Ready, set, real life.

Wow. I feel like I have to much to say about this momentous occasion. Last Wednesday morning, I sat in my apartment and finished my last final--ironically a take-home one that I did in my pajamas. I didn't even have one single final this semester in the testing center! Weird. 

So I finished the final and turned on the radio and told myself that the next song that came on would be my finished-with-my-last-final theme song. The winner? "Paper and Ink" by Tracy Chapman. Some key lyrics that help convince me it was meant to be:

"money's only paper, only ink" (allusion to my imminent and very poor future?)

"the world we know will fall piece by piece" (um... does life go on after being a student for so many years?)

"sat down up close to the colored black hole" (yeah, sounds like the scary abyss of an unknown future)

"faced towards the sea, looked to heaven up above, felt the world revolve around me, no one could tell me otherwise. but the turbulent waters won't reflect this life, only the sun, the moon, and sky, and all illusions shattered." So... real life, eh? It does kind of make me dizzy to think about.

The other thing that kept coming to mind was this scene:

RORY: Ah man, you guys are almost done packing up your stuff?

PARIS: Getting there.

RORY: Can you believe we graduate tomorrow? I can't believe it. I can't wrap my mind around it.

PARIS: Oh, you're not gonna start getting sentimental already, are you?

RORY: That wasn't sentimental. That was incredulous. I'm allowed to be incredulous. I mean, can you believe it?

PARIS: Ah yeah, I can, actually. I checked out of this place the second I got into Harvard. I never get tired of saying that.

RORY: Well, I can't believe it, and I intend to savor every moment of it.

PARIS: Well, savor while you spackle.

Anyway, incredulity aside, the day I never thought would come actually did! Funny how that happens. 

At first I thought it was weird that BYU does two days of graduation, but I actually really liked it. I think I got to see everyone I wanted to see over the two-day period, and plus, you can't really have too many pictures from graduation, can you? 

Proof:

Day 1, Commencement

 Me with my cute friend Emma:

 My best commuting buddy, Lynzi. I don't know how I would have survived Utah's public transportation system without this girl!

 I think this picture perfectly sums up what I look like every time I'm with Lynzi: laughing.

 With the bestie!

 I got this sneaky pic of them (President Samuelson and Elder Perry) as they were watching all the graduates walk in. 

 One of my favorite photos from the day:

 I made Laurel take the same one:

 Miles was really maintaining the dignity. 

 Woot! C'est moi!

 We are so cute.

Couldn't they have found blue flowers? 

 Cec.

 Elder Perry:

I loved how he talked to us about having a balanced life. I think it was exactly what I needed to hear. 

Taking advantage of the great light:

 Love these girls. 

 Remember how on our mission, we took a whole lot of jumping pictures and got our bags stolen? Good times. No one stole our bags this time :)

 Editing friend, Audrey. One day you'll see this girl's name on the masthead of Teen Vogue or some equally fabulous magazine. Mark my words :)

By the way, this is what happens when you give your camera to other people:

 Or maybe it's just a younger sibling thing...

Day 2, Convocation

Waiting in line:

 Doesn't that guy behind me look thrilled to be there?

Here I am with a lot of my ELang friends. We always had a fun time in our classes!

 So Michael and I were maybe the only Frenchies who didn't get their degrees in French--dang those double majors! Michael's primary major was Spanish; mine English language. But we still did all the work for the French major, promise! We just didn't get to sit with everyone else...

Harms and Holli: Notice that they hadn't walked yet, which is why my tassel is on the "graduated" side and theirs aren't. Also, the different colors are for their bachelor of science degrees as opposed to my bachelor of arts. 

 These two making the same laughing face. Too bad that couple in the background ruined the picture.

 Two of my favorite people on this planet. 

 The classic pictures-in-front-of-that-sign-on-the-corner-of-campus: Courtesy of Gavin, my pictureman for the day. Didn't he do a great job? I love the sparkle from the tassel :)

 With the parents:

 And, since I don't have a husband but needed the picture...

 As we were walking away, I realized that the sign on the other side of the street has different words! (BYU's other motto.) So naturally, we had to cross over and take a picture in front of this one, too.

So, yeah. No more school. Still blowing my mind. 

Really, I am so so so grateful that I was able to attend such an amazing university. Thinking too hard about it right now makes me tear up, even. Where else could you go to get such an amazing education that ties in the gospel every day? I feel like I have really been able to make the world my campus, and I will continue to do so, but this campus will forever hold a special place in my heart. 

So proud to be a BYU alumna! 

Madame Emma

Have you ever met someone and you knew right away that you were going to be good friends? That's how I feel about Madame Bovary--the book, not the person. 

I'm not sure what it is about this book, but I just love it so much. I might need to read it in English, however, to be sure. Some of the more salacious parts may have gotten lost in the French for me; not sure. 

Anyway, to sum up, the story is about this guy, Charles Bovary. His first wife dies and he remarries this farm girl, Emma. She is obsessed with reading and loves the adventure and excitement of the kind of love she reads about. Basically she is just unbelievably disappointed with her boring, empty life (not to mention her boring, empty husband). She tries to spice up her life with fashion, men, and even religion, but she ends up ruining not only her life but also her husband's and child's.
 

It really is just the best story about being dissatisfied with what you have--no matter what--that I've ever read. 

So you should read it. And if you have read it, I'd love to discuss it with you. I'd also love to write a couple more research papers on it. Random, much?

I don't know about you...

But I'm feeling 22.

Yeah, I think this might have been the birthday where I stopped feeling like I'm 21. I don't know if it's because that's how old I was when I left on my mission, but for a few years now (okay, more than a few) I've felt stuck at 21. Not that it's not a great year to be stuck at, but it's time to grow up, I guess. Maybe it's just the fact that this birthday is compounded with my impending graduation... Either way.

It was a great birthday. I forgot to take a picture, but I was treated to a wonderful birthday breakfast by my bestie and her hubby--what a great way to start the day!

I got to go to dinner with these great friends:

And got this amazing free dessert (that I had to pretend like I ate any of to fake out the waiter):

On Sunday we had my family birthday party.
These two are just too adorable (plus Chelz--she's adorable too!).
Paisley is saying "Hi!"

Grandpa throwing the kids on to the bounce house. It's only a matter of time until he breaks someone's arm.

Cute girls!

Best dad in the world, right?

Here's to being, as my nephew Logan said, "twenty-something!"

It's going to be a great year. In the words of T-swizzle: 

"happy, free, confused, and lonely in the best way. It's miserable and magical."

everyday missionaries

This week was awesome! (Besides those two horrible papers I wrote in like two days... 17 pages of quality French, I'll telling you.) But other than that, there were definitely a few highlights. Stake conference, which just got over, was one of them, but this week I also got to go to a fireside with Clayton Christensen. 

For those of you who don't work at BYU Magazine and haven't already heard his life story (watch for a feature on him in the upcoming issue), he's basically like the smartest guy in the world. Like, voted the best business management thinker. in. the. world. nbd. He teaches business at Harvard and also happens to be an awesome member missionary. I've been meaning to read his book (or I've heard this one is also excellent), but luckily he came to talk to us about that very topic: everyday missionaries. 

So I thought I would share his words of wisdom and tips on being an everyday missionary. 

He basically just shared 4 principles, along with stories that illustrated those principles. The principles are so simple, but sometimes it's the simplicity of things that makes us overlook them. And really, member missionary strategies from the best innovative thinker in the world? Might be useful stuff. 

#1
You never know who's going to accept the gospel, so you have to offer it to everyone.

He shared his and his wife's experience of having this list of 12 people with whom they were going to share the gospel, and none of them accepted. One day the missionaries came by and asked if they knew of anyone else, and they mentioned this couple they knew in their neighborhood, but said that it would be a waste of their time because they would never ever be interested. Two baptisms later...

#2
People who have questions are religious people.

Just because someone doesn't go to church doesn't mean they aren't interested in religion. In fact, some people who have rejected religion have simply rejected what wasn't the truth! Which is a good thing! He talked about this pastor guy who said he couldn't believe in God anymore, and when asked to describe God, he gave a definition completely unlike the LDS doctrine of who God is. So really, this guy wasn't rejecting God--he was rejecting the false idea of God, which, sadly, in his case was all he knew.

He also talked about this guy who had had all these questions and finally had given up on religion when none could answer them. Bro. Christensen invited him to talk with the missionaries, and one by one, they answered all his questions. He also gave him a Book of Mormon and an assignment to find the answers to his own questions (the next time Bro. Christensen met with the guy, he told him one of his questions was: "Why is God upset about infant baptisms?" [or something to that effect], and the answer he'd found for himself: "Because it trivializes the Atonement of Jesus Christ." Whaaaa. Yeah. He found that all by himself.). Got baptized...

So Bro. Christensen's tip here was just to use "Mormon words" when talking with people (ward, church, institute, seminary, young women's, etc.). If they are interested, they will pick up on that and start asking questions. 

#3
Here Bro. Christensen explained a principle of marketing (those suckers at Harvard business school who have to pay thousands of dollars to hear this, and we got it for free! haha), that a product won't sell unless it gets a job done.

So sometimes we try to tell people that they need the gospel, but they don't see what need that will fulfill in their own lives. However, people need to feel needed, so by turning the tables and finding out how the Church needs their help, they can find fulfillment. He told the story about this guy that his dad home taught who wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Church. One day, the roof of some building got blown off, and the elder's quorum needed volunteers to help fix it. Well, the dad went to ask this guy, who happened to be a roofer, for his help. He said, "I don't want you to ever come to church, but we need your help with this roof." So the guy came and helped and felt so good afterward that he started coming back to church. 

One time he asked one of his neighbors to help him carry an old fridge out of his home teachee's basement. The guy was like, "so tell me about Mormonism." And as they were lugging this 200-pound cast iron fridge up a flight of stairs, Bro. Christensen replied, "This is basically it." haha!

Another example was that of a sister asking a non-member friend to come teach her primary lesson about the good samaritan. The friend felt the spirit during church and was happy to have been able to help. She told the sister to call her whenever she needed help.

And finally, one sister whose calling was "bread coordinator" claimed that she couldn't possibly need any help with her calling--she bought the bread and brought the bread. Period. But she started asking non-member friends if they had any good bread recipes. After explaining the importance of the bread and water of the sacrament, she'd ask them to come over on Saturdays and help her make the bread.

Bata-bing. When people feel needed, they suddenly feel that connect of "getting the job done."

#4
We succeed when we invite. He said something here that blew my mind. He said that if we don't invite people to learn about the gospel, it's like we are exercising their agency on their behalf. So even if they don't accept, we succeed in offering it to them.


So there you go. Clayton Christensen's secrets to successful member missionary work.
Ready, set, go!

Sleepover!

 It turns out that sleepovers with your best friend are still fun, even if she is married! Laurel and Phil were kind enough to let me crash on their pull-out couch for a couple nights so I didn't have to drive up and down two hours every day (my bus/train pass expired last week, and it's not worth it to buy another one for only a week and a half!). 

I was happy I did, because we were able to celebrate the last day of our undergraduate careers together:

(Yes I chose my outfit on purpose for my last day. Yay BYU!

and yes, I stole this picture from her blog.)

 And I got to feel like I was on a little vacation for a few nights:

 Thanks, Laurel and Phil, for taking pity on me!

All the rules will be fair

So if you are currently in my ward, you can probably skip this post, since it's basically what I said in fast and testimony meeting last week. But I felt the need to share this with those who weren't lucky enough to be there in person ;)

A friend and I are excited to be going to Women's Conference in a couple weeks, down at BYU. We decided that because there are so many classes, we would go through and choose which ones we wanted to attend and then go over our top choices together to see if there are any that overlap. So I was reading through the class descriptions for the ones I'd narrowed it down to, and then reading the little bios of the presenters. Most of them were pretty basic, but then I came across this one:

"Former president of Young Single Adult stake Relief Society; wife; mother;
firm believer that the Lord never cheats anyone."

I read that and just burst into tears. (Granted, there may have been some mood-altering hormonal issues going on at the time, but still.) That phrase just hit me like a ton of bricks. Now, lest you think I go around every day thinking that the Lord is cheating me, let me say: I've never actually even thought about my lack-of-blessings(read:husband&kids)-that-everyone-else-seems-to-have situation in those terms, but reading that little phrase made me wonder if deep down I have been feeling like that. Luckily I didn't realize it before I had this experience and discovered that I 100% share this woman's belief. 

Going along with that, I keep thinking of this quote from General Conference. Definitely one of my favorites (quotes AND talks!) (by the way, check out the conference highlights here! SO great!). It was from Elder Cook's talk about peace.
He said (quoting Ugo Betti, an Italian judge and author),

"To believe in God is to know that all the rules will be fair
and that there will be wonderful surprises."

(And also, from Elder Nelson: "Our living God is a loving God.")

Deuteronomy 32:4 "He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."

2 Samuel 22:31, 33 "As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is tried . . . God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect."

I just think already of all the wonderful surprises I have had in my life. How could I not believe in God?! His way, though I clearly don't often understand it completely, truly is perfect. It gets clearer and clearer all the time that He has a plan for all of our lives
 and that His plans are always infinitely better than our own.
So why should I ever complain, knowing that my life is in His hands?

Also, I just got my tentative summer itinerary for the internship I'm doing. Don't worry, I'll be traveling for about three and a half months to, oh, you know, San Diego, LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Denver, NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, North & South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Chicago, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Arizona. So if you're in one of those places, hopefully I can stop by and see you this summer!!

What a wonderful surprise!!
How's that for the Lord not cheating me?

The word that cometh forth from the Lord

 As a missionary, I taught a lot of people about the importance of having a living prophet on the earth. Think about it for a minute--why would God have sent prophets like Moses and Noah to the earth in ancient times and then just leave us here by ourselves? We need direction and guidance just as much, if not more, than those people did. And luckily for us, we have a wonderfully loving Heavenly Father who has sent us that guidance. 

Twice a year we get to hear from our prophet and the apostles. I am so happy to belong to a Church whose organization is not only the same as in Christ's primitive church, but is also still led today by Him. 

I wanted to share one of my favorite scriptures about prophets. It's from Ezekiel 33:

Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 

Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:

If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;

Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. 

He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

...

So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.

Basically the Lord is telling us here that He has a watchman in the tower already: the prophet (and by extension the apostles and other general authorities of the Church). He is there to warn us of things to come and help us prepare for trials ahead.

...

Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh from the Lord.

I love that. In Doctrine & Covenants 1:38, it says, "What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same." So when we listen to the voice of His servants, we are really listening to His voice.

This scripture in Ezekiel goes on to talk about people who will say things like that ("Come, I pray you, and hear...") but then they won't really pay attention. People who hear the words but "do them not." And then it says:

And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.

So what I'm telling you is that a prophet is among us. And he's speaking to us today and tomorrow in the general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

And you should watch.

On happiness

So I'm going to say something here, and I hope it doesn't make me seem as weird as I think it will. That said... Sometimes I see pictures of myself looking so happy (see below), and over and over (this has happened quite a few times now), this one thought comes into my mind:

"Sometimes happiness is unfeigned."

Yeah, I know. I'm a freaking weirdo. Who thinks things like that? Me, apparently. Like, do I have a problem with faking being happy? Sometimes I'll fake laugh when not-so-funny people seem like they need a boost, but overall, I think that when I'm happy, I'm happy, and when I'm not, well, I'm not. When I was little I'm pretty sure my mom thought that I was like borderline bipolar because I would be either really really happy and excited or really sad and depressed. Somewhere along the way there it has somewhat evened out, but I still tend to think that my highs and lows exceed the normal range. 

Anyway, so happiness. I mean, not like it's hard to be happy when you are standing in Paris next to the Seine, eating a cookie/chocolate-flavored ice cream cone, wearing a cute outfit on a perfect summer day. Please.

 

However, life isn't all hanging-out-in-France-and-sunshine-and-eating-ice-cream (or so they tell me). Sometimes life is really hard and it's hard to even imagine that that kind of happiness even ever existed in your life.

It seems like I have been riding this happiness high for the last little while, and I've been trying to narrow down its source. It's definitely not my grades, since I recently got back the two lowest test scores of my life (nbd--graduating in 20 days!).

I really feel like it's boiling down to confidence. And I'm not just talking about the I'm-basically-the-cutest-person-I-know sort of confidence (which, I mean, come on), but really just knowing that despite all your weaknesses and shortcomings and straight-up sins, you are a great person. Me! I am a great person. Yes I make a million mistakes, and yes I am sometimes (read: often) mean and judgmental, but I'm trying. As always. Still trying. One day I'll succeed. And you know what? I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know that He takes away my sins and weaknesses when I repent and that He strengthens me with His saving grace. And that, my friends, is the true source of all confidence. 

Yesterday in Institute someone made a great comment about confidence and then the teacher asked where that confidence came from. He answered his own question: "Aligning our lives with the commandments of God" (I was expecting, "Aligning our will with Heavenly Father's." Pretty much the same thing). It may sound strange, but I really believe that's true. 

I found this quote from Elder Hoyos of the 70 from the October 2005 general conference:

"Happiness comes as a result of our obedience and our courage in always doing the will of God, even in the most difficult circumstances." So true.

Anyway, moral of the story is that when you try to align your life with the commandments, you gain confidence. And with that confidence comes happiness. 

And truly, sometimes happiness is unfeigned.

Soul roommates

So this morning I drank the last of Megan's orange juice. I told her I'd buy her more, so I go to the store and almost bought the regular kind (that she'd had), but then the mango kind caught my eye and I got that instead. 

Came home and took a nap and got a text from Megan: "bought some oj." When I woke up she wasn't home, but I go and open the fridge, and lo and behold...

Yep. Same person.

But seriously.

We just might be the cutest sisters in matching Easter dresses ever.

Am I right?