Sunday thoughts

I didn't write in my journal for a year. I'm thankful, now, because I really wasn't in a place that I'd like the generations to find themselves reading about. My head just wasn't screwed on right. I started writing last November, when I had my 'coming to Christ' moment. My green Mickey Mouse journal goes from June 2011 to June 2012, the only entry I wrote during my 'dark period.' Then it kicks up in November. At this same time I began reading the Book of Mormon because, well, as the kind diligent Mormon I am, I never have. A few verses in a stumbled upon a verse I very much adored. You have to know me, if you don't by now: I love words. Words, words, words are of highest priority. I love music for the words, I love writing for the words, I love humor for the words. They're my kinfolk and confidants. "And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge." -1 Nephi 1:3 More than that, I only know what I know. And as I said in that short musing that got published in Weber State's undergrad book Metaphor (paraphrased because I'm lazy): Words are the only means I have to communicate visually to the outside world what I see in my head. I wrote the above verse in the front of my journal. It just...it fit, you know? I know that the record which I make is true, and I make it with my own hand, according to my knowledge. Nephi later says he doesn't know everything, but he knows enough. All I have to give is all I have. It's not everything; it's enough. I filled that journal quite quickly, and started a new one February. I find it funny that three years span the first half of my Mickey Mouse journal, and three months fill the second. I randomly opened the Book of Mormon one night, and found another verse to put at the forefront of this new journal, and it's this one that inclined me to type this blog post: "Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents. "For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory..." -Jacob 4:3-4 I want it to be that way with everything. With who I am, with what I saw, with what I write, with what I emit. That they may know that I know of Christ, and have a hope of his glory. Maybe it's powerful to me because it explicitly speaks about writing. maybe it's one of those things that don't connect with everyone the same way, but I just knew I felt something just now, and that I had twenty minutes until church started so why not share it. I want to live my life with the gospel on my sleeve as openly as my heart is. I'm so constantly in a state of readiness to hand my heart over; I should be the same with my testimony.

Believe not God is in your heart, child, but rather you're in the heart of God.

"I found God when I thought I was happy, when I thought this is as good as life can get." -Al Fox

I'm not going to be long with this one. I just had that need to write again.

First, let me just say watch this video:




There's not much more I can say than this. I echo everything, and it's interesting to me how similar a circumstance I share with someone whose past is entirely opposite of mine.

But I suppose it's not that we are different, but rather that Christ is the same. "Forget not whose hands you're in...You have a God and He is yours."

My first year of college, both semesters, my LDS Institute class was held in the same room (110 to anyone who knows the Ogden Institute on Weber's campus). There's a picture of Christ in the front corner of the room. It's not that generic one that I have in my room, or that Al Fox has on the bookshelf behind her. It was  a different artist's rendition, and it was the first one that made me think of Christ as existing, rather some childhood fairytale.

I suppose that's the trouble with being raised in the church, seeing that picture in every primary lesson, or every time I glance across my bedroom. There were lots of fanciful stories I was told in my exuberant youth; stories of pigs building houses, bears eating porridge, a girl dangling her hair from a tower, men walking on water, a man feeding five thousand with loaves and fishes, a woman being healed by touching a cloak's hem...

Everyone has their conversion moment. Even if you've grown with the gospel set before you and wrapped around you. There's the moment when it stops becoming folklore and the reality clicks into place. Where suddenly I know Joseph Smith did see God and Christ; I don't just know the story. I know.

Suddenly I know Christ walked this earth, that the atonement is more than a word, that Gethsemane was more than a garden. That there is reality and truth in these stories.

That reality and truth are these stories.

I was sitting in Relief Society in my single's ward a few months back, and they passed around a stack of wallet sized pictures of Christ with little quotes on the back. I was handed the stack and I grabbed one out of the middle and passed it along. The pictures had been different, but somehow I ended up with this one.

That's the one from that institute classroom. That's the one that, to me, is Christ.

I stuck the little picture in my Book of Mormon, and every time I open it the picture falls out. I've been so afraid I would lose the little picture and never remember the artist (Greg Olsen) and would lose that little miracle of having it brought to me. So one night I decided I'd check out the guy's website to drill his identity into my mind, and see how much a print of this would cost.

I was on my phone, and couldn't decide if I should take the initiative and buy it for myself or wait until farther down the line when marriage and moving out happen, perhaps requesting it as a gift from my mom.

I was going to navigate from the page when the thought struck me to set this picture as the background on my phone.

"I couldn't do that. What if it doesn't fit? The picture of Jason Mraz that is currently my background isn't saved in my phone. If this picture doesn't work I'll have to scour the internet for my old background."

But then I realized my greatest temptations come with this phone. That my steepest mistakes have stemmed from holding the internet in my pocket.

So I changed the background.

And I couldn't stop smiling.

Sorry, Satan. Chalk up another point for Christ.


I haven't been perfect, but it's harder to ignore that wrong doings are wrong when I'm looking in the face of Christ every instant I check the time.

Obedience brings blessings. Obedience with exactness brings miracles.

I have that desire to write something again, which is frustrating as I am rather tired and was excited to try this thing called "go to sleep before 1 AM," but...alas...

I went on a date last week, and we met up with a group of his friends to see a movie, and he warned me beforehand that one of them would more than likely try to hit on me.

He did. 

And in his process of hitting on me, he asked me if I'd been raised LDS. I told him yes.

"Is that why you believe it?"

"That's part of it."

He then asked me what the other part was, and I felt that awkward emptiness that comes when testifying of truth without having your whole heart in it; for a second I felt like I was saying what I needed to say, not what I felt to say. 

I don’t feel like I failed or anything; he wasn’t sincerely asking anyway so it’s not as if anything I said would have brought a chorus of angels raining down upon him, but I couldn’t help but obtain a notion of my inadequacy.

So I’m fixing it.

And I’m fixing it in the way my stream of consciousness wants me to, which is like this:

At Christmas time I had a guy ask me out. Let me rephrase that. At Christmas time I had a guy chat with me on Facebook, give me his number, text me until later than I wanted (I worked at six at the bakery the following morning), and in a roundabout way ask me out.

To coax me to talk longer after I quickly vetoed a midnight phone call with someone I’d only seen once in person on a day when I was quite preoccupied by others in my proximity, he asked me a series of questions. One of which was something like “Tell me five essential things to know about you.”

I typed in my love of Mraz, my writing and theatre and…

What else could I say?

I really didn’t have anything.

And then a voice, a voice I wasn’t used to hearing and was starting to vaguely notice in the recesses of my dusty, encumbered mind, said “Tell him you’re a Mormon.”

So I did. I told him I belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that I was very devoted to my religion.

From that moment I had a rush of feelings shooting through me, each little buzz reiterating the fact that I needed to talk about religion with him. I needed to explain where I stood. Because though for so long I’d been limply abiding by my religious precepts, it’s something I could never blatantly forsake.

He asked me to ask him questions.

I did. And one of them was his religious affiliations.

He told me he’d been raised LDS and still believed the principles and “understood” it more than most, but he just had a problem with organized religion.

I’ve seen that problem manifested in an older brother who was an entirely different person—and I say that quite literally—in his days of distance from “organized religion” verses his time now spent actively trying to follow Christ’s plan. I’ve seen the difference in countenance between one who claims to appreciate the gospel and “knows” it’s true and one who embodies the doctrine they know so well. I’ve lived the difference between striving to fulfill God’s purpose for me on earth verses laying in bed acknowledging that God is good, but that I don’t need to do anything about it.

I was still clawing my way out of the pit I’d spent over a year digging.

I wasn’t falling in it again.

And all the feelings twittering in my arms like miniscule bees affirmed that if I went on a date with that boy I’d never get out of that relationship, and I wouldn’t be at all where I needed to.

Because I’d met someone who made me realize that forever isn’t as far away as I anticipated in the midst of my numb roaming of the world. He made me realize I didn’t have time to waste, because that righteous boy who could take me to the temple could turn up any instant, and what would be my course if I wasn’t ready for him? Where would I be? What eternity of good would I miss from one instant not acknowledging my Maker or Savior, ignoring and forsaking that I have the ability to breathe, the agency to lay in bed, because of one plan I chose to follow and abide by? Why should I be blessed with someone like that when I can’t even manage to mumble a prayer in an uneventful or calm moment?

He asked me if the religion thing threw me off the idea of a date.

And I thought of that someone who woke me up, whose mere personable spirit carried so firmly the light of Christ that I couldn’t be around him without the buzzing in my arms to do good. To constantly do good.

I talk about this a lot and I’ve probably told the equivalent of everyone but him that he gave me my conversion moment. His lack of shyness with the gospel pulled me to the realization that all the beautiful things I’ve ever had in my life came from a God who dearly loved me, and that by not taking a moment to put effort toward His cause I was wasting my time—wasting my life. And that’s why He took the words away.

I remembered a time I’d felt blessed, peculiar and chosen, and how I wasn’t that person anymore. I wasn’t that adolescent constantly abuzz with what she’d read in scripture the night before; I wasn’t that girl who hoped on Christ. I was that girl who went through the motions, followed routine, and had bouts of panicked faith in high-stress moments. Not even literally almost dying, locked in a freezer, brought me to realize my error. No heartache or blessing brought me to the knowledge of my God; nothing humbled me into seeing it is through Him all is possible.

Until this boy.

And it all hit me as I lay in bed texting the non-religious gent, and I knew I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to sound judgmental and prudish and “holier-than-thou” but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to say no to him. I had take a stand for once in my life, had to remember a tear-stained aunt telling me not to date anyone I didn’t plan on marrying because she’d never intended on marrying a Catholic, but she dated him anyway and fell in love and now what? I had to remember the petite paragraph in my patriarchal blessing that talks about a husband and the church. I had to remember those statements of rearing children in Christ, of that celestial marriage and eternity I want and deserve. I had started working so hard for it, and I couldn’t compromise.

So I didn’t.

And I won’t.

I told the boy I was sorry, but I couldn’t. I was flattered, but I couldn’t. I did the difficult thing and said no.

And blessing started pouring through.

And more are coming. I have to keep remembering that. I often think of that story President Monson tells about himself as a young bishop being in a stake meeting of sorts with the distinct impression to visit a ward member in the hospital but he continued to push it aside, seeing it inappropriate to get up and leave. And by the time he ran into the hospital he was informed by a nurse that the patient had been asking for him just before he died.

President Monson says he vowed at that moment to never again hesitate with spiritual promptings.

I’m trying. I really am. And sometimes they’re not what you want to hear, and sometimes they’re so difficult that I literally feel nauseous. But it’s worth it, I think, to count myself on the Lord’s side. To know that I’m chalking up points that He’ll repay in the fullest of fashions. It’s worth it to know I’m in cahoots with someone on the inside—and not just that, but with the person running the show. He has the cheat codes. He has the answers. He has the words and He has the strength. And maybe I’m still shaky at saying no when I need to and instantaneously saying yes when He asks. Maybe I’m still selfish and ignorant and stubborn.

But I’m trying not to be. And I think that’s the point. And maybe I haven’t tried other religions. Maybe I’ve only sat in one Baptist church meeting, and only went for my public speaking class. Maybe I haven’t tested other sources.

But I haven’t needed to, and that’s what I should have told the guy at the movie theatre. I haven’t needed to compare, because I’ve felt the fullness with which this gospel, this religion, brings me to Christ. I’ve watched His love envelop and change the very appearance of a person. I’ve watched sharp edges grow soft and harsh lines become smooth. I’ve felt His hand and I’ve felt His absence.

I believe you can feel Christ’s spirit anywhere. I believe the Holy Ghost helps those who haven’t received it; but I feel that spirit most with the Mormons. I feel that spirit most with the Plan of Salvation and the temple and the Book of Mormon. I don’t doubt God exists in other religions, I just know He dwells in mine.

And I’m thankful every day for being raised LDS. I’m thankful every day for being fully converted. I’m thankful to that friend for living his testimony in so full a way that it inspired me to don mine as a more public garment. I’m grateful God listens and loves me, that Christ set selfishness aside and atoned for my sins, pains, heartbreaks and concerns. I’m grateful I have a Redeemer to lean on, a crucified hand to hold, and a knowledge that we are eternal. And a desire to act upon it.

And you know what? It’s a testimony, so I’m ending it like one.

And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Sermon of Sorts

It was my senior year of high school. I was seated next to my friend Rachael in our dreaded AP Lit class. We'd been reading Albert Camus' The Stranger (I think it was one of the few assigned books I actually read in its entirety).

In essence, the book is taken from an existentialist perspective; Meursault (it's French, ps) sees life as meaningless--he does not mourn his mother's death, he does not feel anything toward the woman he "loves", and he kills a man in cold blood without so much as batting an eye.

I consider myself a religious person. To the extent that when I watch movies of heightened stress/anxiety/suspense, having placed myself in full empathy with the characters as my actor instinct privies me to do, I find myself willing them to pray for help or protection or whatever it may be. One example that always stands out also took place my senior year in my US Government class when we watched the movie World Trade Center, which follows a few cops the day of 9/11 who were buried in the rubble of the crash. One of them is particularly wedged under concrete, and I remember the entire time watching it I had my fingers pressed to my mouth inwardly screaming "Somebody say a prayer already! Why aren't you praying?!"

Because that's my gut reaction.

So it's interesting that when Rachael said how stupid of a concept existentialism seemed, for me to respond that if I didn't have my religious believes, I'd be behind it.

For some reason, if I didn't have a sure thing to hope on, hoping on an absence of hope would almost be just as...comforting.



I was talking with a friend yesterday who's been surrounded by Mormon culture all her life, but she expressed to me that she's only ever fully felt comfortable in her friend's non-denominational Christian church. She went on to explain that's why she doesn't believe there's only one true religion, because you can feel that spirit anywhere.

I fumbled for a moment; I've been perfectly fine sharing every detail of my life with this friend, and she happened to become more present in my life at the same time I started focusing more specifically on my religion--but something has always held me tentative from sharing fully religious statements, though she knows more of my mission serving dilemma than most. I suppose it's because I respect her so much and she's so studious and smarter than me and I'm worried....I guess I'm worried of being logicked out of it.

But I did respond, saying I agree you can feel that spirit anywhere, and that I have felt it in places not specifically Mormon, and then referenced how a few months back the movie Valentines Day actually increased my testimony of God's wisdom, understanding, and plan (in essence because the movie shows how everyone's stories effect everyone else's in just that one small day, and how God orchestrates things like that both with people and books and music on an hourly level). But I closed sheepishly that I do believe there is only one true religion.

And as the conversation was interrupted there and I was left to myself for a moment, I realized...

One true religion is always how they say it. We are the one true religion. But that sounds the way my friend has been taking it: that all others are wrong. And I thought of things I could have said or would have gone on to say had conversation continued, and my next thought was that teaching of Christ brings the spirit. There is truth in Christ and the spirit manifests truth. I believe you can feel that truth, that spirit, in thousands of places. But it's with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I feel it the most.

It's not so much one true religion as it is one complete religion.



I know this post is really scatter-brained, but I just felt like saying it.

Life is meaningless without knowing where we're going. Logically, existentialism makes sense to me. But I know where I'm going, I know where I want to be, and I have a way to get there, a hope to find it.

If this makes any sense.

Maybe I should have just stuck with cleaning my room.

Dirt's All The Same

I have a friend who once told me his secret to not judging others. It's an analogy and it goes like this:

Sin is like dirt. Dirt's all the same.

His point, which he elaborated, was that it doesn't matter what a person's done; there's no reason to judge them for their actions. The point is they're dirty. Everyone is dirty in some way.

And dirt's all the same.

I haven't been perfect in my life. I wish I could say I have, but I haven't. Who am I to expect that from someone else? Whether their dirt is the same as mine doesn't matter. The point is we've gotten dirty. We've both walked on a beach and gotten sand in our shoes. We've both spilled food on our shirts; maybe mine's grape juice while theirs is mustard. Neither one is better. Neither stain is preferred, because that's what they are: stains. They both need extra attention and care to be removed.

Dirt's all the same.

I've tried taking this into my heart and acknowledging it in moments where I'm tempted to lessen my view of someone based on my perception of their life, but it's never really stuck. I haven't gotten it to be the thing that pops effortlessly into mind to deter me from passing judgement.

Until the other day when I realized I'd been inwardly chanting something to remove judgmental tendencies, it just wasn't about dirt.

In my mission prep class we're moving into teaching The Plan of Salvation, or Plan of Happiness. My teacher gave an example of an object lesson a young girl in Guatemala (where he served his LDS mission) gave to a group of her peers. She had them write down:

Day-
Week-
Month-
Year-
Life-

And then asked them, next to each 'time,' to write one of the most important choices or decisions they had to make in that instance.

So, for example, maybe your biggest choice today so far has been what to have for breakfast. Last week maybe it was to go to that last-minute audition even though it seemed pretty pointless and when you got there you realized you were right. But the choice to go was important and had impact.

So everyone did it. And for fun, I'll ask you to do it. Right now. One of the most important choices. Write it.

(Please do not read ahead until you've completed the exercise. Thanks.)

When they were done, she said something to the effect of--paraphrased by my mission prep teacher and then scribbled by me in my notes--"I tricked all of you because life didn't start with birth. Life started in the pre-Earth life, and you made a choice to come to Earth. You chose Christ."

In fine, the most important choice you made in your life happened before you remember. You chose Christ. Her follow up point was that, in each instance listed above--day/week/month/year/life--do we continue to choose Christ? Does following Him continue to be our most important choice?

To clarify because I feel I should, in the pre-mortal existence (referred to above as pre-Earth life. We're fans of synonyms in this church), Heavenly Father presented a plan for us, as spirits, to come to Earth and gain a body and experience and live in mortality before returning to His presence. Satan pitched a plan that, in essence, left mankind without agency and gave all the glory and praise to Satan himself, rather than God. Christ stepped forward with the plan that every man may choose his own path, but He would come to Earth in His own time and be a sacrifice for the sake of mankind, that through Him they might repent of any sins or wrongs and return to God of their agency and free will, with His help. And the glory be to God forever.

Satan's plan was rejected and Satan rebelled. There were many that followed Satan's plan, and God cast them and Satan from His presence. Those that remained, those that chose Christ, were sent to Earth to gain a body and experience, and the opportunity to choose Christ again.

(Scripture references for my amateur and brief explanation of the war in Heaven and Satan's fall: 2 Nephi 2:14-27; Alma 42:2-9. And I'm sure there's more but I don't immediately know them. I'm in mission prep. I'm still learning these things.)

Basically, if you have a body, you chose Christ.

Take a moment to look at yourself.

Do you have a body?


When I find myself looking on someone who seems to have left the path, strayed from Christ's plan, I remind myself that they chose Christ once. They chose Christ first. That's the thing I've been chanting. That's my "dirt's all the same."

I have a botany professor who is insistent on his way of life being the right way, and thereby discredits any other source of knowledge or belief. He's yet another admitted liberal professor who strives so strongly for those of us simple-minded conservatives to awaken to the bonds with which we are bound (ie our traditional beliefs and lifestyles) and transfer to their free and easy and non-prejudice way of life that is vastly prejudiced to those not part of it. He tries to get us to understand indigenous people's view of nature and the divine by bashing the concept that some all-seeing God in Genesis "made it that way." To him, in order for me to understand or appreciate another religious belief system, I have to crumple mine up and light it ablaze and send the ashes over the Grand Canyon first. I've often had the impression in his class that a supernatural belief is permissible; unless it's mine. Unless it's an understanding that a Heavenly Father sent His Son to create the Earth and come to the Earth and die for the sins of mankind.

That belief is wrong. He makes no mistake in telling me.

There was an instant last week, as he taught and made some side reference to the fault of Christianity, that I had the distinct thought: "You chose Christ once. You elected to follow Christ once."

My cynical view of the man changed in that moment from indignation that he consistently trample on my religious affiliations as though I'm some mindless lemming, to a sort of warm understanding that he sees the world his way now, but in a time past he understood this supernatural belief he now fondly mocks. He chose to follow that God he discredits, and soon to come he will face Him again.

Not to disrepute my friend; I feel "dirt's all the same" to be very much an accurate perspective, and it correlates with this notion to follow Christ, but at least for me, acknowledging the good they chose once rather than the wrong we've both encountered leads love for them to form in my chest. I've started to see others as siblings and cohorts on the same tract of life, whether they see it or not. They chose Christ once. I chose Him at that same time. I've chosen Him again, and so could they. We are kindred spirits, we both chose Christ. We both have fallen into dirt. Judging them isn't leading them to an understanding of God and the Atonement and His love.

Dirt's all the same. And there's only one way to ever fully be clean.

Newness Ahead

If you'd asked me last year where I'd be today and what I'd write about in a cliche end-of-the-year blog post, I would have looked around, grabbed my wrist, and showed you my Jason Mraz used guitar string bracelet.

That, basically, would have been it.

I would have never dreamed of being able to report all the things I've experienced this year, nor would I have imagined they would all, in hindsight, be steps back to living my testimony.

Yes, it's going to be one of those posts.

With the end of 2011 I had fallen into the pattern of not trying with regards to faith. I refer to it now as my hiatus, which I believe is a very human thing to experience. Luckily enough for me, my hiatus consisted of slacking off/neglecting basic things like prayer and scripture study, as opposed to dabbling with drugs or whatnot.

In January I bought my Jason Mraz used guitar string bracelet, which I wear erry day, with the exception of work/swimming because if I expose it to water it will rust.

Shortly thereafter I was involved in a devised theatre project, which served as a realization that I'm not as theatrically creative as I would initially like. It also served to illustrate the fact that I evidently can't be myself and just talk. Ever.

In March I met FUN.

I listened to them all through senior year, so that was a super nice thing. (and a warm up for what would later come, for it would be about a month later that I would find I had the ability to meet Jason Mraz.)

My mother and I went to California for two days with my grandma because the hotel was totally cheap. I walked on the beach and watched the ocean and wanted to stay. I didn't want to go back. I wanted to dwell on the California coast and listen to Jason Mraz's California music and live in contentment for once. 

Upon my return, my place of employment moved locations, which brought with it a new set of jolly coworkers and a crappy new uniform and iron-fisted corporate reign. 

At some point after this move, I was locked in the grocery freezer. For twenty minutes.

Looking back, my year has gone like this: Erica's really focused on the worldly things. Erica really wants to be rad with regards to the world. Lord lets Erica meet FUN. because what's more rad and worldly than that? Erica continues to trounce about in said worldly manner. Lord lets Erica be one of twenty to get meet-and-greet tickets for her favorite musician. Erica still trounces worldily. Erica gets locked in a freezer.

There is nothing more devastating than standing there, shrugging and thinking "I'll pray, He'll let me out, life is swell," and slowly having to realize He has no reason to let you out of the freezer. He has no reason to answer you in your time of need because you ignored Him in your prosperity. 

The blood started to slow in my veins and I began to want to sit and wait, to give up and rest because I was so tired. But the Lord is a merciful being, for though He didn't allow me the ease of freeing myself from the freezer, He continued to prompt me to kick the door and make noise, even though I desperately wanted to stop, and He prompted someone to come back to that secluded part of the store at that moment, even though she didn't really need to. 

I had to look at myself, metaphorically, over the next few weeks, and remember that haunting thing that kept nagging me in the freezer: that if I wasn't worthy for Him to immediately rescue me from behind a locked door, I am in no way worthy for Him to rescue me from hell.

I continued to trounce in my worldly way.

In September I met Jason Mraz, which you can read about if you haven't here. The thing is, though, I walked away from this experience the same. Nothing changed. I returned to Utah and I was still living with my parents, I was still going to Weber, I was still working for minimum wage, I was still unpublished, I was still not musically talented, I was still subpar and unhappy.That's what set in the most: I was unhappy.

The greatest thing of my entire life had just happened--I had experienced the one thing I'd dreamed about for years, the one thing only a handful of people get to experience in their lives. My greatest dream/wish/ambition had come to pass, and I was unhappy.

The idea began to dawn on me that I'd gone to the concert seeking lasting happiness. I'd gone ready to return an enlightened, exuberant person. 

I'd sought living water from a worldly well.

You see, I was searching for answers all summer. I was searching for ways to not be what I'd been during that devised theatre project; I wanted to be myself 100% of the time. I wanted to be outgoing and funny and normal. But I didn't seek the Lord.

I found answers with Jason's music, living in the moment, your home being inside of you...everything on his album answered my concerns and gave me hope--I thought that perhaps that was the Lord's way of answering me, though I wasn't being humble enough to seek answers from Him. He put the answers where I would find them: in Jason Mraz's songs. 

But other than having a poetic way to describe what I needed out of life, I had nothing. I still remained in my unhappiness, and the memory of meeting my idol somehow weakened me rather than provide strength.

In October they changed the missionary age.

I stood at work by the microwave thinking it over, having been out of the room when President Monson said over the radio the news. I started thinking.

I've never felt I needed to serve a mission. That's never been a thing I've planned on. I always figured I'd decide when the time came, primarily expecting that I'd be in a steady relationship and therefore wouldn't be expected to go because I was just going to get married shortly and begin to craft a place to rear healthy righteous babies. 

That's always been the plan.

It dawned on me that age 21 wouldn't be the time to decide to serve a mission or not. Preparation beforehand would be needed. I realized, there by the microwave, that if I began preparing to serve a mission right then, I'd only barely be ready by the time I was 21. 

If anything, the mission age change made me realize I wasn't worthy of mission, and wasn't going to be any time soon.

I trounced on in my worldly pace.

In November I auditioned for the Improvables, something I'd been wanting to do since high school but timing was never right. I almost didn't go. I was preparing to leave and head over to the theatre and I really about turned around and went up to my room to get in my sweatpants. 

But I remembered how mad I'd been at myself for not trying for Drama Sterling Scholar, when only one person ended up applying last minute, so I went to the audition, deciding it wouldn't hurt if they didn't want me.

The Lord made one more effort to get me. He tried one more thing to bring me back to His orbit. He allowed me to cross paths with someone who changed me, almost instantaneously.

They always say we have a light about us, that Christ shines through in our faces, as members of the church. They use the Christ in your countenance metaphor, and I never really got it. I never saw the difference, until I met this person. There suddenly was no way to keep me from delving into the gospel, no way to talk me out of reestablishing my relationship with the Lord. I was struck immediately by an overwhelming desire to do good, to be good, to be of the Lord again and walk the way I should have been walking all along. Everything that had happened to me in the past year lumped together and confirmed the thing I had finally grasped: I need this gospel. I need the Lord and His Spirit and my Savior. I need to dwell in His house and abide by His precepts, and life will be a happier, more successful place for me.

I began writing on a daily basis, and writing things of actual merit. I was offered the position of director at an elementary school for their spring play. I was able to help with technical aspects of the Institute Christmas show, getting some know-how before assistant stage managering next semester. I found a botany class on campus. I registered for an Institute mission prep course. I kissed a man. 

Whatever the end all is, whatever I'm headed toward, I'm confident and comfortable with it. It took me a year, but my Heavenly Father is ever patient. He knew I'd come around, and He didn't give up on me. 

2012 wasn't the end of the world. It was the end of my being of the world, and a revived resolution to never again stray from His course or His light.

"24 And now I speak unto all the ends of the earth--that if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

-Moroni 10:24


I check up on myself every once in a while, see how I'm standing compared to where I was. It was November, and I checked the list to the right that shows my posts through year and months. It was depressing to see I was a long ways off from the 40's I'd been reaching with no qualms for the past two years.

I felt insufficient.

But suddenly I had so much to write about and so many ways to script it: the words came back.

It's because faith and application of it came back.

I realized this a few months ago, that I'd added some five pages to my manuscript during the summer purgatory, whereas the year before I'd jotted near sixty pages plus a notebook of extensive backstory and side details I'll probably never divulge. I realized, though the words may still be around, they aren't as free flowing as when I'm plowing a prosperous field and sowing spiritual oats. It takes me three times as long to locate them.

I acknowledged this, yes, and continued merrily on my stagnant way.

Which, as a side feature to mirror the slew of nonsense yesterday's post entailed, imagine a stagnant body of water. It could be beautiful; I'd assume most are at the beginnings. But add whether and algae and seasons and animal droppings--with nowhere to leach out to, it festers in itself. It's revolting. I hadn't really thought about it before, though I've used the term stagnant in my internal monologue for weeks. Its got quite the disturbing connotation. And denotation.

If we're being honest, I don't remember which is which.

#englishmajor

The family had settled in for family scripture study, which isn't the most common of practice, and something that I partially don't see the point in because I never keep up with the reader. I always pause at some point to mark a verse in my specific, unique, meaningful way, and catch up some twenty verses later.

This was one such case, but it was worth it, because it clarified what I'd been musing for months and vocalizing on occasion.

"...if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

"...if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief."

Yes, I found many musable topics in November, but I also found Christ and rekindled my belief.

And the words came back.

The experience of losing the words and having them return taught me two things: 1) if one doesn't work for the Lord's purpose, one can lose one's gifts; 2) I'm not a writer. That isn't something innate bred in me like my eye color or that freckle on my ring finger. It's not something I'll carry and keep regardless where I tread. The Lord made me a writer. He opens the floodgates through which the words flow and frolic and dance and arrive.

What this means is I can't afford to lose the Lord in my life. I can't afford to dwell in unbelief. I can't survive if he takes away the words.

My favorite lyrical sentence of all time (and this is a drastic statement because there are many a Jason Mraz lyric that are utterly beautiful) is from the Hudson Taylor song "Wont' Back Down." It's my life wrapped up in one sentence. It hits so truly home that if I ever in a million years got a tattoo, that would be the one thing I could visualize myself scripting to my skin. You've probably read it before: it's the subtitle to my blog.

"Take my words, they're all I have."

Losing the words this year forced me to realize that I am nothing without them. I am nothing without the Lord. The only way I could carve a way through this life is through the pen and what it produces. I'm not an actor. I'm hardly a teacher. Everything I am stems from everything I write. I've constantly fallen back on my ability with words.

I can't afford to be idle, at least not with the gospel. If I ever place something below another, the gospel must be what stays afloat. If all I am is possible through the words, and He controls the words, without him I am nothing.

Perhaps this is redundant. Perhaps I didn't articulate it with the smoothness I had hoped. I'm just trying to say what I know now, what I had to learn to cease the circling. Words may be all I have, but that I won't have them if I have unbelief in Christ.