. But I don"t know that for sure. It"s as if I need to save myself from him to save myself for him.
I mean, it"s not that he"s coming on too strong and I have to fend him off. But I have a feeling his eagerness to do more than just light kissing when we"re together is growing stronger. Well, of course it is. He"s a guy, right? I feel that way, and I"ve always been the more reserved one.
I"m sure you"re thinking that the reason I"m saying I need a plan is because I like to have things figured out so I can sort of be in control. Well, in this situation I think it"s a good thing for me to plan to be in control of how I maintain my purity for my future husband, whether it ends up being Todd or not.
So here"s my plan. I"m going to save my really big kisses (and everything else) and tuck them away, safe and warm in the secret place in my heart. When Todd and I are together and I feel like kissing him really good, I"ll just tell myself to save that kiss. It will be like saving pennies in a piggy bank. One day I"ll give that piggy bank to my future husband, whoever he is. And when he breaks it open, look out! That bank will be loaded!
June 21
My SS, I hereby t.i.tle this entry, "In Search of the Lille Havfrue."
What is a Lille Havfrue, you ask? Why, that"s the Little Mermaid, of course. As in, the so-called famous statue that my tour book said could be found in the harbor here in Copenhagen.
Yes, well, Katie and I got lost and spent way too much time trying to find the tiny statue, and when we finally located her, as Katie said, she wouldn"t even turn around and look at us.
I hope I never forget the lessons I learned today. Some of the things I set out to find in life aren"t as grand as I thought they would be. When those discoveries turn out to disappoint, may I always be blessed with what I had today: (1) a peculiar treasure of a friend to laugh wholeheartedly with me over the disillusionment and (2) enough money for bus fare to take me on to the next episode of the adventure.
June 25
Oh, Dearest Silent Friend and Sweetest Silent Sister, I have something to tell both of you. Something I have longed to write on your pages for a long, long time.
Today Todd told me for the first time that he loves me. He loves me.
I know I don"t have to record the details here because I"m sure I"ll never forget the way he came to the bakery in Basel and surprised me when I thought he was on his way to the airport with Katie to go home. I will always remember how he told me he held me in his heart-close in his heart-and that he needed to tell me something.
I hate to admit this, but I felt that old, old stab of fear and panic, thinking he was going to break up with me and then leave. Why do I always fear the worst? I hate that about me. But I love the way Todd calms me and brings me back to a place of truth and hope every time. I started to cry, and he touched my face and said, "You need to know, Kilikina, that I love you." Whenever he calls me by my Hawaiian name, I melt, and I melted today when he told me he loved me. Then he told me a second time and said we have a couple of months to pray through what the future holds for us.
Hold this dearly precious secret for me, okay? Todd said he loves me.
My heart is wearing a very big smile right now.
July 4th (Happy Birthday, America!)
Silent Sis, I miss America so much today. I miss my home, family, and friends. Most of all I miss Todd. No surprise there. When I made the decision to stay here for this final summer session, I thought it would go quickly. But after being with Todd and Katie for all those weeks, it has been so hard to get back into the studies and into spending time with the kids at the orphanage. I want to finish out my time here well. It"s been an amazing, wonderful experience in many ways, and I"m glad I came. But I can"t wait to go home. Ah, home. Even writing it makes me feel a little sad and lonely.
However, I"m determined not to get depressed or apathetic during my final weeks here. Todd told me right before he returned to California that, for each of the sixty-seven days I"m still here, we"ll pretend it"s one long day like he experienced at the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn"t set in the summer. And every time we think about each other during this one long day, we"ll say, "I can"t wait until tomorrow."
So, I better say it quickly now before I start to think about fireworks, hot dogs, and watermelon. I can"t wait until tomorrow.