July 28th

Eleven years ago today my grandma passed away. It has been on my mind all day. And it was her birthday on Tuesday. I miss her so. She and I had such a special bond. I showed up late to her viewing and it didn't seem like the crying started until I got there, an aunt whispering in my ear how much she loved me. I've referred to myself more than once as the ninth child, spending  memorable portions of my summers in Dry Fork with them. At the family reunion last summer all her kids and I were called to the picnic tables to identify some of her belongings; I was touched to be considered part of her children, especially to realize that I had a fair share of knowledge about the items to share. She loved to read, even though she was a slow reader. She was always crocheting, knitting, quilting... things she all taught me. I remember riding on a plane in elementary school, around seven years old, and crocheting, wondering why people were looking at me so funny. She wrote letters every morning, incessantly; I think I'm more inclined to sit down and hand write a letter or card than most people because of her example. I associate Grandma with her bottled pears, chocolate hidden all over the house, and freshly baked bread. Her home was always a place of safety and comfort for me.

Consuming my mind even more is the seven month anniversary of our divorce that also occurred today. While there have been some long moments, it has also passed quickly. I can't wait until I am in a place where I don't notice the monthly marks, maybe just the years. I hope I can reach a point where I don't measure time since he left, where my life has become about me again. I hope the 28th can become just another day. He proposed five years ago tomorrow.

Today wasn't just about the death of my grandma and my marriage, it was also a day of possibilities. Something about my writing class this week has breathed a life into me that only comes through words, mine or others'. While I still don't have a specific direction for life after graduation, I think the GRE (required to go to grad school) will be in my future, just in case.

Peace and Comfort

Last Sunday I needed peace and comfort. My prayers for these things were answered in many ways, the following videos just some of them.

I want to share with you that I know the Lord is aware of us. He loves us and is growing us into the people He knows we can be. All of this growing is painful, but He helps us more than we know. We have a merciful God.

I Bruise Too Easily

Literally. I have been moving the past couple of weeks and have acquired a disturbing number of bruises. My legs alone are up to at least sixteen of them. The biggest and best one? It's baseball sized and on my left... uh, cheek. And it was from a fabulous fall after being stuck in the mud for several minutes during The Dirty Dash last Saturday. It was basically a muddy 5k with random obstacles, such as the hogbales, slop 'n slide, and pig sty. I had a good time getting disgustingly dirty, navigating past the snow machine in the summer, falling more times than I care to admit, and seeing all of the costumed runners.

  

I have thought a lot about all of these marks on my body from the dreaded move... and then I remembered that the most notable, and unmentionable, one was from a new, exhilarating experience. As I'm looking to put my ever-changing life in perspective, I hope I can remember that there are so many good things happening - new friendships, going back to school, opportunities to grow through trials, and just fun times - that also leave their mark on me. And, in the end, those will be the things I notice and can't resist talking about, like my left cheek. 

All of this bruise talk has brought Art Garfunkel's song "All I Know" to mind many times...

I bruise you 

You bruise me 

We both bruise too easily

I am an emotional person and I do bruise easily. My poor heart has taken a beating this past year. I read about a women recently who left her career as a physician because she felt she had to limit her caring for her patients to meet the requirements of her job. She didn't want to be the kind of person who gives only so much. That's not who she is. It's not who I am. With Zach, with my recent heartbreak, with friends, I cannot be the kind of person who only gives so much. I give of myself completely and I love whole-heartedly. I acquire many bruises this way, but I can't live any differently. It is not in me. I hold on to the hope that someday I will be in a relationship where there is no such thing as caring too much, where I can love freely. 

I bruise too easily and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Growing Place

I took comfort in the familiarity of going to work everyday and continuing my same plans to finish school when my life was upside down during and after my divorce. Apparently I no longer need that comfort and familiarity, as many more aspects of my life are beginning to change. And, believe it or not, I’m excited about it!

Last week I was hit hard with the realization that I could not finish my degree while working at my current job. Most of my remaining classes are only offered during the day and my work schedule could not accommodate that. I felt like I was wandering around aimlessly for a day or two, but then I began to feel peaceful and excited. I need this push or else I would stay in this stable job with steady pay forever. Finishing my degree, which has weighed on me heavily for years now, will push me to my dreams of writing or working in the publishing industry.

My current plan is simply this: I will leave my job by August and go to school full-time in the fall semester. I will mostly likely stay in Orem and go to UVU, but there is a small possibility that I will go back up to Logan and finish up at my beloved USU. I would like to work part-time and I met someone just a few days ago who asked me to meet with him about working with him part-time while in school. I’ve even started looking for writing-related internships which would mean leaving my job earlier. So much change! And so much peace.

I am grateful for the opportunity to finally finish school. If nothing else, I did not go through all of those years of killing myself with both work and school to stop short. I desire, almost more than anything at this moment, to finish what I started and obtain that little piece of paper that might convince the world, as well as myself,  that I know a thing or two. 

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in 

which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing 

which you think you cannot do. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

I Believe in Love (And Quotes, Apparently)

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.  ~Zora Neale Hurston

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve.  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley
  
Desire creates havoc when it is the only thing between two people, or when it is what's missing.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
  
Loving is never a waste of time.  ~Astrid Alauda

Love is like a friendship caught on fire.  In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering.  As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.  ~Bruce Lee

Life only starts when love comes.  ~From the movie Bill of Divorcement, 1932

The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.  ~Margaret Atwood

You really shouldn't say "I love you" unless you mean it.  But if you mean it, you should say it a lot.  People forget.  ~Author unknown, attributed to an 8-year-old named Jessica

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.  ~Victor Hugo

Love is when you can be your true self with someone, and you only want to be your true self because of them.  ~Terri Guillemets

Once a man has won a woman's love, the love is his forever.  He can only lose the woman.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
 
          

Beautiful

I believe in the sun even when it isn't shining. 

I believe in love even when I am alone. 

I believe in God even when He is silent.

Written by a Jew on the walls of a hideout during the holocaust.

Eat Pray Love

“I will … ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, 

that … you cannot feel them,

… that ye may know … that I, the Lord God, 

do visit my people in their afflictions.

“And … the Lord did strengthen them 

that they could bear up their burdens with ease, 

and they did submit cheerfully and

with patience to all the will of the Lord.” 

 Mosiah 24:12, 14–15

^{I would first like to share with you how lifted up I have been throughout the difficulties in my marriage and this divorce. And I don't know what I did to deserve it or understand how the Lord loves us so completely. Yet, he has let me grow. I pray that He continues to let me grow in this gospel and to heal along the way. I am in a place where I'm ready to heal and move on to the beautiful things this life has to offer.}

^*****

Last weekend I watched Hope Floats with Angie (one of my two favorite sisters-in-law). I have always loved it and I can't pinpoint why, other than relating to the daughter's struggles with her parents' divorce. Something about that night put me in a fragile state and, whoa, did this movie hit me hard. I was in a constant state of tearfulness. But you know, it felt good. I'm ready to feel the sadness. And luckily, Angie is a true friend who feels the spirit and we had one of those late night talks that I couldn't be more grateful for. She reminded me that the Savior and his Atonement are the key to my healing process. I know that He is there for me in this capacity, but sometimes it is so difficult to believe that he can do, and does, all of this just for me. I still doesn't seem real that I can be this blessed.

I found this whole week to be a tearful one, though not an overly sad one. I also had a great, tearful (imagine that) conversation with a dear aunt. She has always been an example to me of the how to live the gospel. In fact, I have often referred to her in visiting teaching messages of how we need to teach kids the gospel. I am convinced that her 10 & 8-yr-old daughters (?) know more about the gospel than I do.

She shared with me that she put my name in the temple this last weekend. While that is always a thoughtful thing to do, I was especially touched because the buzz among my family is how well I seem to be doing. And I am! Really. But that doesn't mean that I don't still face difficult things and need all the help I can get. I am so grateful to her for being in tune with the Spirit and including me when it looks like I may not need it.

And I love her for crying with me. How true of a friend is that...

I ended this week by watching Eat Pray Love and oh my goodness! You'll never believe what I did during that movie... There were so many things that resonated with my soul. I couldn't keep enough tissues around. While the chick flick thing is kinda silly, I actually feel like it helped bring some things to the surface that I needed to be reminded of or look at from a slightly different angle. Yay for good tears!

I do feel that it is important that we share our struggles. There is healing in doing so, as well as a great bond that develops when we allow others in. However, please don't think that I cried all week. I had plenty of time to go to Zumba, go salsa dancing, and hang out with two of my favorite little people. I'm in a growing place.

*****

"Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. That's what momma always says. She says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will..." -- Hope Floats

"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." -- Eat Pray Love

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."-- Eat Pray Love

"I remember an old catholic joke about a man who spent his whole life going to a church every day and prayed to the statue of a great saint begging "please, please, please, let me win the lottery." Finally the exasperated statue comes to life and looks down at the begging man and says "my son, please, please, please, buy a ticket." So now I get the joke, and I bought three tickets." -- Eat Pray Love

Nourish

As I mentioned in a previous post, last year I outlined monthly goals for myself as inspired by Gretchin Rubin.  I've pieced together this year's goals and I've decided to focus on nourishing myself this month. I want to take extra good care of myself so I can heal and grow. This might mean going to the gym for a good workout, hanging out with a friend, taking a long nap or watching 500 Days of Summer by myself for the nth time. I've also taken the time to make myself some decent meals, in between my spurts of toast and cereal. But allowing myself to grow isn't always pleasant, which is why I'm also taking a dreadful math class to keep pushing me toward a degree. And sometimes you have to allow yourself to sit there a bit and feel the sadness. Running from it can be tempting.

I feel like having goals is especially important this year, as I'm living life as a single person now. This change in marital status often brings about a change or renewal in goals and priorities. It has definitely renewed my desire to be a better person and live life more fully.

Because Sometimes Life Breaks Your Heart

There aren't good or funny introductions for this kind of thing, but Zach and I are divorced. And I don't know what to say about it, other than the fact that I've grown a lot through the experience.

I can, however, share some of the things I've learned:

I'm stronger than I think.
I have a lot of supportive people around me.
We have a loving god.
I can have fun by myself.
I can enjoy my life on my own... and still look forward to enjoying it with someone else.

I'm in a place of peace. The heartache has mostly passed.