New Year's new word

I'll be honest, I'm a little bit sad to see 2013 end. It was such a great year for me (minus a few key events, but whatev). Saying goodbye to my college days also feels like saying goodbye to my traveling days and my fun summers, so I'm having this pessimistic attitude toward 2014 (not to mention the rest of my life in general). I realize how silly that is, but it's there nonetheless. I also recognize this weird phobia I have that my awesome life is going to all of a sudden stop being awesome and that Heavenly Father is going to stop blessing and guiding me, but knowing that doesn't rid me of my irrational fears so easily. 

Luckily, I was recently introduced to this talk by Elder Holland called "An High Priest of Good Things to Come." I'm sure you've seen the Mormon Message that derives from the talk--I think I've seen that one more than any other, but I was shocked to find that I'd never read the original talk. Fail. Elder Holland always knows how to put us in our place, doesn't he? In response to my pessimistic outlook: "Even as the Lord avoids sugary rhetoric, He rebukes faithlessness and He deplores pessimism." Yep. His main point was about looking to the future with faith and having hope in good things yet to come. "Every one of us has times when we need to know things will get better. Moroni spoke of it in the Book of Mormon as 'hope for a better world' (I'm calling it my "hope for a better year"). For emotional health and spiritual stamina, everyone needs to be able to look forward to some respite, to something pleasant and renewing and hopeful." 

I think the bulk of my hesitancy-to-move-into-the-next-year attitude stems from the fact that I have nothing solid to look forward to anymore. My future is wide open. No upcoming events or trips or special occasions or anything. But the point that Elder Holland makes here is that because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can always have that hope of good things to come. So even if I don't see what's on the horizon of my life, I can confidently trust that there are indeed good things ahead.  

As always, Christ is the perfect example of faith in the future: "Nothing could break His faith in His Father's plan or His Father's promises. Even in those darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on, continuing to trust in the very God whom He momentarily feared had forsaken Him. . . . Because Christ's eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him."

So I guess the lesson here is that I need to fix my eyes on the future, and trust that Heavenly Father has promised me lots of things that are yet to happen but will still really happen. I need to remember that "there is help and happiness ahead--a lot of it," and like Elder Holland, I need to remember to "thank my Father in Heaven for His goodness past, present, and future." He has been SO good to me. He is so good to me. And I know He'll continue to be good to me. 

Alright. Faith in 2014. Ready, go. With that in mind, I was thinking about how one of my friends chooses one word at the end of each year to describes that year. As I was thinking about assigning words to years retroactively, I decided that this year I'd assign 2014 a word just as it was getting started, in part to help overcome my pessimism. 

So I was reading through this scrapbooking magazine at work (gotta keep up-to-date with the competition, you know), and one of the pages was all about New Year's resolutions, but every resolution started with "I intend." I loved this little phrase she had written at the end: "Continuing the intention to live the length and width." I just love that. Maybe because it sounds so scriptural, I don't know. I really want to want to live my life, and to have it have a length and a width large enough to make it worthwhile. I want a life that I love. Don't get me wrong--I love my life already, but I just want to ensure that it stays that way. So with that as my inspiration, I sat down to think about the word that would help me have that kind of life. 

In my brainstorming, I threw around words and phrases like "live it up" (obviously I got really creative here--not), "enough," "do it," "own it," "active," "abundantly" (I had to throw an adverb in there)... None of them seemed quite right. I thought more about it, tried to visualize what I wanted this year to be like, and finally settled on one that fit: create. 

Now I'm not sure if I just chose that because I work for a scrapbook company and creating things is basically what that industry is all about, but I just love every connotation of it. I don't think awesome opportunities are going to fall in my lap anymore--at least not as often as they did in college. I'm going to have to create the life I want instead of waiting around for it to just happen. So this year, that's what I'm going to do:

Create friendships; create lasting relationships. 

Create travel opportunities, even if they don't take me very far from home. 

Create a more healthy body. 

Create more interesting thoughts by reading more, writing more, and spending less time wasting time. 

Create a budget. Yeah.

Create a more spiritual climate in my life, in my room, in my soul.

Create a life worth living. A life I'd choose to live.

After I chose my new word for 2014, I remembered this talk that President Uchtdorf gave a few years ago called "Happiness, Your Heritage." He talks about how the greatest happiness is God's happiness. Understanding God's happiness isn't exactly the most straightforward concept to grasp, however, since His ways are not our ways. But, as Pres. Uchtdorf points out, He is able to accomplish His goals of bringing to pass man's immortality and eternal life because of two things: He is a God of creation and compassion. "Creating and being compassionate are two objectives that contribute to our Heavenly Father's perfect happiness. Creating and being compassionate are two activities that we as His spirit children can and should emulate." So, I guess I need to add "be compassionate" to my list of goals. Seriously something I always need to work on. 

He also gave some encouraging words on what exactly it means to create: "The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano (which is good because I'm not really all that artistic). Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before--colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter." 

To go along with that, and not to get all P.S. I Love You on you or anything, but I love this idea about what it means to create something: "Just create something... new, and there it is, and it's you, out in the world, outside of you, and you can look at it, or hear it, or read it, or feel it, and you know a little more about you. A little bit more than anyone else does."  

And of course, "The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come."

So here's to creating a life I'd choose to live, even if it weren't my own. Here's to creating a belief that I can make my life just as fulfilling as I'd like it to be! Here's to creating 2014. 

I hope it's a good one for you, too :)

Ode to my house

Today I said goodbye to a very dear friend who has been with me for almost 23 years and has seen me through, well, everything. Playing Nintendo with my older brother, my sister and I asking each other if we were still awake while going to sleep in our bunk beds, having sock-throwing battles in my older sisters' room, hiding on top of the fridge during hide-and-seek, counting down til we could wake our parents on Christmas morning, playing in the out-of-control weeds in the backyard, jumping on the tramp and breaking my finger, leaving and returning from various adventures near and far, sneaking out my window to go hang out with *cough* (boy) friends, crying from growing pains and heartbreaks, laughing hysterically, tripping up and down the stairs almost every time, painting the walls, growing up and moving out. You get the idea.

I love that because we took the shelf that my grandpa built for my room, there remains the record of the evolution of my room: from my purple, butterfly-bordered middle school days to now.

Mindy lived here.

My mom left the heart-shaped wreath on the door, "as a symbol that we love this house."

So, dear friend, I will miss you. I'm trying to focus on all the wonderful, happy memories I have with you and not think about how sad I am to not be able to create new ones. I'm so grateful to have been able to call you home for so long. Farewell.

2013: year in review

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your 2013 was as awesome as mine was. Here's to an amazing 2014! It's gonna take a lot to live up to last year though.

Voilà my year in review:

Pick me!

Last night I had a dream that I was sending out my résumé to guys on this online dating site... Troubling? A little bit. 

Obviously I've been doing too much of both of those. But this morning I realized that it's basically the same thing, and here's why:

Trying to convince potential husbands that I'd make a good wife. Uh... I'm cute? Strong testimony! So fun! And I'm out. (Is the lack of "I love cooking" tidbit on there that glaringly obvious?)

vs. 

Trying to convince potential employers that I'd make a good employee. Uh... I'm a hard worker? I can edit like nobody's business. And yeah... pick me? My résumé is pretty cute; I'm pretty much banking on that. (Although, again, it's lacking, in the HTML/marketing experience. Oh well.)

Both with subtle undertones of...

So, yeah. I'm to that exact point in my life where I need either a job or a husband. Preferably both. So if you have any leads on either front, let me know!

Because, you know, I'm a Mormon.

So I just updated my mormon.org profile. I figured it was about time, since I first created it when I had just returned home from my mission three years ago and basically nothing about my life is the same anymore. Except, you know, what I believe. 

So... yeah. Go ahead and click on my new "I'm a Mormon" button right there. Right. To the right. Right there. 

If by chance you aren't Mormon (otherwise known as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), you can check out what we believe at mormon.org (go figure, right?). And if you ARE a Mormon, you should go set up your "I'm a Mormon" profile! And if you are a Mormon and already have a profile, good job! :)

Good for my soul

The other day at work, my next-door desk neighbor and I were looking over an article about Moses (yes, this is what working at the Church magazines entails. It's awesome). We were both shocked to discover how much we didn't know about this snake staff-wielding, Red Sea-parting, burning bush-seeing prophet, like the fact that he fled Egypt after killing someone. What the heck? That wasn't in any movie I ever saw about Moses. I mean, I'm sure he had a good, Nephi-like reason for doing it that's not recorded in the scriptures, whatever. It's not shaking my testimony or anything, but I was stunned that I had never even heard of what seems like kind of a big detail, and I consider myself to be fairly scripturally literate. 

So naturally, I decided that it was high time to read the Old Testament. I have always thought of this as a relatively impossible task, and granted I'm only at the end of Genesis so I still have a long way to go, but I just feel that this daily reading has been so good for my soul.

From what I've read so far, the Old Testament seems to be largely about Jehovah keeping His promises—even (and especially) those crazy, how-on-earth-could-that-possibly-ever-happen promises. Which is good for me because I'm waiting on a couple of those.   

I've read most of these scriptures before, but stringing them all together like this just gives me more faith in the power of God's promises.  

Genesis 30:22, "and God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her."

Genesis 28:16, "and Jacob awakened out of his sleep and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not."

Genesis 25:21, "And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived."

Genesis 21:2, 6, "For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him (see Gen. 18:10, "And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son."). 

". . . And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me."

Genesis 18:14, "Is any thing too hard for the Lord? 

At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son."

Genesis 15:6, "And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness."

Love it!

What themes have you seen in the Old Testament? Let me know now before I get too far in and miss them all!

The most ironic picture of my life

Let's do a little throwback here, to a Halloween of yesteryear. It's 2006, and I am a sophomore in college, living with five of my very best friends in the world. I am also engaged, so naturally when my roommates and I make up our "marriage order prediction" list, I am number 1. Hence the picture. You can see here my painted pumpkin-bride. It's clear what was on my mind. I'm pretty sure it was my fiancé who took the picture even.

Seven years later, and this picture kind of haunts me. Only a few months after it was taken, my fiancé and I broke up, and my roommates systematically began getting engaged and married, one by one. And I had a horrible on-again-off-again with the ex-fiancé for years and years afterward. Yeah. Painful.

So here's the thing. When I was in high school (or really, I guess as soon as I started thinking about it), I always had this idea that whoever was prettiest and skinniest would get married first. So I was psyched to be the first one out of all my pretty, skinny roommates to tie the knot. 

Well, that knot was not to be, and for years afterward I thought, "well of course. Naturally! How could I be the first one to get married? I'm neither the prettiest nor the skinniest. I was doomed from the get-go."

I have since realized the ridiculousness of that train of thought. Logically I recognize that there are people less attractive and fatter than me who have successfully gotten married, but somehow it's still something I struggle with. Why else wouldn't I be married by now? (Sorry if this post is beginning to sound a lot like this one.)

Does anyone else feel like perfection is a prerequisite to marriage? Or is that just me? For far too long I've been listening to that voice that tells me that I'm just not good enough to be married. I'm learning, little by little, to not heed that voice. But it's hard. And I think of that picture and that pumpkin and how I never thought I would get married, so I was incredulous when it was happening and then had to revel in my self-fulfilled prophecy when it didn't work out. 

I so often have to pray, "help thou my unbelief," because honestly, I still just don't really believe that it's going to happen. How could it? I'll never be good enough, pretty enough, skinny enough--especially to satisfy someone who fits my picky qualifications. 

I just think there is something eternally ironic in that painted pumpkin of mine. Marriage: my ever-elusive attainment. Despite how much I think of that pumpkin and how it seems to mock me and feed my insecurities, I will keep reminding myself that for whatever reason, I needed to go through those experiences. And I will keep reminding myself what an awesome, way-better-than-if-I'd-have-gotten-married-then life I've had so far. So many experiences have made me never regret that it didn't work out. 

Hope has become my new mantra in the face of my unbelief, especially as other serious relationships have come about and also ended painfully. I will continue to place my hope in my Savior and my Father in Heaven, knowing that they will bring every good gift and blessing into my life; that they will guide my future as they have the past. And my past has included some freaking awesome things.

If only I hadn't ever painted that dang pumpkin.