A Poem

See...here is a Poem I wrote: 

So, here's the deal. I'm not a poet, In fact, I typically avoid writing poetry, but I woke up with these words in my head and I had to write them down. That was a couple weeks ago, and I've hesitated to post it because I was afraid how it would be seen. 

Not because I'm afraid people won't like it, I don't really care what people think regarding my poetry skills; I'm amateur at best. But I was afraid to post it because it gives the impression of sadness and while there is a sadness in grief, over the past year I've also learned the beauty in grief. 

I miss my parents, and that's a good thing. I want to be missed when I'm gone as well. But the emotion of grief has also taught me so much this past year. It's so much more complex than I ever thought it was before. I used to think that grief was just being sad, but I have learned that it's not just that. I'm not even sure that they are sort of the same thing. 

I think that grief is the bridge that helps us cross over from sadness to moving on.  

In my psychology classes over the years, I learned about the stages of grief, and we can categorize them if you want, but it doesn't really work like that for every person. If I had to define my grief, I would say that it is memories. Little memories and big ones too. When they come, especially through everyday little things, I've started to record them because I want to always be able to remember those things. 

For example, at a fireside Sunday the speaker talked about the old church primary song, "Little Purple Pansies" and I realized that the song I thought my mom had made up (She had a knack for making up silly songs) was real. Whenever she saw Pansies - and most especially in the fall and winter time- she would sing that pansie song. I wrote that down to remember her and the pansie faces she loved.

I have a knack for getting paper cuts, the hazards of a lot of filing at work, and for some reason, I seem to get paper cuts in groups and usually just on one hand at a time. This last week, my right hand was all bandaged up with cuts when I got another cut. I shook my head at my own clumsiness and in that moment I thought of my dad, who when I was little would tease me about always injuring one side of me. One time when I stepped on a upturned nail, he pulled it out of my foot and while I cried, he comforted me by saying, "well, at least it wasn't on the side with all your other injuries!" Which made me giggle and forget some of the pain I was in. 

I think those memories are grief. They are at times tinged with sadness, but most often than not, they bring a peace that lets me know that everything is okay. 

But as my poem says, there are days that the grief comes hard and fast and not in slow and trickling memories.I've learned to appreciate those days as well because they are human days that we have to have in order to get stronger. 

Grief doesn't go away in just those well defined stages-grief stays with you and turns you into something more. It turns you into the person that those lost loved ones know you truly are-who they see you as. And that is why it is so important. And so, as you read this poem, remember, it's not in sadness that it was written, but in growth and in grief. 

And don't forget:

Exceedingly Great Faith - Alma 13:3

I had just a few weeks left in my mission when this scripture (Alma 13:3) wormed it's way into my thoughts, my study and probably my teaching as well. If you get a chance to read it, do! It talks about the great war in Heaven before we came here and how the war was won.

It was Brother Carpenter, the father of a family we were really close to, who first asked me the question that made me look at this scripture so differently. The scripture talks about the 'exceedingly great faith' of those who fought on the Lord's side. Brother C. asked me, "What did they have faith in? How can they have exceedingly great faith in God and in Jesus Christ when they were living with them? They were taught by their presence. So, what does it mean in this scripture that they had exceedingly great faith?"

This question made me think. It made me study and research. I wanted to find an answer for Brother Carpenter. In the end, I came up with a few reasons.

This is what I think it meant to have "exceedingly great faith" in the context of those living with God before they came to this early life.

There were two plans presented in Heaven, there was God's Plan, the Plan of Happiness that centered on Christ and his Atonement for all mankind. His plan was also based on our agency, our ability to withstand the trials and temptations of this world and to make the right choices. To repent when we made mistakes and to accept Christ and his gospel in this life.  The other plan was presented by Lucifer, it was a plan that he said would ensure that every single one of God's children would make it back. There would be no agency, there would be no choice. All of God's children had to make a choice right then and there as to which plan they would support. Two-thirds of those children chose God's plan and those two-thirds are here on this earth. Those two-thirds are those who exercised our great faith. But HOW?

There are three things I came up with:

1. We had faith in our Heavenly Father that his plan was the right one for us. We had faith that agency was the only way we could learn and make our own choices-even our own mistakes. We had faith that his proposed plan was the only way that we could become more like Him-which is what we really, really wanted.

2. Once we had faith in the plan, we then had to have faith in Jesus Christ, our older brother. We had to have faith that he would fulfill His earthly mission. He would come to earth, he would be sinless though tempted, he would teach and minister, he would suffer for our sins and all our hardships on earth, he would die for us, and then He would be resurrected so that all of us could one day be resurrected. We had to have exceedingly great Faith that he would be able to do all of that because of his eternal, and unsurpassing love for each of us.  

But again, although there was a war in heaven over this decision, we were there and we saw and were taught the Father's Plan by the Father! We saw, and we knew of Christ's love for each of us! We still exercised our faith and choose the plan, but there is one more thing that we had to have faith in.

3. We had to have exceedingly great faith in OURSELVES. The plan in opposition the plan of happiness said that every person would make it back to live with God. That sounds very easy.

But we had heard the Father's plan, we had faith that he was right. We heard Jesus say he would go and be our Savior, we had faith in him. That final and maybe most hardest part to accept was to accept that we would have to go down to earth, away from our Father, and we would have to make choices, face temptation and trials, and make the right choices that would get us back to God. We had to have faith that we could do it. We had to look inside ourselves and ask if we could do it, if we could make all the right decisions, if we could give our will to the Father so that he could make us into the person that He knows we truly are. We had to exercise 'Exceedingly Great Faith' in ourselves.

But guess what? You did that. I did that. Because you and I are here, I know that we had Faith that we could do it. 

Sometimes, I forget that. Sometimes, life is hard. But then, luckily I'm surrounded by people who remind me that I am a Child of God and that He loves me, and He also has Faith in me. That makes a big difference. Whenever I come to this scripture in my study of the Book of Mormon, I'm reminded of Brother Carpenter and his question, and I'm lucky that he asked it and that it stuck with me. And just when things start to get stormy in life, sometimes Heavenly Father reminds me of this scripture. He did that this past weekend and I'm grateful for his constant love for me.

I know that sometimes I get caught up in everything going on around me, but there is so much more to life and to eternity than what is just right here surrounding you. There is so much more to the Plan of Happiness that we don't understand yet. But it is a plan of Happiness. So if you're not happy right now, remember that you can be and that it will all be okay. 

Chariots of Fire

Growing up, this girl was my best friend, pretty much my sister. She's my niece, and 18 months younger than me. That beautiful baby is her 9 month old daughter: 

Three Weeks ago, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma, she's days away from her second Chemotherapy treatment. Last week, in talking to her, she told me of an experience she had. In a dream, she woke up in the Spirit World and she was sure she had passed on. As she looked around, her grandpa, my dad, walked over to her with a huge smile on his face. He put his arm around her and gave her a side hug, he never said a word, just smiled. She said, it scared me at first because it made me think I was going to die. But then I realized that it was meant to give me comfort. It was meant to let me know that there are people on the other side that are looking out for me as well as people here.

Although this was her experience and not mine, it was very powerful for me for two reasons. The first reason was the fact that it was my dad to come to her. Why you ask? This girl has had four grandparents die in the space of 18 months. Three of them die in the last five months. And I think there is a reason that my dad was the one to represent all of those loved ones to my niece: 

Mainly because at the time of his death in April, he hadn't walked in over 25 years. In her dream, he walked to her and put his arm around her. It demonstrates that after this life, we are made whole because of Jesus Christ. He wanted her to see that no matter the consequence of the cancer on her body, she will one day also be made whole.  

The other thing I wanted to address from this experience is that there are people on the other side cheering for us. I thought instantly of this quote by Elder Jeffery R. Holland: "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2 Kings 6:16-17).

In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil, and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike--and they will--you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection. They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham's seed.” 

 I'm grateful to know that truth, as two of those grandparents in the spirit world are my parents, I miss them so much but I know that they are there, that they care and that they will always come to my aid and my defense. 

Reality...

I think the world we live in today is so interesting. Here I am, writing a blog (which is essentially a Journal entry) and putting it out there for the world to read. I'm not sure many people read my blog, but regardless, it's silly isn't it? 

There is this need that I have to see my words reach other people. I think it's silly when my mom gets sucked into the Reality Shows like the Bachelor or Dancing With the Stars, but I'm easily swayed into the hype when Britney Spears becomes a judge on the X-factor. There are people who make you roll your eyes when you see them on those kinds of shows, there are blogs, possibly mine, that make you roll your eyes because I'm just that girl who wants someone to read my words and react. 

Why is that, do you think? 

When did we get so sucked up in 'reality' and putting on a 'reality' for others. 

You wanna know me? I'm just a girl who's trying to figure things out. 

I've never been in love, I've never been that important to someone else, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to be. 

In my Anthropology class one time, someone brought up that the culture of Reality TV and Blogging and such has turned us into Narcissists. We think that people really care who we are and what is on our minds. I'll admit, I love it when my facebook status' are liked, and people comment that I'm so funny, or witty or whatever. But I didn't used to be that way, at least it wasn't my main focus. Now it seems as though if a facebook status goes unliked, it means that I myself am unliked. 

I guess I sound like a hypocrite as I'm typing this all on a blog...but I want to know, why is that that it feels so validating when someone comments on my blog?  

Quote of the Day: Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. -Andre Dubus

Quote of the Day:

I guess I've always loved quotes, well, maybe not always, but since I was about 14, which feels like always. I remember my parents had taken me and my nephew Jari and my niece Shalyn to one of those little Utah town my mom loves. It was the year of the bi-centinal I think and my mom had a Utah Passport book where you were supposed to get a stamp from each county you visited in Utah.

Anyway, while we were waiting for them to check into the hotel, we were of course scoping out the gift shop and there was a magnet that said, "Some come into our lives and leave quietly, others leave footprints in our hearts and we are never the same" It struck me because at the time, I was going though those Jr. High friendship challenges where you really learn that. There are the friends who come and go, and there are the friends that make a difference in your life forever.

Well, after that quote, I just started collecting them. From anywhere, anyone. Friends laugh at the quotes that I write down from movies and tv shows. Then they regret it when I've shown them the quotes I've written down from them. I'm quite well known for that! :)

Anyway, my quotes define me. Maybe there are a few people who get that, but I'd be willing to bet that there are alot of people that don't.

Recently I found one that said, "I wish that someone would read my favoite book, just to understand me." And since I send out a "Quote of the Day" to my friends and post it on facebook, I have hesitated at sending this one out. I want people to know that I'm not accusing anyone, but it's so profound at the same time. When was the last time you asked your friend what their favorite book was? Favorite song or tv show? You don't have to love it too, but think how it would make you feel if someone were to ask you what your favorite book was, go home and read it and come back and talk to you about it. I think it would mean a lot to you because it's something that simply is you.

So...this ended up being a really random post, but just thoughts on my mind.