a tall personality

Today I heard an amazing lady tell an amazing story and I want to share it. Here is some context first:  I heard this story with my friend who is a survivor of some heart-wrenchingly difficult life-circumstances.  She eventually escaped them and came to BYU where she started to make friends, for the first time in her life.  I have the honor to be one of her friends, and to be part of her healing process.  It has been one of the best experiences of my life.  Since I have known her she has blossomed into a beautiful, capable, strong women; she is one of the people I admire and respect most in the whole world. She and I were chatting with one of the kindest and smartest ladies I know, who also happens to be a Jewish holocaust survivor.  I also admire and respect her more than I can express. So there I was, sitting with these two people who have been subjected to the worst of humanity.  They are also two of the most wonderful people in the world. ...

I wrote the first part of the post around last Valentines Day, I just found it again and wanted to share:   These thoughts about love started to coalesce the Tuesday before Valentines Day when a professor recited a poem by ee cummings. It goes like this i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) Then he told us that whatever else we do in our life, we should find love.  N...

It's just after dawn, it's cold, it's rainy, I'm with a gaggle of about 200 runners all wearing leggings and long sleeves huddled around a "Start" banner in the middle of the red rock desert near Moab, UT.  Offspring is blasting through the morning dampness as a feeble attempt to pump up the hardy souls who came out for this race.   " I won't pay, I won't pay ya, no way,  Na-na Why don't you get a job!"   I haven't heard this song since high school and it is pretty apparent that I'm the only one of my friends who ever was a fan of the Offspring, but I sing along anyway.  My friends and I dance around and take silly pictures wearing trash bags.   I think Heidi and Kristin are maybe playing patty-cake here? Kristen let me share her trash bag.  What a friend! The silliness distracts me from the pre-race jitters that tag along with my thoughts, "What if it's too hard?  What if I get lost?  What if everyone leaves me behind...

I haven't been the biggest fan of personality tests in the past.  I think they can put you in a fictitious 'box'.  However, a few weeks ago we had someone come speak to my psychotherapy class about a particular classification of personalities.  Before he came, we all were required to take a personality/communication style test online.  I was 'diagnosed' as expressive/expressive.  I didn't pay too much attention, but I took the test and whatever. So this guy comes to class, looks around, points at someone and says "Expressive/Dominant?  And you, amiable, right?"  He was DEAD on, just from looking at them!  That got my attention. As I listened, and read the profile of my own personality, it was like shining a blazing spotlight on the mysteries of my life!  It helped me understand myself in a way I never had before!  So here are some descriptions of my personality type. How I see myself "You volunteer for tasks, even if...

Recently I've had a burst of ideas for blog posts.  They'll all be belated but in the order they sort of happened.  The first one is about turning 25, which happened to me at the end of August. A few thoughts about turning 25 1. Getting eight hours of sleep has become a non-negotiable factor in my life.  When I was 24 I could say to my body, "Body, I want to stay up really late tonight and get up really early tomorrow, so you just hold tight and maybe on the weekend I'll give you an extra hour or two!"  I almost always got my way. I swear the day I turned 25 everything changed.  Now I set my alarm for 6, but if the 8 hour mark is at 7:16, my body will completely ignore the alarm and wake up promptly at 7:16 as if to say, "dummy, you know 8 hours was our deal!  Not 4 not 6 not 7 hours and 55 minutes.  8!  I win."  Really though, I win, I'm much happier this way! 2.  My friend Holly also recently turned 25, and she made a list of 25...

Tonight is among the first chilly nights of Fall.  I decide to wear the almost-too-warm but irresistibly soft zebra stripe pajamas my mom just sent me with my purple jacket as I lay under the stars on my lawn.  Just thinking.  Wondering.  I give myself a few hours to try to feel better...and then it is 11.  I go inside and lay on my bed.  I don't know what has been wrong with me lately.  I ask Heavenly Father, or maybe I'm really asking myself, "What is the source of all this pain I feel?"  I have everything to be grateful for.  Everything.  But I still feel this gnawing pain for something I can't escape and can't identify.  I feel my mind slipping over a certain emotional place every time I try to pin-point it.  It's hard to describe.  There's something there making me sad and someday I'll figure out what it is. A tear slips out of the corner of my eye, so slowly that it dries before it falls to the pillow. ...

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh"  Ezekiel 36:26 KJV I don't want to apologize for being spiritual...but I feel like this kind of post won't mean so much to some.  I hope knowing that it means everything to me can help you understand why I'd want to share it. The 21st and 22nd of August mark my SEVENTH year of being baptized and confirmed a member of my church.  The events of those two days long, long ago in 2004 have impacted my life like no others before or since.  Every good thing that has happened to me since then is connected to those days.  Every experience has been richer because of my beliefs and the commitments I have made to God, who I believe and feel is literally and in every way my Heavenly Father.  Knowing this has forever changed my mind and heart. I always suspected there was a component of myself that wen...

Everyone, meet my friend Skyler.  I asked him if I could take a picture of him doing a backflip, and it turns out he can not only do backflips, but just about any other kind of flip.  Skyler deserves his own post without a doubt, but this one is just going to be about backflips :) When I was a kid I learned to do backflips on my trampoline, and I quickly found that a backflip takes TOTAL commitment.  If you aren't ready to finish the backflip when you start, you end up landing on your head.  Backflips aren't that dangerous...unless you get half way and decide you don't want to do one anymore.  What's more, most of my head-landings interrupted otherwise perfectly executed flips. I had Skyler pose at the exact point at which it is most crucial to NOT  freak out! As I've thought about recent choices I have made, specifically the choice to get a master's in social work, this is the analogy that has come to mind.  It was a scary choice to make, b...

This weekend I went to the best fireworks show this side of the Atlantic Ocean, at least for me it is. It takes place every year on the 2nd or 3rd of July in Lander, Wyoming.  It's put on by a wonderful family, the Bills. "So...Why not on the 4th?"  I asked the first time I went to the show 6 years ago. Well, check this out: "The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776 (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/declarat.html) The vote for independence actually took place on the 2nd, and the declaration penned by Thomas Jefferson was adopted two days later on the 4th!  So the Bills are following John Adams' advice, and I think that is pretty legit!  This i...