If You Must Know…

I’ve always figured that I’d get married some day, but mostly in that when I was really little and I imagined life, I noticed that everyone gets married and so will I sense.

And then I grew up, and I realised that the world is a big, bad place, designed for one purpose, and one purpose only:

To take every dream you have ever had and squeeze the life out of it until you drown like a beached whale.

And when I had this revelation, I resigned myself to the fate of every girl who has ever dreamed and then realised she was a closet gnostic: the old spinster with 17 cats, all named ridiculous cat names, like Oreo and Fluffy.

Now, granted, I may still have lots of cats with ridiculous names, but I won’t be a spinster.

Unless of course the groom to be spurns me, and I end up like Miss Havisham, alone in a room, wearing my yellowed wedding dress and watching spiders crawl across the rotted, decaying cake.

You never thought a post announcing engagement would include words like spider and decaying and beached whale, did you?

Well, that’s just how I roll.

Oh, and a note for the overly excited, who leave really long, disaster-filled messages on my voicemail, I did not say yes by text. That post was something else entirely.

It happened just the way I’ve seen in movies. We discussed it over dinner and came to a consensus, and then went shopping for a ring the next day.

Isn’t that how everyone does it?

That Moment

In movies, the moment is captured in different ways, depending on genre, but there is one unifying theme: there is a right response and a wrong response.

So, much like the evil liberal media convinces us that we should all look like starved supermodels in dire need of a sandwich, Hollywood has me convinced that there is a right way and a wrong way to respond.

I feel the moment coming–my female spidey senses are well tuned–and my mind races with what would be the best answer.

And I can’t find it. I try to hem and haw and figure out just the right way to say the wrong thing. Or maybe it’s the wrong way to say the right thing.

But this isn’t a movie and there is no script. So I say what I say.

And I wait and analyze, as that is what I do.

And after the wait and after the analyze, I do what the protagonist in my biopic would undoubtedly do.

I send a text message.

Maybe If I Open a Window and Type…

… a post will appear.

Life has both stepped up and down a notch.

I’ve decided to go down to part time for school. That suffocating, completely overwhelmed feeling just became unbearable. So a decision had to be made. And it was. I just hope it was the right one.

Thanks to all of you who have shared good news with me.

I have some good news of my own: I finally got promoted at work.

Yes, that’s right. I have a real job now, complete with 401k and vacation time and all that good stuff. I almost feel adult.

I’ve cracked open Approaching Zion, and I think I am finally going to settle in with it tonight.

I’m experiencing a weird phenomenon, however. I am picking up books and reading them and finding no joy in them.

I’ve started three books this month just to place them back down. Am I just reading the wrong books? Am I really that mentally exhausted that I cannot read? I don’t know how to process this; it’s completely virgin territory.

At the same time, I’ve opened this same window more than once, only to close it, finding no joy and no release in writing. Was my personality somehow removed from my body, and I think I’m the same, but I can’t possibly be, as I am reacting to past stimuli in a way which is completely out of character?

There are stories to be told and insights to be shared, but none of that will be happening here tonight.

Is it time to call an exorcist?

To Whom It May Concern:

Between the dead uncle, the mother in rehab, and the dad with cancer, I could use some good news.

kthxbye

From the Nightstand

I thought this was a great depiction of what my life is like.

Time almost completely blocked out by books, both academic and spiritual.

Can you tell which is winning?

Growing Young

My standard operating procedure is that every day I insist I will be going to bed early. I have to be up at six, so I shot for ten tonight. It’s now quarter past twelve. My bad.

But I’ve neglected blogging, and the thoughts are all swirling around in my head with no outlet.

The subject constantly on my mind is change. I feel my life and myself changing. I feel the tugging of the Spirit, in that small, still way. I say something, I do something, I think something, and if it isn’t what I know I should be doing, saying, or thinking, I feel a little tug in my heart and in my mind, a little jab, almost like guilt, pushing me to recognize these moments.

I’ve done a lot of talking to friends and pondering in my heart about the importance of becoming who I want to be, who I should be, who I must be, and I think that God is calling me out on the carpet in a way.

I think these little nudges are like the reminders that we sometimes ask our friends for when we are trying to change our behaviors. Or those little bits of unsolicited advice we sometimes get from said friends that we sometimes resent and then slowly embrace.

I think it’s time for embracing.

I feel emboldened in ways I’ve only wanted in the past.

I’ve spent the past few months thinking that I was so tired and so overburdened that I couldn’t be spiritual until I got some rest, but as I was walking across campus the other day, it hit me that my perspective was backwards.

My mind had distorted the order of things, much like those who refuse to take pills because only sick people take pills, so it must be that the pills cause the sickness.

I think that I must become a spiritual person if I ever want to find rest.

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”  (Mosiah 3: 19)

I’ve always been pretty religious, but spirituality is uncharted territory for me. I kind of stumble around, trying to look like I know what I’m  doing, but most times, I don’t even know where to start.

But I did some thinking on this one, and I think I’ve found the place to start. The place that started it all for me. My initial interest in the Church was sparked by what I had heard about the Word of Wisdom. So, is it much surprise that I start at the beginning?

We humans are creatures of habit and so it is these words that give me the comfort I need tonight:

“18 And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;

  19 And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;

  20 And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.

  21 And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen.” (D&C 89)

Things Not to Say In Front of One’s Boyfriend

Ohhhhhhh. I wanna be pregnant!

*headdesk*