Random and 22

Random ramblings of my life lately....


1. 22!!!!! I am now 22. 22! 22! 22! I don't why but there is something that sounds really good about that age. It just rolls off the tongue. Haha. Really though, I had such a great birthday celebration with the people who are very closest and most important to me. It wasn't a super social time for me like it often is...I spent individual time with a lot of people in my family over the weekend and spent my birthday with family and just a couple of close friends. I am grateful for birthdays because I always pay a little more attention to loving myself and to loving others and to being grateful just to be alive, no matter the challenges I may be facing. I love the season my birthday is in because I always receive extra gratitude for nature because of how beautiful the mountains and leaves and trees are on my birthday.

2. Those girls who spent my birthday celebration with me and my family have been rocks for me throughout the past 10-15 years. I am so lucky to have such an amazing support system all around me. I have felt the strength of all those people who love and support me so much lately. Sometimes you don't really realize how many people there are around you who love you until you have a time that you literally need the strength that every person in your life gives you. Every person matters so much. Every person has so much to give. Every person has something that is invaluable to someone else. I hope you all know how amazing and special and valued you are by so many people.
Just to show you how adorable my friends are, my friend and I went to lunch today and she called me as I was driving home because "22" was playing on the radio. This is so awesome because we have been trying to find a moment sing along with "22" at the top of our lungs all week to celebrate my birthday. We've never been able to find it on the radio when we were together. We were in separate cars when it came on so she called me and we sang to it together on the phone in our separate cars. The timing on my radio was ahead of hers so we were just singing and laughing. It made my day that I have such a sweet friend. She is the friend who can I can always count on to make me laugh and help cheer me up. She is one of the only friends who I can get together with when we are both in super bad moods, be it from hormones, boys, frustrations of living at home, or whatever else and we can just laugh it all out. We laugh at each other's stresses and are pretty soon laughing at our own and then just laughing at how dramatic we can be. It's the best. I might add though that we are super bad influences on each other when it comes to having self-control over buying delicious food. Those get-togethers to laugh at our problems usually involve ice cream or some other food. Oh well...

3. I love this song. Slowly, I am trying to learn to live like this. Loving people is so so good. It hurts sometimes, but is soooo good. I have been thinking a lot about confidence lately and about how we can have full confidence in our lives in the many different aspects we may have need of confidence. Something in my life recently turned out really differently than I thought it would. I have struggled since to know how I could feel so confident that it was going to be a certain way when that wasn't the intended outcome. It hurt me and confused me and I had to search a lot to know if I had been wrong or deceived in what I had felt was right. I felt confident that I knew the Source of those feelings, but perhaps I had misunderstood. As I pondered and talked with my Father in Heaven about it, I felt the reassurance from Him that I had done my part and that I had not been wrong or deceived. I had given my full faith to the matter, my full heart, my full hope, my full trust, and my full belief in its goodness. I had run my part of that race with sufficient faith and effort and Heavenly Father helped me know that I could be confident with that. Along the lines of self-confidence, when we are living the Commandments of God, and doing what we need to in our personal lives to be clean before Him, we can always have confidence in ourselves. Confidence comes from how we live before God, not from anything that man gives to us or acknowledges us for. I also learned recently (long time coming haha) that I don't need to worry about being pretty enough or skinny enough or whatever enough for boys. Haha. All I need is to live worthily so that I can always have confidence in the presence of God and then I can always have confidence in the presence of anyone else. Yay!! God is so good.

4. I believe in miracles!! I know God can give us help beyond our imagining in our lives. My mom once told me "You have to need a miracle for God to do a miracle in your life." Sometimes we want the miracle without having to have the circumstance that provides the need for the miracle. I feel this way a lot. However, over the past few years, I have learned that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's words, "Man's extremity is God's opportunity" are true and I am grateful for the small moments of extremity I have experienced. A month and half ago or so, I offered a prayer in which I somewhat unknowingly asked for an experience to help me along in my path of discipleship. I had been recalling a time of extremity I had about 4 years ago which involved intense illness. I felt I had forgotten some of the important things I'd felt in that time and I wanted to be reminded of those things and learn new things. I prayed humbly for whatever experience it would take for me to find those things again in a way that I would be able to learn them permanently. I had nooooooooo idea what the Lord was going to give me. It was far different and far beyond what I thought might be necessary. Haha. I have learned once again how holy our times of extremity can be. Though they may be challenging and stretching, if we can look beyond complaining about them, we can find so many blessings and so much growth (I am not good at not complaining, but I'm working on it). I am grateful that I have a Father who gives me what I need over what I want and I am trying to repent of the times when I insist upon what I want rather than what I need. This song is one of my faves. I know that God will and does and can work miracles in our lives. So often the miracle is just how He changes us through our experiences. I love Him so much!

I know God loves you and wants to reach out to you and help you in whatever you are struggling with He loves you so so so so much!! He wants to give you so so much! He wants to forgive you and to heal you and to help you be happier by helping you be cleaner. Pray to Him. He wants to talk with you. He is your Father.


Stay tuned for my next post. It's been formulating in my mind for a good week or more now. I don't know how to do it justice but I am going to try.