Finding Hope: My Story

I feel like this sometimes. I am Tom Hanks in this instance.  I, lately, have become the worst version of myself.  I see negatives, not positives.  I avoid situations where I have to be positive.  Then I bring my friends down because I am in such a negative space. So, dear void and my friends who fill it, I apologize for the negativity that I have been projecting lately.  For the angry, hate-filled, spiteful things I may have said.  There are a lot of emotions under this anger that I am scared to deal with.  I know they are there.  And I know that I am hiding from them.  I know it is time to stop hiding, but that is scary. So give me one more day.  Give me one more day to be angry and spiteful and see everyone else as a monster and myself as a saint.  Soon, I will begin to try to see the good in the world around me.  But not today.  Just give me today.

Secret confession time: I hate the bouquet toss at wedding receptions.  As a still single twenty-something, it gets more and more obvious as I attend more wedding receptions for friends, relatives, neighbors and the occasional mission buddy that the bouquet toss exists solely to rub in the fact that you are still single. Screw tradition.  That is not what this is all about.  Does it really work that the person who catches the bouquet or garter is suddenly going to be the next person to get married?  Is there a magic marriage fairy that comes and hits you with a pretty stick while you are sleeping after catching said bouquet to get all the boys to want to date you after this life changing event happens?  Apparently so, because we girls, who are normally calm and refined turn into a cage full of starving tigers chasing the one piece of meat that was thrown into the cage to feed us for the next week. I only bring this up because yesterday my brother g...

Have you heard the phrase "When life gives you lemons (insert deep, moving comment or slightly witty comment here)"?  Well, I have a new phrase for you.  One that I have been working on for weeks now. "When life punches you in the face, get up and punch it back.  Preferably in the baby maker because, come on son, we all know that is where it is going to hurt the most" Since when is life about lemons?  There are a million things that you can do with lemons.  You can make a tasty summer drink from them, you can make desserts, you can use them in cleaning supplies, you can probably make some table decoration out of them and then put it on Pinterest for all of your friends to see. However, life is all about getting punched.  Usually in the face.  Never do you expect it.  Never are you walking along in life and thinking "hey, I think today would be a good day to feel completely weighed down by everything that ever was." NO! Instead, you are b...

Have you ever had a bad day?  Like a sincerely knock-down-drag-out I am done facing the world kind of day? Last Friday was a day like that for me.  I was reaching the end of the first week of school, and that is hard enough dealing with new classes and new teachers and the like.  But, added on top of that, I had all sorts of tension building up over all sorts of stupid little things.  Things that I think are a big deal but that anyone else looking in at my situation would see as small and insignificant.  Even looking back, now that these problems are on their way toward resolution, I cannot believe how frustrated I was. But I was frustrated. I was cold.  I was hungry.  I was irritated, stressed and sad.  And I was all sorts of craycray hormonal.  Oh, the joys of being a girl...(LIES) Anyway, I was going about my day and happened to see two amazing people from my Mission.  That brought the total for that week up to 4...which for m...