Category: Uncategorized

Dear Friends and Family,

This past semester I’ve been in New Jersey, back in undergraduate study as an English major, History minor, studying poetry, theory, Mediaeval history, and perspectives of the Holocaust.
All this is to say that I’ve decided to go abroad next semester, to Beer-Sheva, Israel, to study at The Ben Gurion University of the Negev. I will be there for five months, learning Hebrew, Israeli history, English literature, ecology, and the history of violence.
This is a dream come true and a very scary endeavor! But I know the experience will change me in ways I can’t yet comprehend, and I thank God for bringing me here.

Please pray for me. I’m also asking for support through donations to help cover some of my travel costs. I really believe that this time will help me discover questions I want to answer and events I want to study and uncover in the future, in undergraduate and in graduate study. I will absolutely blog about my experiences, through pictures, stories, impressions, and struggles.

I’ve started a donation sight, and I ask that you share it with your friends. I hope you will follow me on my journey! For loneliness can come even in the face of great things, and I am not to proud to admit that I’m scared. But I cannot wait.

Here is the link for more information about my trip:
http://www.gofundme.com/iznw4

I will do my best to update my progress here, on my facebook, and my Tumblr (http://mellymary.tumblr.com)

Thank you and God Bless You!!!

(And now the word looks as if it has a different meaning entirely..)

Today I went for a walk, and I let my dog stop and smell for as long as she liked. This reminded me that I should also stop and smell the world around me.

The sights and smells of New England are still new to me; even though I was born here, I compartmentalize my childhood into the back of my brain, so I can’t associate that with right now.

I think so many of us do that, as if forgetting the past will make the future more attractive.

But so we also forget the present.

Everything from planning to praying makes the future more attractive, but no matter how strong our will, we cannot will the future.  It is, after all, “Thy will be done” and as easy as that sounds, leaving it all up to God is like teaching Chinese to control freaks.

So what happens when our worlds spin out of our control?


I was lucky enough to go to the Van Gogh exhibit in Philadelphia two days ago, and however sad his life was, however much he tormented himself in his mind, I am in awe of how he saw the world.  Blades of grass and irises and sheaves of wheat danced for him and comforted him, and I bet he wished he could dance back.

I do believe that we can dance with nature, if we let her take the lead. Her secrets are infinite and her beauty enormous.  We are nothing but dancers here, after all.

There are many idioms individuals possess that, however illogical, somehow maintain our sanity and ease our worry in the midst of confusion or in my case, displacement. For me, these are:

—Checking my email every thirty minutes to see if any divine answers have come to me through my inbox.


—Following dimly lit roads after accidently (absent-mindedly) taking a wrong turn, praying that I don’t end up in an industrial park…or a ditch.


—Reminding myself to breath when I hear one of my favorite songs, the one that takes me away to my dreams (especially when driving through deliverance on the wing of a prayer).


And of course there are other guilty pleasures, like singing along with baritones in ballads, and eating ice cream straight from the carton. When you find yourself in a brand spankin’ new arena, its best to hold tightly to something familiar with your left hand, while reaching forward with your right.

Tonight, I have a one man show in store for me. I try not to analyze these things too much, because then I know I will end up hating much more than I should, myself included in that list.