Learning to Float

Last summer I spent as much time as possible at the lake. I love swimming – and mountains, and lakes – and there was something about lying on my back in the water, completely relaxed, not worried about work or friends or even about drowning, that soothed all my stresses away. But I learned early on that in order to be like that, I had to learn to let go. If I didn’t want to sink, I had to relax and trust the water to hold my body up. Even when it was windy and my body would move with the waves, if I could relax and trust the water I would stay afloat.

And, as I’ve been learning, so it is with life. Life is scary sometimes. As soon as we get complacent with our circumstances – jobs, relationships, location – things change. People move, we move, people change and move on and leave us behind. Nothing in life is constant, yet we all fear change. I fear change. I’m scared of starting over, of making new friends, of having to learn new skills, of the hardships I will have to go through in order to grow. What if I’m not good enough? What if no one likes me? What if I cry myself to sleep every night, and there’s no one around me I trust to let inside?

But that’s where the gospel comes in. God is constant, and I know that if I trust in him I will be safe. If I can stop trying to control everything around me, if I do my best and then trust in the Lord to make up the difference, then I will be at peace.

For me, trusting in God is a matter of letting go. Letting go of my worries, of my fears, of my stress and trusting that, because my Heavenly Father loves me and my Savior suffered so that he would have the power to make me whole, I will be okay. When I do that, then I can begin to see the beauty in life. Like when I lay on my back in a lake in my favorite national park and look up at the pine-tree covered mountain slopes and am so happy to be alive.

There’s another part to this, though. When you’re floating on your back, you can’t just lay there motionless. You have to swim. You don’t have to swim quickly – although sometimes that is enjoyable – but if you stay stationary you will start to sink. It might take a couple minutes, but it will happen. Application? To paraphrase someone important and famous, trusting in the Lord is not a sedentary act. You have to do things to make your situation better. The Lord will magnify your efforts, but in order for him to do that there has to first be some effort.

So I am working on learning to move forward, to let go of my worries and to trust that, because of my the most powerful being in the universe is watching out for me, I will float.

Leigh Lake - pretty much my favorite place ever

Give and Take

 I have issues with letting other people serve me. It takes a lot of humility to admit to needing help from other people, and too often I am far too proud to admit that I’m not tough enough to make it on my own.

And then there’s the matter of being a burden to other people. I feel guilty if I inconvenience them, and my first instinct is to pay them back in whatever way I can.

But the thing is, it shouldn’t be so much a matter of paying it back as it is a matter of paying it forward. It doesn’t help me if I feel guilty when someone listens to me cry because I’m not doing anything to serve that person. For one thing, I don’t always know the impact I have on someone – I’ve seen that in my own life, when people have blessed my life more than they could ever know, just by the little things they do for me – but also, maybe that person doesn’t need anything from me right now, but someone else does. And if that person ever does need me, then I can be there for them. Not in an “I owe you” sense, but rather in a “Someone is in pain, and since I am in a position to help make it better, I will do what I can to comfort them” sense. And that’s how I let others serve me – in an “I am in pain, and I can’t heal myself on my own” sort of way.

So it’s cyclical, too; everything in life is cyclical. Sometimes I need to be focusing on others, and sometimes I need to let others be focusing on me. That energy needs to be flowing back and forth. I can’t give without taking and I can’t take without giving. Once I send that energy out I need to be willing to let it come back in, and once I let it in I need to send it back out. It needs to ebb and flow, like the tide.  

Ebb and flow, like the tide. Although, I'll admit, this is a lake and not the ocean. Brownie points if you can figure out which lake it is.

I understand all this intellectually, and yet I still have a difficult time letting others into how I am truly feeling. The only person I feel comfortable turning to is my Savior because I know that he loves me perfectly. I know that he will always be there for me. I don’t trust other people not to judge me as weak or needy. Maybe it’s because as I child I thought I had to be tough, that I couldn’t cry when life got hard because that’s what crybabies do, and there was no way I was going to be one of those.

But the thing is, I am a crybaby. I’m a crier. That’s how I deal with life. I have a bad day, I cry, and then the next day I feel better (why is there such a negative stereotype about women who cry easily? It doesn’t mean I’m weak; I mean, excuse me for having emotions. Don’t the two greatest commandments have to do with an emotion? Because for all that love is an action, it is first an emotion. But I digress). I just don’t want others to think that I’m miserable all the time. I also don’t want to be a burden to them.

But an important part of this life is relationships with others, and the best way to build deep relationships is by being vulnerable (I highly recommend listening to this talk). I can’t give emotionally to everyone if I’m not letting anyone give to me emotionally; it will drain me.

Luckily, I’ve been getting better at this over the past couple of years, although I’m not quite at where I’d someday like to be.

In an attempt to find the balance between giving and taking, I’ve made a list.

I give: to my awesome roommates (meaning all of them), to my friends, to my visiting teachees, to the people who read this blog (at least hopefully that’s how you view this blog), to the people I sit next to in my classes, to anyone in my ward whom I notice sitting alone.

I take: from my family (although hopefully that one is both a give and a take), from those of my friends that I trust enough to let into my life (and thank you to those of you reading this who have been there for me. I love you so much. Heavenly Father has blessed me so much by placing you in my life). I take from Heavenly Father, and from Jesus Christ. I take a lot from my Savior; he’s already given me so much, I might as well accept that gift. Goodness knows I need it.

So I give where I can, I take when I need to, I live one day at a time, and maybe someday I’ll discover I have found the balance I need.

Worthy of Love

Today’s essay is about something I struggle a lot with. Perfection. Not because I’m not perfect (although that is most certainly true), but because I try too hard to be. I beat myself up over little things. It makes life difficult sometimes. We’re commanded to be perfect, right? To follow every command with exactness? Yet I seem to have such a difficult time with that.

But lately I’ve discovered a different way of looking at things. It stems partially from Brad Wilcox’s talk “His Grace is Sufficient” (which I highly recommend reading), partially from my experiences with meditation, and partially from specific trials that I have been going through lately. My new perspective is this: According to what we learn in the Plan of Salvation, we live on a fallen world. I tend to think of it as broken. And since we live on a broken world, it makes sense that we are a broken people. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have worth. You do not have to be perfect to be loved. That is not love at all. Love is, by nature, unconditional. It’s seeing someone for who they really are – the good and the bad – and still wanting the best for them. Think of the scriptures in Moroni 7:45 and in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. That is how the Savior loves us. He is patient, he is kind, he is long-suffering, and he is the only one who has the power to not only heal us completely, but to make us stronger as he does so. His Atonement doesn’t just mean that we will be forgiven of our sins; it means that we can overcome our sins and our weaknesses and our character flaws and be healed from our sicknesses and physical ailments. In other words, it means that we can be made whole.

So I’ve been starting to see more clearly who I really am. I am a daughter of God, and perfection is not a matter of being punished for every little mistake, but rather a matter of becoming whole. So those little things I do wrong don’t matter as much as who I am becoming. And if I’m reading my scriptures and praying – earnestly seeking God’s will in my life – and looking for ways to serve others, then I will automatically grow into my potential – even if I mess up every single day. Which I do, and I will, but as time goes on gradually I will mess up less and less. I already mess up less than I did a year ago. By this I can see that God has been guiding my life, placing me in situations where I can learn and grow – both situations where I am stretched more than I thought possible, and situations where people are put in my path who lift me up and teach me and, most of all, love me enough that just talking to them brings me comfort.

And God loves me and will help me get to where I need to be. He blesses me even when I don’t ask him for blessings, and even more so when I do. Really people, God loves you so so much. I have felt that love for me during some of my darkest moments. It is what keeps me going when life gets to be more than I can bear. And he loves everyone that much. He loves you. Christ loves you enough to have suffered and atoned for everything that makes you less than whole; everything that leaves you broken – sin, weakness, heartache. He can heal you. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Welcome to my blog!

In order to get myself to actually spend time writing, I told myself that I couldn’t work on homework until I had written for thirty minutes. So, in order to get anything productive done today, I have to first have fun. Man, I like this system.

Anyway. So this is my blog. It’s not about my life, though. Well, it is about my life, but not in a “I just got a dog!” sort of a way. More in a “This is what I’ve been learning about life and myself, and this is why it matters to you” sort of way. So probably this will turn into a collection of essays (and possibly a few poems, if you promise not to critique them too harshly), and hopefully they’ll be good because I am an English major. And hopefully they get better as time goes on because that is how life is supposed to work. Mainly I want to write something that will make a difference in someone else’s life, although I’m not sure that anything I have to say will have that kind of power. Really, I’m not sure I’m all that wise, or all that good with words. And anyway, in the end it comes down to whether or not you are willing to act on what you learn. So if something I write helps you realize something new, please promise me you’ll act on it.

So I have an old blog that I meant to share with people and then forgot about and now can’t remember the email address I made to go with it and can’t figure out how to find that out from the blog and even if I could, I wouldn’t remember the password. But I had already written a couple of posts for it that I think are pretty good, so my first few posts will be from there. To start with, here’s the intro:

Welcome to my blog! I suppose I should start with an introduction.

The main thing you should know about me is that I believe in Christ. I believe that he atoned for my sins, that he loves me perfectly, and that through his Atonement I can find healing. Having his love in my life brings me peace and makes me whole. It can do the same for you.

Other than that: I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as Mormons), I am currently a college student living away from home, I love hiking, writing, laughing, playing piano, making snarky comments, learning, and growing.


I also have several challenges. I am living away from home with roommates, taking classes, and providing for myself. I deal with all the stresses of college life and, like everyone else, regularly have other trials that come along.

The purpose of this blog is to use my challenges and the lessons I learn from them to bring others to Christ. If my words touch you in any way, I would love to hear about it. Heck, even if my words don't touch you I'd still love to hear from you. Constructive criticism is always welcome (the key word there being constructive). So, welcome to my blog, and I hope you enjoy it.