Curly Hair

Jami permed my hair, and I'm loving it. =)

Wings of Lightning

To quote a line from a song I wrote recently, "Well, a lot of things have changed."

Not a drastic amount of change, but definitely enough to provide an update.

Over the summer I ran two half-marathons and only got injured in one of them. =) I also hiked the Wellsvilles with my friend Darrell, and the Jardine Juniper trail with my friend Steffen. I almost changed majors and schools as well, but eventually decided to stay.

I also became a volunteer at the FamilySearch library here in town and I am there once a week for six hours, helping patrons, teaching classes, and working on my own family history. It's pretty great. =)

Still not dating any one person, but have gone on a few dates in recent weeks with a few different guys. Also, I'm trying to spend lots of time with my music therapy gals who are graduating this spring and leaving me behind. I'm definitely going to miss them!

And my hair is curly now.

Music Improvisation

"Music...can at the same time belong to the patient's world and be part of reality perceived by the senses of hearing, seeing, and touching." (Alvin, 1966, p. 138) 

Audible, visual, tangible thoughts. =) I love music.

Humility and Confidence - Ammon

One of my current scripture study projects right now is to see what the disciples and prophets and followers of Christ in the scriptures say about themselves. Is confidence the same as pride? Is it possible to have confidence and humility at the same time? How?

Here is a quote from Ammon, one of the sons of Mosiah, after his mission to the Lamanites:

10 And it came to pass that when Ammon had said these words, his brother Aaron rebuked him, saying: Ammon, I fear that thy joy doth carry thee away unto boasting.

11 But Ammon said unto him: I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God.

12 Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.

13 Behold, how many thousands of our brethren has he loosed from the pains of hell; and they are brought to sing redeeming love, and this because of the power of his word which is in us, therefore have we not great reason to rejoice?

(Alma 26)

The green text means that he is talking about himself and/the others with him. The red text is when he is talking about Jesus Christ. As seen by looking at the green text, he expresses both humility and confidence. He says "I do not boast," "I am nothing," and "I am weak." But he also says "I can do all things" and "we have wrought many mighty miracles" and "the power which is in us has saved our brethren." How does that work? How does someone who is weak do all things?

Then, by looking at the red text, it's seen that something confident (and green) is never said without red text nearby. Instead of just "I can do all things" it's "In his strength I can do all things." "We have wrought many might miracles, for which we will praise his name forever." Not just "the power which is in us," but "the power of his word which is in us."

Ammon's example shows that confidently talking about oneself alone might be boasting, and our words might be false, but when we talk confidently about the team "the Savior and me" or "the Savior and us," we're not boasting, we're praising God.

The difference is Jesus Christ.

The take-away I get from this is that I shouldn't express confidence in myself alone. When I express confidence, my goal is to include (either out loud or at least in my head [to keep me humble]) an acknowledgement that anything good that I've done only happened through the help of Jesus Christ.

Not only will it keep me humble, I believe it will also keep me happier, because I can look forward to more great things, as I know that Christ will never run out of the power or the love to help me.

Why so happy?

So, I was able to to do a lot of awesome family history work today! I found people who hadn't been entered into FamilySearch yet! And I can do their temple work! Well, several were men, so I'll need to find a kind male to help me. But yeah! I'm doing REAL family history!! This descendency research idea is working well for me! =) It's odd, but good, how happy my family history success has made me. It's helping me out of my mini-depression I've had for the last few weeks. For which I'm very very grateful. I'm grateful the Lord led me to do this. And after years of off-and-on trying, I'm so grateful to finally be having success!!!

Brand New Day

Feeling better now. This is my new theme song. I'm in love with it. And the sun completely agrees with me today. =)

My Occasional Grouchy Post

We all have our bad days. I won't go into everything. But I'll admit that sometimes I just want to kick something - really hard - because I'm really tired and frustrated of being alone. End of story.

Next post will probably be happy.

And maybe I'll delete this one later. We'll see.

Missionary reawakening

Well... a lot has probably gone on since I've written. I won't try to catch up on everything right now, but I did want to mention that I have a new desire to do missionary work. Part of it was talking to the sister missionaries for a while during the Saturday Institute thing (the "When Thou Art Converted" conference). And we're gonna start doing visits again to the girls in our Relief Society, so I'm gonna feel tons better pretty soon here.

Not focusing on boys is going really well. I'm grateful the Lord let me know not to worry about it this semester. It helps a lot to know that I don't need to, and shouldn't, be thinking about it right now. Much better than wondering if I should be giving it more thought, and just being wavering and confused. So I'm grateful. I just prepare by learning how to better serve and do the Lord's will, and how to give Him my whole heart, might, mind, and soul.

Trying to have faith that being 25 will be at least as awesome as being 24! I only have a few days left... =) So much incredible stuff has happened this year. 24 was epic, but 25 will be, as I've said before, amazingly beautiful. =)

One more thing I want to mention is that the Spirit of Elijah is working on me. The rest of life feels like an interruption from doing my family history work... I have a lot of excitement for doing descendency research and finding people to do the work for. It's going to be great. =)