Year of 26

Started off bad.  Well, actually it started off really good.  Around my birthday last
year I met the person who is now one of my best friends.  We were friends…and
then I kind of fell in love and he kind of didn’t.  That part was really lame…as were
the following 6 months of willing myself to fall out of love...

But there were actually  quite a few bright spots in those months, like the time me and Lil saw wild horses, or the time I went skiing in Montana with Casey, or the time I went backpacking and rappelling with Lillian, and the million times Mandi and Joscelyn, Tahlia, and so many others called to make sure I was ok, and the million times Robby and I practiced frisbee in the middle of the night-- I call it frisbee therapy.

And I learned lots and lots of things.  This (below) is one of them.  I became a world class expert at doing this, and now I'm trying to undo all that focused training.  And you know what?  It's starting to work.

How to guard your broken heart so nothing can touch it or make it feel better it

1. Think about it all the time

2. Give into every impulse to contact the person who broke it

3. Let your peace be interrupted by every communication with that person

4. Focus on the things that remind you of them

5. Remember the things you were supposed to do together, remind yourself

of them often.  Take advantage of every opportunity to think of them or tell

others about them

6. Try to convince the other person that they made a mistake

7. Try to convince yourself the other person made a mistake

8. Take it to heart when others say that he made a mistake

9. Relate every other bad feeling or thing that happens to you to them

10. Don’t let other sources comfort you, seek comfort only in knowing they still

care for you

I learned what NOT to do.  What to never do again.  I'm working on the list of what TO do, maybe that will come next.  Also, still working on that love story.
I got this at the farmer's market this weekend.  It's a sparrow (but it is unfortunately reminding everyone of the Hunger Games, understandably) and it reminds me that I have the freedom to choose, the freedom to think.  It reminds that freedom gives me the opportunity to control aspects of my life I let get nearly hopelessly out of control.

A great man who visited my mission said, "Don't try to make your companion good.  Try to make your companion happy and you'll make yourself good." (side note for those who aren't familiar with LDS missions, a companion is someone you spend 24-7 with for several months while working full time to help strengthen congregations of the church.  Literally you are never out of each other's sight unless one of you is in the bathroom.  The experience teaches many great things)  I loved that advice and I'm continuing to find the underlying principle so profound.

You will accomplish more by worrying about who you love and not who loves you.  You waste a lot of time an energy on anxiety that comes out of intense self-concern.  If you can let go of that concern for how you are being treated or seen and focus on others you will become pure and good.  It takes surrendering the desire to be seen and treated that way. 

You can't become like Jesus by trying to be like Jesus because Jesus wasn't trying to be like himself.

Abrupt ending here...more to come, these thoughts are constantly bubbling out!

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