smMYling

In our own despair we often forget that others around us are also suffering. It's easy to do. We are very self-centered creatures normally. Think about it. When your mom asked you to clean your room you thought to yourself, "MOM! I just have three more levels before I beat this Zelda!!! Can't you wait!" You then were plagued with doubts about your mother's love for you and you have never ever been the same since. No, but really, when your teacher at school assigned you a major homework assignment the night of your biggest game in your life's history didn't you sit around in a circle with all your buddies and bash on that good-for-nothing teacher that should realize that half of the people in his class are on the team with the biggest game in their "career" on the line and he expects you to finish this torturous assignment? Who can worry about something as trivial as Math or even English when something important is on the line such as your basketball career. We really are centered on ourselves.
Today I had the opportunity to smile at a hundred people as they made their way through door L of the BYU-I I-Center for devotional. As I tried to practice an infectious smile I had a long while to think about myself and the people going in and out my door. Some were really quiet and wouldn't look at me in the face until I said, "Enjoy devotional!" then most heard me and smiled and said "thanks." But then there were others that maybe didn't hear me and never looked my way and on their lips wasn't even a remnant of a smile. This makes me reflect on myself negatively and ask "what if I failed?". I remind myself of the poem by Emily Dickinson, "They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity." And again I ask, "What if I failed?"
I was always smiling and even if sometimes my voice did stutter I did welcome them to devotional. So I really can't say I didn't do my part to try and make their day better. They just didn't give me the chance to.
It makes me feel so much better on a bad day when a complete stranger acknowledges my existence because it jars me away from thinking about me and my problems and reminds me that there are other people on the planet too. So what am I trying to get at? I'm not sure. Maybe I want to ask you to look at the people that you walk past on the sidewalk and smile. Maybe that's all they needed at that moment. You could be the one do give it to them. And I think that'd make them smile back. Plus the world will be a happier place if the people in it showed their pearly whites once in a while.

Walls

You’ve built up so many walls inside of you; I can see them outside of you.
They make you stiff and cause you to be critical and demanding of others.
And that is not what this life is all about.
We were meant to love each other and be supportive and forgiving.
But those walls inside of you won’t let you relent.
You must be exacting. You must be imposing. And that makes you mean.
And it’s causing you pain.
But the walls inside you can be temporary if only you’d let them.
Take the petard that forgiveness commissions and destroy that part of yourself, forever.
Never let the walls slowly build up inside you again.
Everyday choose to go on clean up duty, chose to forgive, and chose to repent.
Throw away the ruble that starts accumulating in your heart.
Don’t let it sit there and cement and cause you to lose out on the joy of life.
Please.
You’ve built up so many walls inside of you; I can see them outside of you.
And it’s causing me pain.

What is meant by "being content"?

Contentment
Robs the mind of thought
Stunts the growth of knowledge
But opens time for peaceful rest
So motion loses progress

Testimony Meeting at Girl's Camp

My soul is billowing, billowing more and more, getting bigger and bigger, and closer to Heaven.
Warmth, flickering and flashing, causing my eyes to water and my conviction to strengthen.
The crack and pop induces goose bumps to run up and down my limbs.
Inspiration lands soft and white in my eyes causing tears and my fingers to fly on a page.

"The Spirit of God like a fire is burning"

I'm Thinking

I'm thinking of all the places I need to go, the things I need to do, and the people that I need to see. I'm thinking that I might not have time for all of it, especially now that I'm taking a minute to write. I'm thinking of my blessings, and how bountiful they are. I'm thinking that even though I'm feeling nervous about the unknown I'm going to be happy no matter what comes my way. I'm thinking that I think too much and that now is not the time for thinking but the time for doing.

A Nightmare

One late evening in Autumn, Night reached her icy cold fingers to grip the streets of a small town and the heart of a little girl.
A father starts walking, hand in hand with his daughter, down a dim, damp street. The pale green of the patriarch’s eyes hold a hint of sadness and the daughter’s light blue eyes look around unseeing. Clinging to her sole parent, the pair walks past store after store.Music is heard coming from a bar. A pebble skids across the hard, cracked, cement sidewalk.  The pair walk on.
Past drunks coming out of a bar, the pair walk, not hearing their slurred speak and or seeing as they wobble by. Passing a huge man in a dark rain coat, just standing at an entrance to an alley, they go on and on. The moon is hiding it’s familiar face and the lamp lights shutter spookily. Leaves piled up at the base of a nearby tree rustle, and the wind brings the sound of a train whistle while the tightly joined duo walk on.
A teenage stranger approaches the pair who are snapped from their numbness when she inquires if they would walk with her home. She seems frightened, a bit on edge, and she reminded him of a little girl, a little like his own daughter, so the father agrees. Still clinging to the strong hand of her father, the girl studies the stranger. Strangely dyed, curly hair is pulled up on her head in a bun. A pretty necklace graces her neck and a gangster-like jacket hangs about her slim shoulders. And so the now trio walk on.
An old, orange, stray tabby cries from its seat on an abandoned car. They travel past a hole-in-the-wall, long closed, Pizzeria and down the long street. An owl screeches when it‘s prey is found. A car drives by with its bright headlights on, temporarily blinding all three. The girl still clings to her father’s callused hand as they all walk on.
With the strange teenage girl leading the way, they take a sharp right and find themselves in a dim alley behind a small Mexican-American restaurant. People are lining the wall to their right and a few large silhouettes line the wall to their left. The teenage stranger thanks the father for accompanying her home and the father daughter team turn to continue their tedious walk home. The biggest silhouette, one who reeked and wore a gangster-like jacket similar to the one the teenage stranger had on, left the wall and placed a pair of arms as strong as heavy rope around the unsuspecting father, suddenly tearing him away from his beloved daughter’s grasp. Although the father was no match for the man he commenced his useless struggle, desperate to not be parted from his little girl.
Deeply miffed by the cold she felt when the warm hand left hers, the daughter goes after the thug who is dragging her father to the back door of the shop. She throws herself at him and manages to place one good kick to the scoundrel’s shin. Before she can strike again however, another massive thug grabs her from behind, stopping her pitiful rescue attempt. He pins her to the ground while they continue to take her only mortal parent away. In a last ditch effort to free her father she pleads for mercy from the seemingly merciless thugs, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! You can‘t take my dad! I don‘t have my mom anymore, I need my dad! No! You can‘t take him! He‘s all I‘ve got left!!”
A confused consciousness fills the girl and she reaches one small hand out in lonely anguish for a mother who is no longer there. Her father, after hearing her cry out, comes into her room and holds her till her self-pitying sobs end. The daughter then grabs hold of her father’s strong hand and clings to it till a numbing sleep frees her from her current woes into the arms of nothingness.

Life isn't a Movie

What could be better than watching Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr as they fall in love? Or watching the epic story of true love in “The Princess Bride”? The other day I just kept watching a fairly good PG movie called “Runaway Bride”. I wanted to understand how Julia Roberts’character finally found herself. And how come she fell in love with Richard Gere and not groom number four Christopher Meloni? I got absorbed into the characters’ lives and analysed almost everything about them, what they wore, the way they talked, the way they handled a situation, and even the way their hair was done up. Everytime you watch a movie you can observe different things. That is what I love about movies. And if the movie is a good one then you might want to watch it over and over again so you can observe different things, or maybe that’s just me. But it is like reading different versions of the same book and it almost doesn’t feel like you’re watching one movie over again. But I've been noticing lately that when I'm sitting down watching movies, I'm becoming a couch potato. And who wants to be a veggie that sits on a dark couch somewhere with so many eyes? There are only twenty-four hours in the day and as a way to help me stop spending so many hours with movies I wrote a list of reasons life is NOT like a movie.

Life doesn't have mood music constantly playing in the background for everyone but you to hear.

There are seldom chase scenes.

Unless you have your hair professionally done or you are a hair stylist yourself, your hair will never look like the characters' in the movies, especially when you've just woken up!

Although the coincidences aren't coincidences in either, in the movies it is because the writer dreamed them up, in life it is because God knows what's best for us (although we do wonder sometimes what He had in mind).

The main characters are physically pretty but they are only beautiful because we consider them to be so.

People actually have faults that aren't endearing or cute.

Science fiction is fiction, and it won't become real, although someday it might come close.

Your Fairy Godmother died with your childhood, sorry.

Life will never be as glamorous as Audrey Hepburn or as over-the-top hilarious as Bob Hope.

There are major consequences to gambling, drinking, smoking, being promiscuous, and eating a lot of chocolate and ice cream without exercising.

Life is not a movie but it's more fulfilling than watching one, especially if you actually embrace your life and live it.