oh, how i love this movie.

"you okay?"
"terrified."
"why?"
"i've been looking out of a window for eighteen years, dreaming what i might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. what if it's not everything i dreamed it would be?"
"it will be."
"and what if it is? what do i do then?"
"well that's the good part i guess. you get to go find a new dream."

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.

another kind of madness, maybe.

march is a magical month for me.

march first is almost more of a new year for me than january first. winter is on the downward spiral (although it will rear its ugly head many more times until the beginning of july) and bulbs are sprouting. it's hopeful.

i'm filled with hope right now. hope in the future, scary place that it is, and hope in my imperfections, which i'm slowly learning aren't as imperfect as i always thought they were.

we have a distorted view of perfection in our society.
i have hope in that knowledge.
the knowledge that i'm redefining perfect in the right ways.

cheers to march.

if at first

i'm almost finished with a book that i borrowed from muslim back in january. it's been a touch-and-go book with me since then. i've been into it, then i'll draw back again, then get into it. the language is genius, and the way mark helprin uses words is absolutely phenomenal.

a paragraph i just read stuck out to me and wouldn't stop reverberating off the sides of my brain.

"All right, Virginia," Mrs. Gamely said. "You've failed a bit. But you're still alive. You may not find a way to save your child. But you have to try. You owe it to her, and you owe it in general."

that kills me. in all the good ways.
for whatever reason, this cannot be preached to me enough.

"you've failed a bit. but you're still alive....you have to try."

opening

there's something about creative writing teachers that seems to continue resonating in my life.

kay merrell, my creative writing teacher from high school (and probably one of the best women i will ever meet aside from my mother and a handful of other women, of course.) is one of them. and i write her name, hoping that maybe one day she'll google herself, and see this post. i'd be flattered if she read it. i hope she'd be flattered, too. i owe a lot of things to the woman who had a love for billy collins and told us stories of paris and new york and penny lane. my love of poetry, for one.

at the end of each semester, she would give us a trinket marbles for the first semester, a rock for the second and with each seemingly useless knicknack not useless to me, mind you, a poem of infinitely useful worth would come forth. i leave you with an excerpt from a poem that she wrote.

---------------

Years later
I still believe "good" and "bye"
are never meant to hold hands,
so I leave you with "good"
in a whispering stone.
My eyes will continue to dance
with days of wild writing
when our tiger tongues
found their prey,
those victimed words we greedily devoured,
tasting what we wanted to understand.
Place this in your road-mapped palm
where destiny lines are as endless
as London rains
and possibility peeks between each crevice.

Listen.

It will always spill its rambling secrets,
sun-streaked afternoons of watery laughter and inky memories
with a woman worn smooth
from too much loving.

---------------

perfect. it's exactly how good and bye should be explained.
it's the good that i leave with you.

you don't know who you are.
but i do.

and hopefully one day you'll realize. there is no bye to these words of mine which have endless meaning. only good. and i hope the good that i leave with you can one day blossom into something better.

something marvelous.

the jkb is a magical place

4:44 make a wish.

i've found that as i make a wish at those times in the day, they end up becoming silent prayers.

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we

are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.” -george eliot

i wished that day.
i was with one of the most delightful people i know, and as i left she checked her phone.

"4:44. make a wish."
i walked down the south stairs, and wished.
i looked at the clock facing me as i came down and wished.

then i walked outside the building, and part of what i wished for came true.
i ran back in to tell emily. it was fate, she said.

now. there are two eggs in the basket. plus a really little one.

lights will guide you

remember this song?
i didn't then.

but now i do.

those lights have been miracles.

my miracles.

i've seen many of them.

now remember what i said
at the end of this post?

i think i can say that now.

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.

fever: when you kiss me; fever: when you hold me tight

this is why i love spring.
and gardening.
and my home, for that matter
because it has all of those things...
not to mention a few other things
i love.
see that clematis in the first picture?
i absolutely love it.
and see the raised garden
on the left in the second picture?
potato plants grew there last year.
i planted them,
and i was very proud of myself.

to: moon unit

this post is dedicated to whit leigh.
you will understand all the
ambiguities today, whit.

remember that time in high school with this song?
or when we were in ms. spencer's class
and when she'd say "time" we'd pound our chests?

remember the punch dancing that went completely wrong? it was windy, and i was in a dress. it was liberating, for that brief moment before your foot broke. we never did finish our punch dancing experience.

there was also december our senior year, the week before cotillion...

remember when i liked wyoming boy, and your cockapoo about attacked him?
or when i told you about the swkt, and you said, "if a boy takes you to a 'swicket,' you kiss him."
you didn't even know what a swicket was, and you still don't

remember screaming on the phone with me?
remember screaming in the car with me?


there was also that time when i was upset about life: my family, boys, and i just ran away to your house right as you were going to work. you listened, and let me cry. you let me cry a lot of times to you. even though you didn't know how to really handle it, up until recently. kudos on being more in touch with your emotions, by the way

remember choir? and the ebola virus? and how you had that movie for three months?

and i'll always remember the runs over to tasty's. or how arby's makes us sick. or how we 'confiscated' food into movies over. and over. and over.


and now, i'll always remember that time you came to my apartment and said you loved a boy.
how i didn't believe you.
and after some explanation, i realized you weren't lying.
how, "i don't know" after someone asked if you could marry him was a big deal.
revolutionary.

but despite everything that may happen in the future, you'll always be the girl from mr. knecht's class who helped me take him back to his days in 'nam. that one girl who became friends with me over a huge piece of chicken at applebee's.

i love you.

today:

words are flowing out
like endless rain
into a paper cup

the beatles always say it best.

the ides of march

it's been a day of:

• car alarms outside my apartment that stay on for two hours no lie
• studying
• blessings
• death cab for cutie
• dieter f. uchtdorf
• french mistakes
• blessings
• spring-like weather
• becca and jana at wal-mart
• yogurt gluttony

and last but not least

blessings.

photo via flickr

to you

i love love.

as i walked home today in the chilly march weather, i made this realization today. it was rather revolutionary, considering love has done me wrong one too many times (my theory behind why emily dickinson is so melancholy).

i walked, and i listened to garbled information from people passing me by. i walked, and i stole glances at the girl walking to class with stress in her eyes, the boy coming out of the science building--the couples walking hand-in-hand.

i love loving peanut butter m&m's.
i love loving art.
i love loving people

like my dad and his loudness.
my mom and her honesty.
my sister and brother and their banana fight the other day.
like my granny and her bread rolls.
like my grandma and her crossword puzzles.
like my granddad and his supposedly vast amounts of knowledge.

like the missionaries.
like sexy sadie. like whit leigh.

i love loving stella.
i love loving literature and learning and french.

i even love loving that one time. at that one place. in draper.

and despite everything that i haven't loved about the past little while, i may or may not love loving what i learned.

i'm pretty sure i'll love loving that, too.
it's just gonna take me a while to get there.

she was dancing in the mirror

this post/song is dedicated to my dear friend emily
she's absolutely wonderful, and
i love her.
thanks for making my day brighter today. :)
(and it's not necessarily the lyrics i
dedicate to you, emily. you'll understand.)

just a small town girl

don't


believing

(i know...not original, but i liked this picture
of a stop sign i took when i was waiting for my
roommate at a car repair shop)

cupcakes

for the sake of humanity, i have christened today fun-fetti friday.

i had to bring treats to my early morning meeting for my early morning job today, and i decided that the extra cupcakes that i made of the 48 cupcakes that came into existence last night would accompany me throughout my day and brighten the lives of others because really...cupcakes have the power to do just. that.

plus, since it's snowy and we were teased here in provo with nice, spring-like weather earlier this week the snow is a bit of a slap in the face everybody needs a little pick-me-up.

yay for fun-fetti friday! cheers!

rough mandarin minus the characters

knee sure woda pung yo.

when i'm fifty

my roommate, whitney, made a video
for her mother, who is turning fifty today.
and because i love whitney, and i love the video,
i've decided to post it.

disclaimer: yes, i'm in the video. yes, i look like i got run over by a semi-truck. and yes; i'm wearing flannel.

rainy days and tuesdays sometimes get me down. but not this tuesday.

it's been a good day.

i missed the missionaries all the guys in this picturei met a tender mercy in the form of sterling from my ward who listened to me, understood, and didn't judge.

i almost locked the key to our key box in the key box at work today, proclaiming my idiocy to the world luckily it had fallen in a drawer

homework is relatively quiet this week, so it should be a relaxing (and potentially unproductive) week.

life is good. and there are only three more days until i get to see these glorious men.

happy fat tuesday.

*correction* fat tuesday is next week. my bad.

special: indeed

i find something beautiful about leafless, winter trees. their silhouette against blue sky is so graceful looking; the black, unpredictable lines.

i'm sitting here at my kitchen table at home (not provo home, but home home) looking outside at a naked tree. what's especially lovely about this tree is that i can see the shapes of the buds forming; the buds that will eventually turn into blossoms, turning into green leaves. another kind of hope.

it's been a great and unproductive, sweat pants, big bang theory, mat kearney, rainy saturday.

hope yours was as delightful as mine!