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. :)

A zombie just bit you. What are you going to do about it?

THE EXTENT OF MY ZOMBIE KNOWLEDGE

I can hardly believe that I’ve sat through three “Walking Dead” episodes, but I have. So like, okay, I think that the acting is pretty good, and that it’s a pretty quality-made show. But reflecting back upon those three episodes I’ve seen, I honestly can’t tell the difference between any of them. Nothing about any one of them stands out from the other two. All I remember is that each one went kind of like this:

Oh hi, we’re all hanging out at the secluded house in the countryside that’s the only safe place left in this rampant zombie apocalypse…

Oh hi, oh wait, there’s still something we really, really need in order to survive, but that something is back at the town, and the town is simply crawling with walkers, and I don’t know if we stand a chance, but we’ve just GOT to get that something that’s back at the town… We will just have to sacrifice… Do you have a gun? I have a gun.

Oh hi, there’s the forest that separates our safehouse from the town. The forest is the only way there… There may also be walkers in there… But in the name of Survival, by George!

{Tip-toeing through the woods... And then…} GAAAAHHHHHHH HELP MEEEEE!!!!! A WALKER IS TRYING TO EEEEAAAT MEEEE!!!!!!!

{BANG!} Okay, zombie’s dead. All is well. Let’s keep moving towards the town. Oh look, here we are, and there’s the building wherein our means for prolonged survival lies. Oh wait, GAAAAHHH there’s more zombies! All over this gosh darn place! HOW DO WE GET PAST THEM!?!?

And then somehow they just keep getting past the swarms of walkers, and keep making it back to the safehouse in safety. I don’t remember much of anything else that was happening in those episodes. There’s drama. Love triangles, of course. And a little kid went missing maybe, and the adults discovered that the kid had meandered into the woods, and I think they saved the kid from another wandering zombie… Surprise.

So yes, I’ve watched three episodes of “Walking Dead.” (Probably about two years ago or so. Have never watched another episode since, and I don’t particularly plan to resume anytime soon.)

I still don’t know very much about zombies. All I know is that folklore describes them as undead maneaters, and if I’m not mistaken, whomever they bite into becomes yet another cannibalistic zombie, and that’s how the zombie population grows. I don’t know, that’s just what I’ve been hearing all my life.

GITTIN’ BIT

As far as I’m aware, zombies aren’t real, in any known terrestrial place. There are no “walkers,” “runners,” or “stalkers” roaming around for the sole purpose of feeding on human flesh. But…there are imperfect citizens of Planet Earth everywhere. This nearly-numberless number of citizens includes me, you, and everybody. We’re imperfect because, well, we tend to “bite” others and ourselves in a different, more figurative way than the mythological biters do.

What do I mean by “bite”? I shall explain with a story, but please allow me to preface it with the statement that I will not be asking for any amount of sympathy here; for the type of “bite” I’m about to talk about is the type of bite that everyone gets. These bites happen to all. My only intent is to paint out my sincere thoughts to you:

Once upon a recent time, in a land not far away, a person came up to me and said-&-did something deliberately-&-directly at me which I’m sure wasn’t intended to be hurtful, but it was just so swift and sharp and unexpected that it stung quite a lot. It caused a wound to form in my spiritual and emotional flesh, and it kind of was just gaping open for a while. Not for a super long while, but just barely long enough for me to take notice that a trace of a grudge was possibly starting to take shape. I didn’t want one take shape and make a home in me. Grudges are Grodo Baggins.

I was trying to make the best of my situation. My methods of battling a potential grudge evolution included me testing out a little experiment on myself. You see, oftentimes, if ever some adversity is bothering me or getting on my nerves or whatever . . . well . . . okay, I’m a woman, right? Women gots ta talk with each other about stuff! J Talking out problems is generally a very healthy thing for the soul. But for this particular situation at-hand? I thought I’d try something different – just to see what would happen.

I kept it all in my own heart and in my own mind. A short timespan passed and I found myself sitting in church on a Sunday. I was still feeling sort of shaken; nevertheless, I was really glad to be there. For me, church is commonly a place that has a lot of comfort and edification to offer – it’s just the nature of the building and the spirit that resides therein. This time, especially, due to this weird, rare-ish condition I was in, I found the environment to be exceptionally soothing and uplifting.

I sat there among the congregation, kind of hoping that church would doctor me up. I tried to be as reverent as can be. I tried to keep my mind on Jesus and Heavenly Father, instead of on what was bugging me. Then something happened that, to me, seemed to be a small yet concrete miracle. There came a very specific nanosecond during the meeting that altered me. It was a tiny change, but a noticeable one. What I’d compare it to is the scene where you’re standing outside on a cloudy day, and your skin feels the cold and itty-bitty initial droplet which you know has just arrived from the sky. A tiny yet noticeable change, and it feels quite nice.

What was the change felt in church? Do you have the clue that leads you to believe that I suddenly felt a lot more at peace with the bothersome thing? Because that’s exactly right. Calmness commenced its kindly kicking of shakenness in the pants in the gentle yet effective way that it does.

ZOMBIES THAT ACTUALLY HAVE AGENCY

Before I write any more, I want to clarify something that may need clarification, which is: even though the possible-bitterness-that-was-possibly-growing-like-moldy-moss-on-my-heart was instantaneously transfigured into serenity, during that one miraculous nanosecond in church, it doesn’t mean that my wound wasn’t there anymore. The incident that had happened still had happened.

But let me tell you about another event that took place in that nanosecond in church: a Venn diagram, which abruptly exploded in my brain . . . about . . . zombies. HELLO, I hadn’t extensively thought about zombies since I watched those “Walking Dead” episodes two years ago! WHY would the guardian dam of my mind suddenly involuntarily burst as to permit zombie imaginings to enter NOW? In CHURCH, of all places!? But, it was what it was. I decided to run with it.

Here’s kind of what the mental Venn diagram looked like:

When you get a bump, bruise, scrape, dog bite, bee sting, broken bone, concussion, or paper cut, it’s a pain that is nonfictional and there. Typically you cannot pull an “I Dream of Jeannie” Jeannie and straightaway blink it away. The same goes for the instance when somebody hurts your feelings. It’s okay for your feelings to still feel hurt even when you’re wishing that they’d quit feeling hurt. It’s a pain that is just there.

One natural reaction, whenever someone does hurt your feelings, is to do something to defend yourself. And sometimes the defense ends up being impulsively hostile. Your reflex may be to “fight back” by jabbing with an unkind word or two or three, or to go forward in gossiping about that person to other folks you know. My train of thought includes the following psychological theory:

One reason why people sometimes automatically respond defensively to incoming emotional jabs is because, for some reason, they think a fast-turnaround reciprocated jab will somehow help deplete whatever painful jab they got.

But my train of thought also includes the notion that this is how a zombie would handle getting its feelings hurt, should it ever, for any strange reason, have any other feelings besides feeling the neeeeed for feeeeed. And – let’s be brutally honest here – who of us would ever actually strongly desire to live the life (or the unlife) of a zombie? We weren’t born to be that! We were born to be strong, bright, beautiful, kind, and good! (And to utilize the Oxford comma!)

Interestingly enough, my “outstanding nanosecond” in church also comprised of a number of high-speed reflections of my (and your) Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect epitome of goodness and greatness. I found it funny and strange how just a brief second or two could be so quickly filled with not one, but several memories of wonderful stories that I know about Him.

I thought about the little “secrets o’ life” that He exemplified in His mortality – of how not to act like a zombie would, when faced with adversity. I know that there were a lot of people who loved Him, but there also were plenty of people who didn’t love Him, and persecuted Him. There were people who willingly held active roles in the plan to scourge and crucify Him.

There was that one time, when He was being seized in the heat of what must have been an intensely critical moment – a moment in which I think any other person would’ve been far too stressed, scared, and agitated to even begin thinking about looking for ways to lovingly serve someone else – and He saw that the literal, actual ear of a member of His adversary’s team had been sliced clean off by a sword, and He took the time to show compassion to the soldier whose ear it was, and heal him. How impressive that is. I love to think of how precious of a moment that probably was, for the soldier and for Jesus.

My hope, from this point in my life and onward, is that I will always strive to choose to do what my Savior would do, and not what a zombie would do, whenever such a choice is to be made.

Whenever my feelings get hurt, I want to stay positive, kind, and perceptive to the amazing love that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ truly do have for me. Whenever I realize that I have hurt someone else’s feelings, I want to be able to have the courage and strength to seek forgiveness, and I want to be able to use Christ’s atonement to improve. When the time comes to forgive, I want to follow the Exemplar’s example. Whenever my heart becomes troubled, I want to have faith.

(………and it came to pass that this has turned out to be a pretty…um…elongated piece of documentation. J But I wanted to write it out, and I want to keep it on-hand if ever there comes a time when I’d do well to look back and read it.)

(If you have achieved the accomplishment of reading this entire thing, congratulations to you!)

29 Things I'm Thankful For, On My 29th Thanksgiving

In preparation for my life's 29th Thanksgiving holiday, here are 29 things I am thankful for:

1 – Depth perception, that I am not constantly ramming into and tripping over things

2 – For every time a Pokémon reference is made during church, in order to illustrate a gospel principle. It’s rare, but when it does happen? Right on the money. #gottacatchemall

3 – The fact that there is a Beatles song that can accompany a little over half of all dialogues and discussions you have with people

4 – The fact that there is a Nacho Libre quote that can accompany about a third of said dialogues and discussions

5 – For my betta fish who, like a Diagon Alley wand from the Ollivander shop, chose me. All the other bettas on the tall shelf were like zombie bettas. When I walked up to the shelf, the zombie bettas just floated stationarily, not doing a bloomin’ thing. But my fish? He was the only one who acknowledged my presence. In fact, he started fluttering his fins uncontrollably at the sight of me, and would jump out of his little container and into my arms if he could. This was the fish from my dreams. A week or so prior to my buying my fish, I dreamed that I had a pet betta, and I kept him in a little glass bowl by a windowsill, in the sunshine. I walked over to the windowsill to say hi to the fish and to gaze out the window at the lovely scenery of the yard. The fish jumped out of his bowl and onto my shirt, just below my chin. He was crying, like, human tears – really BIG humanesque tears. Whimpering, he spoke like a human, and asked me, “Why don’t you ever hold me and pet me!?” And I said, “Because you are a fish and so you will die if I take you out to hold you and pet you!” And then I woke up the next morning and decided I really needed to buy a fish.

6 – For elevator brakes, that the elevators I ride in every day do not plummet to my doom

7 – That I’m not allergic to peanuts at all, and that I’m not ridiculously allergic to kittens

8 – For the beautiful life process of growing up as a generation and making way for a new one to rise. I love to look back on my younger days of having childhood fun with my siblings and cousins. We all had such a ball together as kids. Now that we’re older, we look at the children who have entered our lives – these children are siblings and cousins and friends to one another, and make sweet and precious memories with each other, as we did when we were their age. And before they know it, they’re going to be as old as we are now, and they are going to have younglings of their own, and witness this process for themselves. I just love all of it so much!

9 – Of course I am thankful for floss. How could I not include that on this list?

10 – That I made the decision to take the old perm and roller curlers I found in my family’s house, which had not been used for years, and incorporate them into my life

11 – For Jesus Christ’s amazing atonement, especially for the power it has to help me clean up slates, move on, and become better. Repentance is a miraculous thing. We can say goodbye forever to the wrongs we’ve done in the past. If we walk hand-in-hand with the Lord, and allow Him to help us to become improved versions of ourselves, we can leave our sins in the dust for good. So awesome

12 – For people who know how to play stringed instruments. I really do think that God was the first person to design the violin/viola/cello/bass/etc. I don’t think it was a mortal human who came up with that idea. I think God had the blueprints with Him in heaven, and one day He decided to tell a mortal about it, by way of thought implant (aka divine inspiration)

13 – That I spent my youth having happy, goofy, dorky little dogs at my house. I loved them so much. Even though they’ve both been gone for 10+ years, I still miss them a lot every day

14 – Truly am grateful for the hardest trials that have come up in my life. These are things that for-real have helped me strengthen my familial relationship with my Father in Heaven

15 – That I learned to play piano at a young age, and stuck with it, so that I can play piano for the elderly, who can sing along to the songs I share

16 – For Alloy.com, the best place in the world for jeans for me. Srsly, where would I be without that place?

17 – That the megalodon and the human have never lived on planet Earth at the same time

18 – That most plants are not poisonous

19 – That houseflies are not venomous (wait, are some species of fly venomous?)

20 – For Jimmy Stewart

21 – That the sky has always been blue. If the sky had never been blue, and if our sky had always been, say, green (as the grass and the leaves on the trees) … I don’t know about you, but I would have gone about every day feeling a terribly uneasy feeling for a reason that I could never put my finger on … because the reason would be the fact that the sky was never blue, and I would never have known that that was what the problem was, because why would I have ever had a reason to believe that a blue sky – as opposed to a green sky – would kiss all my unexplained troubles away? #babbling #likealunatick

22 – That there are no cockroaches where I live

23 – That I currently can fall asleep for a night’s rest within 5 minutes of my head hitting my pillow. Trying to not take that for granted

24 – For the choice I made to keep an emergency deodorant in my purse at all times

25 – For various people who were happy to “spot me” or “get my back” (Don’t worry, gurl, I got yo back!) in my random little moments of dire need

26 – For the random little moments when someone has asked me if I could aid them in their random little moments of emergency (a statement that could be read as vague, but I think you may know what I’m talking about)

27 – That I can read and write

28 – For the goodly IT/computer-smart people in the world. These are the people who tell me what they do for work, and it goes waaaaaaaaay over my head, but all I really need to do is soundly understand that whatever they do for a living is help me live in a technological world and make easier for me things that I didn’t even

29 – The people I love. The people I am honored to call my family and friends