write it down

January 27th, 2012. The day that my favorite artist in the whole world emailed me. His name is Stephen Christian, and he is the lead singer of Anberlin. He has an acoustic side project/band called Anchor & Braille. They do soft folksy acoustic type music that I adore. SO the morning of the 27th, I was on facebook and saw that he had posted that the first five people to email him would be sent a demo song for Anchor & Braille's upcoming album, The Quiet Life. I figured, "why not?" I knew there had probably been a few more than five people that had already emailed him, but I quickly sent him this anyways---


A&B,
I'd love to hear the demo! I was at the Felt album release show in Nashville, and I've been waiting since to hear more! So excited about the new stuff!

Hope all is well.

Rebecca Mullen


Not even a minute after I had emailed him, the post on facebook disappeared (probably to prevent tooo many flooding emails for him). I crossed my fingers and went on to my first class of the day. After class, I grabbed a bagel and sat outside of Einstein's waiting for my english class to start. I then opened my email ohso hopeful that there would be something special in my inbox from the man that I love.
AND GUESS WHAT! THERE WAS AN EMAIL. My heart seriously jumped out of my chest and started racing. His message (read it and weep, below) was followed by an audio file and a photo of him and some bandmates..one of them being Micah Tawlks (another one of my favorite artists).

ok friends, let me explain. a demo is a rough cut of a song as most of you know. so this song is called 'a hymn for her', and it is just me and my out of tune piano. if you listen close you can hear my dog walking around in the background. this is the slowest song on the record, but still one of my favorites. 

hope this finds you well,

stephen

ok amis, laissez-moi vous expliquer. une démo est un rough cut d'une chansoncomme la plupart d'entre vous connaissent. donc cette chanson s'appelle «un hymne pour elle», et il est juste moi et mon piano, hors de ton. si vous écoutez attentivement, vous pouvez entendre mon chien se promener dans l'arrière-plan.cela est le plus lent chanson sur le record, mais encore l'un de mes favoris.

espérons que cela vous trouve bien,

stephen

ok kaibigan, ipaalam sa akin ipaliwanag. Ang demo ay isang magaspang na hiwang isang awit ng karamihan sa inyo alam. kaya ang awit na ito ay tinatawag na 'isang awit para sa kanyang', at ito ay lamang sa akin at sa aking labas ng tunepiano. kung makinig ka isara naririnig mo ang aking aso paglalakad sa paligid sa background. ito ang pinakamabagal na kanta sa the record, ngunit pa rin ay isa ng aking mga paborito.
asa na ito hahanapin mo rin,

stephen

の友人は、私に説明してみましょう。デモでは、多くの人が知っているように、曲の大まかなカットです。ので、この曲は"彼女のために賛美歌"と呼ばれ、そしてそれはちょうど私と曲のピアノの私の外です。あなたが近くに聞けばあなたは私の犬がバックグラウンドで歩き回って聞くことができます。これは記録上最も遅い曲ですが、それでも私のお気に入りの一つ。
、これはあなたによく見つける願って,

stephen

After I read the message, I grabbed my head phones and pressed play. The song is called "A Hymn For Her". It's beautiful, and I think anyone with any type of musical taste would agree to that. As I sat there and listened, it took everything in me not to cry. The crying wasn't because THE Stephen Christian emailed me but because of the words of the song--they hit me straight in the face. They are beautiful and encouraging and heartfelt and everything that I could ever want in a good hopeful love song. "A Hymn for Her" is all about being hopeful and patient and waiting for someone that's worth it to come along.

I still look at the place that I was sittting that morning outside of Einstein's and relive how excited I was as I sat there and listened to the song for the first time. What a beautiful morning it was.

This is a hymn, a hymn for her
to the one that I'll adore


Please, listen.

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Most of the time, I don't feel like writing in complete thoughts. Blogging is tough for me in that way. Sometimes I'm just too lazy to organize my thoughts and being on a computer doesn't help the process. I always have so much useless information running around in my head. I try to start out anything that I write on paper, so I can get my scatterbrainedness out and things in order. With blogging, I tend to just go for it, so things are either super choppy or really long and annoying--- until I've written a whole paragraph about the fact that I'm crazy.

ANYWAYS.
I passed my guarding class today. Thank the good Lord. This weekend has been a real test to my faith. From the YOKE lock-in Friday night and lifeguarding saturday and sunday, I wasn't sure I could do it. I felt like I could physically feel the weight of stress these past few days, but I saw God do some seriously obvious prayer answering. Why do I worry? I don't know. It's what we do as humans but females especially or something like that. I try to rely on myself, and it just doesn't work. Is it a lack of faith? Why yes, it absolutely is. I'm working on it. I'm working on a lot of things. But He's changing my heart all the time, and I am certain He will finish the good work He started in me. I must remember that He has prepared in advance the things that I am supposed to do.

Sometimes my heart gets a good dose of calmness.

I must register for classes tomorrow.
I must go to bed.
So much to do this week.
Trusting.
Trusting.
Trusting.
Trusting that I will manage everything alright.
I'm ready for summer, and it feels good to say that.

Bore post.

I survived my first weekend of the lifeguarding class. One more to go. It was better than I expected. We got there at 8am. They sequestered us into a tiny classroom, told us to go change into our swimsuits, and get ready to swim a three hundred, which is six laps--breast stroke and free style. I was a bit relieved that it was less than I expected, but I still wasn't quite prepared to swim nonstop for so long. It was so tiring and by just the second lap I wasn't sure if I would make it. I have little to no upper-body strength, so I spent my time catching my breath and kicking as hard as I could so my leg strength would get me by. Our next pretest was to tread water for two minutes without using our arms. Afterwards, the two minutes seemed like they went by pretty quickly...But it was a scary moment when our instructor said that only thirty seconds had passed when it felt like it'd been thirty minutes. In the next part of the pretest we had to swim across the pool, do a surface dive, and get a weight from the bottom of the fifteen foot diving well. A lot of people had trouble getting the brick since they couldn't see without goggles, and it hurts your ears pretty badly to swim down that deep, but we all (almost) ended up getting it. I suppose the point of all the pretest stuff is to weed out the wienies and make sure we can all decently swim. Throughout the day we watched vidoes about how to save people in different situations and different techniques for entering the water and getting victims out safely, and then we practiced all the techniques. It was all very intense and demanding. I just have to get through this upcoming weekend, and I will be able to breathe.