A modern day miracle

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of house sitting a friends house.  Looking back, it was fun, but at the time, I was scared.  I had never done this before.  But here I was, in charge of a house.  And there was no one to protect me if someone broke in.   This was also right after getting my license, so it was weird driving myself back and forth all the time.

But during this time of fear, God caused me to see His omnipotence and feel His comfort.  In small ways every evening, as I had to go to Him to take away my fears of being alone in a large house.  However, there was one major occurrence that showed me His marvelous grace!

Part of my house sitting included taking care of the family’s dog.  His name was Chester, and he was a hoot.   Every time I saw him, he always had a reservoir of energy that needed to be used up.  I don’t think he ever got tired, no matter how much I chased him around the yard, or threw balls for him to chase.  Despite being a bundle of pure energy, he was a real sweetie.  Every night, before bringing him in, we would sit on the steps and I would pet him as we gazed at the stars.  (Well, I gazed at the stars.  He was more interested in taking in the yard’s landscape.   )  But, one day, he gave me a real scare.

One Tuesday morning I woke up late, and had to hustle home for school.  When I let Chester out, I considered forgoing my usual trip outside with him, but something made me go out despite being late.  As I walked around the yard, I spied some torn up cardboard.  The house backed up to a greenbelt, so I often saw trash back there that had blown in.  Most days, I didn’t pay attention to the trash, however something made me stop and read the cardboard fragments.  The words that met my curious eyes were, “Mouse Kill.”  A few seconds passed.  The reality began to sink in that Chester had torn up this box, and must have gotten to the poison.  Hurriedly, I searched the yard for the four packets of poison.  Two were right next to the remnants of the box.  They were torn open as well, and empty.  A thorough search turned up only one more packet that was unopened.  To this day, we don’t know what happened to the fourth packet.

Unsure of what to do, I called home and told my mom what I had found.  The hint of panic in her voice told me that things were worse than I had first thought.  I hadn’t had any contact with rat poison before, and didn’t know it’s effects.  But upon reaching home, I found out.  Most of the rat poisons on the market are blood thinners.  The way they work is they make the animal bleed internally to death.  After reading this I felt sick.  My only desire was to go to my room and sob until this terrible tragedy had passed.  This was just awful!  This poor dog was going to die a painful death, and it was on my watch!  Unfortunately, I didn’t get in my cry.  After our family Bible time, Dad and I went back to the house to watch the dog and look more closely at the packaging.

Shortly after arriving back at the house, Dad was on their computer with the cardboard fragments in front of him.  The results of his google search brought some relief.  It turns out that that particular poison was a neurotoxin.  So, instead of bleeding to death, Chester’s nervous system would be attacked.  (Now, there is an important piece of information I’ve neglected to share.  We had deduced that it had been at least twelve hours between the time Chester had possibly eaten the poison and when I found the remnants.  Thus, doing charcoal or a stomach pump would have been useless.  So, whatever had happened was irreversible.)  Dad called our friends, the owners, and it was decided to take Chester to the vet.

Boy, was that a nightmare!  Chester was terrified to death of the vet.  Yet, she insisted on trying to check his eyes, ears and legs.  For her persistence, Dad got a ripped shirt and all of us are now sporting nearly shattered ear drums.  What made it worse was that they told us all we could do was wait and watch.  They did give us some hope however.  The peak of neurotoxins is between 2 and 12 hours.  We knew it had been longer than that, so it appeared he would come out all right as symptoms should have shown up by then.  The next couple of days I checked on Chester more often than normal, and he never exhibited any reactions to the poison!

So how was God’s hand working in all this?  They way we see it, it happened is one of three ways.  Either some other animal tore up the box (which I personally think unlikely), or Chester didn’t eat any of the poison, but simply tore the packaging up.  Or, God caused the poison to not do their evil deeds in that dog’s body.  Whatever truly happened, I know that God worked a miracle.  It was a miracle if Chester ate the poison, or it was a miracle that he didn’t.

So, even though that was an emotionally trying time, I learned something invaluable.  God worked a miracle in that dog.  He is an all-powerful God, surpassing all knowledge, and is bigger than all things.  Yet, He chose to work in my life by showing He cared about such small, insignificant things as that dog and me.  Through this trial, I got a taste of the goodness of God.

Though we forget it, God cares and thinks of us every second of every day.  In the Bible, Paul wrote how Jesus upholds the universe by His mighty word.  God is actively holding every atom in the universe together.  If He ever failed to think about you for one second, you would cease to exist.  Sometimes we feel all alone in a situation that is out of control.  We need to understand that it is not just when we desperately need help that God remembers us.  We are always on His mind and His heart.  Stop and think about that for a second.  This realization should make you fall prostrate before your God in complete awe.  This is what I learned in during that trial.  And the dog is still a bundle of energy to this day!

Praise the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness continues to all generations!!

~Tee-Kaye

Cultural Marxism – an enemy of our generation

Do you remember the “good old days?”  Gun control meant having a good aim.  The chief problems in school were chewing gum, running in the halls, and talking out of turn.  People stood up for God, family and country and were ready and willing to fight for them.  The family was the backbone of our society, and Christian faith and morals were it’s foundation.  We now hear of regular school shootings, divorce and spouse unfaithfulness.  People are becoming ignorant of our history, and how our freedom was won.  In recent years, we have seen the rise of homosexuals, feminists, animal rights groups and radical environmentalists.  What has happened to our culture?  Why has it changed so much in the small span of a few decades?

In two words the answer is, Cultural Marxism.  Today I will give you a brief history of Cultural Marxism, the teachings and dangers of this doctrine, and what we as Christians must do to combat this enemy.

The man who started it all, Karl Marx, lived from 1818-1883.  His self stated goal in life was, “to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.”  He cannot be described as either an atheist or an agnostic, for he knew that God existed, but hated Him.  Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, which laid the foundations for Marxism and Communism.  He dreamt of a utopian society, where everything would be controlled by the government, and be devoid of God and the economics of capitalism.  In his book, he laid out the 10 planks of Communism.  Once these were reached, Communism would reign.  While his theories were never realized in his lifetime, they continue to grow in strength and popularity.

In 1923, Marx’s followers founded a base of operations in Frankfurt, Germany, called the Institute for Social Research, also known informally as the Frankfurt School.  It’s purpose was to train next-generation Marxists, and make plans for spreading Communism.  But, to their surprise, the people were resistant to a Communist revolution.  Therefore, Marxists Antonio Gramsci, and later Max Horkheimer, decided that they needed a new approach.  Charles A. Reich summarized their new strategy in his book, The Greening of America. “There is a revolution coming.  It will not be like revolutions in the past.  It will originate with the individual and the culture, and will change the political structure as it’s final act.  It will not require violence to succeed, and cannot be successfully resisted with violence.  This is the revolution of the New Generation.”  Thus, their focus was removed from Marx’s economics and transferred to culture.  They needed to change the people’s mind before their revolution would occur.  As Gramsci said, “Marxise the inner man… to alter the Christian mind and turn it into it’s opposite in all it’s details so that it would become not merely a non-christian mind but an anti-christian mind.”  How did they propose to do this?  Horheimer provided the answer.  He was also very interested in Freud, and he took many of Freud’s ideas and married them with Marx’s.  The result was Critical Theory and Psychological Conditioning.

The first, Critical Theory, is basically what it’s name implies.  It is simply merciless criticizing of your opponents views.  However, in so doing, you never mention what you stand for.  Only what you are against.  Critical Theory is used by most of America now, but it is not called Critical Theory.  It now goes by the name of Political Correctness.  The way that it is practiced is that people take offense at everything.  Usually things that aren’t offensive.  Let me ask you a question.  Are you afraid to share your beliefs, or speak the truth in love because someone might take offense?  If so, then Political Correctness has accomplished it’s goal.

The second, Psychological Conditioning, is much more subtle.  Lenin described it perfectly when he said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”  Marxists are careful not to throw the whole lie in our face at once.  They feed us little bits at a time, slowly desensitizing us to their lies.  But how are their godless deceptions disseminated throughout the U.S.?  The Marxists have gotten into our universities, schools, Hollywood and the media.  Through the schools they are able to indoctrinate the next generation.  Then they can desensitize everyone else through the entertainment and media.

The Marxists biggest enemy has always been the family.  So it is not surprising to see that many of their teachings were aimed at destroying the family.  Shulamith Firestone wrote in 1970, “Marx was onto something more profound than he realized when he observed that the family contained within itself in embryo all of the antagonisms which later develop on a wider scale within the society and the state… [U]nless revolution uproots the basic organization, the biological family… the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.”  We see other evidences of this in Cleon Skousen’s book, the Naked Communist.  In this book, he listed the 45 goals that Communists had for America, many of which have been reached.  A few are; #17 – Get control of the schools.  Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda.  #22 – Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.  #25 – Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.  #26 – Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, healthy.’  #41 – Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.  Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.  And finally, #41 – Discredit the family as an institution.  Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.  As you can see, all of these, especially the last few, were aimed at destroying the family.  Unfortunately, they have won a great victory in this area.

Now the question we must ask and answer should be, “What are we to do about it?  What is our battle plan?”

First, we must diligently study the Bible.  It is impossible to grapple with an enemy if you don’t even know where you stand.  This difficulty is only heightened when you are against an enemy that is slowly desensitizing you to their evil.

We must also be diligent in teaching the next generation Biblical truths.  This is so vital.  None of us will live forever, and someone must take our place when we are gone.  It is essential that these replacements be armed and ready for the fight.  If they are not equipped, they will be in a dangerous position.  Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Next we must recapture the mediums that the Marxists are exploiting so effectively.  However, unlike some hope, infiltrating Hollywood, newspapers, news stations and universities is not going to work.  Our enemies are very cunning, and have anticipated this move.  I can assure you, that if you were to try this tactic, they would be able to silence you very easily.  They are quite capable of eliminating those who do not agree with them.  Classic examples of this were seen in the new movie Expelled by Ben Stein.  Several times in the documentary, Mr. Stein spoke with professors who were quickly and effectively hushed after promoting a worldview contrary to their superiors.  Many lost their jobs.  So, you can see that infiltrating the enemy stronghold would be useless.

What must be done instead, is to create our own education and entertainment industries, built on strong Biblical foundations.  My parents have already taken the first step by homeschooling my siblings and I.  This way, we are being trained by them as Deuteronomy commanded, instead of sending us to the Marxist government schools for indoctrination.  Also, HSLDA started Patrick Henry College to cater to homeschoolers, and to be a university contrary to the Cultural Marxist norm.  As regards entertainment, a man by the name of Doug Phillips is already working on this by hosting the annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.  This festival’s purpose is to train Christians how to make good quality films independent of Hollywood.  This past January, they gave away the largest cash grand prize ever in the history of independent film.  Because of this festival, many Biblically based films have been made and are in the works, providing us with good solid entertainment without any of the bad stuff thrown in.  All of these are giant steps in the right direction.  But it is important that we continue furthering this vision.  We must no longer go to the godless Marxists for our education and entertainment.

Finally, we must destroy Political Correctness.  It is imperative that we see it for what it truly is, which is the progeny of Critical Theory and godless Marxists.  Thus, it is not something to be laughed at, for it is deadly serious.  But, beating it is easier than you might think.  The way to beat the Political Correctness game is simply, not to play.  Don’t give into the pressure to suppress your beliefs.  If they are offended by the truth, that’s not your fault.  It’s theirs.

Time is of the essence.  We have already lost two generations to these false philosophy’s.  The time to act is now.  What are you going to do to take back our culture?

 

(This is a persuasive speech that I wrote for the 08/09 season.  Hope you enjoyed it, and that it caused you think! ~Tee-Kaye)

Update: Dad’s leg

Well, Dad’s calf is doing much better than he expected.  However, he will still have to be on crutches for at least three weeks.  After looking up this certain injury online, Dad found that people don’t tend to heal from this for several months.  So this incident will be affecting our lives for a while to come.  But, on a more humorous note, I found a verse the other day that seemed so appropriate to this situation.

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.  You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.   ~Malachi 4:2

~Tee-Kaye

It’s been awhile… again

Hey all!  I’m sorry I haven’t written anything in such a long time.  My family has been busy for the last while.  First with ballet recitals and then the Chec Conference.  We are just now starting to recover.   Several thing have also happened.  Three weeks ago, my sister broke her arm, the first in our family.  None of us were really surprised, she is so dramatic and accident prone.  We were more surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.   Anyways, how it happened was our church had a picnic at the park around the corner from our house.  The kids were playing Monkey on the Ground, an tag game on the playset with the person who is It walking around with their eyes closed.  My sister was It and thought she was at the stairs and took a step.   Unfortunately, it was not the stairs, and she took a step into thin air with a five foot drop.  When she landed her right arm was underneath her and it caused the radius to snap in half while the ulna received a buckle fracture.  At first, she was in a lot of pain.  It took 3 miligrams of morphine to lessen the pain enough that she was okay.  This is a lot of morphine, even for an adult!  She was still in a lot of pain for the next couple of days, but she hasn’t had any more since.  Praise the Lord!  She’ll be going to the doctor this week to get the cast on, then it won’t be much longer before it will be healed!

But then just today, at another church picnic, my dad had an incident.  Most of us were playing Ultimate frisbee, and my dad was participating of course.  He was covering my brother when the frisbee was thrown to him.  Dad ran up to block the pass when all of a sudden he cried out and fell to the ground.  Everyone rushed over, and Dad asked them to straighten his leg.  He lay there for a while then limped over to the chairs in the shade where he lay down with ice on his calf.  I thought it had just been a case of a Charlie’s Horse, as Dad admitted that he was dehydrated.  But when Dad decided to go back home, he stopped by at our doctor’s house.  Turns out, Dad tore a muscle in his calf.  Thankfully it wasn’t the achilles, but it is still extremely painful and he’ll be on crutches for a while and won’t be able to do anything for about three weeks.  This will certainly throw a wrench in our family plans, and Dad isn’t feeling exactly comfortable with this incident.  So, if God lays in on your heart to pray for us, we would greatly appreciate it.

On a more joyful note, a dear friend of mine is coming tomorrow and will be staying for a week!  I’m so excited that I get to enjoy her sweet fellowship for a whole week!  I guess that is it for now.

~Tee-Kaye

Yet another link on emotional purity

The post today is from visionarydaughters.com.  This is the blog of the Botkin sisters, Anna Sophia and Elizabeth.  Their writings are aimed more so at young women, but of course, guys can check it out as well!  Their article is very well written and has many interesting points.  I’ll admit that God convicted me of some sins in my own life through this post.  Here is the link. http://visionarydaughters.com/2009/04/how-not-to-heat-your-veins-and-fire-your-brains  Enjoy!

~Tee-Kaye

Here I go again…

You all have probably gotten tired of my many posts on this subject.  But it is something that I feel very strongly about.  Have you guessed what it is yet?  Yep, it’s emotional purity. 

I found a really good blog post on the subject by Lauren Reavely.  Here is the link to it, http://lauren-reavely.blogspot.com/2009/02/look-no-hands-re-defining-view-of.html .  Lauren does a very good job explaining the issue.  She expresses everything so eloquently, and points out many good scriptures pertaining to emotional purity.  It is definitely worth the read.

~Tee-Kaye

Random news

Hey everyone!  It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here.  A lot has happened since then.  The RMC tournament has come and gone, Savvy came to visit, we sped through Regionals (with none of us advancing to Nats in case your wondering) and went on a family vacation to Virginia.  It’s been so busy, and now I’m just trying to recover my sanity.

But something else has happened during the last month that you all might be interested in.  Some of you might remember me posting our adoption adventures.  To refresh your memory, in January of ‘08 we visited Reformation Church and heard about a young girl who had expressed a desire to be adopted by a Christian homeschool family.  She had been living with her grandma, but the grandma had recently passed away, leaving the girl in foster care.  While with her grandmother, this young lady had gone to Reformation Church and been homeschooled.  Anyways, that Sunday, everyone in our family felt God tug on our hearts.  It was such a God-thing, as many of the members of my family had never seriously thought about adoption.  But God opened our hearts to this girl, all at the same time.  And, after praying about it, Mom and Dad began the process to be certified to adopt.  Over the next several months, we got to know the young girl, and we took all of the necessary classes to be certified.

However, last August, the young lady had a change of heart.  She decided that she no longer wanted to be homeschooled, and wasn’t sure she even wanted to be adopted.  It was a hard blow for us, but we trusted that God had brought us into this, so there had to be a purpose for it.  My parents decided to go ahead with getting certified to adopt.

It took forever for everything to be done, but a couple months ago, we finally had all the paper work and the house study done.  Now it was up to the county committee.  For some reason, they kept pushing back the date for deliberating over our application.  At one point they sent someone back to us to ask us more questions.  Finally, they got their meeting done.  But their answer shocked us.  They denied our application.  We were told that we had two options.  We could get sent a formal denial letter, and our name would be put in the database.  Or, we could withdraw our application.  Either way, there was no posibility of us every being able to adopt.

As I said, we were shocked, and more than a little angry.  The reasons we were denied all had to do with the fact that we have a home church and are homeschooled.  Undeniably, it was religious discrimination.  But we weren’t not sure what was the wisest course of action.  My dad got in contact with a lawyer at HSLDA and we and our entire church was praying earnestly for wisdom.

Then, something happened that we didn’t expect.  The county either got scared or impatient, and they sent us the denial letter, even though we hadn’t made a decision yet.  This complicated things a bit more.  The lawyer was rather wary of trying a lawsuit.  There were a couple points that he thought would be extremely hard to win. (It wasn’t like we weren’t in the right in those areas.  Just that it would be rather difficult to persuade others (namely the state) that we were right.)  A couple of weeks went by, then an elder of our church e-mailed some very smart Christian leaders about our predicament.  Mr. Scott Brown was one of them, and he replied very promptly.  His answer was a little surprising, but the more we thought about it, the more we saw the wisdom in it.

He told us that he wasn’t sure we should have even got involved with the State in this in the first place.  He said that some covenants with the State are necessary, and are not really evil.  But with being certified to adopt, we would have to play by the State’s rules during the foster care phase of every adoption.  We would have to mask our beliefs to please them.  Mr. Brown, we realized, was right.  This wasn’t something we could do.  Fortunately, the county was gracious enough to reverse the denial and let us remove our application.  So now we are right back where we were before all this happened.

This whole experience has left me sitting here, asking God, “What was that for?”  He hasn’t answered me with the specifics yet, but that is okay.  He has been there throughout the whole process, guiding us every step of the way.  There is no doubt in my mind that all of this was orchestrated by God.  Though we cannot see it right now, God had a purpose for this.  We may never know the reason, but I can rest in the knowledge that God was, is and will always be in complete control.  So, in the end, we can whole heartedly say, “Thanks be to God.”

Soli Deo Gloria!

~Tee-Kaye

I wonder…

Ever since the invention of the telephone and more recently, the Internet, communication has become much more easy and convenient.  Thus gratifying our desire of instant gratification.  Through the Internet, we have e-mail, forums, blogs, Facebook, and more recently, Skype.  With these tools, we are able to converse with friends far away much quicker.  Because of this, many young people spend many hours on the Internet, chatting with their friends.

But I had an interesting thought this evening.  We all, on a daily basis put time and energy into maintaining our earthly relationships.  But what about our relationship with God?  I wondered, what would happen if each of us professing Christians resolved to spend at least as much time, if not more time deepening our relationship with our closest Friend as we do with our earthly friends?  How would our lives change?  I don’t just mean in the way we manage our time (thought that I’m sure that would be drastically affected).  But would we change the way we live our lives?  Would our focus be removed from the temporal, pleasure for the moment worthlessness, and transferred to more important, God honoring things?

Some of you right now may have that little voice in you saying something like, “But that would be asking too much.  No one could be expected to carry out such a radical task.  You couldn’t possibly be expected to spend an hour or two reading your Bible!  Besides, it would cut into your friend time.  And you just can’t give that up.”  I currently have a similar voice whispering in my ear.  But, if you think about it, which of your relationships are more important?  The ones with your earthly friends, who you might not even remember their names twenty years from now?  Or our ever-present, personal God, who will be with you to the end and beyond?  That Friend who sticks closer than a brother?

So, the question is, which relationship will you spend more time and energy on?  Your temporal ones?  Or your eternal one?

~Tee-Kaye

Nuremberg revisited

My family and I recently watched a movie that was based on the Nuremberg trials, named “Judgement at Nuremberg.”  This particular movie followed the trials of the Nazi judges, and one in particular named, Dr. Ernst Janning (pronounced, yah-ning).  It was a very good movie, and was very captivating.  I found myself going back and forth in my judgement of the Nazi judges with every speech.   Throughout the whole movie, the defending lawyer was saying that Dr. Janning had only stayed a judge to keep things from getting worse.  That he shouldn’t be punished, because he was only doing what he was made to do.  On both sides, the speeches were so impassioned.  I was often moved to tears. But, my favorite part of the movie came in the last conversation at the end of the movie.  The American judge, named Judge Haywood, had a private conversation with Dr. Janning, in which Dr. Janning said, “Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come:  Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that.  You must believe it, You must believe it!”  Judge Haywood’s response was amazing.  He said, “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death that you knew to be innocent.”

Many people wonder how people could come to do such horrible things, such as what occurred in Germany under Hitler.  But what they fail to realize is that most of those who were involved in the Holocaust didn’t start off that way.  In general, when we fall into great sin, we don’t do it in one giant leap.  It comes slowly, unassumingly at first.  It comes with the small compromises we make everyday.  We don’t even realize the full impact of those compromises, and eventually, as with the Nazis, we can become desensitized to the evil we are committing.  Before you know it, all of the little compromises, the little tiny steps, have led us to that place, the end where we fall into “great sin.”  But, in reality, there is no such thing as a “great sin.”  Each of those small compromises were just as wrong, and just as condemning.  Just as Judge Haywood said in the movie, “It came to that (the “great sin” or compromise) the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”

We can see examples of such small compromises in all areas of life.  But, the major one that comes to mind is called the Holocaust of modern times.  It is… abortion.  But, this vastly committed sin didn’t not become legal all at once.  Before Roe v. Wade, there was another decision, or small compromise, that paved the way for the full legalization of this brutal form of murder.  In this law that was passed, abortion became legal in cases of rape and incest.  Thus, the proverbial camel’s nose came under the tent.  Many people rationalize these compromises to murder by saying that the baby is unwanted, it came about from a sin, etc.   In the cases of the life of the mother being in danger, they say that the unborn must be killed to save the mother’s life.  But, the fact is, that it is still murder of an innocent, unarmed human being.  Back in the old days, it was considered cowardly to kill someone who could not defend themselves.  Now, this same act is done in staggering numbers on a minute by minute basis.

Even a little compromise in this area is devastating.  It led to the over 50 million lives that have been snuffed out so far.  People can rationalize their compromises away however they want, but that doesn’t change the truth.  It is still murder, and it is still wrong.  Those who supported the first law being past might plead, “All those millions of children.  We didn’t know it would come to that.”  But the fact is, it came to that the first time, for any reason, an innocent baby was killed.

Here is a very good speech to watch on this subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK9_NqQGrmw

CSQ ‘09

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted.  I’ve mainly been recovering from the Centennial State Qualifier a couple weeks ago.  (I’m still in shock that I’ve finished my Apologetics cards.  After writing 90 six minute speeches, you don’t really feel like you’ve reached the end.)  As you could see from my last post, I was true to my tendencies and was very late in memorizing my speeches.  (There is a guy who, after I told him, shook his head every time he looked at me.)  Needless to say, I was nearing on petrified when pattern B was rolling around.  All three of my prepared speeches were in this pattern, which included the two I didn’t know.  I began praying very hard, just that God would enable me to make it through the speeches.  I didn’t care or expect to make it anywhere, I just wanted to survive.  First, I went in to do my HI.  There was a crowd, and someone was video taping.  That didn’t help my nerves.  I made it through the speech, but with two major blank outs.  The last one was so long, I was nearing the point of telling the judges I couldn’t remember anymore.  Thankfully, I handled my poor performance well.  I knew I shouldn’t expect much for what little effort I’d put into it.  Dad, who had watched me with my HI, walked with me to my Persuasive room.  After the HI blank outs, I was even more nervous for my Persuasive, which I had written three days before.  Once more, I had a bit of an audience.  But, this time, I didn’t blank.  I stumbled over some lines, and skipped a quote, but I had made it through!  However, I was still elated that I didn’t have to give the speeches anymore that day and could practice more on the way home and then back the next morning.

Through all of this, my brother and my duo was doing very well, and I seemed to be doing fine with Apologetics.  Many people assured us that our Duo would break, so we were feeling very confident with this.  With Apologetics, I had always been written down for looking at my cards too much, so I was very relaxed about giving the speeches.  Because I didn’t expect anything at all from it either.  In the realm of debate, my brother and I were struggling.  I’m not sure what it was, but we just weren’t on top of it.  And it seemed from postings that we weren’t doing well.  But therein lies a funny story.  We were very confused with postings, because we were alternately going against poor teams and good teams.  My brother expressed his confusion to one of our friends.  He replied, “You shouldn’t read too much into postings.”  Then, my brother, being the joker that he is, returned, “But if I don’t read postings, I won’t know where to go!”   But, back to the speech aspect.  God enabled me to make it through giving my speeches two more times.  I was so grateful.  On Saturday, the whole hour trip to the tourney, I was praising God for helping me, even though I didn’t deserve it.  I had continued to stumble in some spots, but I hadn’t blanked anymore.

Saturday morning was also nerve wracking.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to break or not.  The thought of giving my speeches again turned my stomach.  Breaks announcements found me in a state of turmoil.  Debate breaks came first, and we didn’t break.  But we didn’t think that we had done well.  Apologetics breaks came next.  Since I wasn’t expecting anything, I was just listening for my friends names.  But then, my name was read!  I couldn’t believe it!  This was the event that I had reconciled myself to the fact that it wouldn’t go anywhere!  After this came Duo.  We didn’t break this time.  (I’ll admit I was slightly shocked.)  All that was left were my two dreaded speeches.  To my dread and amazement, I broke in both!  Everyone was patting me on the back and congratulating me.  I threw my head back a cried, “Nooooo!”  But it was done.  I had to give those speeches at least one more time at the tourney.

Praise God, all three went very well!  I wish that we had taped them, but oh well.   I was so grateful to God through all of this.  I know I certainly didn’t deserve anything, but God helped me through the whole weekend, and enabled me to go farther than I ever expected.

My HI didn’t break to finals, but Apologetics and my Persuasive were moving on.  With Apologetics, I began to be afraid.  I was going against all of the really good people (course, I guess that happens with any finals room ).  Unfortunately, I picked a very long card.  So, between my nervousness and trying to get through the card quickly, I looked down at it to much.  Also, I ended up going a minute overtime!  It was so funny!  I’m just glad that I made it  that far.   My Persuasive went better, though I did mess up a quote.  I got confused, thinking that I had missed a portion of a quote, so went back to it.  Then, I remembered that I had indeed done that part, so I laughed and said, “I was right the first time!”   But other than that, it went well.  I should however, be able to do better at the tournament next week since I’ll have had more time to practice!

Unfortunately, throughout all of this, there were a lot of people getting sick with the flu.  From a comment made during awards, it sounded like they were dropping like flies.  There were even some people who were so sick that they couldn’t compete in semis.  Thus, they had to forfeit their Regionals slot.   It was really sad.  Thankfully, we didn’t get sick until a couple days after the tourney was over.

In the end, I got 8th in Apologetics (I’m sure due to going overtime and looking at my cards too much), 7th in HI (which I didn’t even break to finals in, but still ranked higher than I did in Apol!), and 6th in Persuasive.  Now, our focus is turned to the tournament coming up next week.  We have much to work on still.   But, Centennial went well, and was very enjoyable.  I am so thankful for God sustaining me through it all!

Soli Deo Gloria!

~Tee-Kaye