365 days for you

    I miss writing. I miss the way it sooths my soul, the way it empowers me to look at the details of my life in a positive light. There has been so much going on in my life lately that writing basically got buried in a corner forgotten.      Some of it might be due to the fact that havent felt very positively about my life lately. But I miss the feeling of being in-love with life, I miss feeling alive. Somewhere inside of myself I know that if I want to feel those things again I need to find the courage to pull out the things I love and dust them off. At first it might not be very pretty, like a painter that is out of practice there are bound to be some duds before there are masterpieces.     Here I am making it full circle with a goal that is the very reason I started this blog, I want to start writing everyday. Writing things that I hope can help and inspire others and maybe in the writings of my soul I will be able to refind myself.   ...

     More than a year ago I found myself living in a cold little apartment with my husband, during one of the coldest winters of my life. Whether it was cold because the weather or because my marriage was failing and I felt alone and isolated I'm not sure. Either way, it felt cold and barren, I came home after work to an empty apartment and would get to work on trying to start the wood burning stove so that whenever my husband came home the apartment would not be quite so frigid.      I have never been very good at lighting fires, this was no exception. I made a game out of it, trying to see if I could light the fire with only one match. It didn't work. I finally just went to the store and got a lighter because I was going through matches at a ridiculous rate. As the year went on my husband moved out, I moved back in with my parents and I realized the week of Valentine's day that I was pregnant. The emotional chill of some of those moments reminded me of ...

     Exactly 450 days ago I got married, the day that everyone says is the happiest day of your life. I was happy, incredibly happy. But happiness is a strange and interesting emotion, it's not like instant gratification or even like the anticipation of a surprise, it's soft and quiet. Happiness comes through the application of true principles in life sometimes the result is so subtle that you will completely miss the happiness if you don't know that it is real and existing right in front of you. Happiness is like a habit and if you stop nourishing it, it will fade and completely disappear, most of the time we don't notice the absence of light and happiness until it is so drastic that it would take a great change of action to restore it.     On January 24th my husband moved out after almost 13 months of marriage. I had always known marriage would be hard and that it took effort and change to make it work, I saw my older siblings in their marriages and I knew w...

In my last blog post I talked about enjoying, remembering and relishing the details of your life, this has become more and more real to me through out the summer, because the last year of my life has been one of the greatest blessings I have ever received.     Almost exactly one year ago today I was working in retail in a clothing store called DressBarn, contrary to how it sounds they actually have really cute clothes, and despite everything I did like work there. I also knew there was a lot missing in my life. I had fun coworkers, I had some awesome customers that I loved, but I felt pent up and frustrated a majority of the time.     I have always wanted to be a mother, I am LDS so a huge focus in culture and life is the family. I lived about 125 miles from my family and mostly just saw them over Holidays because I didn't have money for the travel back and forth, and I didn't want my parents to feel like they had to pay for the gas. I wasn't dating anybody or even...

    Over the years I tend to focus on lessons, they are reliable and through all the phases of life they are constant. The lessons themselves are not constantly the same, but they are constantly there. So it's an easy focus, it helps me feel like there is something semi controllable, I may not be able to control what happens around me, but I can control to some degree how much I learn from what happens.     So I never write about details in my blog, or journals really for that matter. If you searched my room you wouldn't really find a journal or anywhere that I write down the details of my life. There is not much to be found written about the places I have lived, where I work, or the people that are in my life. I don't ever talk about the men that have broken my heart, with one exception, when I felt that the lessons learned would be more beneficial to other if they knew the cause of the heart ache. There have been rare occasions when I have given insight ...

" Forget what we're told, before we get to old Show me a garden that's bursting into life." ~Snow Patrol      When I was a young girl I remember looking out my bedroom window after a rainstorm at our backyard. It was always so beautiful; rain has a way of accenting color and bringing things to life. Everything always looked richer, the bark on the old apple tree has a deep reddish orange tint after rain, the grass was greener, and even the mountains and clouds in the background looked more brilliant.       There was something so calming in that sight to me; reassuring even. Knowing that after the hard rainstorms, the hailstorms, the thunder and lightening: knowing that after all of that nature could be resilient and beautiful. Maybe it was the knowledge that, that applied to our lives as well, that after the rainstorms your life could be brilliant.      Everyone has a garden, a garden full of hopes and dreams. Weeds of doubts fear...

     I am a hopeless romantic, it's a true story. I love cheesy, but sincere lines, and old couples holding hands, happy endings and slow kisses in the rain. Once when I was about 14 years old my bishop called me up in fireside (probably about dating and relationships) and asked me to tell everybody what my ideal evening with my future spouse would be; he knew I was a hopeless romantic and for some reason thought I would give the perfect answer. I don't know if my answer really was that different than what any other girls would have been, but I do remember my answer.     I said my dream evening with my spouse would be going on a walk while holding hands. The years have changed me: I'm older, my priorities have changed, I'm a little less shallow, my perspective has changed, my faith has grown deeper, my heart has changed. This one thing about me has never changed, I am still a hopeless romantic. I have been warned to be careful and protect my heart, and to be wa...