Aviator Glasses on My Face, Tambourine on My Head, and Confidence in My Heart

I've been thinking a lot about how I've changed over the past year. So far, I've come up with little to share, but I did dig up this beauty while cleaning. 

In eleventh grade, Ms. Sanderson, my favorite English teacher, assigned us to describe ourselves using this Mastercard ad. Hopefully it's big enough for you to catch the detail. I'm surprised at how little things have changed since then.

"I was not ever thus"

About a year ago, I spent an afternoon and an evening eating potatoes, chili, and strawberries; talking about heroes and causes; and arguing about capitalization. I knew that everything had changed. And it did. I spent the next week thinking about pink lemonade as an intervention tactic, which is still a thought that crosses my mind. I was not ever thus before.

I’ve been through some periods in my life of deep depression and discouragement, but nothing compared to what I’ve been through more recently. I was not ever thus before.

People often say that things heal with time. I’ve always thought that was true. It’s only a half truth though. Satan is the father of all lies, especially the ones that have some truth in them.

Yes, time dulls pain and makes us forget some things, but time alone has no power to heal. We can let time pass and try to forget our sins and pains, but they never go away unless we confront them with the power the Savior extends. True healing comes only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Time may be a component, but the changes and the lasting peace that accompanies real healing—those belong to Him. When we rely on His Atonement, then we can truly say, “I was not ever thus nor prayed that thou shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path but now, lead thou me on.”

What I will be

The little yellow kitchen in my little yellow house, 2010.

In a few weeks, I will walk; meaning, I will cross a stage and receive a fake diploma. I won't really graduate from Brigham Young University until August, and I'll finish my last class in June, but for all intensive purposes, I am finishing my last real semester of classes.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the thoughts and feelings attached to that. Some of them, I've pushed down pretty far, which is alright for the time being, because I cannot handle them right now.

I say that because the past few months have been marked by the deepest depression I've yet endured. I will not say that my entire time at BYU has been rough, but I will confess that much of my time at college has been really hard. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the biggest ones is that I often didn't know what exactly I wanted to become. Choosing a major and actually applying myself to learning often felt like a battle I could never win.

Finally, I found the editing minor, which combines many things I love. Even with that though, I still often find myself disliking the field. I do not succumb to these feelings though because I know God has given me gifts in this area and that I enjoy it most of the time. This is good enough for me, and I trust that He will open up opportunities to make good use of me as an editor and as a writer. A few weeks ago, someone challenged me, asking "Is editing really a good thing for you?" In essence, I replied firmly, "We are not opening up that can of doubt and fear again. I have made a choice, and I will make it good."

I often think of this talk from Elder Nelson about choosing an educational path and a career. He said:

A doctor’s ultimate destination is not in the hospital. For a lawyer, it is not in the courtroom. For a jet pilot, it is not in the cockpit of a Boeing 747. Each person’s chosen occupation is only a means to an end; it is not an end in itself. The end for which each of you should strive is to be the person that you can become—the person who God wants you to be. The day will come when your professional career will end. The career that you will have labored so hard to achieve—the work that will have supported you and your family—will one day be behind you. Then you will have learned this great lesson: much more important than what you do for a living is what kind of person you become. When you leave this frail existence, what you have become will matter most. Attributes such as “faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, [and] diligence” (D&C 4:6) will all be weighed in the Lord’s balance.

I wish I could say that during my time at BYU I have developed those attributes splendidly. I haven't, but I have made some good progress.

Even now, when faced with decisions about jobs and internships, I think I still don't know exactly what I want to be. The question I've been wrestling with all this time is still there, still bothering me.

But out of the depression I've been in lately, I've found a better question to ask: what kind of person do I want to be for my children? In many ways, I ask this in the same spirit that I ask God who He wants me to become. That's probably the more important question to ask, but I've found that phrasing it in terms of my children helps make it a bit more tangible.

My answer to this question is primarily that I want to be a woman of faith. I want to be a mother who knows. Those are my primary goals.

I also enjoy reflecting on the fun parts too. My mom likes to remind me that I will be a good mother someday because I am creative. I believe this is something I can use to make the world my children live in good and bright.

Dorothy Lee, a wonderful anthropologist who writes many good things about motherhood, says, "Motherhood is not a thing in itself, it is I who am a mother and I have to be myself first." She doesn't mean this comment in the sense that we have to go out and find ourselves in some grand external sphere to be mothers. Rather, her point is that what our children want is us. They want to know us as whole people with quirks and flaws and preferences.

I find that lovely. It also makes me want to be my best self—the one who writes good things, does not fear, and is fun. I can imagine that the day-to-day stresses of motherhood might threaten to dampen that spirit within us, but it certainly does not need to. In fact, those daily activities of eating, cleaning, sleeping, working, worshiping, and playing are exactly where our true selves lie. Knowing this makes me worry a lot less about what my degree says I am.

You know enough

When people think of Mormons, they often see us as a people bound up by rules. They might mistakenly think that our entire religion is a great list of dos and do nots. It's easy even for myself to start thinking that my relationship with God is based entirely on the commandments. I do know that God gives us commandments for our good, for our safety, and for our growth. However, His first commandment to us is to love Him. There must be faith, hope, and charity in our lives. Obeying His counsel helps us to develop those, but they are also conditions of the heart that we must choose to live with.

Moroni 10:23 says, "And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me." It is through our faith that Heavenly Father manifests His power in our lives. In the video below, Elder Neil Andersen talks about how this simple principle is at the heart of what we should focus on in our lives.

A Letter to the Mother with One Child

My first thought as I glanced at this article was jealousy that there are 601 comments on it. Then I read it. If all of those 601 comments are good and positive, Simcha Fisher deserves every one of them.

These are beautiful thoughts, which I agree with completely. (I wouldn't disagree as I don't have the credentials for that.) I wanted to share it with my readers, because I want to hear your thoughts as women, girls, inbetween those two, mothers, grandmothers, and even as men, boys, and fathers.

You can read the article here, http://www.ncregister.com/blog/to-the-mother-with-only-one-child. Then come back here and share some comments. What part of this resonates with you the most?

Here's what resonates with me: we have so many expectations of what we are capable of and of how things should feel. We are usually wrong: we are capable of everything, and there is always deep joy to be had somewhere.

I include this picture of my brother and me from about five years ago because this was a moment when we were deeply grateful for my mom, who tried to get us to win her a cake at the elementary school cake walk for twelve years, between the two of us. At the last time possible, we did it.

Remembering: Part two

Last night, Super brought me a piece of pumpkin pie that was thoroughly covered in whipping cream on ALL THREE SIDES! I love whipping cream, practically as much as I love him for bringing me pie. Sometimes, I forget how wonderful he is.

I tend to forget a lot of important things. Lately, I've been working on remembering what divine potential I have because I am a daughter of God. It's easy to forget that I can do hard things and I can do them well. It's easy to forget that I know what is right and I can do it. It's easy to forget that I am capable, lovely, and bright.

In addition to remembering these things, I love to remember that even when I forget these truths they are still true. My heart may freeze over and my potential may go dormant for a season, but the is still a seed of light in me. If I choose to stay like that for too long, I won't be the wonderful person I am, but if I do remember and start living these truths, God is more than willing to pick up where we left off and continue making me even more wonderful and divine. He never forgets what I can do.

He also sent me a man named Super who remembers that I am beautiful and wonderful and who helps me to remember that by treating me with respect and patience.

I still forget things sometimes. (I forgot how long my pigtails were and accidentally got part of that whipping cream in my hair. My friend Sarah tells me there's a place for me in the retirement home she works at.) But there are deep truths that will always be true. My potential is one of God's great truths. I am never forgotten.

Remembering: Part one

The other night, I was cold, so Super, my boyfriend, gave me his sweater to wear. It's big on him, so it was enormous on me. If I had had the right belt, I could have pulled it off and still looked trendy. Without a belt though, I just looked cozy in a wash of grey knit that hides every curve of my body.

I am not uneducated in the debates over gender that are raging throughout the world. I understand that there are a lot of questions and none of them quite have easy answers. Is there such a thing as gender? Are we simply socialized to behave in these ways?

When it comes to answering these questions in direct words, I believe that "gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." I have always been female, and I will always be female. Here's the source for that quote, and let me say that I believe every word in this document on the family.

 When people want an answer about gender, I turn to that document and that quote. But today, I'd like to write about the part I don't usually bring up in debates.

I feel like a woman in this sublime way that I cannot describe. Standing in front of the mirror the other day, I knew that there is something deep within me—beyond physical attributes, beyond what toys I played with as a kid, beyond what colors I like to wear—that is truly feminine. It transcends the mortal explanations and categories that so many scholars and interest groups throw at it. I just am beautiful and divine. Nothing outside of me can diminish my worth or my purpose. I am made to do all things: work, raise children, get an education, serve others. And I do all of these in a way no one but me can do, a way that is rooted in my identify as a woman.

It frustrates me that this isn't a valid argument in the voting polls or the scholarly discourse. It frustrates me even more that I cannot put it into words even for myself sometimes.

My hope is that other women will be more in tune to those moments where something in their spirit communicates that they are women. Often times there are a lot of things in the way, like our own ideas of beauty. I think that is in itself a sign that we are missing part of the picture.

I don't think it's just standing in front of a mirror. It's a moment that happens when we're least expecting it. This kind of knowledge happens though when you start thinking beyond what you see to what you feel. Keep thinking until nothing you come up with has anything to do with the world's view of these things. Think until it's only something you understand. I think then you'll understand what I mean.