Seven is a lucky number

 WOW! Seven years…

Obviously soooo much has happened in seven years. I don’t even want to think about an in depth catch-up here, so here are some highlights.

• Bought a house
• Got my heart broken
• Had major life changing surgery
• Had a quarter-life crisis
• Met the most amazing man in the whole world
• Got married
• Had a baby
• Sold my house and moved back to Wyoming

And that about wraps it up!

What a weird, wild trip these last seven years have been. The amount of growth I have experienced is…I don’t even have words to describe what it is. The only thing I can compare it to is something I mentioned in a past post about us being a mansion to be remodelled.  Only this time my mansion got stripped down to the bare bones, the foundation being the only sure thing, and even that ended up being smaller than I thought it was. Some of the supporting structures were even torn down and thrown out. Much of the original wood and frame are still there, though they may have been repurposed and turned into something else much more helpful. I feel like I am starting from almost scratch again. 

It was so fun and interesting to go back through some of my old posts and see some of my naïveté, but also some of my wisdom that I had forgotten about. Whatever wisdom that shines through in those posts was 100% from the Lord, probably put there for my own sake too look back on and learn from. 

So, what is on my mind lately? What have I been focusing on? I guess, in a nutshell, love. True, unconditional, whole-hearted, love.  I can honestly say, I didn’t understand how deep that kind of love could exist until I met my husband. That kind of love is work, for sure. It is a living creature that needs constant nourishment or else it dies. But it’s rewards are absolute peace, safety, confidence, hope, joy, sorrow, and soooo much fun.

I have learned to open up my scope of love to include so much more than I had before. That sounds very cryptic, let me explain. I didn’t realise until a few years ago just how judgemental of a person I was. I was ignorant. Plane and simple. I had grown up believing myself to be superior, by virtue of my spiritual beliefs.  This was something I came by honestly as it was an undercurrent belief in the culture I grew up in.  Let me be clear on this point, it was an undercurrent in the culture, not the doctrine, that I grew up with. The doctrine, when studied unbiasedly, with an open mind and heart, actually teaches the opposite of the superiority I grew up believing I was entitled to.

The doctrine, actually teaches the love I have come to understand. It is charity. The pure love of Christ. A concept I heard over and over growing up. But, I never even began to understand what it meant until meeting my husband. He changed my life. He helped me to grow in ways I didn’t even know I needed to grow. 

So, basically, to quote a primary song, “Jesus said, love everyone. Treat them kindly too. When your heart is filled with love, others will love you”. Simple, right? But oh, so profound!

Being a wife and mother are still new roles for me to fulfil, but I absolutely find them to be fulfilling! I am finding so much joy in this journey. Life is a struggle, for sure, but it is a struggle I wouldn’t trade for the world. 

Here’s hoping it doesn’t take me another seven years to make it back here. 

The Choice is Yours

I remember all throughout my formative years hearing some variation of  the phrase "you can choose how you feel" over and over again.  It sounded like it should be true, but I did not understand how.  Anger, sadness, excitement, gratitude, those were all things I had felt and understood as a reaction to my life as events unfolded, but how on earth do you take a situation where anger is clearly the correct response to the situation you are dealing with and just choose to be happy instead?

Now that I have grown up a bit, and pondered that concept continually ever since initially hearing it in my youth, I feel the answer lies somewhere in between.  We have no choice as to what life is going to throw at us.  When you really think about it, there is very little we can control in our lives.  I can do nothing about the choices other people make, especially when they decide to be a complete jerk to me.  The "correct," or should I rather say common response to a situation in which someone decides to be a complete jerk, is anger.  However, when anger is broken down, at its base, it is fear, and sadness.  It is pain, and a natural reaction to pain is to avoid it, which makes anger very convenient.  That pain becomes a hot potato we launch at the appropriate person, place, or thing that wounded us in the first place.  I like to think of anger as a secondary emotion.  Much like secondary colors, it is a result of a mixture of other base emotions, and as such, it cannot stand on its own.  Purple has to have the support of both red and blue in order to exist, so does anger need a combination of baser emotions to exist.  And what are baser emotions other than energy that needs to be expended?  Does it help us to be angry?  Is the result of any action taken in anger ever helpful? No.  So, this is where the choice comes into play.  

The choice is to recognize the primary or base emotions, and to choose to feel them, as painful as they are, and expend that energy.  I have found the best way to expend emotional energy, whether positive or negative is to share it, and the safest place to share it is with the Lord.  The choice is to reject the spirit of contention that presents itself as a seed of anger, and instead to choose to feel the sadness, or confront the fear.  This, naturally, takes faith, hope, and trust.  

Lately I have been contemplating the concept of "things as they really are". (Jacob 4:13)  Elder Maxwell points out in his book by the same name, that Jacob is the only person to use the word "really" in all the books of scripture we currently have.  As such, it is an anomaly that should be pondered.  To see "things as they really are," is to see the truth of them and not be distracted by all the facts surrounding them (see previous post for further explanation of truth and fact), let alone being distracted by the lies that are surrounding them.  

Anger is not the only thing that presents itself to us as fact and a distraction from the truth.  There are a couple of key words I have found that cause distraction from truth as well, and these are "should," and "deserve".  These are two words that keep the people that use them in a state of being a victim.  "should," or its past tense form "should have," keep people stuck.  I cannot think of any time that word is used that is actually helpful.  If I think, "I should have…" the truth is that I didn't, and continuing to think about it is not productive. If I think, "I should…" then I am thinking and procrastinating rather than doing.  

The word "deserve," places a sense of entitlement on the person using it, and the truth is that we are not entitled to anything in this life.  We may think we have earned things, but as Elder Maxwell also said, "Since God lends us 'breath…from one moment to another,' hyperventilating over these distractions is not recommended!"  What do we have in our lives that the Lord hasn't given us.  We may believe that we are laboring so hard and receiving our just deserves, but the truth is we are merely expending energy, and the Lord in His mercy is granting us great blessings as a result of our efforts.  My point is not to discourage any of us from thrusting in our sickle with our might, by any means.  What I am trying to make clear, however, is that there is not one aspect of our lives that we truly deserve. 

In Mosiah 2:21 King Benjamin states "I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live, and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another--I say, if ye should serve him will all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants."

For myself, I have come to realize, that means I don't deserve to own a car.  I don't deserve to have a whole new wardrobe every year, or even every two years.  I don't deserve to have even one cent more than I need to survive every month.  And truly, I am grateful for what I do have.  I have a scooter, and in the winter, I have a free bus and lovely friends that give me rides.  I have clothes that, though they may be three to four years old, still work just fine.  I have food in my pantry and refrigerator that may not produce gourmet meals, but does much more than just sustain me.

More than this, I am having to learn that I an absolutely not entitled to have life go the way I planned, and I am not just talking about going to college, getting married, having kids, and all the usual events that seem to happen to "normal" people in the "normal" way.  I mean, that if the Lord grants that I could have those things, there is no guarantee I will get them in the package I expect them to be in.  I went to college…didn't graduate because I had a broken back.  I had a career, but the Lord made quite clear I was done with it and not to continue to peruse it.  I am 32 and unmarried, and the Lord is presenting me with possibilities to build relationships and move in that direction, but these opportunities are a far cry from what I thought I wanted and expected as a "reward for living so righteously".  What I am coming around to understanding, is that these "stumbling blocks" really aren't as bad as I thought they were.  Just because it's not the picture I always thought I wanted, doesn't mean it's defective. In fact, if I could get over my pride, and open my eyes to the scene the Lord has placed in front of me, I am sure I would find this version of my life more glorious and beautiful that I could have imagined.  

The point is choice.  Life is going to move on regardless of how we choose to accept it.  I can take a negative moment and choose to be angry and dwell on it and try to justify my actions and emotions, or I can choose to accept that things are the way they are, feel the pain of the sadness or confront the fear, and come out stronger on the other end.  The point is to act rather than to be acted upon.  Choose to live, choose to believe, choose to love, to choose happiness.  These really are choices, because the alternative is to choose to be a victim to failure, to anger, to bitterness, to loneliness, and unbelief.  It brings a whole new meaning to Joshua's call to "…choose you this day whom ye will serve…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."  That may see like an over simplification, but it is really not.  To choose happiness, love, belief, hope, kindness, humility, is to choose to follow and serve the Lord.  By choosing to be a victim, we are choosing to distance ourselves from Him. 

In this new year, I hope to choose to root out places in my life where I feel entitled, to let go of that entitlement, and choose to be grateful for what I have already.  This year, I am going to choose happiness.  I am going to choose love.  What are you going to choose?

Truth or…Fact

All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, by Neal A. Maxwell, is the inspiration for this post.  Even though the book is only about 125 pages, it took me about a week and a half to read it, because his writing style is to condensed and he uses a lot of big words of which I do not know the meanings.  He talks of all experiences and their value to us, but what he really hits on is our own reactions to each daily occurrence and expounds upon the different virtues that can help us navigate each experience, and more importantly every trial, with the help we need, allowing us to come off conquerer.
One point he touches upon that made me pause and ponder, is the difference between fact and truth.  We tend to build so much of our lives on facts.  It is a fact that church for me starts at 9am every Sunday.  It is a fact that my only means of transportation is either my scooter, a bus, or walking.  It is a fact that in order to survive in this world, money is a necessary evil I have to accept and work with.  These are all facts of my life, however, they are subject to change, therefore, though they are currently true, they are not truth.

Truth is eternal.  God is our Eternal Heavenly Father, that is truth.  It will never change.  Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer, that is truth. This world was created by God for the purpose of us, His Children, to come here, gain a body, and have the opportunity to make our way back to Him.  These are all truths that will never, ever change.  In fact, using absolutes, words such as "always", "never", "every", "any", "all", and "always", are tricky to use, because when you use them with anything that is just merely a fact, they don't work, they become and exaggeration.  With truth however, you can safely use them. Truth will never change. Truth can always be relied on.
Truth is a solid foundation on which to stand. Fact is a wobbly structure at best that may keep you upright until a storm comes along and wipes it all away.  Fact may touch upon truth, in fact in order for fact to remain a fact, it has to rely on truth.  Truth, however, stands alone. It does not rely on anything but the light from which it springs to remain truth.
So how do we find truth?  Well, truth is light. Doctrine and Covenants 88:7-13 says:
"Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made.

"As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made;

"As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made;

"And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand.

"And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;

"Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—

"The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things."

There is only once source of truth. There are countless sources of fact.  When looking for answers to life's questions, do not let yourself be satisfied with facts.  Facts bring only mediocrity.  Elder Maxwell in his April 2002 Conference address said,"Brothers and sisters, our individual worth is already divinely established as “great”; it does not fluctuate like the stock market."  
Let us live up to our already established worth.  Our worth is a truth.  Do not let your life be built with a whole bunch of facts, that construct themselves into what appears to be a mansion.  Seek out truth, and grab on to it like gold.  Even if you start out with just one or two plain truths, they will take you farther in your life, and lead you to even more truths than 10, 20, or even 100 glittery facts ever will.  And never, ever trade any truth you already possess for a fact that looks more appealing. That fact will leave you stranded and alone.

Don't Stop Believin'

I have been contemplating this post for a couple of weeks.  Believing is a concept I thought I understood, but what I have realized lately is that I have never consciously applied it until very recently.      I think I have had a hard time understanding what faith is, because I have been confusing it with both hope and belief.  I would like to use a car to explain this thought process.  I used to think that faith was the destination we have in mind for our trip.  Then, through studying in Preach My Gospel, I came to realize that the destination, the desire, is hope.  Then I thought, okay, then faith is the gas, the accelerator, to get me moving.  Then, through recent study of the scriptures and other good books, I have come to realize that the gas is belief.  Faith is the car.  It is the "substance of things hoped for."- Hebrews 11:1  Maybe our car is missing a door or two, and maybe we don't have power windows, but I have come to realize that for the most part, we all have more faith than we realize, but we are living beneath our privilege because we don't have a full tank of gas, or because we are too afraid to step on the accelerator.

This was a whole new way for me to understand belief! Maybe a little background will help clarify this.  When I was very young, I can remember learning about Nephi in the Book of Mormon, and how he heard the words of his father and decided to check this stuff out for himself, and when he did…he saw the same vision his father saw.  Later he even talked about how he saw the Savior face to face.  I remember thinking at that time, that I wanted to do that so bad, and thinking, why not?  That "why not" seed lay dormant in my heart for many years as well meaning teachers, parents, friends, and culture mostly, reinforced the stereotype that that kind of stuff only happens for prophets, or people who are "highly favored" of the Lord.  

I remember one time in a Young Women's class being taught the importance of prayer.  We read many scriptures that in no uncertain terms told us to pray ALWAYS, and about EVERYTHING.  We were even told a story about the wife of one of the prophets praying over her shopping list.  Then, this well meaning, doing the best she could teacher said, "Now, do I think we really need to pray about things as trivial as a shopping list? No, but I do think we need to make the Lord more a part of our lives.  When you have something big come up in your life, include the Lord in that decision".

Am I the only one that sees a mixed message here?  

When did we stop believing the Lord when He tells us things?  When did we start believing only partially what He has told us?  ALWAYS, and EVERYTHING are words that are absolutes.  They can be dangerous for anyone who is not perfect to use if they want to be taken seriously.  But when the Lord, who is a perfect being, and does not mince words uses them, they mean exactly what they say!  When the Lord tells us "what I say unto one I say unto all," and that he is "no respecter of persons," why do we think that the things that happen to the prophets and other amazing people in the scriptures, aren't supposed to happen to us, and if they do happen to us, it won't be in this life?

The reasons behind this way of thinking, are what I like to call veils of unbelief.  The minute that we read something like "ask and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you" thoughts of "oh, that doesn't apply to this", "you don't want to bother the Lord with something so trivial", "He's so busy, He doesn't have time to go over a shopping list with you", etc.  These are veils of unbelief that cause our seeds of belief to lay dormant.  And if we give way to those unrighteous thoughts, those seeds can be snatched up and taken away.  

As I was coming to understand how many veils of unbelief I had in my life and how many times a day Satan was whispering these lies to me, I decided to make a list of some of the things the Lord has promised me.  This list came from my Patriarchal Blessing, from different scriptures that have stood out to me, from conference talks, and council given to me from leaders and loved ones. As I made this list, sure enough those veils of unbelief came streaming through my head, and as they did, I wrote them down.  Then I pondered them.  I noticed the stark differences between what the Lord was telling me and the thoughts I was frequently entertaining that were not of my own making.  And then…I started to write the opposite of these veils of unbelief in the form of "I believe" statements.  

For example, one of the major struggles I have had in my life is dating and getting married.  It's not happening for me…yet.  And to be brutally honest, I have never even been on a second date.  To be even more brutally honest, I have never been on a legitimate date, and by that I mean a date where either of us were really interested in the other.  But, I have been promised, in many different ways, and from many different righteous sources, that I will get married in this life.  So, I wrote that down.  I got as far a M-A-R-R  and the veils of unbelief came flooding in me and around me, it was almost suffocating.  So I wrote them down, and they were things like:

"You're not pretty enough."

"Maybe when you've lost some weight."

"You don't know for sure that it is supposed to happen for you in this life."

"You're just too unusual."

"Nobody is going to want you."

"You are just too much of a mess."

There were many more, but I think you get the picture.  So, I thought about it, and prayed about it, and began to write down belief statements.

"I believe I am beautiful."

"I believe I am worth loving."

"I believe that there is someone out there for me that will truly love me."

"I believe that I will get married in this life."

"I believe that I am really not unusual, and that many men would be very lucky to have me as an eternal companion."

The amazing thing about doing this, is that I wasn't quite sure when I started that I did believe theses things, but like Corrie ten Boom stretching forth her hand, pleading for the Lord to provide the forgiving feeling to her German captor, I said the words, and the Lord DID provide the feeling.  That is belief.  That is the accelerator, in a work in progress car that is taking you to the place your heart longs to be.  I have found that I have to catch myself, when I am entertaining the veils of unbelief, and then start saying belief statements many many times throughout the days.  It is a choice, a conscious choice that I have to make every day.  And as I have done so, the thought that a testimony is found in the bearing of it has come to my mind.  Who ever said we needed an audience in order to bear our testimony?  Bear it every day, to yourself and to the Lord!  Bear it as often as it takes for the message to stick!  Bear is so loud that you drown out the adversary and his enormous pack of lies and this belief becomes second nature and becomes a knowledge!!!

I believe that as we all do this, we will be strengthened by the Lord in all of our righteous pursuits!  One thought that has been coming to my mind over and over it that the "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."-Exodus 14:14  I believe the Lord will fight our battles if we will stand still and let Him.  I believe our Savior LOVES us and is always by our sides.  I believe that our Heavenly Father is interested in the details, however minor, of our lives.  I believe that there are many wonderful promises made to each of us that are there for us to unlock through our choosing to believe.

  

I would love to hear your experiences in faith, hope, and belief.  Please share in the comment section below 

Defying Gravity?

This is where I would normally apologize for not writing for so long and promise to be better, but that is not real life.  I am not going to fight it any more.  Life is busy, and the only reason I restarted this blog is because the Lord told me to, so I am now just going to trust in Him that when he wants me to devote time to it, He will let me know and provide the time for it.
Thank goodness we got that out of the way!

I have been pondering about laws lately.  My friend recently went to education week in Rexburg, Idaho, and one thing she brought back with her was this really cool concept about the law of gravity.  For years, human beings fought against gravity in order to try to fly.  They built all sorts of wings to make them bird-like, and other contraptions that would enable their body to all of a sudden trick gravity into thinking they weighed nothing so that they could fly.

It wasn't until they were obedient to the laws of gravity, in every measure, that they understood how the laws of gravity could provide the thrust and ability to fly.  They had to not just work with the laws of gravity, they had to be exactly obedient to them.

This understanding has allowed me to reflect on which laws I am exactly obedient to, which honestly, I am not sure I am exactly obedient to very many of them, and which ones I am fighting against, because I do not understand them, or because I think I am smarter or do not  trust in them.
Two major ones came to mind: the law of belief, and the law of love.  I will start with love, because I think this one can be a little easier to understand.
Love is a hard concept to grasp.  It is a very broad word that encompasses so many things and a variety of feelings.  As there is opposition in all things, love can be "used" for good, to  uplift, support, unify, strengthen and empower, and it can be "manipulated" to force, shame, hurt, disparage, and humiliate.  I use quotes here, because I think in many of these instances we think we are invoking love or what we understand it to be but what we are most often doing is using it the same way a child "fixes" a broken toy with their plastic tools, we believe we understand it and how it works, but we do not comprehend the complexity of what it would be like in real life terms.
I have always had a hard time with love.  I never felt worthy to receive love, and I felt that if I let anyone in to my heart to love me, that they would have the power to hurt me.  As a result, I built a huge wall to protect myself from that.
As I grew older, I realized a part of the law of love, that you have to give of yourself in order to qualify to be loved, otherwise the other person in the relationship gives until it is too painful to give any longer without receiving and then they may choose to walk away.  I realized my capacity to love was enormous and that people could benefit from my showing love to them.  I felt a joy and a peace come into my soul as I practiced this and truly felt love for those I was serving.  The problem was that I was still not allowing the love they were trying to reciprocate into my heart.  As I was trying to build relationships, I would listen, and support and help others, but I would hold back my own struggles and burdens and not allow them to comfort, uplift, and strengthen me.  I have "brushed off" the love others have tried to extend to me.  When they share their love with me, my mind says ,"I know," but my heart says, "nice try pal, but you're not breaching this defense".
Lately however, I have come to recognize something very profound.  The Savior teaches us in the scriptures,
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
"We love him, because he first loved us."-1 John 4:10,19 (emphasis added)
If we parallel this with gravity, my capacity to love others is like my capacity to obey the law of gravity to the extent that I walk around on solid ground with no problem and I throw a ball in the air and it comes back to me.  However, if I want to fly, I have to observe all of the law. The rest of this law being that I have to allow the love of God into my heart, to enlarge my heart, and to recognize the fact that when the law of love is truly observed there is no need for my "protective wall". Period. Allowing love into my heart, from God, or anyone who loves me, is not something I need protection from.  Love needs not defenses. Do the people we love and that love us sometimes hurt us, yes.  But those moments are moments of selfishness and pride, not love.  We tend to tie love up into a bundle with those other things, and they just don't belong together.  They couldn't be more separate if they tried.
We also learn in the scriptures from Moroni that he spoke with boldness to his people because he "fear[ed] not what man can to; for perfect love casteth out all fear."-Moroni 8:16 (emphasis and brackets added)
Love does not belong with any negative feeling, in fact it can cast out those negative feelings.  If we truly observe the law of love in its fulness, we can fly.
So, while I learned first how to serve, then how to give love, then how to share my burdens, I still am working on opening my heart to receive the love that others, and (most importantly) Heavenly Father, are trying to send to me.  I recognize this is the portion of the law that allows me to fly.  This is the portion of the law that is the power of the law, the upward thrust.  I don't know how to do that yet, but I believe that the Lord will teach me about this part of the law of love.  I believe now that I understand that the law of love expands farther than I had previously comprehended, this is a great start, and I know that as I pray for guidance and for the Lord to teach me these things, I will feel that love.

This post ended up being longer than I anticipated, so I will share more about my thoughts on the law of belief in a couple days.  In the mean time, if anyone has any thoughts about practically applying this idea of allowing the love of God, and those around us into our hearts, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Intelligence vs Faith

Faith is…something that just when I think I have a grasp on it, it slips away like a fish.  Yet, I have come to see the necessity of it as I have stood back and watched several people, most of them close friends of mine lean so heavily on "logic" and "intelligence" for understanding, that I think I am beginning to understand how it works a bit better.  Hopefully I can explain this so it actually makes sense.

I recently saw a clip of a man who is an atheist having a "dialogue" (I use scare quotes here because this man typically likes to invite people of faith on to his program so he can try and rip them apart on national television and play king of the hill) with an "intelligent Christian", a label he so "graciously" gave to the man he was talking to.  As I watched this clip, I found myself getting very upset that the man who was an atheist was frankly being a jerk and trying to make his guest look like and idiot.  He kept trying to sway the argument with his "logic".  Now, don't get me wrong, logic is a good thing most of the time.  Logic, if it is true logic, can override ignorance and so-called-intelligence at times, and blaze a wonderful trail to faith, but the problem with logic, it that it is very subjective.  As such, one of the things that can take logic on to the point of ignorance, hatred, and bullying, is when it is coupled with pride.  This is something that happens too quickly and easily that we are all guilty of it, most likely on a daily basis.  

I had a friend on Facebook who posted a disparaging comment a while back about people who were religious flooding Facebook with their beliefs about Easter.  I was really affected by her comment and made the decision to unfriend her.  I did not do this because I do not think she has a right to her opinions, or as any sort of "punishment" to her, I did this because she does have a right to her opinions, but her comment was made to be mean on purpose, and showed a lack of respect towards her friends that are religious (logic would tell me here that if she didn't have more than one friend, me, who was religious, she wouldn't see any posts about Easter), and I do not want to see that kind of negative energy on my news feed.  It was as if she was a dog nipping at you because you are in their personal space; a territorial and defensive response.  Instead of respectfully sharing her personal beliefs, she took a bite.  There was such a big part of me that wanted to write something snarky back, just to "out-whit" her, but then I'm the one doing the biting.

As I thought about this friend of mine, along with other friends I have who may not be atheist, but are certainly not in favor of organized religion, along with the man in the video clip, I pondered about why they so adamantly argue against religion.  It made me wonder if they have ever had a true experience of faith or if they have only gone off of intellect alone. Or, if they had had an experience with faith, had they had forgotten about it?
For me, my personal experiences with faith are what help me to understand other religions and faith. Those experiences are the reason I stand up for, and would fight for religious rights, not just for myself, but for anyone of any religion…"let them worship how, where, or what they may"(Articles of Faith 1:11) and that includes my friends and that man. 

This got me thinking about why faith elicits that kind of reaction from me.   

True faith, leads one to action, in a direction they would not normally go, but in a direction they believe will enhance their life and make them a better person.  It leads them in a direction that they believe to be right.  The small catch, is that faith only "works" for things that are true.  For example, I can have all the "faith" in the world that eating a dozen donuts a day will help me loose weight, but because it is not true, it will not happen.  So, when I have faith in something, if it proves unfruitful, it is not really faith.  It is merely misguided hope.  That is why we are always told in the scriptures to have faith in Christ, because He is a sure foundation, and if our faith is rooted in Him, we will not fall.  He is the one thing, or person, that all true faith can grow from and produce miracles.
Now, misguided intellect or logic would say there are many people throughout history who have had faith in Christ and did terrible things in his name.  My argument is that they did not have faith.  They had a massive dose of pride.  Pride, mixed with manipulation that fed their own egos.
"By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matt 7:20), and that is why I say, anyone with true faith in Christ, cannot be lead astray and can and will produce miracles.  Logic and intellect cannot produce miracles; they are limited.  Understanding coupled with faith can produce miracles, and what follows afterward is wisdom and knowledge.
Like I said, this is not a comprehensive understanding of faith, it is a small dip in the ocean that is faith. I do have faith that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.  I know he lives, and that he gave his life so that I could make mistakes and come back from them and be a little wiser.  I know that God is our Heavenly Father, and that faith in Him and His Son Jesus Christ, will produce miracles in our lives.  And I know these things, not because my intellect has come to this conclusion after visiting all the "facts," but because I have had faith in Them, and They have sealed in my heart and in my mind this knowledge through the Holy Ghost.

Lots of Upheaval

Sorry, again, that it has been so long since my last post.  I moved and got a job all at the same time in April, and life has been chaotic ever since.
I started working as a substitute teacher, which was great, and horrifying at the same time.  I have developed a rather large soap box about our public education system after that job, but I will not be sharing it any time soon, at least not here anyway.  But of course that ended in May with the end of the school year, and the search for another job still goes on.
There have been other opportunities for jobs, not in Logan, that have come up.  There has been talk of other living arrangement opportunities as well, also not in Logan.  There has been many days spent in the temple trying to figure these things out, as well as a timely calling to be an ordinance worker in the Logan Temple which I start this Saturday evening.  I am really excited about this!!!
Oh! and I got a car!  My Mom, came to visit a few weeks ago, and she ended up buying a new car while visiting so she gave me her old one.  I am so incredibly blessed!!

                                          My Mom's first selfie on her new iPad.

Though I have not published any new posts in a while, I have had one that I have been editing this whole time, and I think I am finally ready to publish it.
I have been pondering a lot lately about our opinions and how "free" we are to share them now with social media and the internet, and so I have been trying to be very conscious of what I post.  I have no wish to offend anyone…though I do also believe that if you want to be offended, you will find a way to make that happen.  So, I post these thoughts, not as a claim that my thoughts are the end-all-be-all of truth that exists in the universe, but rather as an option to think about and see if it fits for you.
In short, my plea to all of us out there, is to please opinion responsibly.