Love vs Reality, Child vs Life

When life starts to catch up one starts to loose their sense of hope in reality. Everything that used to be normal, everything that was once what was called reality, is gone. One day you wake up and you don't go to High School, you don't go to Young Women's, and you don't see those friends that meant so much to you when life was all about acing that test, making plans for the weekend, and that cute boy in your English class. Suddenly, you see the mountains in the distance and know that there is more on the other side. Your mind starts boarding you on thought railways like the "How Will I Pay for College Trolley," the "Will I Really Marry This Boy Express," and the "What Will it Really Take to Raise a Family Subway." Once this happens reality looses its magic. There is no Santa, Easter Bunny, or Toothfairy. Your dreams must be reanalyzed and you must decide if they are realistically possible. Suddenly, life sucks more than you thought it could and every time you find a small part of hopeful magic to hold onto, you do. Even if that bit of magic is bound to hurt you in the end at least it is something to believe in, because even after reality hits you hard in the stomach and forces you to grow up there will always be a part of you that holds fast to the child within.

The Truth

In the 6 months that I have failed to keep up with my blog, I have discovered that being a righteous Daughter of God is harder than it appears. Here are some of the things that I have seen attack the Sisters of Zion as of late:

• Immodesty
• Justification of the wrong
• Sexual immorality: trading virtue for "fun"
• Disrespect toward church leaders, parents, dates, and selves
• Abandonment of prayer and scripture reading
• Lying
• Stealing from employer
• Profanity
• Pornography
• Deception
• Soap Operas

The list could go on and on, but my point is most simply stated as this: Satan fears us. Confused? Let me explain..

I have a pretty amazing bishop. One day my bishop told me something that I didn't even need to write down to remember and it went something like, "If Satan wasn't afraid of your potential, he wouldn't try to get you out of his way." The list of temptations above are but a small amount of the many bites of bait that Satan places in front of God's Daughters daily. In truth, he is kind of smart. I only say this because when comparing him to us, the Youth of Zion, because we are really, really dumb. Now, I understand that the adolescent age is the most important age group. I've heard it a thousand times and have seen examples of it in my own life: the adolescent age group makes more decisions that will affect 100% of their life than any other age group. What I don't understand is why we still let Satan win. We know that he is trying every single day to win us over and every time we give in, he gets a point. We have great potential and he knows this! So he is going to keep sending his best tricks. If we didn't have the potential to fight back should we choose to do so, he wouldn't be trying so hard. And that is a fact.

Truthfully now, when was the last time that you have gone a whole day without being tempted in the slightest?

Silver Lining

I have this medical condition called vasovagal syncope. What happens is the blood vessels in my arms and legs dialate, pulling a lot of blood from my head to my limbs. The problem comes when too much blood leaves my head and I loose unconsciousness. My doctors have said that I will grow out of it. That was 3 years ago. I hate the passing out, but the fact that I have not yet grown out of it is a strange comfort to me; in my mind it means that I am still young.

Great Accomplishment of the Day

Accomplishment of the day: My evil math teacher signed a note allowing me to go to the computer lab to print off practice math tests. The last sentence on the note said "I also agree that I am a happy person today." Bwahahaha!
Note: This was after she called a student a....(word)... and told him to go to hell. =D

'In the strength of the Lord, I can do hard things'

I just read a very inspiring article on LDS.org about believing in ourselves and our ability to do hard things. I encourage all those that find life crazy and overwhelming at times in their lives to take only a few minutes to read this. http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/60011/Latter-day-Saint-Young-Women-In-the-strength-of-the-Lord--I-can-do-hard-things.html#

Sweet Serenity

Sometimes, life isn’t so easy. Some days, all you want to do is climb back in bed and pretend the world does not exist. Life starts to feel very monotonous and pointless lately and I am running out of steam to carry on. I would love to have a day spent only with my frog prince in some remote land where no one can say, “one phone call a week” or ask “when will you be home?” A place where the hills are always soft, the air always warm, and school bells are not to be heard from miles around. Somewhere with a soft blanket, warm fire, and glittering lights can be enjoyed in serenity. Oh, the places I wish to be.

The Million Dollar Bingo!

Have you ever tried to play bingo with 4 year olds? Even using big tokens and cards with only eight numbers to them it really is a trick. Now imagine grown men playing bingo with the same attention span as 4 year olds and the same materials...

Keith caught on to the basic idea of the game fairly quickly- look for the number called, put a token on it. The problem came when the number called didn't appear on his board. On these occasions he would loudly proclaim, "now you just wait a minute! There is something wrong here." It didn't matter how many times we explained it to him, he just didn't get it.

Eddie, so happy and full of spunk, was too busy talking to everyone and everything to even try. He told me today that he knows the secret to earning money fast. We were playing bingo and he was fully determined that "if you move this token down here and push it through the 75% row, you'll come out richer than when you sat down without laying your money on the table!" If only it really worked that way. Eddie is the sweetest and funnest old man that I have ever had the pleasure to meet.