The Adventures of the life of Jennie!

Facing Fears

2012-01-16T03:18:00.002+10:30

I don't know how most people are about their greatest fears and how they come about, but I remember mine coming from a young age. I don't even remember how old I was, but I remember the thought, because it is a thought that I remembered often. The situation between my parents was not ideal, and I knew that, and there was a lot of awkwardness, and unpleasantness arose from it, and I remember thinking that I never wanted to get divorced.

It seemed then like some insidious force, something that could not be controlled, something that could come and get me, well, so long as I first got married. I had this dual fear of never being accepted into marriage, and of being divorced. I tried to control it as much as I could. As soon as I found someone I was sure I could get to marry me, I tried to get myself married to him. And then once I was married to him, I tried to bend myself so there would never be a problem, so that divorce would never come to be an issue.

Lots of people talk about cancer, and how it is this eye-opening experience that makes you see what really matters in life. I think a lot of that is having to finally face the reality of the fear of death, just as when Janardan told me he was leaving, I had to start to face the reality of divorce.

We're afraid of them, and so they seem monumentally scary. It seems like anything is better to think about than the subject of our fear. It seems like giving in, to indulge and spend time on our fears. But facing those hard questions, facing those questions that scare us, that is what leads us to find what is really important, and I think for most people they find it inside. It is not the sky that changes, it is the notice of the sky that changes, the realization of that beauty. To ask the question: What if I am single for the rest of my life? What if I only have a few more days left on this earth? What if that really is the end?

There are all sorts of fears, but the secret of fear is that we know the fear so intimately, it is so much a part of us, that we know exactly how to overcome it. I used to think my life would fall apart, that I would have a mental breakdown if I had a divorce. When actually confronted with it, I had and continue to have one of the biggest periods of personal growth. I came to myself, and began to value myself.

As soon as we stop being afraid of what we lack, then we can begin to not lack it. But no one is going to give that to you. Not your friend, not your spouse, not your parents, not your therapist. It is a gift you can only give to yourself. Face your fear, and you will discover parts of you you never knew existed, and strength beyond what you imagined.

Fear exposes our weaknesses, but it is just like eyesight will alert us to the fact that we are looking into an empty cup. It is simply a call to action. Fill up the cup. Overcome your fears, by facing them. What would actually happen if you were covered in spiders? Don't think to prevent the situation from ever happening, think of determining a new reaction, because why should little arachnids get the better of you? Or your ex? Or "divorce"? Or death even? Why should the thought of death take away your enjoyment of life? All of these are opportunities to see what life has to offer, even when it is at its crappiest point.

Just trust in you. Face your fears. You'll find a lot more in yourself than you ever thought possible. If you don't, your fears will rule your life, and you will fall into bad decisions, because you're thinking from a place of fear, not confidence and assurance.

When you take that last breath on earth, you will be the only one doing that. That will be an experience all of your own. Remember that. Your life is yours to live. You don't owe anybody anything, and they don't owe you anything. Your relationships are there to add to your happiness, and should be enjoyable, as well as enjoyed. Live the breaths before the last, though. Live them all, as much as possible, not in fear, but in joy. Not in weakness, but in strength. You'll find the strength inside yourself.

Keep Holding On

2012-01-10T17:47:00.001+10:30

I remember the first time I heard this song. I was sitting alone at work in the late hours of the night, watching Glee, the main thing keeping me sane and happy at that moment. I was on the edge emotionally, of throwing my life away in some capacity, though not suicide, that's never been my inclination. Janardan had told me that he didn't like me initiating things, so I was leaving it to him to initiate contact between us. He wasn't doing so, and we probably hadn't talked in two weeks. I didn't know what to do, and I felt lost, I felt trapped, and I felt alone.

I sobbed when this song came on, and felt like they weren't singing it to Quinn, but like they were singing it to me. I downloaded it within the next day or two, and I listened to it all the time. To me then, that felt like my life, that felt like that was going to be my life, stuck in that relationship, never speaking to each other, but having this uncomfortable presence always there. It did not altogether feel like there was a lot to keep holding onto. But this song gave me hope, just as a few weeks later, a random stranger giving me a starburst gave me hope.

It was hope for something to change, something to be different, though I didn't know really what it was that I needed to be different.

As I was listening to this song today, and thinking of the life I have now, I think of what great things I had to hope for then. There truly was a reason to hope. I would never have believed my life could be like this at that moment in time, in those moments of time, all the times I cried while listening to that song, thinking that yes, I would keep holding on.

And I did. And here I am, living in Australia, the love of my life a few feet away from me. I get more love and affection in one hour than the starved me got for an entire marriage. For example, he just came over and told me he loves me and gave me kisses while I was in the middle of that last sentence.

This is more than I even dreamed of then. So yeah, keep holding on. The dark clouds will break and the sun will come out again. And to any of you out there who are Jennies of two years ago - you deserve love, and should accept nothing less. Keep holding on for it, yes, but don't wait til tomorrow to love yourself. Love yourself today.

Today is Different

2011-12-30T12:10:00.002+10:30

Something I learned long ago was that no day is like any other. This is something that I learned when I began to journal regularly. There was a girl in my seminary class, and she wondered what she could write in a journal each day, because they all seem pretty much the same. My heart screamed out that they are not! Every day is different. I knew that from writing each day, accounting for the events, looking for those things that were different. No day was ever the same as another.

But it can be easy to get drawn into the routine of life. It can be easy to feel like day by day, we go along doing the same things, and while we may progress toward certain goals in some ways, that our lives are ultimately just a mash and smattering of dull gray days with a sameness about them. I know I've felt like that, and that mentality is and always has been there in varying degrees.

I felt an awakening a little less than two years ago, when I realized the ultimate beauty and importance of the moment. And I've strayed from that a bit through my "survival mode" and adjusting to living in a new place, but it is something I never want to lose sight of for long.

Everything is different today. The patterns of weather, and how they all correspond to each other across the world, will never be exactly the same again. The clouds will never take that same shape again. The grass won't be at that length, with that history of growth. I will never be this age again. This moment is a moment all to me. It is the only moment I have right now, and it is the only time I will ever this moment. In an hour, it will be a different moment.

No day is inconsequential. Lives change every day, all around us. We change. We are who we are today. Today is what matters. Today, at this moment in time, all of the past, and all the possibility of the future converge into this one moment, into this undeniable existence of now. Enjoy it.

2011-12-01T17:39:00.001+10:30

Sometimes I feel like I've woken up in an alternate reality. That is the closest thing to what I think living in another country feels like. The grocery store closes at 9pm every night, so all food items must be bought before then. Any other kind of store closes at 5pm, except Kmart. So if you go into the mall at 8:30pm to wander over to a Kmart, there is this creepy feeling of a zombie apocalypse. Everything is empty, and there is no one there. It feels like the world is dead. I mean, it's weird enough that people actually shop at Kmart. The only things that exist that remind you of the country you've left are the golden arches, and the Hungry Jack's logo which resembles the 90s Burger King logo. Ketchup doesn't come with fries. Everywhere you go to eat sells schnitzels, but no one serves a steak with steak sauce. Everything has a different name too. The trunk is the boot. The hood is the bonnet. The mall is the shops. Position is posi. The weather is completely different. There are still the same months, and the same dates pass, but they feel completely different. Summer is starting as Christmas comes. There's no snow. The 4th of July was one of the coldest days of the year. Chinese means a nice dinner out with banquets and lots of courses, not quick take-out and cheap delivery. There is no Mexican anywhere. Everything that resembles Mexican has an off taste. The best tasting Mexican I've had here had chicken that tasted distinctly Indian. Amazon doesn't work. I've ordered from Amazon tons of times, always gotten my item within the time, usually for free shipping. I bought something off Amazon, and it was supposed to arrive by today, and they have to ship a new one out. The rental market is ridiculous. You have to supply things that would be required for a police clearance to prove that you should be accepted for a 6 month rental property. Money isn't good enough. Offered to pay however much up front, and people didn't seem to care about that. It is impossible to get a job, for me. I could go back to America, which is nearing a 10% unemployment rate, and be sure that I could find a job, that if I just looked hard enough or lowered my standards that I could find some sort of employment. (This is in large part to do with my visa, which that situation will hopefully change when I get a permanent visa). Everyone works on Thanksgiving. We got one trick-or-treater for Halloween, and people apparently have a backlash against Halloween here because they don't want to be too American, all the while happily chomping down their big macs and whoppers. Swearing is meaningless here. So is making fun of someone. No one takes it seriously, so it is done all the time, about everything. Adult and family culture is dominated by drinking. It's not just a 20s phase that passes for most people.

(I kind of got interrupted while writing this, and never really finished it, and am a bit out of that mode right now but figure I'll post it anyway.)

They can take the girl out of Idaho, but they can't take the potato out of the girl!

2011-10-13T00:45:00.003+10:30

Brushed Potato vs Russet Potato

Short Cut Bacon vs...what I can regular bacon

Tasty Cheese vs Cheddar cheese

I've been missing the familiarity of America a lot lately, and by lately, I mean the past few months. It started with missing the convenience and utter cheapness of 24-hour Walmarts. Shops here close at 9pm, a select few - most others close at 5pm, with one light of "late night" shopping a week, where the other stores will be open until 9pm. So when we moved into our new place, and wanted to stock up on all those essential items, but just get them quickly and cheaply, we had to head all over the place, and still only get half of them, because nowhere has everything, and everything is not cheap.

I've also just been missing familiarity - every tree looks different, even the smells that seem almost the same have that distinct feeling of being different. The grass is different. The ants bite (and hurt). The spiders are supposedly huge, though I haven't seen any yet, but just knowing they exist in my area gives me the creeps. Trees bloom in bottle-brush shapes. This is really the most striking tree - it is beautiful, but it is also so unbelievably foreign.

I remember the first time I walked into a grocery store in December, to be greeted by the sights on the left up above. Whoo different kind of potatoes! That's interesting! Bacon is different shape, well it doesn't look quite as good, but it's probably a bit healthier since it's less fatty. Then cheese being called tasty cheese just confused me, but I ate it, and was like, yeah that's alright. See, everything is exciting when you are first in a new country, well at least it was for me. Everything being different means it could be better, it means that all the assumptions are automatically questioned (at least with the things that are different), because they have different assumptions, and there is that palpable newness.

Well, that newness has worn off. There are a lot of things I really like about Australia, but there are so many things that seem different just for the sake of being different, and take away that familiarity that says - this place is home. It's like - this is why it is different to move to Utah or New York than it is to move to Australia. The banks are different from state to state, but cheddar cheese is still orange, bacon is still cut the same way, and you can get russet potatoes everywhere in America, by walking into any supermarket. These are things that could potentially threaten the food supply, and have their own kind of problems, but they have that familiarity that just screams home. For all my initial thoughts, there is not one of those three that I would not take the right side of the column if I could.

But today, I found that familiarity in the combination of these ingredients. Baked potatoes, covered in cheese, with broken pieces of bacon on top, skins on the side with butter and salt. That is a great taste. That tastes just like home. Maybe not as much like home as it could have, but enough.

I made a facebook status*: "Yummy baked potatoes with cheese and bacon. They may be weird potatoes and weird bacon, and even weird cheese, but it's a familiar taste! They can take the girl out of Idaho (ok I never lived there), but they can't take the potato out of the girl!"

*quoted out of order

It tastes as good as it is for you

2011-09-10T10:07:00.003+09:30

One memory I have as a kid is sitting on my aunt's porch in country Idaho shelling peas. My sister and I were given the task with my cousin. I don't remember how we felt when we were first given the task, but after awhile, it became apparent that this was a good thing to be doing, and it was because these peas tasted amazing. Fresh out of the garden, sweet, and glorious.

As I've looked more into food, I've begun to realize that there is a very real reason for that. The first is that when food is grown in your own backyard (literally in that case, but also figuratively in the case of it being grown close by) it can be picked at the height of freshness, instead of being picked to last the longest before going to market. With the long distance that produce generally travels, and the bumps and bruising that happens along the way, they have actually begun to breed varieties that are picked for their appearance after this journey. They are effectively breeding less tasty varieties, and these varieties pack less nutrients too. It's all for the sake of portability, so the produce grown in California or Florida or Idaho or wherever for the crop can be shipped the average 1500 miles that food travels. The varieties that have been grown for generations that have been chosen just for the fact that they taste delicious, they are being lost. There are places that are saving the wider varieties, such as Seed Savers, which I've bought from. Those seeds were the thing I was most worried about coming through customs into Australia actually, because they have you go through a special line if you have anything like that, and I was worried I'd get my seeds taken away.

You also get varieties that look really really cool, stripey kinds, and purple carrots, blue potatoes. I began to realize that I had this limited concept of fruits and vegetables based on what I had seen at the supermarket, and that there was a whole other world out there, where food is bred to taste delicious, while still retaining a nutrient balance. Like, it makes evolutionary sense! Food that is good for us tastes good! (Now you're thinking about that bag of potato chips that tastes mighty wonderful but will pack on the pounds if you give in to your desire to eat potato chips all day long - well, the issue with that is that in the wild, finding a fat source like that, it would normally be few and far between, and so you would want to gorge on it to improve your fat stores, because it was unpredictable when the next opportunity might come. Instead our opportunity is for every meal of every day, so that has to be tempered by our mind. Not so with produce though.) Foods that have the nutrients we need will be desirable to us, and those that have less are less desirable. If you taste a tomato that's been shipped 1500 miles and an heirloom tomato freshly picked, there is a cosmic difference. There was a lady who tried a Pizzeria 712 caprese salad who had never liked tomatoes before, and when she tried what I'd deem the real thing, she cried.

When I think back to that day, shelling those peas, though, eating them to my heart's content, I was young then. There's that pervasive image in our culture - the mom telling their kids to eat their vegetables. What the kids realize that the mom doesn't is that the vegetables should be telling them themselves to be eaten. No one had to tell me to keep eating those peas that day. I wanted them because they tasted wonderful. I wasn't thinking about the nutrients, because thousands of years of biological evolution and taste-dominated crop selection had already done the work for me. All I had to think about was whether it tasted good. Because with produce, it tastes as good as it is for you.

True Love

2011-09-03T05:10:00.002+09:30

If there is one thing I have been convinced of in the past year or so, it is that true love really does exist. When I started coming to my own sense of self last year, and reached the point where I realized that I would be much happier single than I would ever be in an unhappy relationship, I began really looking, exploring what I wanted in a relationship. I saw two examples of relationships that I thought were similar in type to what I would want. My mom's parents, you always knew they loved each other, just with this like, incredibly special love. My grandpa would talk about meeting her, and how he just kinda knew she was the one for him, and you could tell though she wore years and the regular hardship of life on her body, that his love for her had only grown, and he loved her the entire way through.

I also looked at Scott and Carolyn, people who just fit together, who still seemed as interested in each other as they did as newlyweds, four years and two kids on. They are also very very physically affectionate, which is something I've always related to, and I saw in that something I wanted, affection that would go past the courting and early stages.

I started looking for love, but then at some point realized that I just needed to wait for love to find me, that if I wanted what my grandparents had, maybe I needed to wait for the whole package, not to do the finding, but to be found.

And then I was found. In the place I least expected, by a person I would have never guessed existed behind his screen name. And I fell, head over heels in love. A couple weeks after he expressed interest in me, I kind of knew, though it took a few more weeks for my mind to catch up, and accept it.

I remember as a child growing up, seeing all the Hollywood movies about "true love", like Ever After, the Princess Bride, and then like, suddenly realizing that it was not some Hollywood invention, but this is -real-.

I walked into my first marriage with the anticipation that it would be hard, but that it would ultimately be worth it. I was right about the hard part, wrong about it being worth it. With Andrew, things just seemed to fall into place, and seemed easy. Not that the circumstances of life were easy, but we were easy. It isn't this perpetual act of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, but a round peg in a round hole. We fit. We match.

But if there is one thing I wish I could tell everyone, that I could scream to the world, it's that true love is real, and that it is worth it. It is worth whatever it takes, whatever waiting, whatever preparing, whatever uncertainty, whatever risk. You look on the surface of the risk I took - leaving my home, leaving my country, to marry a man I'd never met in person*. But I knew, I just knew. Where I tried to know with Janardan, I just knew naturally with Andrew. We were sitting in the hot tub in New Zealand, telling this guy our story, and he was shocked, but then said, "Well, when you know, you know."

And as I lay here in bed, next to this man I love more than I thought possible, who loves me more than I've ever seen in someone, thinking over our life together to this point. I can't believe that just nine months ago, he was beginning to register on the radar, and ten months ago, I had not the faintest idea or feeling. It seems insane that such a small amount of time has passed, because in some sense, a new life started when we came together - our life. And it has been rich with experiences and beauty. Every day, every moment is special. Even if we're fighting about the rules to a card game, or Andrew's getting pissy because of the traffic. It's our life, and I love it. I feel so lucky to be a part of it. It feels so unique and rare, because I know there is no one else out there who I could have this with, but not because I don't think something like it exists out there for everyone. I think true love is out there for anyone capable of putting someone else before themselves.

And I hope those who haven't found it will, and won't accept anything less, because there is nothing that makes you richer in life than love.

*Now I feel like I need to add a caution here, that I don't think everyone should just go out meeting everyone from the internet all around the world with reckless abandon. Like, only do it if you're sure, because there are a lot of people who will prey on you, and do bad things to you just because you will trust too easily, on the internet and off. At the same time, you have to back yourself to know the difference. If you value yourself, you'll know, and you'll know which way to lean. But don't take the risk with someone else when you don't value yourself. Number one thing is that you aren't really in a place to be with someone else if you aren't comfortable with yourself. The ability to be perfectly happy single is, I think, a vital part of being ready for a committed relationship, most of all to make sure you are not taken advantage of.

Fear

2011-08-07T23:38:00.000+09:30

When I was a child, I used to have a hard time getting to sleep. I was haunted by stories of the holocaust, and when the lights went out and everyone else went to sleep, going to sleep in my own room, and I would wonder what if it happened again? What if mormons were the target this time? I only had a vague idea of what happened then, that they had been taken off into concentration camps, killed in gas chambers. It was what I feared most as a child, though. A swastika was a symbol of terror for me. My grandma gave me a book when I was about ten called Three Against Hitler, and I never got past the name and the swastika on the front, afraid of what might be revealed within its depths, thinking it might be too much for me to handle. I was scared of that book.

You see this with a lot of children, though, and I don't think children really know how to express it. Children know about the world we live in. They don't know everything, but they know that there are things to be scared of. I never really voiced my fear to anyone, not until I was much much older did I even mention in passing that I had been a bit scared about the holocaust.

The other thing that used to scare me was listening to the news, and always hearing about someone being murdered. There were always stories of people killing each other, and I used to be scared to go to our basement alone, worried when my mom was taking longer than normal to get home, worried that someone might come in the house, or worried something had happened to her. These were the fears I faced: murder and holocaust.

I had to confront my fears by myself, because in the darkness of night, I was left alone. It never even really occurred to me that my sister was in the room next door to me, and I probably could have gone into her, or that my mom was across the hall, and I could have gone in to her for comfort. Everyone slept in their own beds, and so I figured that is what you did. It was just what was done. It was what was expected of me. I eventually figured out that I didn't have the same fears confront me when I was listening to a story going to sleep. We had Powertales tapes, stories of real life heroes, and I used to listen to their stories as I went to sleep. Then eventually I started taping the audio of tv shows, and listening to that when I went to sleep. If I had a tape, I'd go to sleep very quickly. I used to think that when I got married and lived out on my own, I'd have to have a tape player with me then, and my husband would hopefully be okay with listening to tapes going to sleep.

When I moved in with my dad, I was so happy to be with him, and having come off the most depressing year to my life that point, just after my mom getting remarried, I was really afraid of him dying. I was afraid of what it would mean for my life if he was gone. I had him tell me stories going to bed, and I used to record them, every night, because I wanted to know I'd have them to listen to, if he did ever die.

Going to sleep listening to my dad did a lot for me, in that regard. And then making friends with my best friend, and us sleeping next to each other, arm in arm oftentimes, brought a lot of comfort, and I lost the reliance I had always had on a tape player to be able to sleep. It was also around this time that I began to confront my fear of the holocaust. I read the book my grandma had given me, and really quite enjoyed it. My dad gave me a play to read that was similarly based on the people mentioned in the book. The fear about murder had slowly dissipated as I began to realize that no one showed up to murder me or my family, and that I didn't hear about it happening to anyone I know.

But as I think about those experiences I had as a child, I wonder two things. I wonder why we have a society and social convention setup where our children are separated off to sleep in their own rooms. Now don't get me wrong here, I loved having my own room as a child, loved having my own space, to direct what went on, to have some place that was my own, but I think I would have loved to also have spent lots of nights with my parents and sister. I remember Saturday mornings when we would wake up, and all go into my mom's room, and just lounge around in bed, talking to each other, and enjoying each other's company.

I know there is a large push for cosleeping with young babies, and I highly support that, but I also wonder if our children might benefit, and us as adults too, with sleeping more often in the same room. My grandpa recalled a night he spent with a family, which sounded rather large, and they all slept in the same room, him as the guest included, and it sounded like he really enjoyed the experience. There is also this perception as adults that as soon as we put children to bed that they should be ready to go to sleep. I see this with my dad and my niece, him thinking that she is trying to get away with something when she comes up repeatedly and asks for a glass of water, or for something else. Perhaps I shade it too much by my own past, but I see it as her not knowing how to ask for what she really wants: comfort and not to be alone.

The other thing I consider is that maybe I was wiser before I overcame this fear. I basically overcame it by coming to the realization that I don't live in a segment of society where that is likely to happen, at least at present, and so I personally will be okay. But you see these things happen, genocide and killing, all over the world. And I'm simply not afraid because it's not happening to me or anyone I know. I feel like I should still be scared, because it still exists in humanity, because it is something that still happens, but not so much in the childish, not being able to sleep way, but confronting the world I live in, and that it reaches beyond the bounds I set to consider my “personal” world, but then also with that that perhaps the scariest and worst person I have known is someone who I used to take comfort as being a warm body next to me in my own bed.

I was scared of Janardan for a long time after he left. That's what happened when I was in Australia in December and posted that entry. I was afraid of him again, of what he had done, and that he might be able to do it again to me. I was afraid of losing myself again. It was part of the process, after I decided to stop having contact with him, coming a realization of what life was like when I was not within his mental clutches, but at the same time, not realizing how it had happened in the first place, and sometimes straying to the edge of terror that it would happen again.

But once I felt my own worth and value again, as I felt a pull in another direction, away from his view of me, and into others' view of me, I began to confront the demons of those four years, to question everything that had happened, to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt as I had for so many years, to question his intention in everything, and realize the possibility and probability of the depth of his mistreatment of me, for with emotional abuse, it is difficult to tell always, just how deep the bruises went, just how many lashes there were.

And now, as I go to sleep next to the man who healed me to completion, not really by showing me his view, but showing me a view of myself that is most accurate to the person I really am, to felt seen for the first time, and to see myself for the first time, and to see how to see myself, rather than always depending on the views of others, I am not afraid. In some ways, I know the world is a worse place, more personally than I did when I was a child. I know that bad people really and truly do exist, and that they can be lurking anywhere, that there are mini-hells being created all the time by these people who would don't fit the murderer bill. But I also know there is good in the world too. I know that true love really and truly does exist, because I see it every single day, multiple times a day in my love's eyes. I know that goodness exists, because I have seen so many people. I know the world -can- be a good place. We just can't let the Hitlers rule us. May the good people of the world rule themselves.

Just me

2011-05-02T12:59:00.002+09:30

There's been a lot going on with me lately, lots of massive changes going on in my life, some of them planned, some of them not, and some of them planned more than others. I've moved to Australia, gotten married, and I've left the mormon church. I feel like I should write about all of these, and there are lots of adventures to detail with my new husband, also associated with meeting him, and everything like that, but I feel like the biggest thing to address first of all is explaining leaving the church, because I feel like I should let people know about it, first of all, and second of all, explain why, especially since I think the majority of the readers of my blog are mormon.

It basically all comes down to one aspect of my personality, an aspect that has become all the more acute and obvious to me since Janardan left me, because I thought two things about him when I married him - that he would never leave the church, and that he would never leave me. These were two things I felt certain of, so strongly about, and I was smacked in the face with the reality that they were both wrong. There have been other things along the way, things that I have clung to as certainty, that ultimately turn out to be uncertain.

And so, coming over here to be with Andrew, and him not being religious at all, there was concern from his family about the match, and so he spent a lot of time explaining his view on religion, and that he is not anti-religion, but that he thinks that it sells certainty on something that can't be certain.

It began to have me questioning, and assessing whether I was just doing the same thing all over again - was I clinging to a sense of certainty on something where there simply is no certainty? Was I consoling myself with something that, at the end of the day, wasn't there? And when I took a hard look at it, the foundations of my "faith" crumbled, and I felt like I could not be mormon anymore.

I still have great respect for the church. There are so many paths my life could have gone down, which I was averted from by maintaining the morals of the church. I think there is a lot of wisdom there, though I think there is wisdom in many other places, and want to seek that out as well. I want to explore my spirituality, as I've felt spiritual things in other places, and am curious to explore that a bit more, though I don't think I'd ever join another church, just simply because I think the whole concept is a bit flawed, but who knows.

It feels like the last step in a process that has been happening over the course of my life, coming to know myself better, and be comfortable with who I am. I remember sharing a quote from Joe vs the Volcano on here a while ago. "Do you believe in God?" and she answers, "I believe in myself." I can be sure of myself, whereas so many other things are uncertain in this life, and I'm not afraid to face them alone. Or rather, it may scare the shit out of me, but I'm more afraid of embracing false certainty than I am of facing uncertainty. So from now on, I'm me. Just me. But all me.

Vision Security

2011-04-01T15:46:00.002+10:30

Walked out of Vision's doors today, potentially for the last time.

I've worked at Vision for awhile. Went there in a bit of a move of desperation. I was looking for a job, because I needed to support me and Janardan, and was not having any luck finding anything. I remember praying, and then remembering Vision, and with a bit of hesitation, emailed my old boss to see if there were any positions available.

It was a bit of an up and down road that first summer. There were so many times I wanted to quit, but then I also didn't. As the summer came to an end, things slowed down, and I became friends with more of the people.

That first off-season...my personal life was a bit hellish through that, it being the period right before my ex left, and then right after he left, and I was pretty lonely and withdrawn outside of work. But at work, I had was valued, and people treated me well, and I actually had people to socialize with. So many late nights with just one other person, talking about so many different things, and just feeling normal. And it wasn't just the people at corporate. I made friends with a couple reps and techs, and they all helped a lot in just helping me feel valued as a person. I was still having uncertainties about Vision, whether corporate really valued me as much as I thought I should be valued, and whether it was where I wanted to stay. I started looking for another job, but upon one of my first interviews, I was sitting outside in my car, and as I walked into the interview, said to myself over and over "I don't want to quit Vision! I don't want to quit Vision!"

That following summer, as I came back to myself with Janardan being gone, I found my voice in the call center. I started singing and laughing all the time. Me and Obby talked about this once, how I was the lifeblood of the call center.

And then, this past year has just been a year of a lot of growth at work, gaining more responsibility, helping train and helping people to grow into better workers, and doing my job to maintain excellent work if I can. But I've also used it as a forum for personal growth. When I decided I wanted to stop complaining, my biggest obstacles were with my work, and the greatest happiness in my work came through giving up on the avenue of thought that led to complaining. It's also been a time to just enjoy the job and the people I work with, just doing what we do, taking calls and making accounts work.

As I look back over, the times I am most grateful for Vision were those times of such personal darkness. I got a job to support my family, and when that fell apart, the people at work supported me, even though we didn't really talk about what was going on in my life. I remember a tech in the call center once called me darlin', and that was a huge thing for me, very confusing too because I was married at the time. But it just made me feel so...special. And Janardan didn't do that for me, ever. And he made me think that I was crazy, but people at work made me feel normal, even if I scared them when I would lay on the floor and laugh.

Thank you Cam, Sarah, Deidre, Raman, Jenny, Dan, Tiara, Jesse, Freddy. You helped me more than you can know, and with things that seemed probably very insignificant.

Raman has said that the call center is like a small town, where you either fit or you don't. I've carved out my place, and made it very much my own, and I have loved my time there. Colter told me that they will miss my cackle in the background.

So I feel like I am leaving my hometown to go off on an adventure, with no plans to ever come back. I've loved it, though. Been a good part in my life. I put Vision Security with pride and sentimentality on my resume.

Thanks for the memories~

Chiarascuro

2011-03-06T17:00:00.000+10:30

Affliction. My life has had its share of trials. But when I look back, each of the most difficult periods of my life has propelled me into new appreciation of life.

When I was 12, my mom got remarried, and I moved with her and my sister to New York. The changed dynamic of the family was one thing that was hard to deal with, along with hostility at school. I loved church in New York, though. We had great leaders, and it was a very tight-knit group. It was during that year that I first read and finished the Book of Mormon. I knew before the end that it was true, but still took Moroni's challenge at the end, and felt that confirmation, that this book was true, and that it was the word of God.

This propelled my life into a deeper relationship with my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It was just the beginning of something that has come to have such depth and meaning to me. I love them, I know them, and I am so grateful for all that they are to me, and all that they give to me. I also grew very close to my dad in that time. I'd escape to him, and we would play games together, and he'd just give me the attention I was so desperate for.

...............................

Mark also came to me during a time of affliction. It is strange to have a child enter your life not as a baby. Like, I feel this sense of Mark being born to me, but he was 14, but maybe it's more that is when I was born as a mother. When we were born, that was a huge change in my life. I feel like that is when I began to appreciate beauty. I saw in him something I'd never seen before, just a purity and beauty. I used to call him beautiful all the time, and still do on occasion. It was just so awe-inspiring, to behold what I saw in him, as he went through all these difficult things, to see that he had something truly special about him. It made the world more beautiful to me. It made me appreciate snuggling with my nieces more, their laughs, and just what love meant to me.

And then, Janardan leaving me, which actually was not that much affliction, but brought a great deal of relief, but the life that led up to that point was quite painful, and full of affliction. I feel like him leaving is when I came to really appreciate myself. It's when I realized my value, what my life could be like, and that it had not been living up to what it could have been, and that I had given away a lot of the rights to my life, and so it was a big experience for reclaiming myself.

And there has been a lot of healing, and just enjoying life the past year. Dated a few people, had lots of guys tell me I'm beautiful, feeling desired and desirable again. And then finally realizing that I didn't want to be looking for a guy, that I wanted to be found. I wanted to be found by someone who could embrace all the different aspects of me, and the other important relationships in my life. I wondered if such a man existed as I would need, to support me through the things in my life that are far from typical. I thought perhaps I would never be with someone again, but also felt at peace with that, because I knew from experience that it could be delightful to be single, and it was much better to be in that position than to be in a horrible marriage.

But then I got found. I have the ability to see into people sometimes, to look, and see more in them than they see in themselves to a degree. This has been huge with Mark, but I will be able to see into other people on occasion, and sometimes show them something in themselves. I'd never really had the experience myself, but that's what Andrew brought to me. He looked inside, and just told me what he saw, and then I could see it too.

Affliction is the dark parts in the chiaroscuro painting of my life, but these relationships, they are the bright points. I love to love, and it is worth all the affliction I've been through to have these people in my life.

From Emily~ (Part 2)

2011-03-06T13:30:00.000+10:30

Jennie’s 22^nd year in life was a really difficult one for me. My husband was finishing his thesis for graduate school, and was taking longer than it was supposed to. I was in a Spanish ward when I didn’t even speak Spanish. I felt very isolated in my life in a lot of ways, but Jennie really saved me that year.

Jennie had really developed a characteristic of compassion, caring, giving and serving when she got married. When she was growing up she pretty much wouldn’t do anything for anyone, but when she got married that changed so much, and it was beautiful aspect to develop in her personality.

Jennie gave to me and my daughters so much that year. We would talk on the phone almost every day even though we lived half a block from each other and saw each other most days. She was so willing to watch my kids and help me out, when there was so little time I got out. She really was like a second mom to my kids during that time when I really needed it. She was around so much and knew how I mothered my children, that she would pick up when she sensed how tired, or frustrated I was. What a blessing that was to me and my family as we were finishing up this important but difficult chapter of graduate school.

I decided to run a half marathon and she was so encouraging. When my husband didn’t have time to watch the kids so I could go for runs, she would take them. Or if it is was in the evening and I didn’t feel like going she would go with me. I am so grateful I was able to run in that half marathon and I know that part of the reason I was able to was because of her support.

Jennie was truly my best friend. We would laugh so much together. Watch movies and tv together or separately and then discuss it. We would go to Joann’s together and do sewing parties. I remember one winter I wanted to save on gas money so Jennie and I rode on my husband’s scooter all the way to the fabric store in pretty cold weather. Iremember eating lots of dinners together, and Jennie always being there when I needed to talk to someone when I was so frustrated how long my husband’s thesis was taking. I am so grateful to everything she gave to me and my family that year.

From Stefanie~

2011-03-06T11:30:00.000+10:30

5th grade:The first sleepover Jennie and i ever spent together we weren't friends just vague acquaintances from school. Jennie had spent most of the evening playing some light puzzle game that was popular then with a stubborn refusal to do anything else.
First impression I thought Jennie was irritating. Until everyone else fell asleep and we were the only ones left awake I convinced her to come outside with me because there was supposed to be a comet that night. Well Jennie stayed out there with me until the wee hours of the morning and we never saw a comet. I often get things wrong. However I remember thinking this Jennie girl is ok, I could maybe be friends with her. It was also the first time among many that Jennie would be there for me.

8th grade: I followed Amy Price and her sarcastic humor to lunch with Jennie one day and I kept coming back. Jennie and Amy's sarcastic banter with bits of oddness thrown in and endless continue jokes (As Soon Does Forget) was something I loved listening to and the gummy snacks Jennie sometimes shared didn't hurt either. This was when I really began to know Jennie and how much she loves Giant brand gummy snacks ahaha.
9th Grade/ High School years: Ninth grade Jennie and I became fast friends. It all seemed to start with a lunch table full of friends. We gathered together at every free moment lunchtime and before school convos became our ritual. Jennie could always be counted on for an extra buck when I forgot my lunch (again), help with homework, and endless fits of laughter. Then it just seemed Jennie had everything I needed in a friend. We shared endless sleepovers with movies, mindless activities, and middle of the night singing. In the dark hours of the morning we also shared our hopes and fears. Jennie became my anchor, everything I had I tied to her and she kept me stable. That was when Jennie became my best friend.

So let's take today to celebrate another year in the life of a wonderful person.

From Emily~ (Part 1)

2011-03-06T09:30:00.001+10:30

I remember when I was about 6 or 7 and Jennie and I would fight all the time. I assume this is pretty standard for sisters. I also remembering my dad having a conversation with me how when Jennie and I both grown up a bit, that we would probably be really good friends, and I would be so glad to have a sister. Of course I didn’t believe him at all.

Well about 6 years later our lives had changed a lot. We had moved across the country from Colorado to Maryland, and our parents were no longer married, our parents had been separated for a number of years. We were just embarking on a completely new adventure: our mom dating!

While in retrospect our mom admits that she dated her first boyfriend way too long, and as irritating as it was for me and Jennie to have him around all the time, as sisters we grew a lot. I feel like this was the beginning of what my dad had been talking about. Instead of Jennie and I kind of getting a long and fighting a lot, I started to really see how cool Jennie was, and how grateful I was to have her as my sister.

So a couple of my memories from this year in Jennie’s life was her bluntness. One Saturday my mom’s boyfriend was making pancakes, and not going a great job with it. They were getting burned and not turning out very well. Jennie in very direct style for a 9 year-old stated, “My dad makes really good pancakes”, and then the boyfriend had the brilliance to respond, “Well, let’s all clap for your dad!”

Jennie and I would get really irritated with the boyfriend, but found a whole new joy in eachother. We started talking in ob all the time. We didn’t do it to irritate the boyfriend, more because we wanted to have private conversations, but later when we found out that it irritated him, that definitely didn’t deter us.

I remember when we had the blizzard and got snowed in with the boyfriend, and Jennie and I started digging out our cul-de-sac because we wanted him gone. While I am not sad that this boyfriend is no longer apart of our life, I am grateful for how close Jennie and I got, and I got a glimpse of what my dad was talking about, that my sister would really be a great friend.

From Jessica~

2011-03-06T08:52:00.002+10:30

Jennie is the kind of person that I can always count on for a good chuckle. I give a lot of pity laughs with most people, maybe even a quaint smile here and there, but with Jennie, it's full blown hysterics every time I'm in her company. Jennie and I have this thing where we have to document our antics using a camera. While flipping through photographs of our shenanigans, and after recovering from any associated shame, I can't help but think how grateful I am to have shared such experiences with someone I know will not judge me for them later. This is one of the great qualities of Jennie, completely non-judgemental. I mean, I'm sure she has to judge occasionally, like whether or not those colors would complement a quilt she in the process of making. Besides passing judgement on quilt squares and self-sustaining farming, Jennie is the most tolerant, accepting, and loving individuals I know.

A few more reasons why Jennie is so great:

1. Jennie is very forgiving: I won't even beat around the bush here: I smashed her finger in my automatic car window. Most people would be furious at this point and not continue on with the friendship. Jennie was like, 'ow' and then she miraculously forgave me! I knew this girl was in it for the long haul.

2. Jennie believes in visiting friends in faraway places: We all have friends that live far from us and we all make false promises that we'll have to come out to "such and such place" soon because "it's been so long." Jennie makes good on her word because she genuinely cares about people and their wellbeing. Needless to say, I was absolutely beside myself when she came to visit me in Las Vegas.

3. (I'm repeating this one for added emphasis) Jennie accepts me for me: I know if I ever wanted to become a crack-smoking hoochie mama, Jennie would have no qualms with accepting me. I wouldn't even think twice before telling her about my change in lifestyle. I wouldn't feel obligated to explain myself or my reasons for doing it because I know "she coo' wit' it."

I wasn't particularly fond of my BYU experience, but there were a few people that made attending bearable and shall I say, worth it. Jennie is definitely, without a doubt, one of those people. On anniversary of her birth, I reflect on all the ways Jennie has influenced me, inspired me and edified me. Thank you universe, for letting her be a part of my life.

Happy Birthday Jennie!

Love,

Jessica

From my Mom~

2011-03-06T06:12:00.000+10:30

Jennie came into this world on March 5, 1986 during the morning daylight hours. Her older sister had entered this world 7 days past her due date so Jennie’s mom figured that there was no way she would go over that long again. Little did she know that Jennie had other ideas. At the 7 days past the due date mark Jennie’s dad decided that he did not want to go to law show the next day so they would follow the advice of fellow law students and take his wife and walk around the Provo Temple. After the walk around the temple they went to bed and the labor pains began………but as it turned out it was false labor. The same false labor pains came the next night. On the third night the real thing happened and Jennie joined her family nine days past her due date. She weight 9 lbs 3 oz. but had a small head so the delivery was not that difficult for her mother.

Back in these days you didn’t find out if you were having a boy or girl. So when Jennie’s dad called her older sister – Emily’s comment was “We won – we got the right baby”. Now the sisters would be able to wear all the matching outfits that their mom had made.

When Jennie was around two months old the family went on a trip to Disneyland. Probably the ride that she liked the best was hanging out in her stroller. One night while traveling to California they were camping in the family’s tent and the wind began to blow and blow. Jennie was sleeping in her stroller and didn’t seemed too bother by the weather.

Jennie’s sleeping as an infant was less than stellar………….she liked to hang out with her mommy during the night. When she was a few months old the family went and visited one of her mother’s high school friends and her 8 month old son was still getting up 2-3 times a night. That night Jennie’s mom decided they were ending this habit of getting up 2-3 times a night. There would be NO food at this party – in fact there would only be the pacifier. Needless to say, Jennie decided that this party was not all that fun and started sleeping through the night.

Jennie became a resident of Littleton, Colorado when she was around 3-4 months old. For Halloween that year Jennie, Emily and her Dad decided to dress up like Mickey and Minnie mouse. Afterwards they decided they wanted to take a family picture in the costumes do Mom had herself a Minnie Mouse costume also.

Many fun times were had by the family the first year (and the years to come) of Jennie’s life. Thanks for coming to our family – we LOVE you!!!!!!

Exactly 25 years~

2011-03-06T04:42:00.000+10:30

25 years ago, this very minute, I emerged into this world. It's been an interesting life, but I'm glad to be living, and happy for the life I've had, and for the life I have before me.

Random Facts of Jennie

2011-03-06T03:30:00.000+10:30

I like to wake up with the sun in my eyes.

One of the things I miss the most about the East Coast is the smell of the forest after it rains.

One of my primary modes of thinking about other people is thinking what circumstances I would conceivably act like them, to better understand and empathize with the things people do.

I love to calm crying babies. Every time I hear a baby cry, I want to try and soothe it.

I am very inexact, and a by feel person. Good evidence is my cooking where I very rarely measure and just go by feel.

I love the feeling of grass on my feet, also the give of the earth. It is one of the best things about walking barefoot.

I don't like to take medicine. I like to figure out the cause of my ailments and work from there. I feel like medicine stops that process in many cases. (Now there is no way I'd refuse pain medicine after surgery, but that's because I know the cause and there's nothing to do about it.)

I have a deep appreciation of sorrow and melancholy. I am aware of how important they are for true joy.

I love rain. There is something beautiful about experiencing the power of the earth by having little droplets fall and encompass you.

I like to have very clear nasal passages. I have picked my nose since I was a kid, and would never stop, because I cannot stand the feeling of debris in my nose, and seriously, a tissue doesn't cut it.

I love my body. I've heard it's typical for women to have things they wish they could change about their bodies. I wouldn't change mine. I love it. It is beautiful.

I can get along with pretty much anyone, but I am not really that outgoing. I get more outgoing the more comfortable I am somewhere, and where I feel sure of my place there.

I like biking in the winter more than the summer, for two reasons. One, I am super sensitive to heat, and can get heat exhaustion very easily. Two, it makes me feel hardcore to bike in the winter.

About once or twice a year, I will get an upset stomach really bad, and feel awful until I throw up, then I will feel great.

My favorite sport to watch is Aussie Rules Football, even though I've only seen two games. I think it is -the- best spectator sport.

I am more expressive in writing than I am in speaking. I like to write letters to people to tell them what I think is special about them. I just don't tend to think that way when speaking.

My sister once said that I was bathed in balsamic vinegar in the womb. I love this statement though it can't be true because I would not try balsamic vinegar for years because it looked gross. It is probably my favorite flavor.

I like to do cartwheels. I did them a lot as a kid, and then stopped sometime. I rediscovered cartwheels when one night at work I was alone for the closing shift, so I went out into our large open area and wanted to do a cartwheel, and discovered I could still do them.

From Monique~

2011-03-06T00:30:00.000+10:30

Jennie just brightens up the whole world when she's around. She's so happy and carefree and loving. I'm so impressed with her passion and energy for her hobbies, like local food, cheese making, quilting, and serving others. I am so thankful that I was able to be a part of apartment 121.5 with her, and that we've maintained our friendship for nearly 7 years now. Some of my favorite memories include playing zip-zip-bong, working at the Tanner building at the crack of dawn, going to Panda Express, laughing, talking about the gospel and the temple together, and recently when we went bowling and she danced to all the music and didn't care one bit if anyone saw. I am so thankful that she was able to attend my temple wedding in Washington, DC. She is one of the most selfless and compassionate people I have ever known, and I admire her ability to accept and nurture and love the people around her. I admire her self-confidence and her complete knowledge that she is a daughter of God. I admire her testimony. She is super awesome, and you should definitely get to know her better if you haven't already. Happy Birthday Jennie!! I love you and I am so happy that your life is so awesome right now!! Thanks for letting me be a part of your life and for sharing so many things with me!

2011-03-05T23:32:00.000+10:30

From my Dad~

2011-03-05T22:30:00.001+10:30

At age 5, Jennie created her own dice game. Her family play it frequently.

As a teenager, Jennie was the sole girl who played pick-up basketball games with a bunch of boys, some of whom were on the high school basketball team. At age 14 she tore the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in her right knee at one of these games and had surgery to replace it. This did not deter her from coming back and playing in those games for the following three years (and occasionally blocking shot attempts of much taller boys).

Jennie skipped her senior year of high school to enter college, officially making her a high school dropout. In doing this, she carried on the proud tradition of her father and grandmother.

Happy 25th Birthday~ Everyone Comment please!

2011-03-05T19:30:00.000+10:30

Life.

It is such a beautiful gift.

To grow in the womb of a mother, sharing her body, then to emerge to begin life on your own.

Every life is precious. Every moment of life is precious. And I'm grateful for mine, for all 25 years of it that I've had on my own. 25 years. I'm grateful for the experiences I've had in my life, the dark and the light, the good and the bad, because they've all made me who I am today, and brought me to this point, and I'm so glad to be me.

I love who I am.

There have been dark times in my life, a lot of them, but I truly believe that the Lord gives us opposition in all things to increase the possibility of our lives. For without the dark times, I would never come to fully appreciate the light. Without the times where I am pushed beyond capacity, and feel incredibly weak, I would never come to find the true strength I have.

I feel like over the past year especially, I've come to appreciate life like I never have before, to just celebrate the precious moments on this earth. I love the smells that come, the sunrises, the color of stormy clouds, the colors of the seasons, the love of the most important people in my life.

Today, I want to celebrate my life. I want to know what you remember about me, who I am to you, or just a funny story to do with me. (Feel free to continue to comment after the day too.) I'll be releasing posts today from various people about my life, and my relationships, and then some by myself, written just about different parts of my life, or stories.

But for now, comment away~

Birthday Blog Blitz Extravaganza!

2011-03-05T18:55:00.000+10:30

I was born 25 years ago today! To celebrate, I'll be having posts coming out various points through the day to celebrate my birth and life. There will be a few posts written by me, and some by people close to me, and then just some with pictures. So check back in various points through the day to see all of the birthday happenings!

Post also coming to ask you to share your stories and memories, so be sure to do so!

Coming home~

2011-03-01T02:21:00.000+10:30

I was driving to work the other day, after spending another lovely morning talking to Andrew. And I heard this song, and I just felt so...like, like him finding me, us being together, this is how life is supposed to be. It feels like coming home.

Just one shmuff~

Partaking of the Fruit

2011-02-11T13:31:00.001+10:30

24 And it came to pass that I beheld others pressing forward, and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron[...]

11 And it came to pass that I did go forth and partake of the fruit thereof; and I beheld that it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen.

I feel a kinship to these verses. Lehi's dream, I feel so well how it applies to my life.

I remember living in Texas, and having this image come to my mind, of this woman, clinging to the rod of iron, holding on for dear life, winds howling all around her, hail and rain beating down on her, hanging over this wide, large river, threatening to overtake her, drown her, if she let go of this rod. And there she is, arms wrapped around it, legs hugging to it, and all her effort is just in clinging. It is her only thought, to keep a hold of this rod. I wanted to make a quilt out of it, it was an image that spoke to me so, but my drawing skills need to catch up with me before that can happen.

I was thinking about this image again today, and thinking how I have traveled farther through his dream, and how I feel like I am at the tree of life, partaking of the fruit thereof, partaking of the love of God, and just being blessed immeasurably at his hand. And I have another image that I would love to make into a quilt one day, me, at this tree, absolutely glowing, holding this white fruit in my hands, smiling huge as I partake. Because that is what I feel like right now. I feel so blessed in so many aspects of my life, most especially with my amazing son and my wonderful man. (Yeah, we got back together really quickly.)

The Lord answers prayers. As soon as I knew Mark, I started praying that I would be able to meet him in 2010. I prayed for that for a while, and then just kind of let go of it, as other things came to the front. The Lord answered that prayer.

I was praying for a man in my life, but not just any man, a man that would be amazing, that would fit with me, and then I began to pray not that I would find him, but that he would find me, that he would see more in me than I saw in myself, and that I would be able to love him for that, and know that I was loved. And then a few months later, Andrew started to see me differently, and he found me, and he loves me, so much, sees more in me, and makes me more me, and loves me just for being me.

The Lord answers prayers, and his love is amazing, and the fruit of the tree, it is delicious, and it is wonderful. I am a new person in Christ, and through his atonement, and the people he has put in my path to help me with my healing. I am whole, and I am so wonderfully happy. And that is the beauty of the fruit of the tree. How delicious to the taste it is!

Death Cannot Stop True Love

2011-02-04T01:57:00.000+10:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZalfcrwSU

I've had this quote running through my head a bit the past day. Andrew told me last night that he doesn't think we can be together for the next year, that he can't do the whole dating online thing for a year, especially since he has so many important things to get done right this year. I'd kind of wondered how that would work, us not being able to see each other for the year, and how would we maintain a relationship with that, and how would that go.

But I feel so good about where I am at as a person, that I know who I am, and know my strength, and I saw a lot of that, that change, in how I responded to the news. Because my initial reaction was to do what I have typically done, to see a situation only one of two ways, but that way, at the end of the year, there would be no chance for us.

But I'm sure of myself enough now. I don't need to give into that fear and weakness, to take someone else's needs as personal, and see them as completely incompatible with me, just because it's not what I want. And once I accepted that, I have seen that it will be a very good thing, that us not being together, we'll be more the people we would want each other to be.

And so I guess, I have this phrase going through my head, because yeah, it's not death, but something else, but I don't think it can stop true love. So I guess we'll see at the end of it - is our love true love? For now, I can embrace the uncertainty of not completely knowing, and just say, we'll see.

Joy

2011-02-02T00:35:00.000+10:30

I've grown up in the gospel. I've learned these words all my life: the plan of happiness, men are that they might have joy, and a host of other ones detailing that joy is the end and ultimate purpose of the plan. It is why Heavenly Father had children, and sent us here to earth, to experience trial, that we could experience true happiness. As they say, ignorance is bliss, but bliss is not a fullness of joy.

And I have always gotten that, and understood, you know, that happiness was the endgoal. And so I've always like, found meaning in sorrow, and pain, and affliction, because it seemed like it has such depth, and I liked to kind of dwell down in there, figuring that it would just lead me to greater joy in the end, or something like that.

And then I was reading the scriptures this morning, as part of this past little while which is the happiest I have ever been in my life, and then it just like, suddenly clicked. Joy is the greatest purpose. There is nothing more meaningful or better than experiencing happiness and joy. Joy is the reason for it all. It is the reason we do everything else. It is the reason the Lord did everything else. Joy should not be sacrificed for anything. Pain and sorrow are important aspects of joy, as they are jumping off points for greater experiences of joy. The most compelling insight I came away from this scripture study session, which addresses something that I've always kind of gotten wrong is: "You do not have to have a fullness of hell to have a fullness of joy."

And the Lord has a plan of happiness for each and every one of us, and will put us on the path to finding -daily-, not just eventual, happiness, as soon as we are ready. He has a plan prepared for if we chose 10 years ago, or if we choose so now, or in 1000 years. I've been willful and rebellious in my past, and I, for one, don't want to go down that path again. The Lord has so much more in store for us than we can even imagine. Just a small glimpse of that has pushed me into such amazing joy.

All glory be to the Lord for this beautiful earth, for his wonderful plan, for his son, and the atonement. How glorious his gospel plan, and how immense his love for all of his children. How great his love for me, one of his daughters.

2011-01-31T14:59:00.000+10:30

So many things to write about. What to say.

I am back. I am me. More me than I think I have ever been before, and what a wonderful thing that is. I remember a year ago, that feeling of having myself back, feeling like, oh right, I am a person. And now I feel like, I'm fully free. I'm who I am. And a lot of that came from one night in Australia. I'd had a rough day, don't really remember what had been going on, but not the greatest of days, and was just in bed about to go to sleep when Andrew started messaging me, telling me he wanted to respond to this post. He told me that I have qualities that are so rare, that he has not seen in other girls, that I am special, and that I should never question the quality of person I am. That moment changed my life. Like regardless of what has happened since, I felt like that moment is what gave me myself back, that made me feel like, no one else has control of my life but me, and I am in charge of my life, of myself, and how I feel. And that I don't need to be afraid anymore.

Now I wanna backtrack and tell the story that I've been...worried about telling for a long time. I kinda wrote something vague about Mark, and who he is, and how he's my son or whatever, but it's time to do the story more justice.

I don't really know how it happened. I met Mark playing Mafia, didn't know his name at the time, and he just seemed very sad. I wanted to take care of him, wanted to give him friends and community, so wanted him to come to TSC, where I could talk to him more, and just give him more people to associate with. He eventually came to TSC, and it eventually came out that he was the brother to another member of TSC, and had been lying to us. I was the most hurt, because I had wanted to trust him, had tried to, and felt like my trust had been betrayed. When we talked after it all came out, I told him he couldn't lie to me, that that was the condition of us remaining friends. And he agreed, and he was so faithful to that agreement, more than I thought was possible.

And in the mix of this time, I just began to feel...differently toward him. The ways I thought to describe it were that I felt like a mother lion protecting her young, or a mother hen. And then eventually it just clicked in my mind, that how I loved him, it was maternal. It was like a mother. It all suddenly made sense. It was weird, though, because I was pretty sure that was not how he felt about me, and was not sure how he would respond to finding that out, and then also like, that he was a teenager, but I had all these desires to hold him like a baby, and whatever else. So I kind of, hung back with my knowledge of how I felt, until it finally came to a head one day, and I told him that I loved him like my own son.

It was the first time that anyone had ever told him they loved him. It confused him, because it made him wonder what love was, and did he love me? And did his parents love him (because I said that they probably did, but were just not good about showing it). He thought he would never know what love was, but then a few days later told me that he loved me too. And we just sort of settled into our mother/son relationship online, playing games together, talking about life, fighting, having fun, me helping him through crises.

Janardan hated it. His reaction plus my sister's made me think that everyone would think I was crazy, or that it was some horrible thing I was doing, and so I was scared to tell anyone, and only told people with the most caution, and a feeling of trepidation. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, because I loved my son, and was so happy that he was in my life, but felt like I couldn't be accepted for it. I think Janardan would have liked it if I would have just stopped having a relationship with Mark altogether, but to me, that was impossible, when he was suicidal. A life mattered. Life matters. And so it was something that was important enough to me to disagree with Janardan on. Which, in a way, is perhaps what eventually saved me.

A friend shared an article with me, about these rats where they injected hormones into them, and they acted just as much like mother to these baby rats as ones that had actually given birth to them (or in cases more where they suppressed those hormones in the mother rats). That article made perfect sense to me, and helped me understand perhaps a little more how the miracle of my motherhood had come about, because I really do believe it is a miracle given to both of us by the Lord.

But yeah, I've still been skittish about talking about him, just because I've felt alone in the way I felt, like me and Mark are the only people who really get it. Enter Andrew again. We were talking one night about this process, and just how it came about, and he said to me, "You know, it seems like the way you reacted, it was just natural." And I was like "YES!" This is exactly how I felt, and it was so....liberating to find someone else who felt that way about it.

I knew after like three days of being in Australia that I was going to be moving there. When things got hard, that prospect seemed less enticing, but overall, I am super excited about it now. I'm going to study nursing, and then midwifery, so I can become a midwife. I am so excited. I also kind of felt like, when the Lord was directing me towards Australia that there was a guy there for me too, so I kept looking around for one, but was not really finding one.

Well...Andrew is from Australia. He is not from where I was, and he was going to maybe make it up there so we could meet up, but that didn't end up happening. This man is amazing. We'll get to go on our first date in December! lol, it's so far away. But yeah, he is like...amazing, beyond even the things I've mentioned already here. He thinks I'm amazing, and like, sees me as one of a kind, like the perfect woman for him. And I see him the same way. He just matches me. He can be silly and serious, smart and stupid. I can be silly with him like I am with Stefanie, and feel like I can trust him with anything. There were all these things I wanted in a guy, and like, just kind of had them as a laundry list, and could not really envision what someone with these qualities would actually look like, but knowing him, I understand how they can all exist, even though it still seems so impossible. Like, a man as great as him should not be possible. He is far better than anything I could have ever imagined. I am so in love with him. :) (He and Mark get along too, this is a huge bonus).

Well, there is a small snapshot into the adventures going on in my life right now. :)

Australia Highlights

2011-01-16T18:04:00.000+10:30

I was thinking about writing an entry on distance, and I have been thinking about that for a while, but being I left Australia today, and miss it horribly, instead I will write about some of the highlights of my trip

1 - Watching Pokemon - gotta be the top, me and Mark busted through the first season of Pokemon and the movie in my last two days, and we had so much fun laughing as we watched it, and just so many good times

2 - The smells - there were so many good smells, even just walking from the apartment to the train station each night. Smelled lovely.

3 - Cricket - Australia lost. A lot. But it was still fun to watch and learn more. Still so much to learn! But at least I can watch a match and have -some- idea of what is going on.

4 - Mangoes - MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM sooo good. No mango ever compares to them, and I hear the ones I had were just average.

5 - Meeting random strangers - I met so many different people on the trains and walking around, ended up in a lot of random conversations, and that was pretty cool

6 - Singing carols at a dinner for the homeless on Christmas

7 - Playing this weird dot game at FHE. So much fun, laughed sooo much

8 - People at church always looking to me for a starting note, and also commenting how it just lifted the congregation's singing when I showed up.

9 - The trees at Hyde Park. Seriously those trees are legit.

10 - Talking to my mom on the phone. I think it worked out so well because of the time difference, so I could be available to talk in the middle of the night, and it didn't have to be the middle of the night for her. We talked a long time, and that was awesome.

11 - Playing through Sonic 4. I actually filled out a chart...almost. 7 years at TSC. Yep, that impressive.

12 - Coming to myself. Had a really great experience that was just so healing, and helped me just be self-assured and feel like I am 100% back.

13 - Dancing around the kitchen, singing and dancing with Mark while making carmels.

14 - Singing together as we went to the train.

15 - Playing 500 with real people...who also know the game! It was fun.

16 - Secret delicious secret~

17 - Meeting my baby. He's amazing and beautiful, and I love him so much.

18 - Being hugged

19 - Mark liking the soup I made. :)

20 - Dancing in the rain and doing cartwheels. Had a lot of fun random moments there. Man, rain is amazing. Glad I didn't get flooded though.

I'm not going to lie, the trip was not easy. There were lots of really rough times while I was there. But it was great. All the positives far outweigh the price for them. And especially this last week, it was simply amazing. I cried so much...well, and I have been crying all day long, just at the thought of leaving, and then leaving, and then being gone. It's been hard to be gone, and as I walk down the sidewalk on the left, and see someone coming at me, I have to remind myself "You're in America" and shift back over to the right. I was one of the last people on the airplane in Sydney, and the guy sitting in my row said to me, "Got here at the last minute?" And I said "Nah, was just trying to delay my goodbye as long as possible. Incidentally, don't mind me if I cry a ton." "Aw sorry. Hopefully you'll get to come back soon." "Yeah, I hope so."

And then getting to America, going through immigration, you know, guy asking me where I was born etc, and at the end he said, "Welcome home wonderful lady." It was a nice gesture, but I felt anything but happy to be back. I loved Australia. Love love loved it. I mean, I loved spending time with Mark, but I loved Australia besides.

But yeah, when I am sad and missing things today, it is my son that I am missing, and his smile and laugh, and his insults, and eyerolling, and everything that makes him him. But though there is this kind of all around dull ache that sometimes leads to tears, I can still think of those specific things about him, and things that happened, and they just make me smile. It was the trip of a lifetime.

Yet to come~

2011-01-13T00:55:00.000+10:30

"Moments before my last match, I was asked for the defining moment of my career. Who knows what they were expecting me to say. I just told them it was yet to come." - Steve Waugh

I was walking home from dropping Mark off at the train today, and just thinking about today, and thought, "Today was perfect." I don't really know what made it feel that way. Basically what I did today was start reading scriptures, not finish, start time attacking a level, and never finish a run, watched Australia lose in cricket. Like, all these things that would not make a perfect day, but it just felt perfect.

And then, I thought about how I have been feeling that things will get better, that the best is yet to come (and the intonation of this commercial which featured the quote above came in my mind).

Life is not about accomplishing things. It's not about finishing, or winning, or whatever else. Would today have been perfect if I had done nothing? No. Then it would have been empty. But that most things I did failed, it was perfect.

And the best is yet to come~

Hope On

2011-01-10T11:48:00.000+10:30

I don't know what tomorrow holds. There are so many different ways that life could go, so many things that could happen, and that is exciting.

Today I am happy for hope, that the Lord is over things, and he will guide me the way I need to go, and that he has greater plans for my happiness than I could even imagine.

I've been surprised by life, gotten a glimpse. And glimpses change you, even if they don't lead to where you think they might, even if they don't lead to where you think they could, a glimpse can show you what is possible. It can open your view to horizons more than you would have imagined.

The Lord is watching over it all. There is reason to hope. There is reason to be joyful, for this moment, and for that which will come in the future. I'm grateful right now for my glimpse, because whatever happens from it, it has changed me for the better, made me value myself more, and believe in myself.

And that's a glorious thing :)

Pictures of Food

2011-01-03T15:50:00.000+10:30

I've started a blog to share the pictures of the food I'm eating. Not quite sure at what frequency I'll update it, but I put it in around the date and time I eat it so in retrospect it should appear for the right times. Anyway, here it is, if you wanna check it out.

New Years Resolutions

2010-12-31T12:51:00.000+10:30

I've never really done New Years Resolutions before. I think often it is because I already have other goals going on, and so I don't really want to interrupt and deal with new goals with the New Year, and it seems a bit contrived or something. And last year I did start my 101 goals in 1001 days, but upon reflection, I think it was a massive undertaking, and while I have done a lot of the goals there, and may give them some thought, there are too many to give any meaningful direction to my life. Well...now I actually want to go back and look at that list, and see what I really think about it. *Does so*

Hm...well, maybe I will not ditch that. It's a good list to have. I've actually done a lot on there. Yeah, I'll keep it. It still has a longer duration too. They are good goals.

There are a little less than 10.5 hours left for me in this year (Aussies get the new year early, and this time I get to partake!), so here are my resolutions for 2011.

1 - Love more people, and love people more

2 - Find 5 ancestors and get their temple work done

3 - Spend 15 minutes outside each day

4 - Finish writing a story (to a polished state)

5 - Take a picture of all the food I eat

Goal 5 I expect to be imperfect. I will not actually get a picture of everything I eat, but I will accept that, and just try to do my best.

Goal 3 I expect could be the same way, though I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do it, if I am thinking about it.

Goal 1 I put in because I wanted to reach for something that is not mechanical, that is not just checking something off my list. It is more to give me focus to my year, to focus on loving more people, and to love more the people I already love. What a beautiful thing it is to be loved, and to love. I want a goal that at the end of the year, I could have achieved, but still be ready to make the same goal next year. I want to change, not just accomplish. So that is the purpose of this goal that is not really quantifiable. It is perhaps the most important goal on the list.

I will probably check in from time to time this year to see how I am doing on various goals. That is, after all, the beauty of posting it on my blog, that I have more accountability!

So a toast to the new year, and all the possibilities it brings with it!

We are all Strangers, We are all Friends

2010-12-29T19:18:00.000+10:30

People are not super friendly here. I've talked to a friend from Adelaide, and I think it may be more because this is a big city than being Australia, because it seemed the same way in New York too. I guess when you get so many people together, it just begins to get unmanageable to try and smile or say hello, or acknowledge most people you see, and so you end up just ignoring them.

But, I still believe in friendliness, and a good smile, so I try to smile or say hi as I walk by people, even though most people avoid eye contact.

So today, I was walking home from grocery store, just through the neighborhood where I walk the most, the well-worn path I walk, and I am looking at the people I am passing, seeing who to say hi to or smile at or whatever, and I smile at an Indian-looking man, and he says to me, "Did I see you the other day? Do you live around here?"

So I told him yes that I am staying around here, and I probably did see him the other day. We talked for a second about how people here don't usually say hi or smile, and then we grabbed sodas and talked for a little while.

He just barely moved to Sydney, and sounds like he doesn't really know many people, and he didn't want to talk about family in Australia, because it sounded like it was a hard subject.

It made me think of the other day, when I was walking along, and this lady actually did smile back at me, and it made my day. It was kind of a hard day. I'd always heard people talk about how a smile could make someone's day, and I always thought it was a bit trite, and like, yeah maybe it can be nice, but it's not -that- big of a deal, but then seeing that lady smile at me, I just understood what a smile could do.

And then talking to this guy, it sounds like I got to be that for him another day. Funny how we can affect people without even really knowing it.

Thanks Guys

2010-12-21T19:23:00.000+10:30

I feel like...so glad that I asked for help, and just to be amazed by the outpouring of love by all of you. When the comments first started coming in, I just cried and cried, and it was so healing. I only in rare circumstances reached out for help while I was married, and I think that is also partially why it was such a dark time, because I went through it alone. Looking back I'm kind of like, "Oh that wasn't a big deal, I probably didn't need to make a big fuss about it," but then I think, it probably wasn't a big deal, because I had so much support and love to outweigh something that left on its own could have grown to something significant, even though it did not justify it.

But I just wanted to say thank you. You all are amazing.

Need your help guys

2010-12-18T23:23:00.000+10:30

*you can go to the very end and that will tell you what I'm asking for help with, if you don't feel like reading the whole thing...it's long

Imagine for a moment that you are just married, and you have attempted to have sex, but find that you are unable to, that your body is stopping you from doing so. Imagine after two more weeks of efforts, finding that you are still unable to. Imagine the inadequacy you feel, the pain and questioning if you are a real woman, when you can not do this. Imagine again having a bit of discomfort with your husband, and a silence that lasts a week. He sleeps in your second bedroom, and the only interaction you have is opening the door to bring him a pan of food, because you are worried that he will starve. You eventually break the silence, and talking at least resumes, but the problem still lays unresolved. Imagine the unhappiness and depression you feel, at the overwhelming responsibility of taking care of everything in the house. Every pan, every plate, every fork, every piece of trash is picked up by you, taken to the sink and washed...or not all of them are. Imagine dropping a bowl of nacho cheese on the floor, your husband reacting with stress, and it being too much for you to take, and so you don't feel able to clean it up, so it stays on the floor for months. Imagine having a moment of revelation, when you realize that part of what makes things so difficult for you is that your husband does not express appreciation for any of the things you do for him. Then imagine talking to him, and him saying that he does not know how to appreciate. Imagine feeling stopped in your tracks, and feeling like you will never be appreciated. But then you think that perhaps you can teach him what appreciation is, and he denies all your efforts to teach him, saying that these are just surface actions, and that they don't really get at what appreciation is. Imagine then again finding out that your husband does not trust you. You try to feel consoled that he does not trust anyone, but it still eats at your self worth, and makes you feel like he does not see you as deserving to be trusted. Imagine the anxious feeling you have watching your husband be naked very often, when he has made covenants. Imagine trying to start things like scripture study, and prayer together, and it feels like all the efforts are on your part, and then your husband tells you that he cannot really feel the spirit when you do things together. Imagine giving your husband massages every day, but never once hearing a sound of pleasure from his mouth, a word of thanks, anything to know it is appreciated, except that he accepts the offer for one the next day. Imagine wanting your husband to be by your side in everything you do, but after a few months, you realize you will never see your family, and you will never get out of the house if that is how you want things to be. Imagine constantly worrying about being sick, about falling into the chasm that you see your husband in, because you don't have time around healthy people.Imagine having your husband speak words of degradation about friends who want to be married and have kids, and find that as a meaningful purpose in life. Imagine every piece of trash, every trip from the house to the trash can, every piece of laundry, ever dish, ever speck of dirt, every thing gotten out being your responsibility to clean up. Imagine it all just getting to you so much that your kitchen just has a small walkway to walk through, and you are so overcome by it. Imagine your husband being stressed that your mom is coming to help you clean the house, thinking that he might be expected to help clean things up, and you consoling him that he does not have to do anything, that that is why your mom is coming. Imagine your husband never being able to go out and do things, but then when a new video game system comes out, he is able to go out and camp out over night, to stay out for long hours. Imagine the joy of your moment, getting to be out with your husband doing something fun, and it is pretty much the first time it has happened in your marriage. Imagine waiting and looking forward to the next time a video game system will come out, because you want your life to be like that one day.

Imagine your husband always wanting to be in a different room from you. When you try to sleep in the same room, he goes to a different room, and you end up switching rooms. Imagine the rejection you feel. Imagine your husband not working, though he said that he would support you, that he would work. Imagine waiting and waiting for months, bringing up the subject a few times, but nothing ever happening.Imagine watching your savings decrease. Imagine finally thinking it has gone on too long, and deciding to get your own job. Imagineworking, and how getting away every day makes you feel better, and helps you get out of your depressive funk. Imagine finding joy in cooking, in making things, in washing tons of dishes all at once, in canning apple sauce and juice, and tomatoes. Imagine the happiness that comes into your life, but that your husband does not share it. Imagine feeling that to have an amount of sanity, you have to somewhat ignore your husband, or you will be drawn into his depressive state, and your house and life will fall into disrepair. Imagine taking singing classes, and loving so much to sing, but every time you sing at home, your husband complains or makes fun of you for doing so. Imaginethe stress of finding out that you have to move at two weeks notice. Imagine your husband being stressed and stopping working over it, to never really work again in your marriage. Imagine feeling the burden of moving all of your things on your own. You break down. You call your mom to read you a story, and it calms you. Your dad comes over and reads to you, and your family helps you move things, even if it is not at all a desirable situation for them. You feel so stressed, you just feel like you need your family to help you. You are desperate.

You move into a new place with two bedrooms. You and your husband have not slept in the same bed for a very long time, so you take separate bedrooms. This becomes the happiest you have ever been in your marriage. You love your own bedroom, sewing, reading, writing, waking up with the sun. You are a short walk from your sister's house and able to go over there often. You try to set up your husband with things so he can take care of himself in his bedroom, food and the things he would need to cook it, a microwave and hot plate, cans of food and boxes of the food that he likes to eat, but you have long since tired of cooking. Imagine going in there to read scriptures together. You have decided to try that again. He seems distracted, and pained by the interaction. Imagine coming to tell him exciting things in your life, and to come away feeling like you wasted the happiness you had, because he did not share in it. Imagine people asking you about your husband, and you not really having anything to say about him. There is nothing really going on in his life. Imagine writing, and wanting your husband to read it, but him not doing so. Imagine finding at his house letters that you wrote to him, long long letters, that lie unopened.

Imagine three years of marriage, and only one word of thanks ever uttered. Imagine asking him to help fix your computer, the one thing you know he can do, and him not doing it, even though you know if it was his own, he would spend hours straight to find the problem and fix it.Imagine so many tears shed, sobbing that you know is heard, but no comfort comes, that you remember two times when he came to hold you when you were crying. Imagine the most unimaginable loneliness you have ever felt, and you finding it ironic that you found it in marriage. Imagine the longing for priesthood blessings, and the denial of those, the refusal to give them, when it is the one thing that he will do for you. You still ask, and they are wonderful when he gives them.

Imagine your husband telling you that you have no purpose in life, degrading the job you took to support your family. Imagine him leaving the church, but you have hope, because for once he is being somewhat nice, and he admits that he had been being a dick to you before, and he wonders why you would have wanted a committed relationship with him. Imagine going out with him, and feeling a bit of that feeling you felt when you went to get the Wii, to come home and have him tell you that he was miserable the whole time, and he is upset that you didn't notice it, even though he seemed to be alert and invigorated while you were out. Imagine him telling you that he doesn't want you to initiate any interaction, so you stop even trying to initiate conversations. He talks to you a couple times, and you joke together and laugh, but then after the first two weeks, he turns to silence, and nothing happens between you. Imagine the desperation and loneliness you feel.Imagine how you feel like you can't talk to anyone about it, because they don't know him well enough, or because they are your sister, and he has asked you to not really talk to her about him. Imagine finally breaking the ice to talk to him, to ask him if you both want the same thing, to be in a happy relationship, and he says that you are not on the same page. Imagine him saying in that conversation that he will leave by Wednesday. You leave at that and cry, then go to your dad, and sob as he holds you. He then starts talking to you about the process of divorce, and you feel so strongly that this is not the point you are at. You feel like you have not reached this place yet. You return home to your husband, laying on the floor, and try to hold him, cry to him, and plead to him, tell him that he should not go. He tells you soon that if anyone is going to change, it will have to be you. He says that your sister understands him better than you do. You think to become more like him, to think the way he thinks. You try it. You try to intuit your way into the way he thinks, that you may understand it. He discourages you from trying even so. You try everything you can think of. Imagine feeling a lack of control in your life, feeling unhappy and confused. Imagine desiring to give up your life, to embrace hedonism, wanting to go off and have sex with someone else. Imagine how that makes you feel about yourself, and the steps you go to to correct such feelings, to overcome them. Imagine telling your husband after such things have been overcome, and he says that for the first time in your marriage, you have said something that surprises him. You did not even expect it to hurt him, because you have never seen him hurt, and it does not seem possible. It seems apparent that you have hurt him, though, for he soon after ends it.

Imagine asking him about going to San Antonio in a month, and him telling you that he does not think he will be around then. Imagine him asking for more time, and him saying that your time started 6 months before, and that you were over time, though no conversation had been had before to indicate that such a trial was ongoing. Imagine the hope you feel for him, that when he is gone from you, he may actually find happiness, because that is what he seems to think, even though you think it is a vain hope. Imagine then his parents calling you and telling you they are leaving to come and see you, that they are leaving right then. Imagine the stress you feel. You plead with him to call them. He does, and gets a plane ticket to leave Christmas day. You ask him if he plans on coming back. He says he does, then he will leave. You talk to him in January, continually asking him for updates on when he might be back. You want to move on with your life. You mourn the loss of the life you thought you had. You worry about always being willing to go back to him, because he has a potential that is palpable, and that you imagine is greater than anything you will ever find elsewhere. Imagine the surprise, then joy you feel at the happiness that comes in your life with him gone. Imagine the feeling that you are yourself again, and how you understand that, as people tell you "I feel like I have Jennie back again." Imagine as person after person after person says that they thought before that he was not a partner to you, not a husband, a jerk, that he just took and took, and never gave anything. You feel defensive of him at first, but with time come to see that their assessment is pretty true.

Imagine speaking to him again, just to sort out something, and him trying to blame you, to make you feel guilty for the things that happened, that it was because you did not understand him that things ended, that it was because of things you did. You feel yourself being drawn back in, being brought down by his words, being manipulated and controlled once again, and you have been free of it for a month, so you know you do not want to go back there. You talk to your sister, and she gives you the courage to make the decision to cut off all contact with him. You begin to question more what went on in your marriage, if you were manipulated and controlled, because you had never thought so at the time, but that reaction made you feel like you probably were. You have no idea how to point to it, but read about emotional abuse, and feel like the symptoms are there, even if you cannot nail down the actions. You feel free, and grateful for every day, for the simple joys of life, the feeling of air in your lungs, the smell of flowers, the smile of a child.

**I wrote this a couple months ago as an email to my sister, and then included my parents in on it. Read something I wrote a couple years ago today, something he said to me, and it is reverberating in my head. His words are insidious, and when I think I am free forever of his control, they come upon me from nowhere, and I feel bound again. Well this time I don't plan on fighting it alone. So I need you guys. I need you who read my blog, just to remind me that I am me, and I am in charge of my life, that I have control, and that I am not crazy.

2010-12-15T23:02:00.000+10:30

I've felt like a mother for 2 years. It was about 2 years 2 months ago that I first became acquainted with Mark, and then less than a month later that I began to feel, by some miracle, the love of a mother for this boy. It was weird at first, until I realized what it was. I knew I loved and cared about him a lot, and described it as "a mother lioness protecting her young" or "a mother hen protecting her flock."

But having a son halfway around the world who you have never met, never hugged, never seen the precious beauty of with your own eyes, it is not the same. It always felt real to me before, but having met him now, it feels really real.

I was worried in LA about missing my connection, because my first flight was delayed, but it ended up that the Sydney flight was 2 gates away from my incoming flight, so that was a great relief for me as I walked off that plane. Then the 15 hour flight was actually not that bad. I slept maybe 6-8 hours, rested more than that, watched a show, journaled, studied scriptures, and enjoyed the beautiful sunrise out my window. I had brought Mockingjay to read, but found that I did not think I would have enough time to finish it, so didn't even really read it at all. Perhaps on the flight home. But anyway, then I got off the plane, through immigration, the conveyor belt was broken, so there was a delay getting my bag, but as soon I saw my bag, I took it and ran to customs. Got through customs quickly, and quickly walked down the ramp, scanning the crowd, looking for him. I didn't see him anywhere, and then I saw him, and I doubled speed, weaving through people, and turning a corner to see him. And then I was there, and he was there, and I just got to hug him.

I have wanted so many times to do that. Just out of happiness, or wanting to comfort him when all sorts of bad stuff is going on, and I finally got to. But then just like, as the day wore on, I just felt like...well, we were walking around the neighborhood with the lady who owns the apartment I am staying in, and we were going across a crosswalk, and there was a car coming towards us, Mark first, and I was just like, instantly in my mind alert, and if the car had not slowed down, I would have done something. There is no way I was going to let anything happen to him. And I would throw myself in front of a bus to stop something from happening to him. And like, that's stuff I kind of had an inkling for before, like I felt that general protectiveness of him, but it's so real, when I am right here.

He is beautiful, and he is my baby. I love him so much.

In the Air

2010-12-14T14:43:00.000+10:30

So for some reason I decided to use the free Wi-fi this time on my flight, and of course what to do but update my blog!

So it seems like I will be able to see Mark every day while I am in Australia, and pretty much all day, so that is awesome! :D

I am on my flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles at the moment, and don't want to sleep on this flight. Want to save that for the flight to Australia...because let's be serious, I am going to need as much time-sucking as I can get on that flight. But towards the end, I will probably just get giddy and just want to bounce in my seat.

I kept jumping up and down various points through the past two days, partially when I was waiting in the line for security. I'm just so excited.

This is probably the most planning I have ever done for a trip. I started an actual packing list like 3 months ago, and started packing a whole nine days before departure (this is a departure from my usual pack in the last 20-30 minutes before leaving the house. It usually works well though). Of course I've been looking forward to this trip for two years.

One day I will have to write out me and Mark's story, and how we came to be bonded as mother/son. But that time has not yet come. He's an amazing kid, though, and I can't wait to meet him.

I feel so blessed, to have this all work out, that I am going to get to see him so much, and just that I know him at all. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but they are beautiful.

8 days

2010-12-05T17:34:00.000+10:30

Eight days. I leave for Australia in eight days. The reason I planned this trip was to go and meet this boy I love like my own son. I've been planning to go there for a couple years, but planning to come at this time since maybe March or April. He moved out of his parents house and in with his girlfriend at the time and her parents, then some bouncing back and forth when they broke up. Then he needed to find a place on his own, and she felt bad for him, so they found a place together, and lived together again, while remaining broke up.

And now she has accused him of attempted murder and assault. At first I believed her. But the more I talked to her, the more her story didn't add up, and then after he was arrested and released back to the custody of his parents, I got to talk to Mark, and hear his side of the story, and then I really didn't believe her, because he did admit to striking her, though not in any sort of forceful way.

I've known about this for a couple weeks, and just kind of been holding on, trying to hope, praying, and it seeming like the evidence is so crap that the case will not go anywhere. And it's been up and down, back and forth about whether I will even get to see him at all while I am there. It seems probable right now, but no certainty.

And so today I decided to start packing, and as I am packing, I realize I have no idea where my passport is. I cannot find it. I look all around. I find my -old- invalid passport, but cannot find my passport. Then I find it, and I am still sad. It finally all comes to a head. And I just start sobbing. I am sad that someone would do something like this to my son. I feel so helpless being able to do nothing for him. I want to save him from all pain and suffering, and here he is with so much heaped upon him. And I just think over and over, Why? Why is this happening? Why would she do this to him? Why? Why? Why? Why would someone be like that? Why would someone want to destroy someone else's life like that?

Before this all happened, people would ask me what I was going to do in Australia, and wonder if I was going to see much. Since my main plan was to cook and sing and play games with Mark, I did not figure I would get out to see much, so I'd say no. And they would seem a little confused. I leave in eight days, and I don't know what I am doing while I am there. I don't know if I will get to meet this boy who has touched my life, and changed me, and blessed me with the title of mom. But I do know one thing: that even if I don't, the trip was worth it. It is worth the chance.

2010-12-02T01:40:00.000+10:30

There is something beautiful and special about a world blanketed in snow. It may move the colorful world to a world of seeming black and white, but it has it's own kind of majestic beauty as well. Though it is cold, it seems quiet and peaceful, the sun rise, seen in the south, not yet over the tall eastern mountains, and I can still hear birdsong.

I want to bask in it, to soak it in and let it fill me, to let it overcome the turmoil and worry I have been experiencing. It seems in the most basic way to be the earth heeding the call of the Lord to "Peace, be still", and makes me want to do the same.

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea

Or demons or men or whatever it be

No water can swallow the ship where lies

The master of ocean and earth and skies

They all shall sweetly obey thy will

Peace, be still, peace, be still

They all shall sweetly obey thy will

Peace, peace, be still

Today, I trust in the Lord. That all things will be done according to his will, and that will be best for me, and for those I love, that the trials will bring experience and be for our good, and that it all works into his glorious plan.

Who am I?

2010-11-04T14:24:00.000+10:30

I have been thinking about the lack of depth to characters I write. Like I have been considering this story in my head for a couple weeks, and the characters are a bit of a blur. They don't stand out to me - it is the actions and the circumstances that interest me (I suppose that is a good thing, at least). Then I started to think about how I view people, in this sort of mish-mash way of the things they do and their circumstances in life. And those things can be interesting, but that is not what makes people human.

In my 50 pages of story that I was writing before, there was crying on almost every other page. It's because that is how I experience, exult, and joy in sadness. To me, sadness is beautifully experienced by crying. But people experience sadness a variety of ways.

I guess I think it is important that I understand what my traits are, who I am as a character in the story of my own life, so I can see when I am falling into the pattern of seeing everyone as I see myself. I want to love these people, love them for their weaknesses, and their strengths that can inspire me, and I think that begins with the journey of understanding myself, and taking time to see people around me in a different way.

I like to relate people to me. I think it tends to make me pretty empathetic, with a few exceptions, but I try to consider myself in the situations others are in, doing the things they are doing, and following the thoughts and feelings that would lead them to be that way, and I see myself in people, and I see them in me. I see how I could potentially react that way, how I would feel if I was going through that.

But I want to see how they are not me. I do this most often with my parents, because it is a relationship that is most surrounded by a natural inequality, difference, separation of understanding. I think I will be surprised and inspired by what I see. People are amazing.

Sacrament Hymns

2010-10-29T15:49:00.000+10:30

I have been studying the atonement for my scripture study for the last little while, and this week I've felt like I should be singing hymns about the atonement each day to enhance my study. So as I have been singing these songs, I have noticed a pattern, one that I had never really realized before, because not often do you sing songs about the atonement (ie mostly the typical sacrament hymns) all together. You usually get one a week, and there is a lot else to focus on, like the importance of the coming ordinance, a time to reflect on the past week, and lots of other worthy things, so analysis of the hymns is not usually something that occupies my mind during that time.

As I have been singing these songs one after another, though, I have begun to realize something. It came, because I was thinking, "Man this is some dreary music for some really hopeful words," as I was singing something, which I don't remember which hymn it was. But then I thought, well of course it makes sense, sacramental music should be penitent, and a lot of it is repentant, but almost always, the last verse is these hopeful and beautiful words, full of promise and brightness, which I think I never noticed before, because it seemed to just fit with the rest, and get sung that way, and so I never noticed it.

But as I have been singing, I have felt the power of those verses, and they make me smile, and feel joyful, and as I sing them, they don't sound the same; they have that feel they should have, that matches the words, even though the music is the same. It's like I feel like I am finally singing it the right way.

So for all my LDS readers out there, next time you sing a sacrament song, try to find that beauty and hope and love in that last verse, and sing to match it, and find the true joy that comes from that, but more appropriately from the source of all hope and joy and love, which is Christ, through his atonement. Because that is what we sing about.

How glorious!

A quilt as a metaphor for life

2010-10-13T16:45:00.000+10:30

I wish I had pictures to accompany this post, but they were just taken this morning, and I left New York, and did not bring pictures with me. I am sure I will get them within the next few days, but this is more about the process than anything else, so I guess the pictures don't matter so much.

This quilt I just finished has had so many pitfalls, and because I was making it for someone else, and not for myself, I had to overcome my inclination to give up. I made the center the first time, and then the back fabric bled, and so I had to scrap that one, buy new fabric, and do the whole thing again. Sewed the blocks all together, and it was super super huge, so had to take off a row of blocks, which i had to unpick them all, and then also re-sew part of the other blocks. And all of these things are obstacles that would have stopped me up, probably from ever finishing a project. I have so many unfinished projects, that I just got to a point where I was too frustrated, it seemed like it would never work, so I gave up.

It has been interesting seeing how the option of giving up being taken away has taught me that so much more is possible than I would have thought, and I can do a lot more than I once gave myself credit for.

But the real analogy that I have been thinking about is something that happened Friday night. My mom left to go work at the temple, and I was there with George (the quilting machine), quilting the quilt. The tension had some problems, and it being my first experience with George, I did not really know how to fix it, so I went along as best I could. I got the center piece finished, and started on the easy pieces, and was getting a decent amount done, feeling like I was closer to being on schedule. Then my mom came home, and started unpicking all of this work I had done, because there were these problems on the back.

I went to bed angry, and woke up deflated, to see almost all of my work taken out. It was not until today that I understood why. With the quilt finished, we took it to the quilt guild, and then we held it up, hanging over this bannister, so my mom could take pictures of it. Then my mom came over and took the side I was holding, and sent me over to see my quilt. It was stunning, absolutely beautiful. Then they turned it around, and I looked at the back, and it was gorgeous. This was a work of art, on both sides, through and through. This was perfection, insomuch as it was possible for this quilt.

My mom and I talked about Saturday morning, because she had spent a lot of time taking this work out, feeling like she had done me this great favor, and was wondering why I was not thanking her for it, and why I seemed to be in a bad mood. Once I told her how I felt about it, she understood a bit more.

But I think there is an important lesson I learned from this, and it was one I did not learn until I saw that quilt hanging in its final form. I wonder how many times Heavenly Father sends us a blessing, something to help us, to take us back from the point we were at, to re-try something, so that this time we can get it right. And we get upset and angry, and he probably feels a bit curious, as to why we are so upset, though he knows, but still must think we are being foolish, because it is for our good. Because he sees the finished masterpiece of our lives and self before we do. We get caught up in the details, in the worry of day to day living, and he is worried about bringing us to that level of perfection.

I think what looking at this project, seeing its beauty and perfection really taught me was that perfection comes through an imperfect process. So many times I have given up on things, because I have made a mistake, or I have messed something up, and it seems beyond repair, or not worth the effort. But the mistakes, the hitches, the problems, they are all just a part of the process. The inferior center flowers, and the thread that is in the trash lays by the wayside, but this quilt lays in its new home, hopefully wrapped up around its new owner, fulfilling the purpose of its creation.

I hope I can do that for my creator.

And thanks again mom.

Tribute to Mothers

2010-09-28T04:35:00.000+09:30

I was studying the scriptures the other day, and then had an idea of writing a post as a tribute to mothers. I didn't have my computer on me, so I just wrote a quick note that about doing a post on it, and saw the note today, and could not remember what I wanted to say. But as I've thought about it, some of it has come back to me.

The power of mothers is great. I was at a CASA (Court appointed special advocate) conference, and if you don't know what that is, it basically means that it was a conference that dealt a lot with how to help troubled children, especially children who come from homes where there is abuse and neglect going on.

I know a lot of mothers right now, mothers who choose to stay home with their children, instead of seeking other work. My comments are directed specifically at them, but apply across the board to good mothers and parents.

What you are doing does matter. Not just if you succeed either. You could have the most troubled child in this world, but your love and care, your persistence, it is making a difference, and it matters, even if it is not doing as much as you wish it could.

What other mothers are doing doesn't matter to make you a good mother. You are your own person, and have to do the best with the talents and blessings you have, not someone else.

Worry less, love more. You are beautiful, for being a mother. The change in your breasts, the stretch marks, the baby weight, they mark you as a mother. Wear them with pride, like your battle scars.

Your children listen to you, moreso when you don't think about it than when you want them to. Don't feel guilty about that. Feel proud. You say good things.

There are lots of kids in this world who did not get enough love at home, who are trying to go off and find it somewhere else. Your love is powerful. Your hugs, your kisses, your I love yous, your reading books, and laughing, and playing, making meals, and teaching. These things are powerful. These shape the lives of your children, and they protect them and keep them safe.

It matters. What you do it matters. Probably more than anything else. So keep on keeping on.

Embracing Imperfection

2010-09-27T12:00:00.000+09:30

I saw this post linked by somebody on facebook, and it drew me in, and it is a good post. I highly recommend it. And it left me with two desires, which kind of mingled with another desire I had, so this may kind of be a mishmash of stuff going on in this post.

The first thing I want to say is that you are beautiful. Every person who is reading this, you are beautiful. We are all imperfect. We may be far from what we think is ideal, but every single one of you has great beauty within you. I remember when I was younger thinking that I did not understand the word ugly, because I had never met a person who I would call ugly. I still haven't. The world is full of beautiful people, and I'm not talking about someone else, not that other person you see, I'm talking about you. And I don't mean you 20 years ago or 20 pounds ago, or whenever you look back on and think you looked your best then, I mean right now. You are truly beautiful.

On the flip side, I want to be real about me. I think I'm beautiful, in body and spirit, but that does not mean I am perfect.

I have often watched entire seasons of shows in the space of a day or less. This is my biggest coping mechanism when something is not going well for me, throw myself in a show and I don't have to think. Throwing myself in a book is a joy, a passtime, throwing myself in a show is an escape.

I have never been suicidal, but I have wanted to abandon my life at times, and embrace hedonism. That is my brand of self-destruction.

My house is never completely clean. The only kitchen that gets cleaned regularly is my kitchen, and I mess it up as soon as I clean it.

I am crippled by fear, in even what I think, and consider doing. I try to overcome it, but it is a huge weakness, fear of how people will react, fear of being rejected.

I made a goal to shower ever other day. I still don't shower that often.

I pick my nose and eat it. I have actually been thinking about doing a blog post on that.

I am a virgin.

I think one of the hardest things when I got divorced was wondering if someone would love me for all these things that Janardan hadn't. Would someone else accept them, and what would happen when I dated someone else, and I had to tell them the truth about me? Then they would want to go running to the hills.

But then I began to appreciate myself. I don't really know how or where it came, except that I know it came through the atonement, even though I asked for healing of so much less than what was given. I love myself now more than I ever have in my life, and all those things I used to tell myself, the things I used to worry about, they are still true. But I am better at embracing what is good about those things, in taking pride in them, or seeing them as a point of starting to work on improvement, or seeing them as not a big deal, and something to be worked on later.

And so I urge all of you - appreciate yourself. Love your imperfections as well as the perfections. Love your body for all it allows you to do, no matter what limitations it puts on you. Forgive others so you can forgive yourself. And forgive yourself. Move past the mistakes you have made, and work for a better future, but allow yourself to be imperfect, and to find joy who you are, in this moment, and in every moment.

I love you all.

The Lord's Tender Mercy

2010-09-26T16:06:00.000+09:30

I have kind of been freaking out this week about money. I pretty much paid up front for the place I will be staying the entire month while I am in Australia, along with my new passport fee, and then about $1000 worth of stuff for my car ($850 in car repairs and $140 for registration). And I still have hanging over my head the purchase of my ticket, saving money for buying food and money for rent for January and February.

I was especially freaking out with the car stuff, trying to decide whether it was worth it to pay for the registration when I will really only be using it one month, etc. etc. All this going back and forth in my head.

And then the counsel from the Lord, to have faith, to just have faith. So I decided Thursday that I was just going to have faith, and when confronted with worry, instead of giving in, to couteract it with faith, faith that the Lord could provide for me, and that all would be well.

So I've also been having mad cravings for Guru's sweet potato french fries. Like for about a week, I would go through wanting them, thinking about buying them, remembering I have no spare money, and then just thinking about them again. So then the day I decided I was just going to have faith, I came home, and went to say hi to the fam next door, and they had just come home from Guru's, and had Guru's sweet potato fries leftover, and I got to eat some of their delicousness. It just felt like a little message from the Lord, that he was aware of me, and that if he could bring me these fries that I had just wanted, just had a small desire for, how much more he would watch over me in the things I prayed for, and desired so much more.

The Lord truly loves all of us, and I am so grateful for him, and how he blesses my life. And I am glad he is looking out for me.

"That which is worth eating should be worth savoring"

2010-09-19T10:32:00.000+09:30

I was talking to my friend a little while ago, and was telling her how I have not always loved food the way I do now. She was surprised, because I talk about food all the time, and it is something I love so much, and cherish about being alive.

I have always been a kind of picky eater. I don't know if on the spectrum of picky eaters that my pickiness is that much, but I would definitely say I am somewhat picky. I can't stand to eat a warm sandwich, do not much like peanut butter and jelly.

Ever since I have moved out of the house, I have enjoyed cooking, the act of creation, it is just something I am drawn to. Being married to Janardan, and his not appreciating or really eating anything that I made that did not come from a box just made me not want to cook for him, but I still liked to cook things for myself, but I still think I had a bit of guilt when I would make things for myself and not want to make whatever he would eat for him, even if I did try to avoid feeling it.

Then we lived in Texas, and that was a very weird food adventure, living in a vegetarian household. I've always eaten meat and enjoyed it. I liked this guy in high school who claimed to be a vegetarian (I don't think he actually was), and it made me consider being a vegetarian, and I didn't eat meat for about two weeks. The last day of my vegetarianism, I was fasting, and my purpose was to determine if I should be a vegetarian. The conclusion I came to was that I should not, based on a scripture in the D&C, and a line from my patriarchal blessing. It was a moment of anxiety for me, as my dad had made Sunday dinner, and was making chicken, so I knew I would have to either tell him I wanted to be vegetarian, or eat the chicken. I ended up eating the chicken salad, and it was delcious.

So being in Texas, just having something denied to me made it that much more difficult not to eat it. I did not eat a ton of meat before I moved to Texas, but just not being able to eat it, I went kind of crazy and craved it a lot. I bought beef jerky to put in my car, just as my safety net, so that if I ever just like had a craving too bad, I could go out and eat some. I don't think I ever did, but it made me feel better. I would order things with meat every time I went out to eat. My dad took me to my first Brazilian barbecue during that period of time, and it was the perfect time to indulge in so much meat.

When I got back from Texas, I still kept eating tons of meat, just like, wanted to get it in while I could, still feeling that scarcity mentality. I still have a bit of meat in my freezer that I bought during that period of time.

There are too many factors to list each individually, but I would say that there are three factors that have influenced me the most in my present relationship with food. The first was a lesson we had in Sunday School about the word of wisdom, and there are lots of beautiful words in there about enjoying fruits in the season thereof, and lots of things about in the seasons. It was then I realized that I had no concept of what things were in season, that I had no idea what the seasons of food were. I do not think I anticipated how much I would change by that, just asking that simple question, "What is in season?" And it is a question that has made me love food.

It is the step beyond just eating to live, and going to the point where you live to eat. It is that question that first took me to the farmers market in Provo last year, that took me to the Promenade in Pleasant Grove, where I met the farmer that I now get my CSA from (Community Supported Agriculture - it is kind of like getting a share of the harvest). It is that question that brought me excitedly to the first week of the farmers market this year, where I fell in love with asparagus. I had never liked it before when I had had it, but I was craving something fresh, something wonderful, and asparagus fit the bill. It is what brought me to try all sorts of things. It is what today brought me to be eating a pepper like an apple (actually that owes itself to my dabble into raw foodism too, which I found to be unrealistic, but helped me appreciate that some things can just be eaten wholly raw, and be quite good.)

The second factor is probably Pizzeria 712. There is a quote they have on their wall, on their website, and seems to be a bit of their motto, ""When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is." - Alice Waters. I have thought of that quote a lot, and the food I love to eat at Pizzeria 712, as I have cooked this summer. Perhaps my favorite meal that I have made this year...ok, there are too many, so many have been yummy, but one, I just threw together a bit of everything that I had at the time, and cooked it, and it was so delicious. It is because of that motto. The best and the tastiest are what is in season -right now-. You can make some great combinations. Man, I have eaten some delicious things this year.

The third factor has probably been Food Inc. Trying to eat locally (another factor influenced by my sister, but also by just knowing what is seasonal by what is grown around you) pushed me to want to eat meat that was at least grown in Utah, but watching Food Inc. made me care so much more what kind of meat it was that I buy. It makes things like chicken broth so much harder, but also so much better. I have 5 chickens in my freezer, and I will probably eat them at a rate of one per month, if not less often, so that I can spread it out until I am able to order another bunch. But it is not just the chicken that I cherish. I have the skins in my freezer right now, no idea what I am going to do with them, but I will figure out something to do with them sometime, but I cherish those bones so much, because they will make wonderful, delectable chicken broth.

One thing I have found in my food journey is that most things I think I do not like, I do not like because I simply have not had the best, or because I have not found a setting which I like it in yet. Like the day I had stuffed mushrooms changed me forever towards mushrooms. I now love them, in so so many ways. Right now I do not really care for turnips or radishes, but I will continue to try them in different settings, when offered by other people, in the search of the thing that will change me toward them, because I believe that every food out there can bring me a joy and satisfaction.

I love food, because it is a precious gift. It is a gift of labor, of life.

I have the quote that is the title here hanging up in my kitchen. It is not because I think it speaks of some quintessential part of me, that it just defines me, but as a reminder to me, that I enjoy life, I enjoy eating, I enjoy food better when I savor it. I work hard to keep food worth savoring all around me, by eating seasonal, by having the best milk, the best meat, the best cheese. Today I got to work, and wanted to eat something before I needed to start work to replenish myself a little from my bike ride, and so I was chomping down a fresh red pepper. Then I thought of that quote, and slowed down, and ate and chewed with appreciation. What a wonderful time of year, a wonderful season, to be the time when this pepper was picked at perfection, so that I could then be savoring it at that moment.

I hope my journey has just begun.

Maybe I really am a Writer

2010-09-16T04:16:00.000+09:30

I just recorded a recording of the part of a story I have been working on, and it took a half an hour to read it aloud. When I finished, and saw how much time had elapsed, I thought "Perhaps I really am a writer."

I have a lot of doubt in myself, especially with fiction. I have a certain concept of how such things come to be, and it does not fit my way of operating. I am not a person who will lock myself up in my room for a month at at time, and just write a book. It takes work every day, each small painstaking step. I get small bits of momentum, but it always takes effort.

I meet other people who write, and they just seem to have this internal drive, like they -must- write, and it seems like the stories just spill out of them. I feel like I can be like that at times, but it is more often than not, non-fiction, in the form of journaling or blogging, writing letters, or something like that.

But I keep going, making the small efforts day by day, doing my 20-30 minutes of writing time, sometimes daring to take that into fiction (I missed two days, when I was getting exhausted of writing...but I'm back and more dedicated), and today, I read a small part of that product, and it is going somewhere, and this world I have found, this place and these people I am writing about, I have hundreds of more stories to tell. So maybe I am beginning to find myself as a writer.

Because I choose to

2010-09-08T09:10:00.001+09:30

(Reposted from December)

The words of Neo in the final Matrix movie are somewhat immortal to me. They go with other timeless quotes such as "To thine own self be true". And they get at something that I think is at the heart of our very existence. The backdrop is Agent Smith fighting him, with mind as well as body. He has throughout the whole triology been telling Neo that "It is inevitable". And it culminates in this moment:

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Because I choose to. These are the words that ring out and stand as a banner for everything we are and everything we can be. It is the admission that in everything we do there is, or at least at one time, there was a choice. We cannot control the world around us. We cannot stop the winds and the storms, we cannot stop the sun from rising, or force it to rise, but in ourselves, we are our masters. We choose what we do. This is the powerful gift, the divine gift of agency.

The whole point of the atonement is to give us the ability to raise from the ashes from our own bad decisions. It is to give us greater freedom to choose, and that one bad decision will not ruin our lives and destroy our ability to choose forever, but as we cling to that, that we may gain greater and greater freedom. If you look at any command the Lord has given, what appears to be a restriction upon closer inspection is a protection of that divine right to choose, a guide to help people stay away from those things that destroy agency, that impair choice.

It is not inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. We can choose, and we can repair our impairment to choose through the atonement. The consequences of our decisions are natural. Certain choices lead to certain consequences. The choice is the decision in the first place. We can choose anger and bitterness. We can choose strife. We can choose to love. We can choose to hate. Every moment of every day, we have a choice. Nothing is inevitable. We are who we are, we do what we do, because we choose to.

(Sometimes I need my own pep talk. Today, I found one for myself from myself)

I am getting rid of my trash can

2010-09-07T02:17:00.000+09:30

I do this thing when my trash can in my kitchen gets super full, where I hang a plastic grocery bag from the handle of my sliding glass door, and put my trash in there, so I don't have to brave opening the big one, and can put off taking out the big trash. So I was thinking today about my trash can, and how I didn't want to take it out, but how I would probably take this small one hanging from my door out pretty soon. And then it just occurred to me. Why even have this big trash can at all? It is such a big bag, and things get so gross by the time it is filled that I -never- want to take it out. It would be oh so much simpler to just have this bag on my sliding glass door.

So I haven't talked that much about the ways I am embracing the process of minimalizing. But this is one way. Another way is getting rid of a lot of the boxes that I have. My ex always wanted to keep them around so we could use them when we moved? I don't really know why he wanted to keep them, but he wanted them, so we kept them. So as I was thinking about what to get rid of, these seemed like the natural place to begin.

I also donated my old gaming systems to DI. I am getting rid of a lot of my Christmas stuff that seems extraneous. I kept all my Christmas lights, though, because I love my Christmas lights! Getting rid of old pairs of shoes that I never wear, and a ton of clothes that I never wear, or only wear when I get desperate from not doing laundry for three weeks...ie if I didn't have them, I would for sure do my laundry, so that sounds like a better idea.

My first idea was the use fewer dishes, but I have not actually done anything with that yet. I want to gather all the dishes from all over the house, and my car...and wherever else they might be, before I pack them away, so I don't have to pack a whole ton away at once.

I am also getting rid of two duffel bags. I still have one super large one, and one week/weekend-sized one. I kept all of my camping stuff, though I probably could weed through some of that.

I went through my CDs, and got rid of most of the cases, and put them all on one of those spindly things. I also put the couple video games I have on there. I had my old laptop in my get rid of pile, but then decided I might want to see if I can revive some data from it. I'm selling a few things on ebay which will hopefully cover the cost of getting a separate battery charger, as what is dead about the computer is the power cord connection to the motherboard. Once I can get data off and wipe it, I will probably part with it, but there may be some pictures on there I really want. They may also be gone from the other time I wiped it. But I can at least get some old chat logs off of it, or find something of nostalgic worth that I have plenty of space for on my current laptop.

I still have a lot to go through, and lots of things to actually get rid of, instead of just being in the pile. I also have purgatory in my hallway, which is those things which I need to use in the next month or so or get rid of. They have to prove their usefulness. Not in the hallway, but also on that list is the massage table. I want to use it, so I should. I really want to give my aunt a massage. I got her phone number yesterday so I could call her sometime this week and figure out a time she might want to come down here so I can give her a massage. If I do that, then it is worth keeping. If I don't end up doing anything with it, it's not, and I should fix it and sell it.

I love the look of my closets, though. They are so empty. My dancing room has always been (since I made it so) one of my favorite rooms in the house. It is so freeing to be so empty. It is peaceful, it is fun. It has so much possibility. I look forward to having more of my house join that realm. And also for the feeling that I can manage everything I own, instead of it overwhelming me.

The Creation Before Creation

2010-09-06T09:50:00.000+09:30

"For I, the Lord God, created all things of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth." - Moses 3:5

I have been thinking about this concept a lot lately, how things are created in some manner before they are created, how important that process is to the process of creation, how it takes both parts.

If I were to apply this to art, or writing, or whatever I do, I think of it as, creating things mentally before I create them physically. Especially in writing, it is the thought, and the mental concept of things, long before I even sit down to write. The time I most often create writing in that form is in the first stirrings of the morning, just waking up, my eyes still closed, and I am carried to a world, consider a world and the people, maybe something I'm working on, maybe something I was just dreaming about. But that is most often where the creation begins. It also comes right before I go to sleep, in that dreamy state.

But it also applies outside the acts of creations of art or things like that, and goes to the things as mundane as doing my dishes, cleaning my house, showering, what to wear. If I intend to do it mentally, and go through the process mentally, thinking through the steps it will take, essentially doing the task mentally, then I am much more likely to do it, to be successful at it. Not that it takes a supreme amount of time. You can complete the entire process of a task mentally in about 5 seconds. So it's not really like, planning out my whole life, it's just intending things before I do them.

It is also seeing the problems and the hitches that might come, that need to be addressed now, so that some thing may be done in the future, if it is not to be done now. It is a good pattern to follow, and I find success as I attempt to create before I create.

Reminding myself why I want to get rid of stuff

2010-09-03T05:31:00.000+09:30

My house is in an oppressive state right now. It is funny, because my house is not usually overly neat, but there is always the solace of my empty dance room.

I began my journey of getting rid of stuff, figuring out what is important, and trying to get rid of the rest last night. Now my dance room is covered in stuff that I have to figure out how to get rid of. Part of me feels like it would be so much easier to just throw it back into my closets and forget it ever existed. The other problem here is probably that I am attacking two projects at once. I am canning food, and I was working all day yesterday also at preparing the 5-6 ingredients that need to be made from different things for these enchiladas I am eating today. So I have been doing lots of dishes, but they keep being piled up in the sink anyway, and I have been assessing what stuff I want to get rid of, taken two trips to DI, and my house still feels like a mess, and like it is covered in stuff.

I do love the view of my closet though. The one in my bedroom is practically empty except sewing supplies on my shelf. The one in my dancing room has my clothes, massage table, a few boxes of things, camping stuff, blankets, and cans of food. (I have not used the massage table in a while, but I hope to. My deal with myself is to give myself a certain date, and if I have not used it by then, then I will get rid of it.)

This is the sort of middle-math of my way of approaching problems, which is just to dive right in, without much plan, and just see where it goes. It will be nice when I push through, but now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. There are boxes all over, and there are things where I don't know where to take them. Then I have my normal stuff kind of in disarray. If I cleaned my bedroom, I might feel better about the disarray of my dancing room. I could probably pick that up a little quickly. Yes, I think I will do that.

I'm just trying to think of moving right now, how if I don't get rid of this stuff now, I will have to move it whenever I end up moving. If I get rid of it now, I never have to deal with it again. It will also make doing my inventory easier.

But, it certainly does not make me want to buy new things. So I guess one thing has been successful. Just need to keep perspective. Things will be good. I will be headed where I want to be. This will all end up better than it was. The process is a bit daunting.

Spaghetti Sauce Giveaway

2010-09-01T15:06:00.001+09:30

So I am making spaghetti sauce tonight, and I ended up with a last batch that will be just three extras, and so I was like, hmm what should I do with these? Kind of weird, because this is less than I planned on making for the year anyway, but I think this is all the sauce I will do. I'm doing lots more tomatoes, and everything else should store well for the winter. Tomatoes are easier to do, more versatile, and everything else that goes into spaghetti sauce I can store over the winter (onions, garlic, spices).

But anyway, so the thinking of these as extras got me thinking, and I decided I want to do a giveaway of one of the bottles of spaghetti sauce.

So, here are the rules:

1 - You have to be in Utah. (This is a local challenge, shipping this stuff anywhere wouldn't really make a lot of sense.)

2 - Have one meal where you know where everything in the meal came from. (This can depend on how you want to do it, but the grocery store is not an answer. If you are eating something processed, you can do a lot of research and probably find out where the different ingredients are grown, but probably easier is just buying some fresh food from a stand near your home.) I'm gonna make an exception with grains, because they can be hard to track down, but consider that a bonus.

3 - Come back and comment on this post with what you ate, and where everything in the meal came from.

4 - Enter before September 9th. The winner will be chosen at random of the pool of people who meet the qualifications!

(For anyone out of Utah, feel free to join in and comment, join the discussion and sharing the story of meals, but just know you won't be in the running for the giveaway :P )

And to start off, I'll share my meal.

Pasta:

flour - Lehi roller mills, which I assume the flour comes from Utah farms

eggs - from a farmer at the farmers market

Sauce

tomatoes - from Chavez farms and Stratton farms

onions - local farmer here in Provo

garlic - sold by this local farmer, but grown by an associate in St. George

peppers - from Jacob's cove, came with my CSA

salt - real salt from the ancient Sundance sea, here in Utah

beef - grass-fed beef from Redmond farms

spices & pepper - don't know, though I do know where to get some locally

Minimalism and Community

2010-08-29T15:30:00.000+09:30

My sister and I went out on errands this evening, and we talked about a couple things that seemed worth talking about. I'll talk about the first, which is something I've been thinking about lately, just after coming across something on the internet, and just as I always think more about the simpler life of older times, and how I want that to shape my future.

I read this thing the other day about a minimalist challenge, which is to have only 100 personal items. I want to do something akin to the goal, but have not quite decided how I will bring it into play. I am sure I will document it when I actually go through the process, but for now it is just conceptual. I have aspirations when I marry again to buy a piece of land and with my husband build a home there. I figure what we will be able to build together will be modest, but nice. I've read about different methods that are easy to learn, and can be used easily to do most of the building, and the land is one of the most important things to me, because I want to be able to raise and process most of the food that I and my family eat.

But back to the challenge, so the idea is just to live with less stuff. I feel the appeal of this, and having my dance room, which is pretty much an empty room, which I do so many things in, and which my nieces find even more ways to have fun in, I enjoy the concept of empty space for creativity, and how less is more. I want to make it so that moving is less of a chore. I want to know what everything in my house is, and know that it is something I want to have. I actually was thinking toward this idea, but more abstractly, back when I created my list of 101 goals in 1001 days. One of my goals was to make an inventory of everything that there is in my house. I think it will be a lot easier to do once I get rid of a lot of my stuff.

And I know there are some things that I will not get rid of, but simply reorganize. Like I want to relegate most of my dishes to storage. I want to have more so that when I have guests I have dishes for them, but want to keep it to one plate, bowl, spoon, fork. Because then I will keep them washed. It will also make more room for my canned food in my kitchen, which is a logical place for it to be.

I am sure I will have a lot more to say about it once I actually begin the process. I wanted to tonight, but got busy socializing, which is always a nice distraction.

The second concept we discussed was independence, and the notion that things can be done on our own. As I began writing tonight, it made me think of my own writing. It is not my own. My non-fiction especially on this blog. I get ideas from so many places, so many people, from the things I read, from the people I talk to. It all comes from so many places. But even my fiction, it is inspired by so many other people, and as I have said, the characters that are just like me are the ones that bore me most (maybe that wasn't on this blog), and it's the one who seem like other people, real people that aren't me, that fascinate me, and that I love. And it is because they are the people around me.

There are so many people involved in our lives, and we are involved in so many other people's lives. I suppose this sentiment has been captured before in the phrase "no man is an island", but I think that is a negative spin on something that is beautiful.

We all depend and rely and affect each other. We are a vast community of people who are greater than the sum of our parts, because of what we do for each other, how we build each other up, how we spread knowledge, how we can lift and inspire and strengthen each other, and make each other better than we ever would be on our own.

I think of the simple act of committing to other people, to write 20-30 minutes a day, and just that system of support and strength, how it has helped me be more the person I want to be, to do the things I want to do. I am glad that I am so much more than just myself, but that all of it is me. I am glad that I can come to live my true potential, while keeping my own beautiful individuality, to be a part of community, and to be one. It is a beautiful thing to be an independent entity, but connected in a vast network that is humanity.

Every little bit counts

2010-08-28T14:26:00.001+09:30

20-30 minutes doesn't sound like a lot. That is part of the reason I thought I could do this challenge. I don't really feel like I do very much each day. I've been working on my story, and it just goes on bit by bit, a page at a time. It seems like something I could have sat down and written all at one time. It is not overly complicated, and I pretty much knew where it was going for the most part. If I had a free day with nothing to do, I probably could have just sat down and wrote it.

But that is the beauty. I haven't had a free day. My day off my dad was here, and I was doing stuff with my family. Every other day I've been working. But the little steps add up, and my first story is coming together. But those little bits, piece by piece they are adding up, and I am coming to a later part in the story. I am no longer at the beginning. I know my characters better now, know this world a little better now, and things are happening. And all it has taken is just 20-30 minutes a day. Today I wrote more than that, but most of the other days, I have not written much more than that.

I look back with longing a lot of times on the days of early 2008 when I would wake up, and spend the day reading and writing. I would spend an hour in my different kinds of writing. It is when I wrote a few of the stories of people close to me. I had time, and I felt like I was just living the dream, and I was disciplined, and it was what I was doing with my life. Now I feel pulled in so many different directions, and feel like I barely get a moment to write. But I see it's adding up. It is working. I am moving forward.

Every little bit counts. In everything we do. Every little bit counts.

Blogging

2010-08-23T13:48:00.000+09:30

Gonna do another post inviting responses. I assume a lot of people who read this are into blogging themselves. So what got you into blogging? What do you like about it? What is your goal with it?

I am a person who is drawn to journaling. I'm usually keeping 3-4 different records that I write in periodically, with pen and paper, that have to do with my life. My first blog was a livejournal, because I had a couple friend who were doing them, and loved to keep up with them, and figured I could add it to my extensive journaling repertoire. Then Carolyn and a couple of my other friends were doing xangas, so I moved over there. Then it kind of died off. My sister got into blogging, and that's when I got on blogspot, which I guess I have liked since I have stayed on a long time, and spent the most time sprucing up my blogs, and also have about 15 open blogs (open as in, ones I have started or write on occasionally, as opposed to blogs that are open to the public!).

A friend mentioned my blog on her blog, saying that it is talking about improving myself. I guess I had never really thought about what it is, I just write when I feel like writing, about whatever I feel like writing about. But blogs do take on a character of their own. Like if you look at my xanga and livejournal, they are replete with references to boys, which I generally steer clear of in this blog, except for the briefest mention, because 1) I think a lot more people read this, and it is much much more public and 2) because I got out of the habit when I was married.

I started this blog and called it the Adventures of my life, because I wanted to view my life with more excitement, vigor, and passion. It is not so much that I do a lot differently, but that I like having a different perspective on it. And so that is a lot what I do with this blog, is to find, create, and share meaning that I find in my life. Which is really just one big grand adventure in itself.

But come one, come all, and share your own experience in coming into the blogging world, even if only just as a reader.

The Barefoot Experiment

2010-08-22T14:43:00.001+09:30

Maybe a month or so ago, I was sitting in my sister's living room, and just kinda listening as her and a friend talked. They somehow got on the topic of bare feet, and running, and these shoes that are kind of like bare feet, and all these other things. It sparked a curiosity in me, of what it would be like to walk with bare feet.

It kind of mixed in with this scene from... I think it is Fire of the Covenant, if not, it was one of the Work and the Glory, but pretty sure it is Fire of the Covenant. There is a part where they are preparing for their handcart journey, and they tell the parents to let their children go without shoes, so they can build up calluses, and strong feet, so they will be able to use their feet on their journey. I've thought about that from time to time throughout my life, how the skin on feet can be built up, and protect against the things that would come to hurt our feet.

So I decided I wanted to try it out. I've been trying to appreciate the senses that my body offers me, and figured paying attention to the sensation of touch would be another worthy pursuit. So I just made a loose goal to take a 15-minute walk each day in bare feet.

I do not have appreciation for grass. I think it is nice pretty much for when you want to play something that requires a field with low grass, otherwise I am more prone to appreciate more natural vegetation, with a greater mix and variety of things, and especially in a desert climate, with plants the require a lot less water. Lawns seem very pointless to me, and it seems like there is so much effort in maintaining them in our culture.

When I first started walking through the grass, paying attention to how it felt on my feet, though, I felt like - this is why we do it. This is what grass was created for. It feels wonderful on the feet.

I liked feeling the different textures, avoiding the rocks that would dig up high enough to cause pain to my less calloused areas. I went to my family reunion for 3-4 days, and did not wear shoes at all, and my feet felt great after that. I could walk across seemingly any surface without worrying about hurting my feet.

I went up to this activity for my ward the past couple days, and I went out yesterday to take a walk barefoot, and it was the smoothest pavement I had walked on. Felt wonderful.

I don't really know where this experiment will lead. I have read about hiking barefoot, and that is something I would like to try. Tall grass still scares me, because I would never want to step on a snake. But walking barefoot has given me an appreciation for my feet, and the wonderful textures of the ground around me.

It is a wonderful thing to have feet.

Four Years Ago...

2010-08-20T06:04:00.000+09:30

It is hard on a day like today to not take a walk down memory lane, and so I have.

Four years ago this day I was married to Janardan.

I hold myself accountable for a lot of what has happened in my life. I know his choices weren't my choices, but a fair few of my choices were incredibly dumb.

In retrospect, the decision to marry Janardan was a pretty rash one, a snap decision that once I made, I never questioned, never revisited, never analyzed against the evidence. It is also a decision I made before we even dated.

Our dating life was not incredibly better than our married life. There is a moment in our courtship that I have thought back on a lot the past while, the moment when Janardan told me he wasn't really ready for a relationship, and suggested that maybe we should break up, and I did not even consider it. If we broke up, we would get back together and get married. If we stayed together, we would get married. I had already decided, and I stubbornly clung to that decision, willfully oblivious to any event but that final event. The details didn't matter. I knew what was going to happen.

I will sometimes idly wonder why -someone- didn't say -something- to me in that time, and then remember how I was, and know exactly why they wouldn't have. There is nothing that anyone could have said, nothing that anyone could have done that would have changed my mind. I am stubborn. Stubborn beyond reason.

I made the decision one morning in May of 2005, as I went about my work at early morning custodial. It was probably around 6:30am when I decided unalterably the decision that I would marry him.

Every one of us is a wonderful son or daughter of God, with an amazing potential, a capacity to do a work beyond our greatest dreams. And I saw in him that potential. I saw in him a greater potential than I had ever seen in anyone, and I wanted it. I wanted the future that was possible with him. I wanted to partake in that greatness, in that life that would shape the world.

In retrospect it sounds like delusions of grandeur.

And I held that view, that possibility, until I finally saw a crack, a chink in the armor, when the potential began to seem impossible, and it was not until I came to terms with the fact that he was leaving me, and until I stopped talking to him that I began to fully understand that the reality of my world, the reality of his choices, my choices, had been leading nowhere near that potential, and that a grand potential for greatness was worse less than nothing when the choices being made were heading for pain, misery, and control.

I was reading through a conversation we had in December, where I was still intoxicated with that idea, where I said that I thought even if some other guy could make me happier, I would always want the potential with him, and I would go back to him at the drop of a hat.

I don't like to place blame. Yes, I think he was controlling and manipulative, but I think that I let him control and manipulate me.

I wondered all the years of our marriage why he had married me. Before we were married, I was so focused on my goal, so focused on being with this amazing guy, having this great potential in my future, and then as soon as we were married, I began to question why he had married me. He never really answered me. I still don't know why he married me.

But to my self in December, I say, You're wrong. There's no way I'm going back there, not no way, not no how (...trying to think what movie that is from, can't remember! Ah, google reveals it's the wizard of Oz). Because I have my own potential, and I don't plan to put it with someone who is wasting his away. In the vein of the parable of the talents, I would rather be with someone with only one talent, but who is using it for good, than someone who has ten talents, but is burying them (I know the parable goes the other way, but it works better for my metaphor this way).

I have always been someone who thinks a lot about the future. Still do. Think about what the future will bring, plan for the future, anticipate the wonders of the future, and find happiness in the happiness that there will be in the future. It was this taken to misguided levels which led me to be so blind to my life and the problems I was facing, to the tremulous issues in my marriage, and even the relationship before the marriage, because I had this hope for the future.

But eternity is not a bunch of tomorrows. Eternity is today. All we get is today, every day, forever.

I find the biggest impediment to me making the use of my own potential is my own belief in myself. I really am my own worst enemy. Today, I want to be my friend.

What pieces of writing have change your life?

2010-08-18T03:49:00.001+09:30

I think there is a lot of subconscious affect on us from all the media we take in. But there are those moments when we know that the thing we have just read has unalterably changed us forever. So what sentences, paragraphs, articles, books have changed your life? And how have they changed you?

Harry Potter 7 is probably the piece of fiction (not that I'm looking for only fiction, just that the scriptures change me over and over and over again all the time, but besides the scriptures, this is probably one of the biggest experiences I have had) that has had the most impact on me. Reading the end of Harry Potter 7, it was so emotional for me, and inspiring, and lifting. And it reminded me of how much I loved to write, how I wanted to do something like that, how I wanted to create something akin to that book. It was in the late hours of the night when I realized the path of my life, that I wanted to write, that I am a writer, and that that was what I would be. There are tons of passages in there that I love, but it was just the overall effect of it that changed me the most.

The days following I began to realize I have always been a writer. I remembered that I have been writing since I knew how to draw letters. I also realized that when I had become afraid of the idea of being an author, I still had words flowing out of me into tons of different journals. It just flows from me.

So that is the biggest one, though there are countless others, and maybe I will share more in the discussion that will (hopefully) follow. So tell me! What writing has changed your life, however big or small, and how?

Telling you all so you can keep me in check

2010-08-18T03:43:00.000+09:30

I read this blog. Today there was a post, offering anyone to commit to writing 20-30 minutes a day. I've been praying for help with my writing, especially the motivating me to write, and so when I read this, seemed just like an answered prayer. Social pressure! Always a good way to keep yourself on track.

So I thought with that, besides just telling her that I committed, I would tell everyone who reads my blog, so you all can keep me accountable too. Wrote in my journal today, and here I am writing again, though this is not super content heavy, just more of an announcement.

I think maybe I will start a series of blog posts that discuss motivations for writing, and opening up for discussions for everyone to share their thoughts on the different topics.

Hm...gonna go run and make one right now!

To Tatiana

2010-08-13T01:24:00.000+09:30

I have one friend who understands the mother/son relationship I have with Mark more than anyone else does. It is because her son came to her the same way. He even came to live with her. She's been with him as he's gone to the hospital many times for suicide attempts, and other physical ailments. She has tried to teach him, to help him grow independent, but above all, she has loved him.

He took his life last night. I woke up to a message from her, asking me if it had all been a waste. Love is never a waste. Caring for someone, even though they may make the decisions that will hurt you, is never a waste. Cherishing a life, that is not a waste.

The loss of a child is always going to be heart-wrenching. Suicide has got to be one of the worst ways for them to go. But though it may make us feel like we're helpless, we need to remember we still helped.

And so today, I dedicate this blog entry to Tatiana, and to mothers everywhere who have lost their children. We never know the time we will get to keep our children. But no moment, no love spent, is ever a waste. It matters more than we know.

The Lamp

2010-08-03T20:36:00.000+09:30

I had a dream about being back together with my ex this morning. We were together, making out, and whatever else. Then he was talking to me about his teeth, and the work he had had done while he'd been gone, and how he didn't think he was going back to the dentist, but going to go to these (don't remember the word from my dream) next time, and tell his dentist that he wasn't going to see them anymore.

This part of the dream was a representation of probably some of the best times I had with him, not quite the best, but the best times that ever happened on a semi-regular basis, meaning maybe once or twice a month.

After this part of the dream, my sister and mom were there, and my sister was packing up a lamp. Right now I have decided I want to get a bedside lamp, so I can read and write in bed, and just reach over and turn it off, without having to turn off my overhead lamp. And so I told my sister I wanted the lamp, even though she was packing it up. My mom said it was a sewing lamp, which in the dream meant it was for some reason hotter, and put off a lot of heat.

And then he was there, and I could tell he would prefer I not have the lamp, and I left it in my mind that we would think about it, but I knew that I would cave to what he wanted, and that I would not have a lamp.

I woke up disturbed, alone, and wanting to cry. I don't want to want that life. I didn't even wake up thinking much about the lamp. It was thinking about the good times. They were not good enough to justify everything else I put up with, with the way I didn't respect myself, how he didn't either.

I've been on a couple dates with this other guy, and other people as well, but this one guy in particular, who knows how to treat me. He makes me feel special, powerful even. He empowers me. And I don't know what will happen with him, but I'm glad I've at least had that glimpse to know that I am worth so much more than how my ex ever really treated me.

The more I have thought about it, the more the lamp is the part of the dream that bothers me the most, because it is me giving something up I want, me putting myself last, me putting him before me. I've spent the last 8 months learning to not do that. And I know that I am fragile enough that if I let him back in my life, I very well could go back to that.

So that is the choice I can make. It is the power that I have, that I take, and will take.

I was somewhat scared to post this, because I am pretty sure he reads my blog. But it's not worth avoiding that not to post it. I need to work through my own stuff, and want my friends, family, and even any random stranger who wants to, to be able to help me and support me through it.

Think I might buy a lamp today.

On Enjoying the Agency of Others

2010-07-31T01:06:00.000+09:30

There is so much in this life that we can affect, that we can choose for ourselves, how we can determine our attitude and destiny in so many ways. But then there are some things where our lives are incredibly affected by the choices that others make. There are the moments when others lift us when we fall, when someone tells us something we would have never thought on our own, but resonates so soundly with us, that in an instant, it becomes part of who we are.

It can affect us negatively too, in the form of abuse and intentional, or even unintentional hurting. There are lots of moments of uncertainty that come to our lives because of the agency of others, if we care about them, while they are making a decision, seeing what they will do, and how that will affect us.

This is the kind of thing that has in the past had the tendency to drive me crazy. If there is a possibility of some upheaval, I will just assume it is going to happen, so I do not have to deal with the reality of uncertainty. Uncertainty has been the state I try to avoid more than anything. Pain I at least have some coping for.

But now I am trying to embrace the uncertainty that others bring into my life. Embrace the thought that I don't know where tomorrow will lead, that the possibilities are there, and not all of the choices are mine to make to see where my life goes. To give up control of my life where I never really had it except in the artifice of my own mind. And to enjoy the uncertainty.

There is something thrilling about it. It is exciting, though it is really not doing -anything-.

I've come to this point after taking a while to just notice and analyze how other people's choices affect the relationships I have with them. It started with my ex leaving, but I've been noticing lots of things since, how other people's choices affect me, how they keep on choosing things even if I wait to choose, just sit back to analyze (which is a choice in itself I realize), and how life keeps going on, and I don't have to make it. And that there are plenty of people out there who willingly choose to be in my company, and treat me well, and appreciate me for who I am.

It feels like a river of choices, flowing all around me, and I know mine affect me the most, most determine where I will go, but the other choices matter a lot too. And when I don't know what someone else is going to choose, I can wait and see, and just enjoy the ride. For it is thrilling.

Cosmic moments and the ordinary

2010-07-23T14:53:00.000+09:30

There are these cosmic moments, the moments where lives hang in the balance, when life's purpose is evident, and life is full of meaning, because of the very choices being made in that moment.

But these moments pass. Not every decision is wrought with that intensity of feeling, and the knowledge of the all-important purpose. The majority of decisions in life are tiny, and feel so insignificant as to be purposeless. Showering, doing dishes, driving to work, what song to listen to on the radio, what to eat for dinner, what to do for entertainment. Contrasted with the potential actions that could help save or lose a life, with the huge changes that are made, marriage, divorce, children, moving. All these small decisions can begin to feel automatic, and meaningless.

But a choice is a choice. There is cosmic significance in the very act of choosing. We alter the course of our lives through the choices we make. That is the power we have. To alter ourselves, to alter our interactions with others.

I feel like in writing, it all comes to rest around these cosmic moments. It is not just some every day person doing some every day thing, though I do enjoy writing about those things. A person enjoying the first strawberry of the season. It is a scene, but not a story.

When I think of how important this day really is, in the scheme of things, it makes me want to weep, for I feel I have utterly wasted it. I have let myself get beaten down by little things that should not matter. Whether it is today or a thousand years from now, the only time I have to experience is now. I deserve happiness now, in this moment, and if I am not, I should be working towards it.

Today is not a cosmic moment. It is one more day in the uphill struggle for happiness. It is a fight against the current, to not let all the reasons to be unhappy win out, but to struggle for happiness, and end with a smile on my face, perhaps tears in my eyes, but tears that I know will dry into joy.

I love being alive, in this totally ordinary moment that seems inconsequential. The only thing that makes this moment matter is that I am choosing to be happy. That I am taking my ability to choose and using it. And I smile.

There are angels all around us

2010-07-14T02:16:00.001+09:30

I got food poisoning last night, and woke up four times throughout the night to empty the entire contents of my stomach. I woke up this morning with my stomach feeling a little uneasy, and incredible weak. I thought it would be good to just have some juice, and so I went into the kitchen to mix up some juice, and was overcome by my weakness, and had to sit down before I had even been in the kitchen a couple seconds. So I went back to my room, and got in bed, and called my sister, and asked if she had any juice or ice cream.

She brought me over both, and after a bowl of ice cream, I feel ten times better. An hour ago, I thought there was very little chance I would be able to make it to work, but now I feel like I can get myself some food together, and get ready and go and work.

I was thinking about this moment of weakness, and how dependent we are on other people. I was thinking about what if I was completely on my own. I probably would have tried to make the juice eventually anyway, and maybe I would have fainted, and be in an even worse position.

But today, I had my sister there, who I could call, and in a minute was over here getting me a bowl of ice cream, and giving me strength I could not have on my own. She was my angel today.

I didn't realize it until someone else called me an angel for being able to reach out to her, and offer my consolation to her. When we lift one person up, we lift up so much more than one. There are angels all around us, who help us in our times of need. I'm so grateful for my angel sister.

Stopping and Smelling the Roses

2010-06-20T13:30:00.000+09:30

I've changed a lot over the course of the last 6 months or so. One of the biggest things that I started out trying to do a lot more was just to enjoy every moment for what it had to offer. I remember when I discovered that breathing felt amazing, and sometimes I just wanted to sit and feel my lungs fill with air, and how amazing that felt, how amazing it was to have a body that could do this amazing thing, and how wonderful it made me feel.

It is a kind of mindset change that seems encapsulated by the phrase "stopping and smelling the roses." When spring came, and I would start walking outside, I would sometimes come across a smell, and would stop, close my eyes, and just enjoy that wonderful smell. One of my favorite smells is a smell I remember vividly from going to the mountains in Colorado when I was probably just four years old.

One day I caught a smell, and stopped to smell it, and realized it was a rose. As I stood there, standing at my neighbors fence, I began to realize that that phrase is not just metaphorical. It is literal. There are beautiful moments to be had every day. There are a variety of wonderful smells, textures, tastes, feelings, all waiting to be experienced, to put aside the other thoughts, and just focus, for one brief moment, on how it feels to be alive in that very moment.

And sometimes that moment will be literal roses, and it is worth it to stop and smell the roses.

The Sacred, the Beautiful, and the Magical

2010-05-12T02:07:00.000+09:30

There is something magical and beautiful about clouds resting around the tops of mountains. It is this beautiful display of earth reaching up to its highest point, and the heavens reaching down to touch the earth. It seems like a scene that would be part of any number of fantasy stories, and here it is, right outside my window, greeting me with beauty.

I was in the temple yesterday, thinking about the sacred things that go on there, and how they go beyond what I would consider magical, and they are truly sacred and special. I've been thinking about magic a lot, as it is a recurring theme in fantasy, and I am drawn towards fantasy for writing, in world creation, and things like that, but not to flashy magic. I guess my perspective is that the kind of magic I would want to write about would all be a matter of perspective, that our world is magical to those who have a different view.

These mountains, the clouds around them, their beautiful is magical and mystical to me. It is the same thing when I find beauty where I do not expect it. I think the most compelling kind of beauty is not the one that is striven for, and created just for that purpose, it is when something else is happening, and it is beautiful beyond the purpose. The mountains are there doing their own thing. The clouds are coming to bring rain and do their own thing. Their union is not planned so that I can look up and see the beauty. It is the same thing with seeing beauty in relationships. Relationships between others or even with myself involved, do not exist so I can admire their beauty. They go on for their own reasons, but there is something so undeniably beautiful that just shines through sometimes.

It makes me think of the concept of shri in yoga, to shine through your pose. The intent of the pose is not beauty. It is work, it is a connection with your body, to help it, to make it feel good, but then when you add shri, there is something beautiful about it.

The magic in this world is not our electronics. It is not our cars, or even our ability to split atoms. I mean, sure, these things are the flashy kind of magic, with instantaneous results, like a light switch. But the true magic of this world is the beauty that comes through things and people fulfilling their purposes in life.

But those things get to be so magical that they almost cross a threshold into the realm of sacred. There are so many magical, sacred, beautiful moments to be experienced in this world. I love finding them.

The Miracle of Birth, and even more the Miracle of Life

2010-05-08T15:49:00.000+09:30

Four years ago, I witnessed a miracle. I watched my niece Prairie be born. It was beautiful. Birth is powerful. I watched my sister, as she pushed this beautiful little baby out, as she labored with her, and how ecstatic she was to have this new life, and I felt part of that too. It was an amazing day.

But amazing as it was, in some ways the greater miracle is the daily things that have come since then. It is the moments of growth, of joy. It is the life that she has lived that has been a miracle, the bright ray of sunshine that she is to so many around her. She loves to snuggle, and she is serious about her dancing, and she loves textures.

4 years ago, an amazing child was born into the world. I love her so very much.

Trust

2010-05-03T01:26:00.000+09:30

When I find something I want to work on, I tend to plan, I tend to make rules for myself. I want to see a friend more, I make a mental arrangement of how much I would like to see them. And a lot of that I think comes down to a basic distrust of myself to do that which is necessary, or that I will have a sustained desire to do the things I want to do at the moment I make such a decision. So I make a rule, a guideline, whatever.

I think a lot of that stems from the reaction of how I dealt with being depressed when I first got married. Forcing myself to do the things I didn't want to do, because I hoped that they would make me feel better. It is for that reason that I would have marathon baking sessions, and want to have 20 meals worth of food in my freezers, so that if I was depressed, it would not spell the end of eating.

But I've come to the point where I realize that mode of operating is not really necessary anymore. I am generally happy, and feel capable of cooking for myself anytime I want to eat. I will make plans to see my friends if I want to. It is embracing a basic trust in myself, to take each day as it comes, to not sacrifice today for tomorrow, without sacrificing tomorrow for today, living each day to the fullest, with an eye to the future, that I may continue to do so indefinitely.

I like to take time to feel the sensation of my lungs filling up with air, the simple act of taking a breath. It is really an amazing feeling. Every moment of every day I am doing this thing, but it takes noticing it to realize its power. I feel the same way about observing nature and the weather. It goes on all around me anyway, I'll be outside walking around in it, but when I take a moment to notice it, I am almost always inspired by its beauty, in all the varieties it comes in.

I do those things, and I have no rule about them, no goal to do them once each day, or anything like that. It just comes as I anticipate loving the moment I am in, trusting myself, I find that some of the best moments are just taking a moment to notice my breath, or looking to the beautiful world around me.

And so I trust myself for the next moments to come.

Plateaus

2010-04-23T06:35:00.000+09:30

I like newness. I like trying new things, developing new skills, making new friends. There is this feeling of growth that is so palpable when things are new. You are growing a relationship that never existed. You are gaining skills that you have never had before, learning things you didn't know, having an experience that you have never had before. It is a richness of experience.

I feel like the past four months, I have been tenacious about seeking after new things, especially goals and talents. I've done lots of things that I have never done before.

At some point, though, there comes a plateau. I am a different person definitely to who I was four months ago, but I don't get the feeling like I am going to be so changed in the next four months. But it makes me think back to a couple years ago when I was running all the time. I would push myself to go however long, and kept trying to run farther and farther, but it was never really easy or great. Then I went to North Dakota, and I was running there, and I ran farther than I ever had, and I just loved the wind, and I loved running. I don't know that I was pushing myself, but I was loving the moment I was in in that very moment.

I expect the noticeability of my growth (at least to myself) will slow, but I hope that I can just enjoy life.

I did yoga today, and as I was doing shavasana (I have no idea how to spell that) at the end, I just lay there and felt superb. Then Prairie, Emily, and Zephyr came over and up, and I just felt this peaceful joy.

Carolyn told me something once that one of her harp teachers told her, that when you feel like you are making the least progress is really when you are making the most. I think of that a lot, especially when I consider the plateau stages of life.

Being Led

2010-04-19T09:15:00.000+09:30

I have been thinking lately about a quote, can't remember who gave it, but it was one of the apostles or prophets, about how it is perhaps of much more importance not the prayers we ask, but the prayers we answer.

I'm in Vegas, and showed up at church today to a building, with a note that the ward was not meeting, but would meet again next week. A minute or two later, this girl showed up, and was like, "Are you trying to go to church?" And I said yes. She had come down to Vegas for the weekend as well, and her friend had dropped her off at church to go to mass, and then was not answering her phone. So this girl didn't have a car, and it was pretty hot, and so she was worried about what to do, and had been praying that someone would come and be trying to go to church, then a minute later, I showed up.

And really, this girl's presence was a miracle. First of all, because I couldn't get a hold of Jessica to have her tell me where another church was and this girl had an iphone where she could look up where we could find another ward, and then as we were driving to this new ward, she started talking to me about her ex-boyfriend, and I was talking to her about my husband, and it just sounded like we had a lot of similar experiences, and so it was awesome to talk to her, and just get to share a moment in time together, relating to each other.

Then this ward was like, exactly where I needed to be today. There was a high councilman there speaking, and he just offered counsel and advice that was exactly what I needed to hear.

It was a beautiful day to bask in the miracles of the gospel, to reflect on the beauty of the atonement, and to joy in the blessings that God sends forth upon all his children. I love him so very much.

A Peaceful Anxiety

2010-04-14T01:32:00.000+09:30

It is funny how peaceful this morning has been, even though I woke up with my mind racing around and stressing over how to arrange my work schedule this summer so I can maximize my hours for the few vacation periods I want off. It is probably what woke me so early, though. I walked downstairs and went to the bathroom, then came back upstairs, no lights on, just reading my book by the natural light of my windows and skylight, the mountains resting outside, and the clouds and bits of snow creating a view out my window.

My book transported me to Virginia, to a 550-acre farm, and he was discussing the grasses feeding the cows, the chickens, the turkeys, the rabbits, and how they all work together, the symbiotic relationships they form. And as I thought about them, my mind traveled to Vernon, UT, where my half a big that I have put a deposit in, is living and eating on pasture, though probably on hay in a barn right now with how cold it is. But Berkshires are hardy and can stand the cold, which is why the Christiansen's use that breed.

When Emily has talked to me about sustainability, I have always had this yearning for self-sufficiency, to be able to grow most of my own food, to provide for myself and my family. And as I read this pastoral vision, this farm that exists, I saw on a large scale what I want to do on a tiny scale with probably just a few acres and a few animals.

It is at the same time an incredibly peaceful thought, and a very exciting one.

2010-04-12T13:36:00.001+09:30

Apparently I am updating on Sundays now, as I just looked and my last two entries were on Sunday. Probably because it is a day where I have time for quiet reflection without having to be rushed off to work afterwards.

There are moments in life where things come to a fork. There are two or more paths that can be taken, and it has to be decided what course life will go on. I think a lot of these come down to decisions where it is not us doing the deciding. We yield control of our lives to someone else, to something else, and there are a variety of ways it could turn out, and it will have significant impact on us. I have a few things going on like that right now, and it is weird. I have in the past met such points in my life with impatience, wanting control back of my life, wanting to know what the path would be, feeling this need to know being more important than even really how things turned out.

I feel very zen about things. Things will change, or they will not. Things will change in one way or another, or they will not. I could take control of my life and decide what is happening, but I would sacrifice the beauty of options. And so I enjoy the waiting, the time of indecision. What do I know? That my life is going to be good, that I will find happiness and joy in the moments. I don't know how the big picture will end up, I don't know if these things will end up being significant or small, almost inconsequential.

Sometimes the smallest decisions we make have the biggest consequences. I think more often it is fear of the small decisions than the big decisions that holds us back.

And sometimes it is a time for patience. I am enjoying my patience right now, in limbo, waiting. It is a good feeling to measure myself and find in myself the feeling that I have the capacity and strength to face the multitude of paths my life could take.

Reflections

2010-04-05T12:07:00.000+09:30

Sometimes the things we don't want to happen happen. When I was a kid, the last thing I wanted was to get divorced. 9 months ago, I began to worry that is what Janardan would end up wanting, and I was terrified. It was still the last thing I wanted. Sometimes those things happen anyway. And life can be okay.

It was still hard at first. It is still hard sometimes, though in a different way. I just find myself with a lot of anger toward him, and I try to find how to bit by bit let it go, but I seem to keep finding more. But the only way I know through it is to rely on the Savior, and how merciful and all-reaching is his love and atonement. Heh, I didn't start this post intending it to be an easter post, but I see way too many parallels. My old life died, but the power of the Savior has resurrected me, and given me a much better life. That is the miracle.

I was making dinner for my cousins and my sister's family, as we were all planning on doing an easter dinner together today. I had a lot I wanted to get done. And it was just so zen doing everything. I did a lot today. I cleaned my kitchen, made bread, made meatballs, which I then turned into Swedish meatballs, and got red sauce meatballs ready, all after coloring eggs with my nieces in between sessions of conference. I was just going about, doing these things, excited to have the largest gathering of people I have ever hosted in my own place, and I was doing dishes, and I just noticed that I felt no stress at all. And it was a wonderful feeling.

And then to sit and listen as my family talked around me, to hear my nieces scream and sing loudly and attack my cousin, to hear my sister catch up with my cousins, and to enjoy the food that everyone brought.

I don't know where my life is headed. I hope I will at some point in the future be blessed with a devoted husband, and that we can have a family together. But I'm not waiting to live, to love life. I want to enjoy this moment, and as many of the moments I am given as I can. I want to grow, and joy in the sore muscles. I am grateful for every moment of life I am given, and love the experience and potential, and reality of being alive, on the earth, in this moment, in this time.

Food Inc.

2010-03-29T04:13:00.000+10:30

I have not watched a movie that made me cry so much in a long time. I expected to be a bit shocked, to be more informed by watching this move, that it would probably inspire me to change my ways a bit more, but I did not expect so many tears.

I recommend this movie to everyone. It is on Netflix instant viewing for anyone who has access to that. Otherwise, I plan on buying a copy that I will be happy to lend out to anyone who wants to see it. It is a truth that needs to be brought to light.

Religious or not, I think it is an issue that matters, but I can't help as an LDS person feel like I am not taking part in my duty to have dominion over animals, and to make sure that they are dealt with properly. When I saw the way that chickens and cows and pigs were treated in this movie, it made me weep. I am not against eating meat. There were also shots of cows and pigs living on their farms, eating grass and things they have been eating for thousands of years, and they looked so much happier. I think the life that the animals I eat lived affects the life I live (which is actually supported by them having better health and needing less antibiotics, and that being passed on to me the consumer).

Food policy is so messed up in the United States. It makes food that is not really cheap, cheap. I want to support food policy changes, but I also want to encourage anyone who has the means to spend your money on food. It is worth paying more for food that you can know where it came from, food where if you know where it comes from, it wouldn't make you want to weep. I go to the farmer's market, and I've had people ask me if it is cheaper. No, it's not really. But there is no question of whether the quality is better. There is no question that there is great satisfaction in talking to the person who just picked this food this morning. The price is higher, but the cost of cheap food is one I cannot pay.

Food is at the most basic level what keeps us alive. Food is our life. It is worth paying for.

The Simple Beauty of a Family

2010-03-22T16:26:00.000+10:30

I drive up to the house. There are two boys playing basketball at a stand in the driveway. They both say hi to me, even though they have never seen me before. I walk up to the door, and knock, and I am greeted by a squeal and a hug. I go in to see familiar faces.

We talk as LaVerne finishes up the preparations for dinner. I am afforded special honors as the guest along with Juliana, since it is her birthday. I would love to just sink into the background, to watch and observe, and just feel like a part of this great family, but I get even more included by being asked questions, and talking about my divorce, my ex, lots of different stuff, my work. We talk and eat, 8 kids, two parents, one guest, sitting around a table, with two of them at the counter right next to the table.

We finish eating, and kids trickle away, and just a few of us are left around the table talking. Then LaVerne starts asking Juliana what we're going to play for her birthday. The decision is made for hotbox. LaVerne gives me clothes to borrow, and I put them on, and join everyone else shoeless outside, where we run from blanket to blanket, trying to avoid getting hit by the ball that two people are throwing back and forth trying to catch us. I scream as I run, afraid that I am taking a risk by going at that time. I don't even notice it. I just do it by instinct, as I rush toward the safety of the blanket. Olivia grabs my hand, and wants me to run with her at a riskier move than I would have taken, and we run for it. I get more and more used to the game as it goes on, and take more risks, and scream louder as I run. I am terrified and thrilled as I step on the blanket safe each time. We play until the call is made that it is time for cake.

We all go inside and sing happy birthday, then eat cake. A few of us end up left at the kitchen table again, talking. I get a text, and LaVerne says I should go check it, so I go and grab my phone, and explain the story behind it. A little while later my mom calls, and asks how I'm doing. I tell her I'm with LaVerne and ask if she'd like to talk to her. Alexis, Jackie, and I listen to half of the conversation as they talk, and crack up at certain parts, because we have no idea what they are talking about. They talk for a long time, and LaVerne eventually goes into another room, and we start talking more, find out what is going on with them, they ask me about my work. Jackie starts picking up the dishes, and I follow in step, helping out. I rinse of dishes, hearing the sound of children around playing, and think that this is wonderful. I end up alone in the kitchen, and follow the sound of voices to the bedroom. There are four or five kids in there, LaVerne on the bed. I sit down, and just soak in the atmosphere. LaVerne shows me her pillows that she just made, and I watch Juliana play with the baby, while Olivia asks me if I am going to stay the night, then tells me she doesn't want me to stay the night.

Then it's bedtime, and the younger kids are directed to bed, to brush their teeth and wash their faces. They change into their pajamas, and ask LaVerne to sing to them. She sings Amazing Grace, and I sing along. She and Juliana sing a few more songs, and I join in when I know them.

I leave, and I am left with this feeling, this feeling that I have been part of something beautiful today, that I was invited into this family for a day, and got to take part in its beauty and power. It is refreshing, and I realize it is what I want. There is a line from a movie that says that children are what happens when your love spills out because you can't contain it just the two of you. I saw that physical reality today. It was powerful and beautiful. To me, that is what is worth grasping for, sacrificing for, striving for. I used to go over to this Hawaiian lady's house sometimes for their Sunday dinner, and I felt that same thing.

And LaVerne just amazed me. She just went about doing everything, and she wasn't stressed. She just seemed peaceful and happy with her life, like 9 kids, no big deal. And I'm sure it's not always like that, and that there are times when things for hard, but I imagine for the most part, she's learned to let go of the things that don't matter, and just focus on the things that do, because she's just so easy-going, and seemingly contented with her life.

Today was beautiful.

Callings

2010-03-15T08:59:00.000+10:30

I am always excited to get a calling. The fresh new idea of serving in some new capacity, of feeling useful, of contributing, and taking things a new way.

I have two callings right now, and it is funny, because when I received both calls, I felt like I completely understood why I would be called to these positions, and I felt a great confidence in being able to do them, and thought that it would be great. My callings are Sunbeam teacher and Ward Choir Director.

I feel like these callings that I thought I would be great for, I end up feeling like a chicken running around with my head cut off. I have a few wonderful and faithful members of my choir, who are always there and support me, but I often feel like we have no one, we need men, we need women, we need anyone. I feel like I know from my singing class a bit about singing, but feel like my knowledge is more adaptable to helping individuals than a group. I often feel like I have no vision of what I am supposed to be doing, and I run choir practice by going through the motions.

I had a sliver of clarity today, though. I came to choir, and was lamenting that I had not sent out an email, that I had not yet talked to this woman who I wanted to do a descant, and then that I felt like there was no one in choir. I left my house too late to walk to church, so I drove, and then I had a couple minutes before choir, and I was thinking, and I wanted to do something. And the scripture came to my mind, that where two or three are gathered for the sake of the Father, he is there. And so I started off choir by reading that. And it made me more grateful for those wonderful dependable few who I know will always be there, and made me happy they were there. And it was a calming moment for me, and just a reminder that even if I don't have a choir with even all the parts represented, if I don't have the balance I think I need, that I have a small meeting there each Sunday, with a group of people who want to get together and sing praises to the Lord. And that the Lord is with us, just for that.

It is still hard to not let the other things get to me.

And then teaching Sunbeams. That calling is insane. I had a calling in nursery a few years ago and I loved it. I thought it was great. So I thought, Sunbeams, sure, this should be fine, right? And I love my niece whose that age, and love to play with her and whatever else, so this should be great.

The notion of trying to get three-year olds to sit relatively still for three hours is insane to me. I feel like it's constant in Sharing Time, trying to get one kid or another to sit still and stay in their seat. Then when it is time for class, I feel like it is a constant battle to try and keep their attention, and for me to keep focused on what I am even trying to teach. It is a good thing our lessons are as simple as "I am Thankful for Plants and Flowers" so when my mind gets distracted by the kids running around, and trying to get them back in their seats, I can remember that I just need to tell them something about plants.

I look at these lessons, and I am so excited about them. Like, just talking all about plants and flowers, that sounds awesome! And then I think about getting to share my passion with these kids. But it never ends up quite how I think it will. I am so grateful for the woman that I serve with. She is so engaging, and keeps their attention so well. I am so glad that I get to learn from her when she teaches every other week, and I hope that I can aspire to be as good a teacher to three-year-olds as she is. She is fabulous.

I think of the words of Enos a lot, about his struggle. These callings are such struggles to me, and I sometimes wonder if I am actually doing anything that matters. I love my little sunbeams. They are so cute, and they make me smile, and I am so glad I get to be with them, but I wonder if I am really teaching them anything.

But I also get the feeling that this struggle, this stress and whatever else, it means I'm where I'm supposed to be. It's not supposed to be easy, and it is certainly hard. And so the Lord has placed me here to grow. And so I hope that is what I am doing.

Sacrifice and Talent

2010-03-11T05:19:00.000+10:30

I have been thinking lately about taking time to develop talents. I've been thinking particularly about writing. I stopped at Pizzeria 712 on my way home from work last night, and was reading a book while I waited and ate my food. And as I was reading, I felt more motivation to write, as I felt the ideas of the book inspiring me, and reminding me of the importance things in my life could have.

It is a hard thing to balance, feeling like I need to take time to myself, take time to read, time to write, and step away from the part of the world where I am directly interacting with people, that interacting with people at some point must be sacrificed to developing my own talents.

It seems like something that should come naturally to me, but it doesn't. Like it makes sense to me. I think of going to Carolyn's concert a couple weeks ago, and how wonderful that was. And I've been thinking of how much she has had to sacrifice through the years to have that talent. I remember her staying at home and practicing when others of us would go out and do things.

I don't know what I am meant to do in my life with writing, but I feel like it is what I was born to do. But I have a hard time taking out time, to step away from people, to go into books, and to go into my own little world, to develop it in mind and with words.

I guess it seems like if I was born to do it, it should not feel like so much of a sacrifice to do those things. But sometimes it really does. But my hope is that it will be worth it in the long run....and that I will do it.

An Amazing Birthday

2010-03-06T16:09:00.000+10:30

Sometimes I think I forget how much I enjoy being with people. I live alone, and I love living alone, doing my own thing, and just living life. But I love being with people too. I love one on one, and I love small groups and big groups. I get focused in on the narrow base of people that I interact with on a pretty much daily basis, and I so easily forget how much I enjoy the company of so many people.

I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to do for my birthday this year. Then my sister was asking if I was going to be working that night, and I hadn't thought about it, and she said that she wanted to throw me a birthday party. And I've been excited about it ever since. I didn't want a night to sit at home and lick my wounds and be sad that I'm alone...or off working to avoid that. And so I've been excited.

And I was going off to a salon (yes I did pamper myself just a wee bit Deanna!), and my sister was stressing because she felt like she hadn't planned as well as she hoped. And I just got tears in my eyes, thinking about the great love that my sister has for me, and how she'd put herself through this stress and whatever, so that I could have a great birthday.

And I got a barrage of birthday wishes from people all day long. I went to go up and pick up my car today, and pay the $1600 I owed for it. Then I had to go to the courthouse and find out that I couldn't pay my ticket yet because of whatever issues. But it's like, there were well-wishers all throughout the day to make those things not matter, and just bring me back to my happy place, and remember that it was an amazing thing to be born.

24 years ago. 24 years ago I arrived on this earth. It's been a rough life. But it's been a beautiful life. I don't really expect there to be less pain and hardship than there has been in the last 24 years. I expect there will probably be more. But I expect to be able to bear it with more happiness. I've learned how to at times have the heart-wrenching joy that comes with being happy at the same time my heart is breaking.

And today I got to celebrate my life, hearing from so many people, having their care, then getting to have so many friends and family around me as my sister threw a birthday party for me, and to talk and laugh and play games. Every wish of a happy birthday made me feel just that much better. Every gift that was given made me that much happier. Every hug and call and text, just made it a great day.

I've been thinking about being 24, and I like the number. "It's a good number," I said to Emily, and so she wrote it on my cake, lol. It's gonna be a good year.

And next year on my birthday, I'm going to the hospital where I was born, and I'm gonna celebrate my birth minute there! You're all invited, so anyone who wants to join me, start planning now! It's gonna be awesome!

(And once again uber thanks to my sister for being amazing and awesome and making this birthday amazing, and to all of you for making this the best birthday I have ever had. Everyone should have every birthday be like this :)... (though hopefully not having to pay $1600 is car repairs lol!))

2010-03-02T18:46:00.001+10:30

Sometimes I want to crawl into a hole. I want to make my own little world, where I can shut out all the stupid things that people do. I want to forget that I live in a world where people murder, where people rape, where people abuse children. I want to forget that I live in a world where people use alcohol and drugs to solve their problems. I want to forget that violence is rampant, and people make a mockery of some of the most sacred and beautiful things there are on the earth.

Because thinking about these things can make me weep. It makes me feel overwhelmed. It makes me wonder what difference my own little life can make, and how much happier I could be if I just lived blissfully ignorant in my little hole, and didn't know the horrible things that happened outside of it. It all seems like too much, and in my little hole, I can control things, I don't have to worry about the bad decisions other people make.

But staying in my little hole won't change that the world is like that. Ignoring those things, wanting to run away from these harsh realities, it won't change one thing. And so I step out. I step out and trust that my tiny little ripples matter, that they can make waves that will change the earth, and that the world is a better place because I am out of my hole. And I realize, if nothing else, I am a better person, just for trying.

The Tongue of Angels

2010-02-28T09:47:00.000+10:30

If I give a bit of context, I think that this is a phrase that pretty much anyone can relate to. Even those who do not believe in God or angels have surely had the experience with something akin to what I mean by this phrase. It is those moments when someone says something, and it just reaches inside of you, it touches you, it heals you, it makes you feel special, makes you feel good. There are various times I've felt the tongue of angels could describe what people have done to me. Sometimes it is just someone saying I'm awesome or fun or amazing. It just makes me smile and feel good. It definitely described the feeling of laying in bed next to Stefanie, Mitera singing Nani Nanis to us. It often is a feeling when someone tells me that they love me. They speak with the tongue of angels.

With that setting...I had a discussion on my facebook the other day about swearing. I was frustrated and angry, and put up as my status "Sometimes I want to swear like a sailor...". I have not had strong feelings or an understanding of why not to swear, and when I get really frustrated, it seems like it would be so lovely to use these words. I walked away from that interchange wanting to figure out how I feel about swearing, to get off the fence. I know the church has recommended the use of "clean" language, but all the talks I could read about it still did not seem like compelling evidence. I guess it just wasn't anything that personally sank in to me.

And then I was looking up at my wall. Last year my personal theme for the year was to try and speak with the tongue of angels (which I was not very diligent about pursuing, but I did a little bit with it). Well I'll just copy to you what I have there, quotes from Jeffrey R. Holland:

"Heaven never seems closer than when we see the love of God manifested in the kindness and devotion of people so good and so pure that angelic is the only word that comes to mind. In this long eternal quest to be more like our Savior, may we try to be "perfect" men and women in at least this one way now - by offending not in word, or more positively put, by speaking with a new tongue, the tongue of angels. Our words, like deeds, should be filled with faith, hope, and charity, the three great Christian imperatives so desperately needed in the world today. With such words, spoken under the influence of the spirit, tears can be dried, hearts can be healed, lives can be elevated, hope can return, confidence can prevail."

If there is anything I want to do in the world more than anything, those last things are them: dry tears, heal hearts, elevate lives, give people hope and confidence.

While I was in that mood, I ended up calling someone I care a lot about a douche, which is a word I don't consider technically swearing, but a few hours, I felt really bad. I don't want to make people feel worse. I want to make people feel better. I want to spread love. I want to elevate lives. I want to speak with the tongue of angels.

I think of swearing. It doesn't really offend me, but never once has swearing made me feel anything resembling that feeling of the tongue of angels.

I don't expect to speak perfectly all the time, to always say uplifting and inspiring things, but I want to as much as I can. I don't want to damage the influence that I can have in the world.

And to all the angels in my own life, thank you. :) Your tongues have reached to my heart so many times, and even just the memories brings a smile to my face, and inspiration and determination to my soul.

Definitely Adventures Today!

2010-02-25T16:22:00.001+10:30

I know my last post was talking all about the imposition I feel by the title of my blog, but today the title of it made it so I -had- to write about my day.

So I was in a pretty bad mood today, just because I thought I was done with Janardan's stuff, but I found more, and one of the things I found was this letter I wrote to him that he never read...even though he had like 5 years to do so. Anyway, so I've been pissy all day, just about that and whatever.

But Emily and I had tickets to the BYU basketball game tonight, so we were going to that, and me and Emily alone is always a fun time. We were going to walk there, but then I went to Communal last night, and was too full to get dessert, so I decided we should get dessert together tonight. So then we decided we'd drive, because if we walked home, we might just want to stay home and not go out again. So we get in the car to drive over, and I thought this car in front of me was slowing down for a light, so I lightly press on my breaks...but he was stopped. So I run into him, and the hood of my car kinda crumples. He was in an SUV, and he got a small scratch on the bumper. My car, a bit more damage (I'll get a picture tomorrow when there's light). And for some reason, this put me in a great mood. No one was hurt, just the front of my car, and I found it funny.

So then we take my car back home (we were just a few blocks away, and it still runs), and go over in Emily's van. Drive all over campus looking for a spot. Can't find one for forever. Finally get one in the far lot by the stadium, and we made it in time for second half (lots of jokes about how we lost time by driving lol). It was a good game, and apparently if BYU scores over 80 points, you can get a free piece of chocolate cake at Magelby's Fresh. It was less than a minute with 79 points. So that was the most exciting play of the game! Lol. It was so fun, though. Think I have to get season tickets next year. I love basketball. (Why did I never go to sporting events when I was a student? Well I will fix that when I go back and take classes this fall).

Then off to Communal for dessert. Yuuuuummm the chocolate bread pudding was -amazing-. Like really you can't go wrong with a dessert with Amano chocolate in it, but this went soo right. Delcious. Emily and me cracking up about who knows what, which caused me to spit water.

Come home to finish filing my claim and reporting my accident with Geico to find out that I do not have collision coverage. So, not completely happy about that, as I have no idea how much it's gonna cost to get stuff repaired. And then to look online and remember (because when I was signing up for insurance, I did not want to be stingy, so I signed up for the best coverages I thought there could be) that the reason I did not get collision because it wouldn't let me because of some other thing I had. I had no idea what either of them was really.

But still, it's annoying, but I think today ended up being a great day! Emily said to me, "So you just need tragedy to take you out of your bad moods." Perhaps I do. I like to be surprised by life. It doesn't have to be a tragedy. I like to reminded that things can be completely different to how I planned them.

2010-02-23T04:51:00.001+10:30

Having the title of my blog be adventures can be a bit imposing sometimes. It gives me this false notion of what I should be writing about on my blog, or what I should be doing with my life, I guess. That it all has to be some grand adventure.

I've spent the past month being very go go go, always doing something, always busy with something, cleaning up this, checking on this, talking to this person, going to do this, cooking this thing, reading this thing, writing about this, biking this place, working on this goal, go go go go go. And I realize why I've been like that, it's a backlash against how I was in my marriage, where I rarely did anything, and everything took tremendous amounts of mental effort to do. Momentum makes action easy.

I don't work in the mornings. So I rarely have to get up to be somewhere, and I can wake up leisurely and lounge around in bed. But I hadn't done that in a long time until yesterday morning. I woke up, and instead of like usual just starting in on my series of actions that would last me until it was time to sleep, I just laid in bed, and thought.

I am quite perplexed by myself. Because I would not say that I am a person who suffers from low self-esteem. I am very confident in myself. But then, I have a tendency to bend my will to others for the sake of avoiding disagreement, or at least doing it on the surface, and suppressing my argument. Like, when disagreement or something contrary to what I want comes up, I immediately react with this "oh it's fine" thing, suppressing my own desire, and just giving up on what I wanted. It is an aspect that makes it easy for me to get along with pretty much anyone, and be friendly with lots of people.

It makes me think of something Carolyn asked me, when I was talking to her about my marriage last July, and she said "When do -you- get to be happy?" My own happiness matters to me when I am alone. It is probably a big part of the reason I've been so happy this past month or so. Because when it is just me, I can care about my own happiness.

But then, like, while I realize this is a problem, it is also hard for me to accept that it is not simply selflessness (even though it in some ways leads to selfishness). Eh, I'll figure it out eventually.

Gentle Guidance back to the Path

2010-02-18T04:06:00.000+10:30

At girl's camp one year, our theme was "Hold to the Rod." We had a really neat experience, where we put on blindfolds, and then we were told to hold on to this rope, which was supposed to represent the iron rod. And so I went along, holding this rope, and everything seemed good. It was dark, and I had no idea where I was going, but I knew that this rope meant I was going the right way.

I got to a point where I felt like it was the end of the rope, and I was confused as to where I should go. It was then someone said to me, "Come over here." So I let go of the rope and went to where they were. And then immediately, there was another person who said, "No, come back here" and gently guided me back to the rope. After that, I held on with gusto to the rope, and didn't heed what anyone said, and just held on to that rod, because I knew that some of those voices would try to lead me astray.

We came to the end of the rod, and were told we could take our blindfolds off, and there was a beautiful tree lit up, with apples tied to it by ribbons. It was beautiful. And then we sat and were spiritually fed.

I see how much that experience reflects my experiences in life. I may be going along a good path, and then come to a moment of confusion, and it is then that Satan strikes, to guide me away from the path. But there has always been someone to speak gently and tell me I was going the wrong way, and lead me back to the good path.

Most often it will be my sister or mom. But it's been countless others as well, Young Women's leaders, Visiting Teachers, bishops, friends, roommates, or some random thing I hear somewhere.

I think of this woman, who was there standing by the rod, just there to watch over and make sure people stayed on the rod. She had so many to look over, all the probably 200 girls that would walk by her, but she took the time for me. And these people make time for me, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Because these things lead me back to the word of God, they lead me back to the scriptures, and back to feasting upon the words of God, and being filled with the spirit. And then I get to the tree, and feel infused with beauty. The people lead me to the rod, and the rod leads me to the love of God. How beautiful and glorious.

Today I feel like a writer

2010-02-14T16:46:00.000+10:30

2.5 years ago, I read Harry Potter 7 for the first time. As I was reading the end of it, it was a very spiritual experience to me. It changed me. And it was then that I realized that my calling in life, if you will, was to be a writer.

It seemed kinda duh once I realized it. I mean, as soon as I could make letters, I was writing books. I wrote a ton as a kid, and even in high school when I had gotten past the idea that I thought I wanted to be a writer as a profession, I still kept about 10 different journals, and wrote in 3-4 of them daily. I write. It is what I do.

But the idea of writing fiction is a bit daunting to me, not that writing non-fiction at any length is any less daunting, because then I get worried about factuality. But, I felt like writing is what I am meant to do, and that fiction writing should be a component of that.

So I started writing fiction. And I'd write a little scene here and there, and I was so scared of writing that it was more convincing myself that I could actually sit down and write something than actually being anything I wanted to write about. I found a few things that interested me, and my mind still goes back to some of my favorite scenes from things I have written, but there doesn't seem to be much more than just a couple pages there. Then there is of course Words and Understanding, the short story I wrote. I still really like that story, and I feel a depth to it, though I think the writing of it does not convey it all, and I am not really sure why, but I also don't like it -that- much that I care to invest a lot of time in figuring out how to make it better.

So I was writing daily for a few months then, and then life kinda overcame me, and my fiction has gotten patchy. Then maybe a week or so ago, I decided I was going to be disciplined and start working on fiction again. So I've been making scenes or whatever, just like normal, only this time, I wasn't so overly concerned with product and doing something amazing, and just felt like it was the flow of things.

So I sat down to write last night at 2:30am. Thought I would be in bed by 3am, which is the late end of normal for me, but still not abnormal. I started writing, and I could not stop. I wrote until 4am, and I just stopped in the middle of something, because I decided I needed to sleep at some point. Then today I was working on developing characters, and I just see about 100 things that I could do to work on this story, and all these things that will be for background, so I know what is going on and can write it all better, and include the little details that don't seem important, but make something set out, because the secondary characters are really developed, and -I- care about them.

And so I have stepped into this world, and I want to discover so much of it, and find out about these 12 people that I have, and then there will be more they come into contact with. I have found something where I want to go back to it the next day, and probably will the next and the next. And who knows when I will want to move on to something else. But today I feel like I am truly a writer.

And I like the feeling.

Emily

2010-02-12T03:49:00.000+10:30

Today I want to give a tribute to my amazing sister. (This is the only recent picture I had of her on my computer, and it was taken by Prairie, but I like it :) ).

When my sister moved out to Utah years ago, I was worried that she would want to come and see me all the time, and that I would feel stifled by her. I knew she cared about me a lot, and really loved me, but I was kind of a bratty sister, I guess. I hadn't learned to appreciate her yet. But when she got here, it was when Janardan and I were first dating, and she made it feel so comfortable to come over to her house. She understood that he was sick, and didn't judge him, and so we loved going over there, and would go over there all the time. And I began to see the beginning of what an amazing sister I have, far beyond what I had ever seen before.

Besides moving to Texas, I have moved progressively closer to her every time I have moved. From about a mile away, to a block away, and now we do not even have to go outside to go in each other's houses.

I think of how depressed I got when I first got married, how difficult that was for me, and how lonely I felt. I've been worried about falling into a depression with this divorce, and working really hard to avoid it, but in some ways, it is simply easier. I can walk right out of my door and into her house. I went over there sobbing a week or so ago, and I know that even though she's not the most physical and touchy person that she would hold me, and hug me.

She has been my unsung hero for so long, but I don't want her to be unsung any more. She is the one who pays attention, and bothers me if I'm not eating, so that I will eat. She is so willing to help me, and is there for me.

And so I offer this tribute to my amazing sister, Emily, and to amazing sisters everywhere. You do more than you know, and you help in ways that cannot be measured. I love you Emily. LYLAS!

Every Fruit in the Season Thereof

2010-02-10T07:19:00.000+10:30

In June, we had a Sunday School lesson on the word of wisdom. (I don't really know how many readers I have who are not familiar with LDS theology. I tend not to explain much, and assume that most people know, which may be erroneous, but if I ever say stuff and you want to know more or know what the heck I'm talking about, feel free to email me or leave a comment, and I'll try to explain). Growing up, I always viewed the word of wisdom mainly as a guide of what to avoid, not to drink, smoke, drink coffee, etc.

Besides the word of wisdom, with my sister being into ecology, over the past few years, I've had a more ecological view of my eating, especially reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, and seeing the importance of sustainability. And so I've had all these ideas floating around in my head, with her stories of a family that would eat only things grown within 100 miles from their home, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about things, or exactly what to do.

So when we had this lesson on the word of wisdom, and there were a few people in our Sunday School class who pointed out that we do not, as a church, seem to pay as much attention to the commands of what we -should- eat, and only pay attention to those things that we are told not to consume or allow into our bodies. I walked away from that lesson wanting to try more diligently to eat fruits "in the season thereof", but I came away feeling like I had no idea what that even was. I can go to the grocery store any season of the year and get bananas, tomatoes, peas, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, etc. I can get anything I want at any time of the year, so what does "in the season thereof" really mean?

It made me realize how unaware I was of the seasonality of food. I wanted to learn what foods came in what seasons. I figured the best way to start was to go to the farmer's market, and see what local farmers were selling at that time. And so I started to do as much of my shopping as I could at the farmer's market, and while there to make sure I was buying from the local farmers (there was a stand that just looked like people had trucked up from Mexico, because they had produce that no one else had). And so now, I feel like I have at least a basic understanding of what season things come in.

I was excited the one week I saw grapes there, and got some, and they were so delicious. Everything is so delicious when it is eaten so fresh, and in its season.

I didn't store quite enough stuff for winter. I have one butternut squash left, which I am kind of saving in a way, as butternut squash is so delicious. I have one large can of peaches left, and they are so divine that I do not want to eat them. I have been making my way through my spaghetti sauce lately, which I thought there was going to be no way I would get through, but I think I may actually be out by the time tomato season comes around again. I have a couple cans of raspberries, but those are so precious to me that I cannot really eat them, unless I really feel like it is a special occasion (like -really- wanting to eat them!). I dried cabbage, and all of that is gone. I've used the zucchini and squash that I froze, and I think I have just a few green beans left. I have lots of corn, but the way I froze it makes it very difficult to use (live and learn, right?).

So I've been eating a decent amount of meat this winter, which seems appropriate with the corresponding decrease in the availability of vegetables, though I do want to store more vegetables to use next winter. (Like about twice as many butternut squashes! and maybe a few more spaghetti squashes too).

Then I have been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which makes me feel like everything I am eating is corn (especially with all the meat), and that all of that is really just based on gasoline and petroleum. So I have been like, aching for spring, for fresh peas and strawberries, and the beginning of that rich and bounteous time of the year, when each week there will be new and wonderful things to eat, and to enjoy.

So with all of this background, I went to the grocery store last night. I've needed a few things for a while, and finally decided I'd stop on my way home from work last night. So I started walking through, and was going past all the bakery items, which were basically a bunch of cakes and cookies. There were so many things that looked good, but I knew that they wouldn't really be that satisfying. And then I started walking through the produce section, and so many things looked wonderful and delicious. Bright orange carrots, green peppers, red peppers, strawberries, blackberries, peas, squashes, bananas, tomatoes, avocados, pineapples. Yum, yum, yum. I wanted to throw a whole ton of them in my basket, and then in the back of my mind, the thought of where all of this food came from, how it was grown probably thousands of miles away from here, and how it was only here because of gas. I looked around, and everything just seemed tinged by oil. It was all oil. I wanted to start crying there in the middle of the produce section.

I think it hit me right there, because it is the produce section most that gives off this illusion of being natural and close to home, fresh, and beautiful. Like, if I go buy a bag of chips, I have no illusions that it is not a processed food full of crap, grown who knows where, and gotten to me from shipping the hundred ingredients from a hundred different places, and then finally shipped to me, all on gasoline. The rest of the grocery store is full of things like that, which I do mainly avoid, but I don't have any illusion when I do go to those things that I am being in any way ecologically responsible.

But it is like, all of these things that I am looking forward to, that I at times ache for, for spring to come and to eat, and here they are! Right in front of me! But then the reality hits me that these are not the things I really want. I want the strawberries grown down the road, not in Mexico. I want the grapes from the vine of my neighbors, not ones shipped in from Chile. (I put those in my basket before I hit the produce section, and I felt a bit sick when I got home to see how far they had traveled for me to eat).

I have had a phrase running through my head lately - "it is not worth eating anything that is not worth savoring." I have thought about this as I have been eating my amano chocolate. That I know comes from all over, and actually from very specific farms. It is a luxury. I understand that. That is also why I don't eat very much of it, and I savor it. But I think of all the fixating I have done on spring (especially with this false spring and it being warm here!), and I want to savor everything I eat. I want to savor that butternut squash. I am going to savor those peaches. I will savor the strawberries when they come, and the peas, the tomatoes.

How wonderful it is to enjoy every fruit in the season thereof. I think I will eat my butternut squash tonight! Yum!

!!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-07T11:35:00.000+10:30

I love being alive!!!!!!!

Life is great! Life is awesome. Like, it is such a beautiful thing to be alive, to draw breath in my body. I went to the temple today, and it is so amazing and beautiful. This world is beautiful. There are so many beautiful things in this world, but there is noting more beautiful to me than the work of salvation. It is so amazing! Especially since it does more to just change and create something new within the Lord's already amazing creation of his children.

Like I was looking at myself in the mirror in the Celestial room today, just like, shining, and being so radiant. And I was just like, man, this is beautiful!

I love being me, and I love being alive!

A thousand paths

2010-02-05T19:31:00.000+10:30

There is in the universe a galaxy, and within that galaxy a solar system, and within that solar system a planet, and within that planet a country, and within that country a village, and within that village a house, and within that house, a room, and within that room a bed, and within that bed a woman.

This woman had hopes and dreams, a myriad of twisting and winding paths before her. The paths stretched before her view like branches from the trunk of a tree, that was her life. They reached and reached. Sometimes they were cut from her, some shriveled and died. These hurt her, and came back to the heart of the tree. But no single branch being cut from her could kill the heart of the tree. The tree would discard the broken pieces, heal up the broken parts, grow over, and put forth renewed energy to the existing branches, looking for the new branches, growing everything which looked like it could grow. She saw so many places where new branches could spring up. She saw new little branches creeping up, and she wondered where these branches would grow to, what path they would lead to. The overall effect, though, was that these branches reached upwards, and her trunk would reach and reach, and touch higher and higher, and reach the sky.

The twists and turns lay before her. She kept the paths open, trying not to squash the tiny little sprigs that would spring forth, even though they seemed so weak and frail, as if they would not last a day. She knew that every new branch would start as just a tiny sprig, so when she felt the inclination to give up, she would feed it more, and give it more opportunity to grow.

Life goes on. Welcome. My life is one big adventure, and this blog is here to catalogue my thoughts, my experiences, and whatever I decide to blog about :P.

There are thousands of paths that lay before me. Oh the deliciousness of possibility.