This is a good sign

This is just so beautiful I couldn't help but include it!  I have a huge crush on Utah right now.

I originally intended to make a montage post of all of the drafts I have written in the past few months...but it was just so depressing that I thought...better not.

Then I thought I'll just write about each month in one sentence!
Still depressing...
So this is what I've got for catch-up, not that I owe it to anyone, but once I thought of this analogy I kind of wanted to use it.

I've kind of felt like I was in that part in the movie 127 Hours when Aaron Rawlston has to cut off his arm with a blunt knife.  At one point his arm was detached beyond all hope, all he had left to do was sever the nerves.  Though they served no purpose anymore cutting them was still shockingly painful.  But once he did he hiked out with one less arm and one INCREDIBLE experience.

Comparing my life to someone who had to amputate his arm to save his life from a canyon deathtrap is dramatic, I know, but HOLY CRAP THE LAST FEW MONTHS WERE HARD!  

I'm just so glad they're over!  I feel like I'm floating around on what a relief it is to feel better.

Here's the run down of what's happening now (I feel like I say this like 1000 times every day)

• I'm graduating from BYU with my MSW (Masters in Social Work) on April 26th
• My family is coming into town including my nniiiieeeccceee!  She's SO CUTE

• I'm going to work as a therapist in sundry to-be-determined jobs for the summer
• I want to visit Alaska, I think about it all the time
• After that, who knows?  Maybe do some wilderness therapy?  Maybe go live in the wilderness?

Anyway, this is what I want to write about today:
I had the chance to let a few people really see me, I mean REALLY see ME.  As my friend put it "Avatar see," meaning to see someone in the spiritual sense.  Ah, I don't know how to describe the kind of "see" I'm getting at.
I didn't recognize the ways I wasn't letting myself be seen.  Everyone else's blind spot was my blind spot as well.  I am generally very open and honest with what I think and feel, but what I didn't notice is that because of that I avoid some topics HARDCORE.  If they came up, I'd have to be honest about them, so I just kept them from coming up.  Except I didn't know I was doing that.

With this particular group the things I avoid kept bubbling up to the surface.  Finally they bubbled out and spilled all over my friends.  It was kind of terrifying.  I love to share, but I never wanted to share THAT stuff.  But then I did...and my friends loved me...more.

And then I could take a good look at what I had been hiding and see...it's not as ugly and scary as I thought.  It's still not fun, but it's not what I thought it was.  And it didn't do to other people what I thought it would.  It brought them closer.

Why was it tempting to believe that if people really knew me they would reject me?  There's nothing appealing about that thought, why do we succumb to that temptation?  It's like someone whispers that idea in our ears so quietly for so long that we think it came from us.  Or we don't think it 'came' from anywhere.  It is so subtly engraven upon our hearts as an absolute truth that we never think to take it out and examine its truthfulness before we let it color our every interaction.  I am constantly evaluating truth claims before I integrate them into my life, how did that one slip my radar?

When I turned on the light in the dark room to finally take a look at the truthfulness of that idea it quickly dissipated.  Had I ever really believed it?  No...impossible, it's too foolish.  It was gone so fast it was as if it was never there, and what was convincing me of its existence was only the darkness.  But when I turned off the light and stopped looking for it, and it was BACK.  It was like I could only be aware of it if I wasn't looking for it.  Like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle sort of...It's also sort of like how I remember the northern lights.  When they're lit you're not sure they were ever gone, and when they're gone you're not sure they were ever really there.  Like something that disappears whenever you look over your shoulder for it.  It is hard to nail down the way that lie affects my life, but I'm in the process.

That's all, that's what I wanted to write about today :)

OH and have you seen this commercial?  I have been debating about who to share it with because it's borderline distasteful maybe, but then I decided...no, it's just REALLY funny :)