at least i tried.

yesterday in the general relief society meeting, they mentioned briefly about how relief society is the type of place where women will invite another woman sitting by herself to come and sit with them. (essentially, that the relief society is a society of women striving to be the type of person who cares about individuals and strives to make their lives better through charity.)

anyway.

i kept thinking to myself about how i'm often that lone woman. and how (often) i like it that way. how sometimes i think to myself when i see the relief society get up "please don't talk to me. please don't talk to me."

i realized that's probably not always a bad thing (independence, solitude, yada yada), but it's not always a good thing either. and in my case, i don't think it's a good thing.

i thought that maybe my speed bump in life will be to not be so unapproachable (or at least not be so unapproachable mentally, because people don't seem to have a problem coming up to chit chat).

so, i decided today to say hello to a woman next to me right after relief society.

she told me her name, and her last name just happened to be jolley.

"what!!! that's my last name too! no way."
i then kept chit-chatting with her (i'm sorry, but sometimes i hate chit-chat) about where she was from, why she was in utah, etc. i even introduced her to pj as "another jolley!"

well, after all of that business, i decided i was thirsty and got up to get a drink. when i came back from my agua break,

the lady had left.

[crickets]

must have scared her off. (i was getting a bit too excited about the last name jolley.)
but! a for effort, right?


happy sabbath, everyone.

king james

I was reading in the Ensign yesterday about the King James Version of the Bible. It was comparing the King James Version with the New International Reader's Version of the Bible. It compared the same section from 1 Corinthians 13: where Paul talked about charity.

The King James Version is apparently known for its poetic nature, and after seeing the version of the Bible I'm so familiar with next to the New International Version, I was so grateful for the language.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing”

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

So, thank you King James. Thank you Lancelot Andrewes, William Barlow, Edward Lively, John Duport, John Hardin, Thomas Ravis. Thanks for giving us syntax in scripture that resonates with the soul.

happy (and hopeful) sunday

it's 4 a.m. and i can't sleep.
(4 a.m. is a magical hour in time.)
i was looking around my room and i noticed the christmas present i made for ginger not long ago, which quotes part of a scripture i love. and in french (so i double love it).

"...car l'amour parfait bannit toute crainte."

"...for perfect love casteth out all fear."
moroni 8:16

sometimes that phrase will be a repeating song in my head that i've listened to a hundred times (in both languages), and i always wonder what it could mean.

naturally, perfect love in our heavenly father; perfect love in christ. these kinds of love casteth out fear, for with this perfect love, we have faith. we have faith in them and how they will keep their promises to us and bless us. "fear and faith cannot coexist in our hearts at the same time." we could even turn that around and say that the perfect love they have for us helps to cast out the fear in our lives.

but what about love for other people?
perfect itself doesn't mean what we think it means in society. we've distorted so much what perfect really is: complete. finished. fully developed.*

of course, we can't be perfect in this life. we're human. we make mistakes. that's why we have the atonement to lift us up when we humanly fall. but what about having perfect love?

can we perfectly love our children? our friends? the people we serve? can a husband perfectly love a wife, and vice versa?

and maybe it comes down to this: we can't have perfect love for those people all the time. there will be moments when my dad irritates me and in my imperfect state i say something i regret. there will be moments when my friends break promises and i feel hurt. there will be moments i forget to serve with full purpose of heart.

but can we have it sometimes?
is it possible for us to have perfect love for people?

i feel the very fact that we have the ability to love shows how much god loves us.** and because He's full of so much abounding and abiding love for every one of us individually, and because He's a perfected being, perhaps our love isn't perfect all the time, but has glimpses of perfection. moments where we are closer to heavenly father and jesus christ because we are loving [as much as we can] like they do.

perhaps that's why i love that scripture so much.
because there are so many hopeful things that come from those seven words.










*click on the actual word "perfect." you'll see its definition.
** please read that whole chapter. not because i want to preach to you, but because that chapter fills me with so much hope and happiness i couldn't not tell you to read it.

teaching

i witnessed something magical today.
[or miraculous. either one works.]
i watched forty-some-odd girls come
together in one purpose.

we learned to love.
i could see it.
i could feel it.
and it was wonderful.

bless this gospel
and the relief society.








bless my sisters.

something divine

spent the evening with an artist who showed me the ways of figure drawing.

the human body is incredible, isn't it?
after searching through sketches and eating a bowl of special k, i decided it was a one-verse-scripture-study kind of night. i was reading in alma 30 anyway, but this highlighted verse struck my attention:

"...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." (alma 30:44)

i started to think about the human body; what i had witnessed through sketches how muscles move and how beautifully organized our frames and faces and tendons are. think about the fact that we can make another body, that cells and brains and organs are created in us without us even having to think about it.

that, my friends, is a miracle.
and that, to me, is what also denotes there is a God.

a God who loves us. a God who is mindful of us.

words of comfort

“That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude.”

- Joseph B. Wirthlin

dear joseph

"the fact that this many people are here today is testimony in and of itself of joseph smith."

the president of the nauvoo temple said that today as we stood in the balmy, overcast weather outside the window where, 166 years ago, the prophet joseph fell after being martyred. it was as though the heavens were remembering joseph and hyrum, too.

i stood in that room today. i realized the sacrifice that he made to bring christ's church back to the earth. he brought me the scriptures, another testament of christ. he sacrificed to bring the peace of christ and his church to my life. the knowledge that through repentance, i can live with my heavenly father again.

and i need that repentance now. i'm far from perfect.

realizations

here's the dealio.

i made some realizations today.

i was reading this conference talk today in the ensign, and was pondering the idea that what we give in this life and the hardships we go through will be returned to us. a hundred fold. a thousand fold. infinite.

i also figured out this morning while cleaning bathrooms all my good thinkin' happens when i'm driving or cleaning that the things most worth it in this life are never easy. but they sure feel so good after you've worked so hard and gone through so much.

hm.
made me re-figure out my life a little bit. both of the thoughts.

it was really comforting. and possibly something i should have figured out a long time ago. but sometimes it takes a while for things to click, ya know?

laughing thoughts

can we please just bask in the irony that is the missionary? (i'd go into detail, but for the sake of my own privacy...i won't. those of you who know me well will understand what i'm saying...)

[basking in irony]

okay. basking done.

in other news, hope you all had a lovely sunday! mine was full of cookies, food, englishmen (just one), the gospel, and legitimately realizing how much i love people.

see you peeps tomorrow. ta, loves.

homework neverending

et maintenant, je vais commencer par les choses importants.

*whispers* and now, i'm going to start with the big stuff.
wish me luck


SIDE NOTE: and happy birthday to the church! 180-years-old today.

understanding

the author and narrator of the book i'm reading asked her father a question. she was about ten. the father didn't respond initially, but asked her to carry a case full of spare parts for watches he owned a watch shop as they got off a train.

she couldn't lift it. "it's too heavy."

he replied:
"some knowledge is too heavy for children. when you are older and stronger you can bear it. for now you must trust me to carry it for you."

then she said:
"and i was satisfied. more than satisfied--wonderfully at peace. there were answers to this and all my hard questions--for now i was content to leave them in my father's keeping."

at this point in time of my 20th year, these paragraphs resonated with me. i believe this is how our Father responds to some of our requests. i know in my imperfect and narrow-persepctive existence, i become impatient and want to know all things. i want to know why trials happen. why i have to wonder.

but i think if we knew answers to the questions we had about our lives, then we wouldn't learn. the knowledge is maybe too heavy for us. God wants us to learn. He wants us to experience life, and grow, and become better people. we sometimes have to trust Him to carry the knowledge of the bigger picture of our lives until we are "old enough" and "stronger" through the trials we've gone through. that's how we gain faith.

then we can be satisfied. we can be at peace. as we work at that faith, we will be content to leave our "hard questions" to our Father's keeping. He knows. He always knows, and we just need to trust in his timing. He knows when we need to hear things, and when we need to learn the hard things. He knows when we're ready.

timing is everything. patience is needed. faith is essential.

espérer

lest my readers (all five of you) think that i've fallen into a big whirlpool of emo-like posts, here's a post that might break up the dolefulness of my blog lately. for the sake of my own sanity, though, i will no doubt go back to emo when the fancy suits me.

hope.

how beautiful is the word hope? simple in its syntax, yet evokes so many deep channeled, untangible emotion.

hope.

i recently didn't think i had much hope. silly, yes i still am trying to figure out how to include and find hope in my day to day existence, but it's there. in the form of the month of february au revoir, janvier

of my roommate, becs. of music

of president uchtdorf and the talk that i've listened to probably seven times since yesterday

there are many reasons to have hope. yes. i need to remind myself of that.


hey becs. if you ever need anything, i've probably got it in my backpack.

Being Pensive

I find it ironic that the first day we "officially" begin the Christmas season (a.k.a. Black Friday) is a day when the worst generally comes out in people. I mean, there have been deaths because of shopping on Black Friday. Deaths! People go nuts, and start becoming the worst versions of themselves just to get that fabulous toaster or that amazing Barbie doll....whatever it is, it doesn't exactly justify the way people get selfish and cruel over shopping.

And the malls get packed, and the traffic gets even worse, and some people just get really (for lack of a better word, and 'tis the season) Grinchy.

Now, I'm not saying everybody is like this. In my twenty years of existence, I have seen so many Christmas miracles and so many Christ-like gestures towards others as well as towards my family that my hope in the human race is not completely gone.

It just makes me sad that Christmas has become so commercialized, and yet I find myself guilty of forgetting what Christmas really is about. Yeah, I know you hear it every year. Everybody's always talking about the commercialization of Christmas and what not, and you're going to hear it another time from me. I got an awakening this past Sunday as my dad (yes, my dear old padre) gave an impromptu Sunday school lesson to a bunch of punk teenagers about Christmas, Christ's birth, and ultimately Christ's life. It woke me up. What an amazing thing to be celebrating....the life of Christ. His compassion upon everybody, his perfect and infinite love. It's so amazing and so incomprehensible what He did for us. I'm glad that I was able to get a bit of a holiday slap in the face.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, and I don't think I really need to have a purpose to post or anything, but I just hope that we really can remember why we celebrate Christmas. it's helped me put not only the holiday into perspective, but a bit of my life in perspective as well, and has made this Christmas a little more fulfilling.

So, Merry Christmas, whoever you may be....I hope that you and your families are blessed and watched after. :)