Christmas-y and Love

It is official- my Christmas music craze has begun! I tell you what, I've held off for a long time this year. It usually starts on Halloween. Actually, I usually have a small phase somewhere around July. It doesn't last long. Then at Halloween, it comes full-fledged. Tonight is the first time I've put my spotify station to Christmas and I'm lovin' it! I should probably admit that I started playing Christmas music on the cello around the 10th of October because I am playing in this suuuuper cool orchestra and we are performing an amazing Christmas concert in ..... dun dun dun... Abravanel Hall! I'm so excited! It's been years since I've had the privilege to play there and I just remember how much better everything sounded in that hall. I couldn't believe that what came out of my little youth orchestra could actually sound like that! We always played in such dead spaces that it was just so amazing to hear everything flow together and actually be able to hear everything that was going on in the rest of the orchestra. I'm so excited and grateful to get to play there again. More importantly than the beautiful concert hall, I am grateful for an opportunity to celebrate the joy of Christmas and the birth and life of my Savior through music. Music is such an incredible gift and brings such a special spirit and healing power into my life.  We are playing some beautiful religious pieces.... O Holy Night and some movements from Handel's Messiah being my favorites. Don't judge me, but I think my favorite piece we're playing is "Polar Express Suite"...yes, from the movie the Polar Express. It's crazy hard, but I love it. I've been listening to it over and over again the past couple weeks and just so you can get a little taste for why I love it so much, you should check it out here.  I love it. I love it. I love it!!!! I just feel like it is so magical, especially the  beautiful middle part. Ah, I am just so in love with music!!! Go listen to some good music. Your soul will love you for it! 

For a little inspiration for your day, I remembered these two quotes today that I absolutely love:

"Real love is never wasted. Its value does not lie in reciprocity." 

How beautiful and how true. ...And...Thank goodness! I love knowing that I don't have to be embarrassed to give my love if the other person doesn't respond with love in return. Isn't that wonderful?! :) I love it. 

"Calmness preserves both energy and relationships." 

Amen. That's about all I can say. 

Both of these quotes are from our good brother, Elder Neal A. Maxwell. I love his bits of wisdom. What a great man. His influence and ministry as an Apostle of Jesus Christ continues to bless my life. 

Well, folks, Merry Christmas and to all a good night! :)

Growing

Tonight I pulled out of a drawer a picture of me that was taken a few months ago. I love it. I love it so much. There's a cute man by my side and two months ago I thought I looked the happiest in that picture that I had ever seen myself look. Even a month  ago, I probably thought the same thing and wished I could go back to that time when I felt so complete and so happy.

Tonight, I looked at it and I saw something different. I looked for that same happiness in my face that I have always seen in the picture, but I didn't see it there tonight. Tonight, I only saw how much the girl I am today has grown from the girl I was in the picture. It's not that I don't still want the happiness I had then to come back, but that girl in a way, was empty. She thought she had everything she'd ever wanted...and in a way, she did. But she didn't know that by losing that part of her life, she could grow even more, she could experience an even deeper kind of spirituality and love and beauty and growth and joy and faith. That joy and love hasn't come from a replacement of the cute man in the picture, but from a loving Heavenly Father. His kindness and friendship and confidence and Fatherhood have filled me up. He has been my Teacher and my Comforter and He has been oh so near to me. I would be lying to say that there have not been tears shed, and deeply sad moments, even some moments of darkness, but oh the light He has shown to me! He has taught me so much about myself. He has taught me so much about life. I have learned about the deep need to always and forever be anchored in Christ. Though I do not feel totally secure in everything where I'm at right now, I know that I have grown from the girl I saw tonight in that picture. It used to be my favorite. I don't think it is anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still love what it represents and love more who it represents, but the me in it is not where I wanted to stay. For some reason I had to be separated from the goodness that picture represents so that I could receive even more in my life, but I am grateful for it. I am grateful for loss which allows for growth. I am grateful for the cavity it creates inside of us that lets us feel God more abundantly.

Over and over again, the words of and LDS hymn play in my mind. Whenever I feel tempted to turn to any source other than Christ, for anything, I think of these words:

"Be fixed in your purpose for Satan will try you, the weight of your calling he perfectly knows. The path may be thorny but Jesus is nigh you, His arm is sufficient tho demons oppose."

Press on. 

From the Mouths of Babes

Today two of my nieces were at my mom's house playing and I overheard my 6 year old niece tell my mom:

"I wish (insert most recent boyfriend's name) was still in love with Megan..."

I started to laugh and came downstairs to find out what had inspired that comment. Her response was "I just want a new uncle so bad! I wish you were married already!! My mom got married when she was 20."
 Hahaha. ....I love how encouraging my nieces and nephews are when it comes to me getting married. :)

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

Some time ago, maybe a couple of months, I knelt down to pray one afternoon with some worries on my mind. I don't remember what those worries were now but I know that they felt heavy on that day (haha, great lesson to be learned in that alone). As I knelt down to pray, I felt a divine reminder about who I was talking with. I was reminded that my relationship with Him is seasoned, long and well-established and that it is a two-sided relationship. I was also reminded of the familial nature of that relationship...He is my FATHER. I don't always pray to Him like He is my Father but I have been working on that. That day I felt it so clearly, I understood it so well and I felt the openness of the relationship. To imagine the way He feels about us as our Father ought to change the way we view life. When I let myself feel His deep love, I feel differently about myself and about others and about life in general. 

I have loved this little song over the past couple years. My favorite line: "You should have seen me smile the day that I made you." We are literally the offspring of God and He cares for us with all the feelings of a perfect parent. I love Him and hope that you can feel His love for you in your life and know that you truly are His child and as such He wants to give you the very best things in your life! 

"But I Love it"

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.

Words of Living Apostles of Jesus Christ

If you refer to my last post, you know that I'm a Mormon. (If you want to know more, check out my profile on Mormon.org. You can find it here.) Yay!! I love being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints with all my heart. Over the weekend, the entire church membership had the opportunity to hear from God's living prophet on the earth and His living apostles. I love this opportunity that we get twice a year. I love the men and women who lead this worldwide church. They are called of God and are divinely inspired.

This weekend brought answers to prayers and huge tender mercies to me. I have noticed how often, when life is particularly trying, the Lord gives us some extra powerful, poignant blessings and experiences to help us through and to reassure us that He is there. The talk below was one of those for me this weekend. I had been praying about serving a mission and Heavenly Father helped me know that my role and "mission" as a woman is enough. I would suggest to all women, everywhere, that your identity as a daughter of God is real and powerful. You are enough. You are good enough just because of who you are. Listen to this talk. Feel of the truth of who you are and of what you can do if you will follow the Lord's plan for you. I am so grateful to be a woman. I look forward to the missions I will fulfill as a wife and a mother someday and I know that those are the most important things I will ever do in my whole life.

Seeing as I have brought Elder D. Todd Christofferson into this post, let me continue with some of his recent stories and thoughts that I have been clinging to lately. First, "The Will of God." I love this story.  It is about Elder Hugh B. Brown and I am ever so grateful for his example. There have been days in my life that I too have "bitterness in my soul" when things do not go the way I hoped. I am trying so hard to learn to accept God's will and not let my personal feelings and desires affect my obedience, or my gratitude or my submissiveness. I love Him and I know that when He "cuts us down" it is because He loves us and in His Omniscient wisdom, He has a future prepared for us that is more grand and glorious than we can imagine. We just have to TRUST Him. 

In my efforts to try and be better at submitting to the will of God, I have found great counsel in the following video: To ask for my daily bread, rather than anguishing in trying to find peace about the future. I have found great solace in asking for just enough faith for this day, in asking for the experiences I need to help me learn and love God and my fellowman today. Praying like this has helped me come closer to God, and has kept me more humble and less fearful. I know that the Lord can give me what I need to get through today. I pray that you'll find the same power in the concepts presented in these videos. 

In closing, may I quote President Dieter F. Uchtdorf who gave some of the wisest counsel I have ever heard. He said:

"DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS BEFORE YOU DOUBT YOUR FAITH."