Sometimes, when you are wondering what they are thinking, they surprise you! .

Our next to the youngest just turned 18 yrs old March 1st. She is finishing her freshman year of college at a christian university. I thought she'd never get her essays written for her college application's packs, in fact, i threatened to write them myself, so i could get her application packets off in the mail. She would have to live with where ever my essays gained her acceptance...   She pushed it, i questioned her, only to meet her dismissal. I prodded and pleaded besides threatening. 

Then one day, while at camp with her cousins, uncle Hank had invited them, eleven churches present, the coordinating churches her uncles and cousins pastor.. Hangin' on Panama Beach in Florida with three cousins in touring christian band and leading worship, one cousin pastoring, two uncles veteran pastors present..Fourth generation..She called me and said mom, I'm writing my essay! I will forward it as soon as i finish. Don't have time to talk, it's in my hand, got to go! 

I had decided, in spite of all of my coercing, i did not want her going to the christian college i had pushed for after all. She needed a more challenging university and one that might advance her career, that looked more impressive on her resume.. after all.. she was of higher intellect. All of her life this was evident. The high scores and awards and abilities.

Then i received this, and out of the mouths of  babes ... Our 17 year old babe..  We were floored and blessed and i will forever hold this moment. She will never live it down or go far enough that i will not remind her of her deep and inspiring faith. God willing she will never need reminding much. So far, she has made good choices, including the one to enroll in Southeastern University and for all the right reasons.

Just wanted to share the essay here because i find it beautiful.
I'm posting it here below.  It is her college application essay.   She had decided to write only one, not many.. for reasons you will understand after reading.  If you take the time and read it, you will be surprised and inspired by a girl with wisdom beyond her years and a faith that is astounding.  It is not an immature teenly angsty story. It is a delightful read.
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                      On Whitman, The Ocean, and Selling Yourself
                                   An Essay By:   Katelyn Christine Davis
                                                      July/Aug 2009

I spent the summer after my junior year of high school immersed in the words of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, drinking every word slowly, swallowing the ideas gently like you would a Popsicle; to both fully appreciate the flavor and to avoid a brain freeze.

Whitman, since then, has been my favorite poet, knocking T. S. Eliot off of the pedestal of my heart, which used to beat to The Hollow Men. I love his writings for a myriad of reasons, including his desperate, patriotic love for a country that in 1855, the year Leaves of Grass was published, was only a wailing infant, albeit a bright-eyed one filled with potential and promise. That promise of a homeland, where a man is free to worship the God (or gods) of his choosing, vote on his own leaders, and, if he works hard enough or cleverly enough, change his financial status -- a concept so relatively new, that it came to be called the American Dream.

Of course, and embarrassingly enough, at the heart of my love for Whitman, was a crush on an English teacher who taught me that first impressions rarely hold true in literature. The first time I read the Song of Myself, turned the heavy words over in my mouth like a cement mixer, I wanted to spit them out, until he showed me the overall message of Song of Myself, the themes of empathy and staying connected to humanity, and of both nature and God.

In my absolute favorite poem from Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, Whitman pens this gem: “My tongue, every atom of my blood / form‘d from this soil, this air / born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same / I, at thirty-seven years in perfect health begin / hoping to cease not till death.” This line in particular, feels like a punch to the tenderest part of me, and is especially poignant in the unexpected kinship it makes me feel.

Of course, Walt is speaking of being American -- every single atom of him -- but I feel it applies to me in a different sort of way. I was born a blue baby, in a country where that isn’t a death sentence, to parents that build churches for spiritual families who are without their own physical buildings. My father, who always seems strange to me if seen without one of his many bibles in his hands, as if he’s missing a limb or his clothes, was born to a Church of God pastor, who, in his eighties still loves on and has dinner with the congregation that is no longer his sole responsibility. He seems blissfully unaware of that.

I am born to parents, born to parents back and back and back into the tapestry of the generations, that have had the only truly satisfying pleasure; that have lived their lives to bring a smile to the face of a living Savior.

Now, in the present, I’ve graduated high school. I graduated in 2008, at sixteen-and-two-months, which was simultaneously crazy and scary and awesome. Now I find myself in this crazy place where I am applying to college, filling out form after form after form, explaining my high school experience and proving that, yes, I was born in America, and yes, I’ve had all of my shots.

With this territory, come the essays. In a page, sometimes two, and occasionally a pitiful 250 or 500 words, I am expected to sell myself. In 250 words, I, verbose by nature, am expected to boil down my existence into its bare essentials. My history, experiences, knowledge, and what I did during the year after my high school graduation. They expect me to give a speech on all of these things, metaphorically speaking, and have offered me the podium for three and a half minutes. The clock is ticking and I always find myself floundering like a fish with sand-filled gills. What is important to me? What is my foundation built on? What do I mention? Do I talk about my family, and where I was born and any of that David Copperfield kind of nonsense? What about skinned knees and making banana bread with my mother? The way I spent this past year working the CAD program, writing to my heart’s content and twisting under the glorious Florida sun? Does any of that matter?

All of these things, I’ve had to weigh lately: If I could only keep half of my memories, which would I keep? Which of these could I dismiss from the labyrinth of my psyche, of my memory, and have who I am fundamentally, remain the same? In a perfect world, in the world I strive to live in, that getting rid of my experiences, getting to know Jesus Christ would change me; that I’ve done a good job of laying him as the foundation and that my house would be a crumbling mess without him.

So when it really boiled down to it, and I was writing out essays to all of the universities I was applying to, I really had to ask myself the question: Do I want to go to a school where that train of thought isn’t valued? Philippians 2:12 says, “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” which, as I understand it, speaks not to earning your salvation by works, but by doing the best you can every single day to walk it out.

I’ve had my moments of wavering; in the darkest of rooms the walls seem to whisper my insecurities at me, that I will never be enough, can never be enough, unworthy, a slime covered sinner, all of which, of course, is true, but for the grace of God and the precious blood of Jesus. And without these dark nights, the morning light is not nearly perceived as so bright, without the tidal wave of doubt, faith means little.

I consider myself a writer; I love words and the effect they can have on people, whether or not I, and the way I use them have the ability to affect anyone. I love pretentious metaphors, and in my mind’s eye, this is the way I see Southeastern: As a mess of people, with the same foundation and goals, standing in the ocean, holding each other by the hands like I used to do with my best friend when the waves would get rough, where not everyone is getting their feet pulled from beneath them at once, and supporting those who are until they find their footing. Where some of us are having dark nights and some getting tanned in the morning light, and all of us are holding each other up.

And sometimes, Whitman’s view of the world and community appeals to me more: that we are all leaves of grass, and that all of our roots get tangled and through that, the soil that we have grounded ourselves in cannot be washed away, and through our braided root systems we nourish and hold on to each other. Sometimes, I see Jesus’ picture of a flock of sheep, like a family, herded by the same shepherd. The end result is the same. Whether I want interlocking fingers pulling me out of salty water, entangling myself in a support system, or simply following a herd towards the same gentle voice, the only place that I want to expand my knowledge of the world is a place that first acknowledges that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and have nothing to do with protozoa crawling onto the shores of Florida.