Dear Generation

We live in a time where some of the tends, beliefs and styles of living sometimes go contrary to what will truly make us happy. We live in a day when people become scared of saying anything that may offend someone or that may be taken to personally. But I also know that if we cannot learn to stand up for what means the most to us the morality of the world we live in will far apart to shambles. Now is the time that we need brave people, now is the time we need people to stand up not shrink in their fear.

The first thing I want to address is our demand for now. I feel like patience is becoming a virtue of the past because we need it so little to get what we want, or think we want. With technological growth being as it is we always have something newer better, shiner and more attractive always on the way, most of the time before we are even ready for it. So of course we don't have to wait for something better, at least never for very long. Also with credit cards available to almost every class of people we no longer have a grasp on the concept that we will have more satisfaction in something that we have worked hard for, than something that we could just swipe a card for. Growth used to come not from getting what we wanted, but from traveling the road of patience and hard work that it took to get it. Now that road is almost nonexistent, no wonder we find so much disappointment in the things we sometimes think we want, we no longer have to work our butt off to get it.

Another thing is honesty. I feel like we live in a day of flattery and flirtation. The idea that at the end of the day it doesn't matter who we've lied to, just as long as they were flattered and happy by the time we ended the conversation. I very strongly feel that the way we treat others is a reflection of the way we look at our selves, and when we are lying to ourselves we have a hard time treating others honestly. There was a time that I looked in the mirror and told myself I was happy where I was at, I wanted to feel satisfied with myself rather than work hard to get to where I really would be happy. I don't believe that is an uncommon practice, in fact I think it's very frequent within our world today. I realized that I needed to be completely honest with myself, even if it hurt before I could handle my dealings with other people with complete honesty. There comes a time in life where either you choose to be honest with yourself and others or you will find yourself living a life of false securities, and vain delusions. When you realize that the only reason you focus so much on your body and material things is because you cannot look any deeper into yourself without disliking what you see.

There is so much I could say about things I've learned and observed in myself and the world around me. But the thing that started me writing today was actually Blame. The blame that people place on everything around them has been digging into me for a while, and I am seizing this moment to get it off my chest. I don't know how much we as a generation can better this world if we place the blame of problems going on in our society always on the heads of someone else. I'm not saying I never do this, or never have this problem, or even that there aren't people to blame. But I am saying that I have stepped back enough to know that it's a problem. There should come a day in everyone's  lives where you look in the mirror and realize that everything that you are and have been is because of you. Not your neighbor, not your bishop or anyone else. Yes there are times that what you have, or don't have is out of your hands. Sometimes tragedy strikes and you loose loved ones, homes, your physical health and many other plagues that prey on every person to have ever walked this earth. But who you become through those times is your choice, based on your actions, you steer your ship in the direction you choose, not matter the size of the waves that attack you in the storms of life. You can change the direction your life, and no one else can make that choice for you. Fact! You determine the end result of who you become, that lot has been given to you and never will be taken away. It's a gift to us from a father that loved us enough to entrust us with it. Yes you need others in your life to enlighten you and help you as you choose, and we all need the cleansing of the atonement that makes our lives possible. But we are responsible for our actions and no one else's. You can not manipulate control or demean people into changing, just as they can not control you. The faster we realize that the more effective, happy, and motivated we will feel. But you can not live the rest of your lives feeling like some of the ruts you get in are all someone else's fault, the more you place blame, the more stuck you get. You are the empowering person in your life. If you want to be happy, look at yourself and make that choice, because really it's in you hands, no one else can make you be happy.
We have wonderful lives of promise a head of us, but in today's world we desperately need people who are willing to stand up and stand out. We can't afford to fit in with the everyday average person, we don't average, we need extraordinary. Dear Generation I think we have the potential to be that. But we can not put on the worldly camouflage to just blend it. We NEED to be different. 

If you see yourself in rags

Ever since I graduated high school I have had a trickle, that seemed more like a stream of friends getting married. It's fantastic and I have been sincerely happy for them every time that things work out in their favor. This is an amazing and exciting time of life, there's so much to love, to look forward to, and so so very much be grateful for and celebrate.

What hasn't made as happy is the fact the I have felt like people look at me like I'm somehow faulty, or just behind schedule. In high school I was the girl that everyone thought would be married at eighteen, or nineteen considering that I'm an older one in my grade. I kind of knew at the time they were wrong, and sometimes I would inform them, sometimes I'd just let them flatter themselves in thinking they were dead on. Than wedding after wedding I was still single, which I was fine with, and when my older sister got married, in the line several people told me I had one year to get married. I figure this had to do with the fact that my older brother and sister got married within one year of each other. Now it's been three years since my sisters wedding. Three wonderful, and sometimes hard years. I have learned how to truly love but also accept heartbreak as a beautiful thing that enables you to love deeper than ever before.

But the more people looked at me expectantly the more I felt I was a disappointment to others, which was what was hard for me, the feeling that I had let others down was what killed me inside. They weren't disappointed, that was just my perception, but that perception started to cripple me. I wondered why I wasn't asked out more. I was told I was to picky, and I wasn't encouraging enough, I didn't touch a guys elbow enough when I was interested in him, which was ludicrous to me, but that tiny sliver of doubt crept into my mind that started to paralyze me. People always said never give up on your dreams and never settle for less than what you truly want, but I had already given up on myself. I was struggling with depression, which  didn't help things and when I finally decided I needed help and was diagnosed medication didn't help, it just eased the stress I felt inside.

Well here it is 1:01 in the morning I'm crying on my bed finally realizing that I am fine, in fact I am great. I finally am realizing that nobodies been disappointed by me except for Satan because he's realizing I am not his, I have bought with a price and I am a daughter of an almighty Heavenly Father who loves me very much and has never for one moment been disappointed by my firmness in waiting for what I truly desire. This morning a friend of mine gave me a blog site for me to read, which I am finally getting around to reading. I think this realization had been setting in all day, and it finally just struck me, the one person that has been disappointed in me was me, and it was because I felt other must staple their admiration of me on to what I am able to accomplish, and when I got pounded for not going on a mission, and people started asking me if it was going to be me next to get married I figured they had to be disappointed. After all I was a beautiful young woman who was intelligent, and talented and able, why shouldn't I be able to attract a man to me, I started to feel like there must be something wrong with me. Well there's nothing wrong except that I am loving and patient with everyone but myself, why should I grant others my love and patience when I was destructively denying myself of what I have most needed : Love for me. Timing is essential in all of Gods finest masterpieces, why should my life be any different?

 If I want my life to reflect the purest beauties of God's wondrous works I need to realize he is guiding me, he is not disappointed, he loves me. He is eagerly waiting for me to be submissive to follow him to the unknown paths he has for me. I can see the doors he has opened for me in my past, and the doors he has started to open to me now, they are not typical doors, one would expect to open at my age, but they are beautiful, baring the detailed beauty of The Masters hand, a hand that has tenderly and lovingly carved out a beautiful future for me, because he is good, and he loves me. I see a door opening before that may change the lives of my children and generations after me. For the first time in a long time I am okay with where I am, and am excited for where I am going, I may never walk this way again, but I am so grateful I get to walk this way now, and I am not sorry for waiting, and learning to patiently accept that the lord knows where he is guiding me, and somewhere between my once upon a time, and happily ever after someone will find me, to have a to hold for forever. And I want him to find me singing happily as I work. There is a great work to do and workers are few.

I think for the first time this princess is seeing herself as a princess, instead of an orphan in rags (metaphorically) but moral is the same. If you see yourself in rags slaving away under the rule of a evil queen, how can you rejoice over the fact that you are a beautiful child to a wondrous king?

Motive

When I first started this blog sight I actually was just going to start a sight where I could have stuff about my family where relatives could come and check on whats going on with my family. I had no intention of making anything super personal just kind of fun side time filler. I find though that this blog has become very personal to me. As I have typed up insights and thoughts of my heart I have started dedicated the posts to my future children hoping that it will help them when they go through hard times to see what was going through my mind when I went through some of my hard times. More than that it has become a site of reflection for me too. I look back on things I've said and thought and I can see how far I've come. My motive has changed as I've done this, but I will never regret the blessings I have gained from keeping some of these thoughts in a place where they will never be lost. Even if I am the only one that reaps the benefits from this blog I am grateful I've done. I hope someday someone can gain at least one tenth of the insight from this site that I gained from typing it. If not I will never feel like I lost anything from doing it.

Compassion

It's amazing the things that will invoke in you a feeling of compassion, unexpectedly doors will open that originally you would have never thought to look inside. When you do look inside your eyes are opened to perspectives you didn't know existed. In the year since I have moved to Salt Lake City my life has been changed in ways I would have never expected before, and my eyes have been opened to concepts that I had never contemplated. I don't savor every memory I have made here, but I know every one of them can build me making me stronger for my future, even the things that I wish I could lock away. I have made decisions I haven't been proud of and I have made others that I know I will be grateful for, for the rest of my life.
But one of the greatest lessons I have learned is compassion, the desire to understand those who seem impossible to understand. I have learned to try to see that everyone does things for a reason, and chances are the reasons are more noble that we may first assume.
Humans are born with innate desire to love, and almost every persons actions are built in some way or another around that desire. When people lash out usually it's because they have been denied of that which is most essential to their life: Love. I don't know exactly what I have blind to all this time, but I have realized just how much people need to be loved, and how much people need to be excepted and supported, sometimes all people need is one person to believe in them for them to take flight.
I have also learned however that you should never allow yourself to be controlled or manipulated because you think that will show someone that they are cared for and loved. You never have to do that! You are less able to love yourself and in turn love others when you are controlled by others and circumstances. Love is not love unless it is accompanied by freedom, becoming a slave to someone else's desires is never a sign of love, it's a sign of selfishness.
It's hard finding a balance and as beings of passion we more often than not tend to go to the extremes in what we do. But I am truly understanding that it is by the small and simple things that great things are brought to pass. It is through small and simple acts that the greatest signs of love are reflected. In time I know our thoughts become our actions and I hope that regardless of my past, my thoughts will become the strength behind my actions.

Intertwined

Our lives are intertwined, who are we to say and determine where one life ends and another begins? Every life in some way flows into another, every life affects another in some significant way. No life is singly lived, or ever should be. Our lives are like a tapestry each thread woven into another, and each life part of a bigger picture. The minute you start clipping strings, and ripping threads you start loosing the bigger picture and things start to fall apart. We need each of those around us for the larger picture to be meaningful. And to attempt to live life singly and separated from those around us leaves life meaningless, with little color and in pieces.
~Carrie Cox

Human Complexity

Human complexity is something that over the last little while of my life I have been observing, and analyzing. People aren't just one soul of simple purpose and meaning, but I'm starting to realize that they are hundreds of pieces of all of the souls that have contributed to who they are. The reason that it is impossible for us as mortals to judge anyone is because there is so much complexity to each individual and the moments to their life than we can ever understand. Like a detailed painting we each have strokes of all of the colors of life, which colors we focus on is up to us, but the colors are still there.
There are so many complex emotions within each individual that it is impossible to make a judgement of character just based on one encounter, but's only after a life of encounter that you begin to even glimpse the depth to who someone is. It takes tears and laughter and awkward silence and moments of comfortable flowing conversation, silent communication across the room knowing your both saying the same thing in your hearts. Some communication isn't even described with words but with the emotion you feel in someone presence.
There is so much to people that goes unknown, but I do believe there is no such thing as an all good person, or an all bad one, there are tiny pieces of good in the worst of people, and there is a tug of temptation even in the strongest people. And everyone has moments of weakness when they become the thing they fear the most, even if only for a moment, whether or not they stay that way is completely up to them. But I know that I cannot judge someone based on that moment of weakness, because I have the same capability to fall the same distance if I am to proud to take note of the path I choose to walk on.
People are capable of giving love if only someone will take the time to show them they love there is to give. You can not judge the loveless soul that was never taught to love, especially if we are just another person denying them of that love. I don't always understand people and I won't pretend that I do, but what I do know is that it's the tiny and unnoticed details that make the most breathtaking pictures. And I believe that people are the same

Learn to Dream

    I testify to you of the power of the Atonement, I  know that as long as your doing the best that you possibly can the lord make up the difference. No matter how big the difference, we were not sent to this earth to earn our fathers love, but to learn of his love and what he will do for us when he can't be there right by our side. We already have his love, it ours, because he is our father and we are his children. I testify that Christ is my friend and he is yours too, and he loves each and everyone of us. I testify that we have a loving Heavenly Father watching over us, and he patiently stands by waiting for the day that he can answer everyone one of our dreams. But first we have to learn to dream and to believe in them.
    The trick in life is not in learning to dream, dreaming comes as naturally as breathing, if we let it. Dreaming is what sometimes saves us from the complexity of this detailed existence. The trick comes in learning to believe in our dreams, and believing that there is a supreme being watching over us that loves us enough to want to make our dreams come true. The trick is believing. But once you learn to believe it is a powerful tool, it changes the way you live life, it changes the eyes through which you see life, and it changes the soul which you become in this life.
   

Doubt Not Only be Believing

The amazing thing about Moses and the Red Sea is that fact that when he had the impression to part the red sea he did not pause or hesitate he did not sit down and tell the lord that it was crazy or to hard, in a time full of pressure and faithlessness in those around him he simply believed. He knew that with God all things are possible, because he knew who he was and who he could become with the lords help. All things are possible not just the most practical. He believed and acted on that belief.

Doubt has been the precursor to every miracle that Almost happened whether in modern days or in biblical times. There was nothing about the parting of the Red Sea that was greater than the reformation of the church or even the small miracles that happen in each and every one of our lives. If you are listening to the still small voice, and believing in faith that you can do the things he is asking of you, you might as well be parting the Red Sea, because you are opening doors for others that until you had faith to follow the spirit had been powerfully locked. And if you can learn to have complete and unquestionable faith in God and his power in your life and through your life you might as well be the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground, because allegorically that is precisely what you were sent her for.

We are in the last days, we've been saved for the last leg of the journey, and the last siege of  this battle. In a day where the odds are so great against us we cannot afford to make those odds greater by doubting. Now is the time to have the faith to charge even when retreat seems to be the only option. We have a call, and we have power through the lord to do amazing things, all we need is to find the courage and belief to do them.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and ^athrust it into my side: and be not ^bfaithless, but ^cbelieving.
 "With God All things are possible! "

People May Not Hear

I have learned though the years that the words that go unwritten in time will become warped and twisted. People can use words as weapons against those who speak them, even when spoken in truth. In a world full of lawyers and attorneys people have learned to twist words to gain the result they desire no matter what the original intent was. If words go unwritten, they go undecided because there is no way to keep them solid and structured the way they once were if they are spoken and carried away in the winds of time. Something I've realized is People may not see the actions I do when they are not looking, and people may not hear some of the softer words I speak and in time, people may even forget the original message which I shared when they did hear me. I may not be able to show what I am feeling as well as I wish, But nobody can dispute the words that I write that contains the dynamic elements of my soul. People can never argue that the words that I write are not true to what I feel inside and who I am. For they are signed with the signature of my heart. And if people read my words seeking to understand who I am it is in my words they will find it. It is there in the signature of my soul. 

Reflections of Me

I though I would just take time to type up some of the things I love in life hoping that they are a proper representations of who I am inside.
I love silence that you hear while snow falls, I love the smell of crunching leaves during autumn. I love sunsets at the end of my hardest days, and at the end of my good days too. I like getting up early and watching the sunrise on my roof with my little brothers. I like the fresh feeling that floats through the air when spring is on the way, and I love the crisp feeling of autumn in the air. Autumn and Spring are my favorite seasons. Utah has gorgeous sunsets. I love the way I feel walking away from a wonderful fireside, and I love the softness you feel towards people when you take the time to have real in depth conversations and get to know each other. I like trying on shoes and bananas in my cheerios. I love butterfly kisses and bear hugs.
I like the taste of peppermint on my tongue, and although I don't like the dentist I love the feeling of clean healthy teeth. I like smiling and laughing and I love smiling even more, when I feel like smiling all day, just because I'm happy. I love the moment in the movies when the girl gets kissed by the guy deserves it most. I love curling up on the couch and watching a great movie with my family. I love listening to the end credit music and the end of movies, I like listening to all the details that added together make music feel like a beautiful invisible picture that you feel instead of seeing.
I love being lead by a guy that knows how to dancing, and I love it when listening to music makes my heart dance. I love that growing up my parents insisted on me learning how to play instruments, and while I was never a pro I learned to appreciate the beauty of music, and I can play the piano for the pleasure of feeling the key touch the tips of my fingers. I love the empowering moment when I nail something that I have been working at for a long time. I like playing beautiful expressive music that will touch hearts and I love singing at the top of my lung in my car when no one can care what I sound like.
I love that moment music expresses your emotion perfectly. I love proving the negative thinkers wrong and proving that I am what I want to be, not what they stereotype me as.
I like finding discounts and knowing that I can get good quality, I like sweaters hoodies and skirts. I love being able to dress up and feel like a lady. I love it when even when someone doesn't like you they respect you for who you are, and I love it when I find myself capable of doing the same.
I love that when I come home to visit I wake up to either childrens laughter or my family singing, I love going camping with my family and ending up with our little cocker spaniel wrapped around the top of my head, with her head on my shoulder. I like going to lake powell with my family and the random moments of insider jokes you remember. I love picking up the phone with my brother-in-law to hear him call me sunshine on the other line. I miss horses and I loved riding bareback and feeling the wind in my hair. I love waltzing gracefully to beautiful music although I haven't done it in years. I love it when I get a dance move just right after practicing over and over to get it that way.
I like fruit yogurt and pizza, and while I've always felt that I was a very independent person, I love knowing that there are people that are concerned and care for me. I like going home to well cooked meals. I like long talks with my family that are full of insight and upliftment.

I guess what really matters is that yes sometimes life stinks and sometimes it's hard, but in all the frustrating complexity I love it. I love my life and while I may not agree with everything going on in my country I love my country, it is beautiful and has a wonderful legacy. I love the gospel, and the insight it gives me. I love life and I hope that people can see my love for life and see it as a reflection of who I am.

On the Outskirts

One of the most important things to realize in life is that you may find contentment and comfort by staying within the safe bounds of your comfort zone, but it's not until you take a brave step outside of comfort that you find what you most yearn for. Yes you will find pain, yes you will feel insecurities, dark times and loneliness. You will stumble on faults and flaws, you will find traits existing inside your soul that you despise. More than anything you will be confronted with all your greatest doubts and fears. But what is greater than all of that, the thing greater than all the darkness that you can confront will be the light that you may find. Yes you are given the confrontation of evil, but more importantly you will find peace, confidence, faith and happiness. Yes the thing greater than all of the pacifying comfort the world could offer you is the light and joy you will surely find when you look past the darkness of the world and choose courage over doubt. The only place you will find joy and confidence (not only in yourself but also in your lord) is beyond the outskirts and boundaries of your comfort zone. You just have to find enough courage to take the step.