76 of My Best MoTab-Tour-2015 Memories

For every one of the 76 trombones, there is a happy MoTab Tour 2015 memory:

1) When the night sky and the madly-blowing wind at the Woodstock concert made Alex Boye's "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" solo especially intense and intensely good. It was like... The song already kinda sounds like a magnificently wailing storm, and when we had an ACTUAL wailing storm happening around us as we performed that one... It was like... Are ya kidding me right now!?!?!

2) The Woodstock crowd. That audience was stalwart. Despite the cold temps and the wild weather, the crowd was still huge. They came, bundled themselves up real nicely, and were just so gracious, fun, and appreciative. So impressive

3) Hailey: "Hey, that splotch on your dress looks just like a horse............WAIT! They're ALL horses!"

4) When my jaw dropped and I had no ability left to speak upon seeing the Marriott-Marquis-at-Times-Square elevators for the first time. I found myself not knowing what to do

5) Working out in the 23rd-floor gym, treadmillin' it up as I gazed out the window at Times Square below at night

6) Spending an entire day at West Point, singing "Alma Mater" and "America the Beautiful" for a young Korean-American cadet living there, afterwards hearing him smilingly say This is the coolest thing I've ever seen here at West Point, and spending hours listening to him tell exciting tales about what life is like at West Point

7) Eating twice in West Point's Hogwarts-like mess hall! Holy COOL

8) Being able to actually WEAR PANTS for a MoTab thing! Yay Yankees games!

9) Being in the presence of one of my very best lifelong friends of all time -- my darling Debra -- not once, not twice, but THRICE! (Home-cooked Sunday dinner, Carnegie Hall concert #1, Yankee Stadium.) Her hubby was there too. It was sooooo awesome and refreshing to see them. I love them

10) Grimaldi's with the great Ernie Barry, who's a musician himself, and is good friends with [and plays accordion for] Jimmy Kimmel. He enthusiastically told us multiple times: "You're the greatest choir in the world!" We sang "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful" for him, right there on the street, and it ended up being a pretty touching and happy few moments

11) On both airplane flights, when the front and back of each plane were so out-of-sync with each other during "God Be With You" that is was utterly laughable and I could not contain myself. I'm sorry, 'kay! :D

12) Jane Clayson Johnson, Jeh Johnson, the Saratoga Springs mayor, the New York lieutenant governor, a Rabbi, and our buddy Santino Fontana (among others) being our "guest conductors" for our encore numbers

13) Elder Larry Y. Wilson also was a guest conductor for our "This Land is Your Land" number. What a guy! He and his wife are awesome. I loved and was thankful for the privilege to hear them speak at our sacrament meeting in the hotel ballroom (week #1), and to also hear Elder Ronald A. Rasband and his sweet wife speak at the next week's sacrament meeting

14) Feeling camaraderie and mutual empathy with many, many MoTab friends towards the end of the trip due to us all catching the same silly, ridonkadonk head cold!

15) Stepping off the first airplane LIKE THIS on our first day in Maryland aka first day of the tour!

16) The hotel lobby chandeliers:

17) The "rowdy" crowd at the Carnegie #2 night, who always clapped in between songs when etiquette advised that they shouldn't clap. But I'm so glad they did! It made that concert so very enjoyable to me! That was my favorite concert of the entire tour -- hands down!

18) Ringin' my F# bells......and being able to be a bell-ringer with my roommate-in-real-life Maria

19) Showing my friends where Zac Efron's handsome doppelgänger once served me ice cream three years ago, in the nifty lil' ice cream shoppe under the Brooklyn Bridge

20) The Brooklyn Bridge's tribute to cheesecake:

21) Gallivanting with some of my boys as we explored where President George Washington used to live with his family. What a house! What land!

22) These Mount Vernon sheep. We think they were fighting with each other, but in a weird, quiet way...

23) This depiction of Washington. Oh my word:

24) Ground Zero. This memorial moved me to tears automatically. My heart was so touched, as I touched the people's inscribed names with my hands

25) The Manhattan New York temple with Bekah, McQueen, and Stace-Face. And we saw Clay Christiansen there, at the elevator. It was wonderful

26) The way Bekah had just barely made a Lego version of the Manhattan temple prior to visiting the temple in-person with us

27) Dorky group selfies every dayyyy

28) Running around the towns and periodically experiencing exciting fellow-MoTab-friends sightings!

29) So much beauty all around at the Cloisters! (Thank you, John Rockefeller! You're quite the feller!)

30) 500-year-old unicorn tapestries. Unicorns. Please, need I say more?

31) Playing ping-pong on stone ping-pong tables......with cellphones for paddles......with cellphones for GoPro cameras......

32) Yankee Stadium oh how I love thee. It's okay to love the Yankees on the one day you sing the national anthem in their stadium, and then dislike them all the other days of your life......

33) Budweiser-sponsored Yankees baseball caps for Mormon Tabernacle Choir organization members. I asked it once, and I'll ask it again: "Need I say more?" (Kerstin plucked out the stitched Budweiser logo from the back of her cap. Reason #4,227,962 why Kerstin is so cool.)

34) Driving "home" to the hotel from the Yankee stadium rehearsal......and spotting the Seinfeld restaurant

35) Dining at the Stardust diner, where the entire eatery is an American Idol stage and your waiters and waitresses are the talented contestants

36) The Hershey Kiss that is as big as my head

37) Saying hello to dear ol' Coney Isle because we chanced to be there... Dipping feet in the Atlantic Ocean with Lauren... Playing a challenging game of ultimate frisbee in the sand because wearing a maxi dress while trying to run, throw, and catch in the sand is just not easy. It just is not. Especially when you strained your left big toe while doing it! Dahaha. But it was awesome. So awesome

38) Riding three Coney Island rollercoasters in aforementioned maxi dress. The three coasters included......one where the safety restraint/seat belt was designed in such a fashion that it made for my springy flowy fluttery maxi dress to whip & flail ferociously through the air, causing me to helplessly flash the entire world that was below me on solid ground... Whooooopsie daiiisy... (Good thing we were probably rolling too fast for anyone to notice...)

39) ......and then there was the super-squishy jaunt on the historic Cyclone rollercoaster. That coaster is 88 years old! And so squishy. But comfy enough to endure the ride with joy. Ehhh but it literally shook the brain that is inside my head like a Magic 8 Ball. Maybe that's why I've been feeling pretty delirious for the past week...

40) Speaking of the number 88, Bekah, McQueen & I walked into a piano store to learn about the brand of piano that has not just 88 keys, but a few extra keys at the bottom of the keyboard that are all black, and are used for emphasis of bold final chords of certain musical selections. OHMIGORSH WHAT!?

41) Immediately following our second Carnegie Hall concert, I reunited with a long-lost college friend named Lindsay (hadn't seen her in FO-EVAH!), and chatted with her and this fun, kind man she works with: the Ambassador to The United Nations for the Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi. He told me stories of his friendships with some of my favorite musicians, such as Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Johnny Cash. He told of how, when he was three years old, he used to nap on Eleanor Roosevelt's shoulder. His parents were close friends with Eleanor and her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I felt so humbled to have been able to cross paths with this man, and with an old college friend! (Okay, maybe "old" is not the proper descriptor, cuz we ain't that old yet! ;)

42) The West Point 4th-of-July concert. Okay, so, like, that concert was a spectacular experience. It served as an official event to officially welcome the newest cadets to the United States Military Academy. There were a couple specific moments during the concert that got me choked up pretty good: when the cadets and the thousands of audience members sang along to our "God Bless America," and when the cadets sang along to our Armed Forces medley. I thought that was so special. When I saw those young men and women in their uniforms, and in their dignified air, I immediately gained a whole new respect and an improved understanding of why it's so important for our country to have a military, and why it's so important to support them and to pray for them

43) Scott Barrick's Scott Barracks

44) For late-night snack purposes... The Cheerios and milk that Emily and I bought from a super tiny local deep-in-the-heart-of-Manhattan grocery store, which was made up of just one room that was probably only like 15 feet long and 15 feet wide

45) Teaching Pacific creole on the bus to my friend Rich. We love the translations for the words "children," "slay," "destruct"

46) The bricks growing inside this tree along the Freedom Trail in Boston

47) Good times at Paul Revere's house and surrounding cannoli locations

48) Bostonian architecture

49) Finding precisely where my friend Travis had left a secret message for me on the wall of the Old North Church one month prior...... But some punk took it down before I could get to it! Jerk! Oh well. It was still a really fun scavenger hunt, and Travis did fortunately take a picture of what he wrote to me, prior to his planting it in a crevice on the exterior of the brick building

50) Being assigned the emergency exit row on the airplane ride home! Can you say "THREE ACTUAL FEET OF LEG ROOM"!?!?!?!

51) Discovering that I may be crazy in love with scallops... THANK YOU BOSTONIAN SEAFOOD DINNERS!

52) Two words: Barry Anderson. He is my favorite person. (Okay that was seven words. Plus two punctuation marks.)

53) Charging up smiles at the Waldorf... Get ready for these smiles:

54) Nancy Beth slaying me with her hilarity at dinner tables, on late-night bus rides, and like such as

55) Cookie Monster reading the Bible. (#nancybeth)

56) Little girl in front of Carnegie Hall after concert #2. She was like 3 feet tall. She tapped me on the leg and asked me if she could have my autograph. Adorable :)

57) Hundreds of MoTab performers wearing matching tuxedos and red shimmery gowns, parading for miles to-and-fro from Times Square to Carnegie and back, causing the public to eye us curiously

58) In between the Strathmore matinee and evening concert...... The Ellen DeGeneres charades game app. Yes

59) Playing the Ellen DeGeneres charades game again on the bus the following day (or maybe it was the same day), and I accidentally let out my infamous dolphin noise, and it speedily sent the entire bus into a sudden state of awe, and when Ron Gunnell came walking down the center aisle of the bus towards the source of the sound of the hullabaloo, I didn't know what to do. All that was happening was my face -- turning red...

60) Dinnertime buffet-line moseytimes: "Oh! Is this arugula!? Do you know if it's in season? What about the romaine?????"

61) Gerry Graves' Darnitol infomercial. I think I may need summat...

62) Photobombing Camille's ancestor interview in the bus-to-Boston bus video. (Sorry, Camille! At least we were both wearing our thick-rimmed glasses and matching H&M dresses! So it was lovely! Right? Right? Haha I know you loved it :)

63) Learning that Mrs. Unsworth's first name is spelled exactly like mine is! Yay! It is the best way to spell it

64) Being instructed to shout at the tops of our lungs "BEAT NAVY!!!" before sitting down to the West Point mess hall tables to eat lunch

65) The ginormous bumblebee getting friendly with Melissa & me at the West Point sound check. It would not leave us alone. I swear that bees do it on purpose, just so that they can make Rachel laugh until she cries

66) Receiving the honor of being in one of Siope's Fashionista/isto-of-the-Day Facebook posts, with Petey

67) Singing "America the Beautiful" at the 9/11 memorial. I think we harmonized really well, and I think it did a nice job contributing to the reverence that is prevalent in that place

68) The Wang Theatre strangely was the only tour venue at which I was in the back row (which, on any normal day, is my usual spot). When we were singing "Betelehemu" at our final concert at the Wang, as the swaying was happening, the risers shook like mad and I thought maybe we were all gonna collapse to our doom on those risers, but we did not perish! We lived!

69) The doors found throughout the backstage-downstairs of the Wang......many of them had the word "Si" printed on them. Hoorah for mystic Spanish messages on puertas that seemingly don't make any sense!

70) At the end of Alex Boye's "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" solo during the second Carnegie Hall concert... Upon Alex finishing his final note... There was one uber soulful audience member who reflexively shouted "Yes sir!" and that was outrageously awesome and it put outrageously huge smiles on our faces!

71) The way Mack always conducts the African-drum rolls towards the beginning of "Betelehemu" with his one pointer finger, and then shakes both his hands in the air for morrrrrrrrrrre drummmmmmmmmmmmm ... Dthrrrrrrrrrr!! Dthrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Dthrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Dddddttttthhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

72) The way we knocked the socks off of every single person in the room with "I'm Runnin' On." The crowd went wild. Every.Time.

73) Our Sesame Street friends coming to our Carnegie Hall concert! They said at Christmastime that they would, and they weren't kidding! It was so stupendous to have them there! Rosita cried like eight times during the show

74) Strengthening friendships with such great people whom I know and love

75) Creating new great friendships with people I hadn't ever really talked to before. It is a joy to have those new friends in my life now!

76) Tour, all in all, was a marvelous missionary opportunity that significantly strengthened my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm so thankful for the blessing this tour has been for me, and I'm also very thankful that we, as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir organization, were able to bless and brighten the lives of thousands of God's children. "Only good can come from this tour of yours." ~Elder Rasband

The Rugs in My Mansion

"He lives my mansion to prepare." There's a song that I know very well that has this line of lyric in it.

I was about to hop in my car and drive an hour away to sing at a fireside with my Jenny Phillips fireside choir, when my roommate appeared in the hallway next to my bedroom and told me some news that actually shook me up pretty significantly. I was surprised by how automatic my upset reaction was.

My roommate was very sweet -- as she always is (that's just her nature) -- when she broke the news to me. It wasn't absolutely devastating news. Nothing immensely bad or sad; however, it was pretty sad. I won't go into it right here, right now, because it hasn't very much to do with the points I wish to touch in this blog post.

But I did leave the house feeling angry. And so this piece of news must have been really been a doozy of a downer to me, because I rarely get truly angry. Anger happens hardly at all within me. It's just not my thing. But today it was . . . but just for a few minutes.

And I know that, whenever I do get angry, it only lasts for a few minutes. Today, after the news flash, with this knowledge about my anger habits consciously rolling thru my mind, I was 100 percent certain that THIS time would be a rare time that I'd remain angry for a little longer than the norm.

I had begun to drive the hour to my fireside destination. During the first 5 minutes of my drive, while I was all by myself . . . well . . . I confess that I was yelling out loud angrily. Yeah, I do yell at the universe sometimes, but usually just when I'm in my car by myself. It's the perfect time.

I started crying out: "God, I'm not mad at you. I'm not. I'm just mad at . . . the universe. Not at you. It's okay to just be mad sometimes, right? But God, I just want you to know that I'm not mad at you."

A couple more minutes went by, during which I was still talking in fretfully frustrated tones. Something inside me seemed to secretly be urging me to continue talking out loud. Five more minutes led to 10, which led to 20, then to half-an-hour, 45 minutes... And then the hour-drive was over, and I found myself at the church building I needed to be at for the performance.

My talking and talking and talking out loud had ended up evolving into a real, bona fide conversation with God. The more I talked out loud, the more it honestly, earnestly started to feel like not just some girl talking to herself, but a child talking to her father. It had become a two-way conversation. Even though it was just one audible voice speaking, there were two people in the car. There was a second person besides the girl: a loving father . . . a heavenly father . . . the one and only Heavenly Father. I found it interesting and quite cool that Heavenly Father, in this setting -- even though I couldn't actually see Him with my own eyes -- seemed to have been sitting next to me in the form of a regular person -- a good friend, like the type of good friend I could see with my own eyes on any given normal day. He seemed to really physically be there in my car with me, less than 2 feet away from me off my right-hand side. I tend to talk with my hands often, and so I actually did catch myself gesturing to Him with my right hand a couple of times as I was chatting with Him.

Anyway, so from the initial moment I began to throw my "tantrum" in my car, it hadn't taken me much longer at all to realize that my talking and talking and talking had turned into a prayer to my dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father. This was such a neat experience that I'm pretty sure I will never forget. This one-on-one conversation with Him turned my world and my day around in such a positive way. By the time I had arrived at the church for the fireside, I felt angry no more. My anger had done a complete 180 and became happiness. I found myself smiling again. My heart was at peace. No more storm inside my soul.

Here's what God and I talked about:

- First, I told Him that I was angry. Not at Him (like I mentioned before), but just . . . angry. And I asked Him if that was okay. At this point, I'm pretty sure that He said yes.

- I spent a couple of minutes loudly stating all of reasons why I was so mad. There was thing wonderful thing that I had found and acquired in my life, and I had just found out that it soon would be taken away from me, and as soon as I learned from my roommate that this is what was going to happen soon, my body almost literally felt like a rug had just been yanked from underneath. I felt so shook up. Wah. That really did feel so awful.

- And then I started to delve into philosophy and analogies with God. I started painting metaphors in my head, and I continued to talk out loud as I painted. I described to God what the picture in my brain was beginning to look like. I told Him that my life -- or, rather, what I wanted my life to be -- was a blueprint of a big, nice house that I was drawing out and designing myself. But since I've only been alive for so long, and since I know that there are still so many more upcoming life chapters of mysterious who-knows-what, I know that all I really actually have drafted up in my blueprints is pretty much just the perimeter of the house, and a few completed rooms and other interior aspects, which represent all the life chapters that already happened for me, and all the joyous memories from my past that I treasure now. There is still so much space left in the empty area of the house. So many more experiences to be had, and so many more joyous memories to make that will beautify the rest of the house, little-by-little.

{How did I know today that Heavenly Father was actually replying to all the stuff I was saying to Him? The Holy Ghost, man. It had to have been the Holy Ghost. Because these next few things were things I had never EVER before pondered in my whole, entire nearly-thirty-years of mortal existence. This next thing I'm about to say is something that I am totally, totally convinced could not have been a thought that I could have spontaneously come up with completely on my own. This one had to have been inspiration from the Spirit. I knew it. I can't give an adequate explanation as to why I knew it -- why I know it. I just do.}

- I recited the line from the hymn "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." You know, that line that I mentioned clear at the beginning of this post. I recited that line to God. I sang the song a little bit for Him. He lives my mansion to prepare...

- And as God was sitting right there, right by my side in the passenger seat of my car, which actually had my big purse and a concert program and some weird CD and some other piece of junk all over it (yeah, just another one of the infinite gazillions of reasons why God is so cool -- He can sit there comfortably even with all that weird also sitting there!), God helped me discover something quite big...

- For me, in my life, regarding the house that was getting designed in my blueprints... That house? It's actually a mansion that He's helping me build . . . right now . . . in my time here on this earth. "My mansion" that's mentioned in that hymn had always been "a mansion that I may see someday in some following lifetime." That mansion referenced in that hymn had always seemed to be something that's not yet within my reach. It had always seemed to be something that I could only dream about (haha, see also hymn #223). But now I believe that there is this mansion that He's helping me build right now. I now see my life as something that can be lived beautifully -- beautiful like a mansion.

- My mansion -- my life -- is something I can put my best efforts into, and can do my part in making it beautiful. Sometimes I make mistakes as I'm putting it together. Sometimes I accidentally spill and make huge messes. Sometimes I pick the wrong wall color, and at the initial time of my painting the wall(s), I think it's not looking too shabby. But then time passes and I realize that that paint color was quite vile. Ew.

- One main, recurring topic that kept coming up as God and I talked about the way we build my mansion together: rugs. Rugs. This is where I brought up the piece of bummeriffic news my roommate had reported to me not long ago. I restated that the news felt like the really nice rug being yanked from underneath me, and I just wasn't ready for it.

- But then the longer I continued to talk about the rug again with Him, He seemed to have helped me point something out to myself: it's not that rug was yanked out from underneath me, for that would have meant that someone in my life intentionally tried to hurt me. But this thing that was bothering me? It was nobody's fault, nobody's wrongdoing. There was no element of wrongdoing at all. It was just one of those "life happens" things. Just the way the planet spins, and the way cookies crumble. And so, instead of an intentionally cruel act of yanking a rug from below, the rug simply perhaps just got a stain on it or something. Like, someone just accidentally spilled their glass of cranberry juice on it or something. Haha, I dunno. :)

- But somehow the lovely rug just got stained or tarnished somehow, based upon the fact that I open up my life -- my "mansion" -- to other people. I share it with other people. Or, in other cases, I even indirectly share it with people I don't necessarily know, but the decisions they make do indeed affect my life -- sometimes in ways you're glad about, and sometimes in ways you are not too thrilled about.

- And then God and I talked about what happens when people open up there "mansion" homes to other people. People accidentally hit the baseballs straight through the windows. People drop your glass goblets on your kitchen floor. People track mud all over said-kitchen floor, not to mention all over your carpets. They turn your thermostat up too high, down too low. Whatever. I dunno. It's just that, sometimes in your life, people may hurt you -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- and opportunities arise for forgiveness. It's the same thing on the flipside: people will welcome you into their lives -- their "mansions" -- and you'll make some offense (whether intentional or unintentional) and you may ask for forgiveness, or forgiveness will be granted to you. From my conversation with God in my car, one of the biggest points that stuck with me is that forgiveness is so incredibly vital in maintaining the peace and beauty in our "mansions."

- God taught me a new interesting way to look at the great atonement of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. He helped me see that, lots of times, it really is I who is the culprit behind creating ugly messes in my mansion. Christ is an excellent, excellent helper (and an ever-willing one, too) whenever I wish I could have help in cleaning up whatever mess I made. Christ is such a great helper. So loving, too. Christ can (and very much wants to) help us build our mansion into something so beautiful, and He delights in helping us keep it clean and bright and as marvelous as it can be. Heavenly Father is an amazing helper as well. He and His Son are such a great team. The Holy Ghost, too!

AFTERWORD
At one point during the fireside that I was singing at tonight, after my hour-long roadtrip with God, I was sitting there and listening to one of Jenny Phillips' solos or testimonies, when I thought further about different things that can happen to a person's mansion. Sometimes a person's mansion can undergo incidents a little more serious than juice stains on the rug. Sometimes it may seem like a real tornado blew through and destroyed everything. Sometimes it may seem like the entire downstairs flooded and became submerged in 6 feet of water. Sometimes it may seem like an entire portion of the house burned up in flames. Sometimes life is just really, really hard. Trials may sometimes seem more than what can be borne.

But I promise you this: you always have your Jesus and your Heavenly Father, who are always, always, always there to help you build and rebuild.

One of the concluding things I said to God, as we were finishing up our conversation, just before I had to go to the fireside, was this: "God, you are always welcome in my home. You are always welcome to stay at my mansion. After all, you have always been there to help me build it. You have never not been there. And so, you are always welcome." And I wept as I said that to Him. Like, kind of a lot. My life is His. I belong to Him. He loves me, and has always loved me. And so I welcome Him.

OH, AND ONE LAST THING ABOUT THE RUG
So, about that one rug I was talking about which had seemed to have been yanked from underneath me... There is still not a replacement rug. I know that there's supposed to be a new rug. One thing God told me is that He'd bring back a new, even better and more beautiful rug -- one that will make that particular room in the house the most lovely it can possibly be.

Now that this "sad" thing is about to come to pass in my life, that thing which I'm about to "lose" represents that rug that was "yanked" (which was, in actuality, just "stained" or something). I don't know yet what I'm going to do instead. I'm going to figure it out. I know I will figure it out, with God's help. And whatever the great thing will be, which God will help me figure out, will be the substantially more awesome rug that God is coming back from the store with. He will help me install it in my home. Just one of the small yet wonderful ways God provides remarkably sweet and sweetly remarkable help in building up my life -- my mansion.

Thoughts on Family

I recently ran across an article that made reference to how the famous ancient Greek philosopher Plato, the student of Socrates, once upon a time suggested the abolition of families. As soon I read that bit, I was stopped in my tracks, and suddenly an entire cattle trailer of thoughts stampeded into my mind, including thoughts garnished with gratitude, regarding how grateful I really am for my family.

I grew up in a lovely, humble home with a mom, a dad, two sisters, two brothers, two dogs, three tortoises, an English-speaking green parakeet, and the occasional betta, hamster, and albino rat. There was always a lot of love going on in that house. A lot of together-time. We’d read together, pray together, play together, do chores together while blasting the Eagles, do roadtrips across the countryside while blasting the Clint Black and the Chris LeDoux, dance to “Funky New Year” over and over and over and over and over AND OVER again on New Year’s Eve… All of us, together.

So much love there. And it’s a tradition that we hang on to still. We’ve all done some growing up and moving on since yesteryear, but we still treasure our time together. Our lives are all busier, but we still get a kick out of getting together whenever we can.

I know of a lot of families whose joys are similar to the joy of my family. In my time here on earth, I have come to believe that the joy of family is my favorite type of joy that I have ever known. The joys I get elsewhere don’t ever quite match the joy I feel when I’m with my family.

I know that not all families are identical to mine. Families truly do come in different shapes and sizes. Within these sizes and shapes, real family joy can occur. For there to be joy, I think the things that matter include the practices of selfless love, kindly service, wholesome bonding time, quality communication, and learning and growing together in patience and forgiveness.

Might I suggest that these practices, which I have just stated in the sentence previous to this one, resemble the practices we naturally try to exercise whenever we want to build positively good friendships with people who aren’t necessarily our blood-relatives? Which leads me to this next pair of thoughts:

1) Under some circumstances, the best or closest family that some are blessed with is the “family” composed of positively good friends. I know that wonderful friends are sometimes the sole people who can help a person move along in this life.

2) Often there is a person who has physically moved far away from their family – like a young college kid/grad who has relocated his or her self to a distant point on the globe for an internship or job offer – and the nearest “family” they have now is the positively good friends that they make in their new town or city. (I’ve been in the shoes of this person.)

Which leads me to this next thought: there is a “family of God.” Each of us is a brother or sister in it. I am not telling you a fairytale when I’m telling you this. I am telling you fact. It’s reality. It’s actuality. There is a Father in Heaven who is the Father of all of us. He loves us – each of us – a lot. And when I say “a lot,” I mean “a looooooooooooottttttttt.” Yup. It’s fact. I’m really telling you the truth. (By the way, if you’d like to find out for yourself if what I’m telling you really is true, talk to Him. Talk to God? Yes! You can actually do that! Pretty sweet, right? Take a calm and an earnest heart to Him and talk with Him about it. Then see what happens.)

I am most deeply and sincerely thankful to God – my Heavenly Father – for all the different sorts of brothers and sisters and families I have with me as I journey along in this world. I have “homes away from homes” where I find a lot of joy that raises me up. There are many splendid “homes away from homes” that many of us enjoy, and they are populated by exceptional people who shape us in great ways.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: the crowning joy of all joys I find in this life is when I’m with my family, including loving parents, terrific siblings and siblings-in-law, nieces and nephews, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the list continues. I believe that this “crowning joy” can be obtained by a person either in this life or hereafter, for this greatest joy is a joy that is eternal and extends beyond the grave, for it is of God.

I believe that friendships are sacred, priceless, and precious, and are also of God. Again, I am so thankful for all my loved ones with whom I belong to the family of God. I hope and look forward to living with my loved ones forever, and I find much delight and – I’ll say it once more – JOY in living among them now.

To see more of what I believe and know to be right, this is awesome. (Click, for it is beautiful.)

Much of my beautiful family.

Several of my beautiful friends.

Ye Olde Rexburg: Blogpost on Craigo's, Young Love, Shyness, and Being Intensely Nervous around Famous People

WARNING: This blogpost was supposed to be focused mainly on how I personally evolved within the realm of shyness. And it is about that, but somehow it just kinda started getting injected with a boatload of reminiscings of various parts of my BYU-Idaho life of the olden days… And so there are tangents. I hope that is okay.

Anecdote

I was a college senior at Brigham Young University – Idaho. I was a couple of weeks away from graduating. I was, at the time, taking a certain capstone course that I’m not afraid to say was kind of a big deal. Our small class of about 10 students used a whole semester to put on BYU-Idaho’s annual “Communication Day Seminar,” which I think (if I remember correctly) we just colloquially referred to as “Comm Day.”

Comm Day preparations included us inviting several communication professionals from around the country to come present at the event. That had its challenges, but we were able to locate and bring over six people – we called them “special guests,” because … well … they were our guests and they were pretty awesome. Some of us 10 capstone students were each put in charge of hosting an individual special guest. I was placed in charge of hosting a newspaper columnist from Tacoma, Washington.

Comm Day lasted a few days – about three:

- First day was the day we chauffeured them from the Idaho Falls Regional Airport to their hotel in Rexburg. I’m trying to remember if we took them to dinner that night or the night after. I think it was the night after. (The dinner is an important part of the story at which I shall soon arrive. Hold your horses.)

- Second day was the seminar, and all six special guests spoke at a forum that was intended for the entire College of Business and Communication. The special guests also gave little workshops at different times of the day. All things occurred in the most beautiful building on BYU-Idaho’s campus: the John Taylor Building.

- Third day was when we brought them back to the airport so that they could fly away home.

On the evening of the second day, we capstone kids (along with our professors) took the special guests to dinner. We took them to Craigo’s. (Über great name, huh? We Rexburgers always liked it.) For those of you who are current Rexburgers, you may or may not have even heard of Craigo’s. Back in my day, there was a wonderful pizza place called Craigo’s on that main big street that practically everything is on (such as the Walmart). But waaaaaaaaay back in my day (even earlier than that) (oh boy, and now I’m about to feel old again), Craigo’s was located just west of campus, in a little ol’ shacky building that had previously been a rundown pizza joint. It had recently gotten renovated – and if you’ve ever heard of the Velour Live Music Gallery down in Provo, Utah – that old OLD Craigo’s was just like the Velour, and college kids who had their own bands and songs and stuff would play gigs there, and people would just come on over to Craigo’s and eat pizza and sit and flirt and socialize and listen to music. Mormon college kids’ Friday-night paradise.

Sorry, this is where a huge sentimental tangent comes in…

As a BYU-I student, I did go to Craigo’s from time to time. A Craigo’s outing was the first time I ever heard of the band Coldplay. One particular group of student musicians were performing that night, and at one point they introduced their next song – “Clocks” – and said it was by Coldplay, and I was like Who in the heck is Coldplay? and soon thereafter I had allowed myself to become hooked to Coldplay. This student band also sang “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers, and the ironic thing is that this student band’s lead singer was a boy who actually did look like a girl I knew in high school…

It may have been that same night or a different night… But one night, I was a brand-new freshman, walking through the Craigo’s front door, and across the one large room I immediately spotted the guy I had a big crush on. He was older than me. A junior. Returned missionary. I was still in the super-youthful phase of life where the thought of dating a returned missionary -- or anyone who was no longer a teenager -- was highly capable of shaking me in my boots, yet it was exciting and it giddified me. His name was John. He was from Rancho Cucamonga, California. Before I met him, I hadn’t ever heard of that city. It sounded so exotic to me, and it made me like him more. Don’t worry, though: I wasn’t really “boy crazy,” and I wasn’t crazy around John, and he never thought I was crazy, and so all was well. He was always so nice to me. We saw each other at the David O. McKay Library a lot (the Library was often where love between students bloomed). He stalked me on “Stalkernet” sometimes to contact me via email just to say hi, and once even invited me to go on a walk with him. Whoooo ;)

But then life moved on and we drifted apart, and I never saw him again since he graduated, probably got married, and moved to who-knows-where.

But enough of John. Now, on to Jane.

My Encounter with Jane Clayson Johnson

Back to Craigo’s. The “newer”one. Not the Velour-like one, but the larger location that the restaurant moved to. This Craigo’s I am now talking about was fancier than the Velour one. More elegant. It’s the place that we 10 capstone students picked to take our Comm Day special guests to, for dining purposes “out on the town” (bahaha). We kind of made it as formal as possible, since some of these special guests were, shall we say, big whigs in the professional world. And so our seating at the dinner table was assigned. I think it was our professors who arranged the seating. Apparently I was supposed to sit not only by the special guest I was hosting, but also right next to the keynote speaker – the most famous of them all: renowned TV news anchor Jane Clayson Johnson.

I was closely nestled in between my person and this Jane Clayson Johnson person, for an hour solid. Or longer. My person didn’t make me nervous; he didn’t talk to me much. I don’t think he was much of a talker anyway. I think he was maybe the least talkative at the Q&A portion of the seminar. But this Jane lady? As a broadcast journalism guru and television star, she was a talker. And she wanted to talk to me – a lot. She’s a fabulous interviewer, by trade (“by trade”? sure, I’ll use that phrase). It’s what she does.

And interview me is what she did. I felt like she asked me so many questions. Probing questions, with those striking eyes, which can pierce through any creature on earth. I always knew that, as a person, I was always more on the shy side of the spectrum. This dinner setting was a bold, scary time period during which I clearly, oh-so clearly noticed just how shy I was. I was downright afraid! Jane asked me multiple times, “So how do you feel about blah-blah-blah?” What was worse was that she’d ask insanely deep follow-up questions to her original questions. And I continuously tried to conceal my nerves and rack my brain to find something profound to reply with, but then I’m sure it continuously came out so wobbly and wishily-washily. Scared out of my mind.

I’m sure that all she really wanted to do was to simply get to know me a little bit. Whatever discomfort that existed in that encounter was all my own problem and fault, and not hers. But, I am also sure that I am making this scene sound much, much worse than it was in actuality. I am sure that I wasn’t as awkward as I say I was. People tell me all the time that I handle stress really well, and hide anxiety really well. I’m sure I was just fine during my chat with Jane.

I guess what’s buggin’ me now about it is how much I wish I could go back in time and redo my conversation with Jane. If it were the me-of-the-now sitting at that dinner table next to that lovely woman of poise and remarkable accomplishment – oh, how ecstatic I’d be to ask her a gazillion questions! I’d want her to tell me all about her growing-up life, about what influenced her to choose the career path that she did, about her life as a wife and mother, about any fun things she likes to do with her family… So many things I’d want to ask her! And I’d be more open and unafraid to share my story with her. I’d be able to more quickly find what words to say.

From “Painfully Shy” to “Outgoing Introvert”

I still am shy. I still sense butterflies zooming and zipping inside my belly whenever I’m talking to someone I don’t know or don’t yet know well. Depends on the situation, though. Sometimes there are oodles of the flying insects, but sometimes not as many. I don’t fully “get it” yet. Or maybe I do, but to explain it would probably take another series of fifteen more blogposts.

Some people fall back in their chairs any time I vocally confess that I am shy. They’re like, “Whaa? No way.” But yeah way. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still a little bit there. When I was a tiny tyke, I used to be in homemade movies and homemade plays with my best friends, and I seemed to not want a whole bunch of lines to say. But as time went on, and as I grew older, I got into a few more plays and makeshift movies, and playing speaking roles gradually became less and less of an issue. In fact, it became quite fun. I’m still no thespian, but acting is less freaky to me now than it was in the past.

Right now I’d say that I’m definitely an “outgoing introvert.” I love to make new friends. Blind dates are a lot less intimidating to me than they used to be. I even once told my mom one day (I don’t know if she remembers this): “I’ve come to the point where, if I had to call up the President of the United States on the phone today and talk to him, I would be totally fine, if I knew exactly what I needed to say.”

And it’s true. I think I have come a long way. The following are life experiences that have helped me a lot:

- Dating. Relationships. Also, it’s a whole nother variety of healthy confidence that gets infused inside you when you (if you’re a girl) call up the boy and ask him out. I firmly believe that.

- College. Group projects. Internships. Public speaking. Extracurricular activities. Signing up for talent shows. All good, nourishing things related to university life.

- Delegation. My natural style is to want to do everything on my own if I am in a leadership position. But in realms such as my church life, collegiate life, event-planning life, and personal life in general, I’ve come to realize that it isn’t healthy-wealthy-n’-wise to take on everything all by yourself. Another one of my firm beliefs is this: allowing others to lend their helping hands provides you with golden opportunities to understand and exercise the mandatory skill of working with people. I say “mandatory” because you’re gonna be living among people all of your life and for all eternity. And if you want a life of goodness, then a huge factor of making life truly good is successfully practicing harmonious coexistence and wholesome societal progression with others. (Whew! Sorry. That bullet was an earful, I’m sure.)

- Multiple failed job interviews. One of the darkest times of my life was when the economy was especially bad and I was hunting hardcore for a job. I landed tons of interviews, but repeatedly got rejected. While each rejection slammed my emotions pretty hard, I somehow allowed each rejection to encourage me to keep my chin up and try again. I gained more confidence each time, and eventually snatched a pretty sweet job.

- The workforce. The business world. Having jobs, both part-time and full-time. Holding the responsibilities of training employees and encouraging others to perform their work to the best of their abilities. Numerous years in the workforce has helped grow me as a person in so many ways that I do realize, yet in so many more ways than I know.

- Music. Vocal performance. Piano performance. Undergoing nerve-racking auditions. Attempting to labor in harmony with the rest of a great big choir, to produce the loveliest of sound. (Side note – one of my new favorite quotes is by Sir James Paul McCartney: “I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity – to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”)

And much, much more.

I enjoy being an introvert. I don’t want it to be any other way. I like who I am. I like my occasional occasions of alone time, sprinkled in the midst of the rest of the time when I’m with people. I like being at parties where there aren’t too many folks runnin’ around, and that likely will never, ever change, and I don’t want it to. Don’t get me wrong, I do like folks. I love folks. I love people. But the place where I recharge my spirit, mind, and emotions is in solitude, or in the company of a small handful of beloved friends or family members. Or with my great big choir. :) This is me.

But there was once a “me” whom I wanted to improve a bit. I wanted to help that girl eliminate some of the fears she had. I wanted to help her grow into a more confident human being. I wanted her to come to a point where she wouldn’t be scared to talk to Jane Clayson Johnson, should she ever have the chance of dining and chatting with her again.

I am pleased to announce that she has become that new person. And as that person, she is a very, very happy camper. :)