(Invictus means undeafeated in Latin. It was written in the 19th century to express what the author, Ernest Henely, endured over a twenty month period in an infirmary where he was being treated for tuberculosis and arthritis.)
Sunday I was released from my Young Women's calling. I served as the Miamaid advisor. After hearing the news, I cried for three days. I get emotionally attached and I have to say emphatically, I love my young women. They are the greatest group of young women any Young Women's leader could ever ask for.
Sunday I taught my last lesson. Good thing I didn't know at the time it would be my last lesson. The lesson
centered on "Finding Joy Now!" As I was preparing it, I thought about the message the world constantly bombards young women with. I think that message revolves around an all out attack on young women and their sense of worth. I think the world constantly sends a message that is meant to make young women feel as if they are not good enough and that in order to be happy they have to be something they're not. This message simply isn't true and I wanted my young women to know that.
As I read through the lesson, I thought about the happiness that comes when young women trust in their own individual worth and their own divine nature. I remember what it was like to be young once and I know that this positive message can never be stressed enough. In fact, I think it's a message that is important at any age.
Dr. Suess said, "Today you are YOU, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is YOU'ER than YOU!" I want young women (and old) everywhere to know ---YOU can find great joy in being YOU! You can find a deep sense of satisfaction in coming to know yourself, coming to like yourself and in being the best YOU you can be! There is great joy in being your own best self and in liking who you are.
I think Joy is something we can have today! Our Savior wants us to be happy here and now and he has provided a way for us to live so that we can surely feel that happiness.
Today I'm going enjoy my journey. Time is so fleeting. I'm going to strive to follow this advice today. I thank the young women in my ward for being great examples to me. I love them and I'm going to miss them terribly. I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with them and all the things they taught me. I will forever think of them as my own. And I'm glad that the thought I walk away with today is one to be remembered.
Trust in your journey! Find enjoyment in it ---Today!
For the past week I've been camped out in Bear Lake. I needed some down time. I wanted to separate myself from the world and just quietly exist alone for a few days, so I ran away from home.
When I arrived at my cabin, I was surprised to find the ground a barren brown at best. I think Winter has fled and escaped to some place far away as well. There is no snow in sight and the first couple of days I was here I could have made my daily walks without a coat it was so warm. Maybe Winter needed some down time too. Maybe Winter decided to run away.
I've concluded Winter is a woman who mostly wears a frown. I'm sure of it, since after a few days of mild temperatures, she showed up again. Her air was cold and she had turned frigid. I guess she hadn't really gone far away afterall. The trees also announced her arrival, she let loose her gusty attitude, huffing and puffing, whipping every barren branch she came in contact with.
Winter must be tempermental. She hadn't been outside my window long when she started throwing things. I saw odd pieces of garbage flying through the air. Her cold front felt like she had taken on the demeanor of a bedraggled spoiled child, pouting in order to make her presence known. I could tell from the sound of things she was not happy to be back.
At night I laid in my bed and listened to her crying sounds. My rafters creaked and groaned each night. It felt like every nail was struggling to hang on to its spot of wood. Now her tears have frozen, they've turned to ice crystals, blowing everywhere. I went out to take a picture. Today I think Winter is mostly ornery and miserable.
I didn't mind her pitching her fit outside. My dense logs kept her tantrums at bay. The fire in my hearth with its rolling flames made things toasty warm and I spent much of my time in my favorite stuffed easy chair. Life felt serenely good with my fleece blanket tucked around me, a hot steaming cup of cocoa in one hand and a good book in the other. Winter could do what ever she wanted outside.
Every soul needs some peaceful time to sit and digest life. Quiet unfettered moments to sort, ponder, analyze and process those day to day occurrences that bend and shape us when we're not looking.
No emotion gets past me when it comes to living life. I seem to feel everything in a way no one else does. Maybe I'm just naive though in thinking I'm the only one who ever feels things with such omnious intensity. I have spent much of my time here seeking the spirit in my analiyzations. Today I found light in my thoughts and a great realization.
It came to me in a peculiar way. I was working on my computer when I decided to turn on some music. I've been so discouraged lately. I don't know what it is, but since my mother passed away, its like I've been groping my way through a cloud. Maybe it's time and how fleeting it feels. Maybe it's just seeing my future and wondering what path to take. Up until now my time has been spent caring for people. Before my mom died, so much of my time was spent caring for her. Before that, half my life was spent caring for my children. Now here I am in this new place that feels totally unfamiliar and I've got to say, quite a bit empty. I'm not sure what to do with my life. Suddenly I've come face to face with myself and to be quite honest, I'm not sure I like it! I have things I want to do and yet I feel guilty for doing them. Is it ok now to focus on me and not my children? I think worrying about it all, drove me away from home. I think I ran away to escape the unfamiliar.
I like to listen to music. I turned on my tunes and was meditating on so many thoughts, chewing them up and at the same time trying to swallow them whole. The music started to clear my mind. I started listening to a song by Sara Groves. And there in the sweet serene melody something came to me clearly. I am amazed at how the spirit works through music. Right then, it spoke to me with surety. Listening to the words I realized I worry to much. Right there inbetween each note was a prominant thought and I saw myself and I saw what sustains me.
I don't have anymore answers to my day to day problems than when I arrived here. I do know one thing though, there are always peaks and valleys in life and while some days the journey might seem rough, I always have a sustaining force that walks beside me. It always sees me through. It always will.
Enjoy this sweet song. I hope it brings you the same message it brought me.
The other day I was listening to my favorite song "Landslide" by Stevie Knicks. I never grow tired of this song. I was on the way to Bear Lake and I love to turn up the volume as I drive. I was belting out the tune when my cute daughter Des, ask me about the meaning behind the words we were singing.
I told her what I'd read and heard, how the song is basically about Stevie Nicks growing up and learning to make her own decisions in life, it's about her relationship with her father.
Stevie wrote "Landslide" back in 1975, two months before she joined Fleetwood Mac. At that time she was living with Lindsey Buckingham (who would become the guitarist in Fleetwood Mac) they were trying to make it in the music business, but they were very, very poor and were being reluctantly supported by Stevie's parents.
Finally, her father gave her an ultimatum - he said he'd support them for six more months, and if they hadn't made it by then, Stevie would have to get a real job and learn the hard way. Some tough love advice, I guess.
So, at the time Stevie wrote Landslide, she was about a month into that six-month window, and she didn't know what to do. Part of her was afraid to strike out in the world without her father's help, part of her knew she had to let him go and become independent, and part of her was afraid of what would happen in the unknown.
So, I guess you can say the song is partly about her father, but it's mainly about herself and coming to understand herself better as she grew older.
As for the images of her reflection in the snow and the landslide, the snow, the mountains - that all comes from being in Aspen, Colorado, when she wrote the song. She was surrounded by those images. In the song, they represent the precariousness of her situation in life. As she puts it, "I realized everything could tumble." In other words, she knew if she didn't make the right decisions, she could lose everything.
After explaining all of this to my daughter, I told her the meaning behind the song for me. When I listen to the words "I've built my life around you." I think of my children and how hard it is on me when they take wings of their own, when they take flight, when they move on with lives of their very own. It has forced me to think about what I will do with my own life when they are all gone. What will I work on personally when my time is not completely focused on them, because like the song says, I have built my whole life around all eight of them!
I hear the words "Take my love and take it down. I climbed a mountain and I turned around. And I saw my reflection in a snow covered hill, and a landslide brought me down." Relationships with people we love are at times difficult and intense. Learning to love ourselves is no easy feat either. We spend so much time and energy coming to new places in these relationships, only to have things spin out of our control. Things happen in life; painful things that sweep us away, like a landslide.
And when she sings, "Oh mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child in my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tide? Can I handle the season's of my life?" For me, these questions strike deep at the heart. I learned a dysfunctional way of thinking as a child and I have fought that thinking pattern my whole life. And like that out of control feeling of being swept away by the very earth beneath one's feet, so often I have struggled to get my thoughts planted firmly on any kind of solid ground.
The image God holds of me is not the image I often times hold of myself. How I long to look up to my Father in Heaven and see my true countenance reflected in Him. So often I have wished I could see myself in His mirror. Can my heart rise above all of the pain I sometimes feel in the battle to overcome myself? No one really has any comprehension of the inward wars I have fought or how painful those struggles have been. Those battles have been different in each season of my life and it always takes an enormous amount of efforting to work through the major obstacles dysfunctional thinking brings.
However, it's true,"Time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm getting older too." So here I am in this pattern of learning and growing and finding out who I am and what I'm really made of. Some days I feel bold in my thoughts and abilities. Then there are those times I feel quite weak, and so often overcoming that feeling of weakness feels like climbing a mountain. And like the song expresses, when my doubts come creeping back in, often overtaking me, when things in life fly at me, and I react poorly, surely it feels like I'm tumbling down again in a land slide.
As Des and I rode along, I hit replay on the Ipod one more time. Every time I sing this song I feel like I'm getting stronger. Together Des and I sang loud. I cherish these times in the car when it's just me and my kids, driving and singing all the way to a place where I feel peace. I love driving up that mountain on the way to my place in Bear Lake. It's a reflective drive. I've driven it in every kind of weather. It's symbolic to me. I'm 52 now and I'm definitely getting bolder in life. Each day the longer I live the more I see what's really important and I have learned if I hold on to the fundamental principles my Father in Heaven has given me, I can ride out any slide.
