I Believe

It's been an interesting week, one of those self-discovery weeks that brings things into a clear focus.

I started out last week feeling an ache in my heart that seemed to stay with me. The ache became a cloud, and the cloud a fog that wouldn't lift. I talked a lot to my loved ones, prayed fervently every night, and decided to leave it to the Lord.

I had been working on a paper for my New Testament class and I turned to one of my favorite scriptures, John 14:16-20. Reading those verses as I sat on a balcony in the JFSB, I felt the cloud begin to lift. "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you...the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. Ye shall know that I am in the my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."

I live a blessed life and  I needed to be reminded of it.

I was reminded when Aaron made a batch of pizza muffins on the night I didn't have the will to cook.

I was reminded when I called my sister-in-law, Brianna, and felt the newly gained distance between us go from 644 miles to 0.

I was reminded when I got my first copy-editing test back and found out that I aced it.

I was reminded as I sat next to a friend during the football game and discussed how we thought our lives would turn out.

I was reminded by the warm embrace of my mom and dad.

I was reminded by the soft licks on my face by the dog who lives upstairs.

I was reminded by the thoughtfulness of strangers.

I was reminded by the sweet outpourings of love from those I care about, from friends I have cherished and others I didn't know I had.

I was reminded by the warm hug I felt in my heart each time I got on my knees to pray.

I am reminded every day by the sun shining on my head and the assuring words of my professors and those who know me best.

"We are what we believe we are." -C.S. Lewis

I believe I am the luckiest girl in the whole world. 

I am Edmond Dantes

I'm rereading The Count of Monte Cristo (again) and to my delight, I keep finding new nuggets of wisdom every time I read it. I read it once when I was 13, another time when I was 17 and now I am the wise old age of 19. People don't always understand why I reread books, but I love it because each time you read a book, you are under completely different circumstances and are ready to learn different things. Things I wasn't ready for 2 years ago, I am absolutely ready to hear now. 


Growth. Development. Loss of naiveté. Understanding.


Here are a few wonderful quotes that I picked up before, but who knows what I'll find this time around!


“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.” 


“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.” 


“Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine. 
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God. 
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you. ” 

Beautiful.

The Right Track

During a lecture this past week, my Doctrine and Covenants teacher asked us to think to ourselves and truly examine if we are in the right major for us. He said that some of us might have an unsettled feeling and we may already know we're going into the wrong career.

Rewind a year ago. A year ago, I was preparing to audition for the School of Music on my trusty clarinet. I was playing music for hours a day, working hard in my lessons, and suffering from all of the normal stress and anxiety of a freshman while also worrying continuously about my impending audition. There were many vital things I needed to fix before my audition and I found myself trying to fix habits that had grown over 9 years in just about 4 months.

I was a basket case.

I tend to be very tunnel visioned about things in my life. When I really want something, that is all I can focus on and I work until I reach my goal. It has been that way with the Nebraska Children's Choruses I sang with, becoming a Drum Major in high school, making All State and Honor Bands, and getting into BYU. This audition was the first thing that I felt that even though I was trying will of my heart, I might not succeed. It was the passing of an illusion that I had grown up with: all of your dreams will come true if you only believe and work hard enough. When I got that email in February informing me that I had not gotten into the program, I think that was the moment I started to become an adult.

I don't mean to say that being an adult only involves disappointment and hardships but it does entail gaining a realism that no matter how many books you read on the subject, you just don't understand deep disappointment until it happens to you.

It was hard. My focus was so tightly pointed at that one goal, that it was disorienting at first. I didn't know where to go from there. Thankfully, I was in an Honors English class and also working on a student journal on campus. Once I got over the initial heartbreak, I began to realize how much happiness my writing class brought me. I used my English assignments as a break, a release, from the boring and miserable Geology readings. I loved to write.

It took me a few weeks to get over my results, many phone calls home, numerous prayers, lots of hugs from my friends and family, and one life-changing pep talk from my Dad, and I was ready to move on. I began to look at English courses and all of a sudden it clicked. It felt like I had just broken up with my supposed soul mate only to realize that my best friend had been right there the whole time and was the right person all along!

I have since changed to English Language, and the feeling I get coming from my ELang 223 class is something that cannot be expressed in words alone. I get giddy, exhilarated, and am bursting at the seams with excitement after each class, ready to spill my love of the language on the next person I see.

Here I am, 1 year later, listening as my D&C teacher urged us to look inside ourselves to see if we've chosen the right major. I waited for the feeling of dread, of doubt and a miserable realization that I had got it wrong again. It didn't come.

The Last Leaf

There I was, sitting on the lawn in front of the JKB on campus trying to think of a project to complete for my Biology class. I could think of nothing. My professor constantly berates us for losing our "Sense of Wonder" in the world but I can't help it if I don't walk around campus and sit watching ant colonies like my professor does. There was a point in my life where my cynicism must have overtaken my curiosity of  nature. It was probably about the point where we stopped watching Bill Nye the Science Guy in science classes and my sleep deprivation from seminary caused me to stop caring about everything for a while. 

There I sat, picking off pieces of grass and willing myself to care about something in nature. Something I could conduct an experiment on in the Provo area. I was about to give up when I looked up to see the mountains. Hm, I thought vaguely, the leaves are changing. I guess fall is really here now. Bam. It hit me. Why do leaves change? Are there certain factors in the trees themselves or their environments that cause them to change before other leaves? What causes the first shift in pigmentation?

The longer I sat there, the more I thought about how quickly this semester seems to be already flying by. We're already a month into the semester, midterms are creeping up maliciously, and I am beginning to check the temperature in the morning to decide what I'm going to wear that day. When did summer begin to bleed in fall and how long until winter bares down on us all? Is it really possible I'm in my sophomore year of college? How is possible that my sister, Allison, is going to be married in just 2 1/2 months? Has my friend, Kevin, really been on his mission in Japan for 11 months now? 

I had a conversation with someone yesterday that I've been thinking about today. When listening to a song in church, he commented that the most powerful part of the song was when the key modulated. It seems to be true for most songs that it's the sudden change that seems to strike a chord in us. (Pun intended) Isn't the same true about life in general? We can't stay in one moment of time nor should we ever want to. Things change so softly from day to day that it's sometimes hard to see the shift until you look at how different the colors of your leaves have become. 

Time seems to be slipping away in a strangely wonderful way.

I'm not sure that was what my Biology teacher intended me to get out of the Nature Experiment, but I think I'm starting to regain my Sense of Wonder. I think he'd be proud.

Peace in your soul

Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life. Keep peace in your soul. -Max Ehrmann

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. There's just so much noise in the world that sometimes I feel like I can't quite think straight. I'm running to class, running to work, making 10 different to-do lists, making phone calls, working on homework, planning my schedule; it's like a constant dull roar in my head.

I'm taking a class studying Doctrine and Covenants this semester and we came across this scripture:

D&C 6:22-23
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?"

Previously, I had only thought of communication through the use of body language or verbal sounds. I have never thought of the feeling of peace as a form of communication from God. I have begun to analyze my life and figure out how much time I am actually allowing myself to stop, think, and feel complete silence. It can be a difficult thing to do in an apartment with 6 wonderful girls or on campus with 30,000 other students, but it's something that I want to strive for a few times a day.

I ran across something on the internet that was surprisingly difficult to do the first time. Try this. I usually have my iPod in my ears while I'm on campus, I'm talking to someone on the way home, and when I study I'm constantly thinking about the assignment at hand. Sitting still and not doing anything for 2 full minutes was really difficult at first because I have a hard time fully resting for a moment.

This week, I have been looking for opportunities to feel peace and I have been continually surprised at how many opportunities I have to feel its comfort in my life. Here's to a week of hectic business and inner peace.

i carry it in my heart

E.E. Cummings is the only poet I know that can manipulate the english language this beautifully. It's incredible.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I knew I shoulda taken that left at Albuquerque!

When I moved to New Mexico, believe it or not, one of my first concerns was I didn't know how to spell the name of the city I was moving to.

It's A-L-B-U-Q-U-E-R-Q-U-E. I pronounced it as "Al-boo-qwair-qway" in my head when I first learned how to spell it. Other than that, I had absolutely no feelings about Albuquerque. I remember a few obscure reference to the city in a Bugs Bunny cartoon as featured here:

Driving from the humid and green state of Nebraska to the dry desolation of New Mexico was a shock to my senses. Where in the world was I being taken? I was waiting to pass a sign on the side of the road that said, "TURN BACK NOW. ABANDON ALL HOPE." 

I had lived in Omaha for 13 years, as long as I could remember and I was leaving my home and friends to move across the country my senior year of high school. Things could have been really bad. In fact, it probably should have been a much worse. I feel like I cheated the system and skipped all of the bad parts as seen in most movies like where the new student sits alone at a lunch table and then escapes into the bathroom to cry in a stall. I never did that. I can thank joining band for most of that because I feel like I had an entire circle of people ready to welcome me when I moved in. It was just so easy to find people to connect with. I am incredibly blessed.

There are a lot of great things about Albuquerque. I was introduced to the wondrous green chile which I grew to love. I saw the most incredible sunsets and lived next to stunning mountains. I fell into a magnificent ward who took me in and made me a part of their family. I met some of my best friends, people I cannot imagine my life without today. I grew up a lot that year and figured out a huge lesson: home is not a place or a fixed location; it is where you are surrounded by people you love and they love you in return. 

Omaha is my home. 

Albuquerque is my home. 

Provo is my home.