Come What May and Love It

This Easter season, there has been a trend going around with the hashtag "#BecauseofHim". I didn't want to follow the rest of the crowd, but as I started reflecting, I wanted to write a blog post about my thoughts. So here it goes... Because of Him... I get to study at this great university that is centered around the Spirit. It is amazing the kind of people you meet and experiences you get to have when it is centered around Jesus Christ. Because of Him... I have the most amazing friends in the whole world. I got to meet them through common beliefs and an understanding of Jesus Christ. Because of Him... I get to stay with these crazy people FOREVER. They are stuck with me whether they like it or not. Jesus died and was resurrected so that we may live again. We can be with our families forever. This is something I have grown to appreciate more and more as I have not lived in the same state as my family for three years. Because of Him... I am here. He helped me ...

Life is busy. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you are probably in for a rude awakening. I am really starting to realize how impossible it is to fit everything in. It is especially hard as a young, single college student.   There is school. There is homework. There is work. There are church callings. There is scripture study and prayers. On top of all that, you want to try to have an ounce of a social life. It is hard! Sometimes life can be overwhelming. Sometimes, I feel so split in all these different directions. I feel like it is impossible to get it all done. I wake up in the morning and I have to attend 4 hours of class. Then I need to go to work. Once I come home, it doesn’t stop there. I have homework to complete, projects to work on, emails to send, students to contact, and people to visit. I try to get all these things done quickly so I can get a couple of hours to chill with my boyfriend before going to bed at a decent hour and waking up to start it over again....

I have been very open about my past depression. I have told people about my struggles, but I always make sure that I talk in the past tense. I need to be honest. It is not just in the past. Did I go through hard things back in High School? Yes. Have things gotten easier? No. Some days are harder than others. And I have had my share of bad days in the last year. In fact, last semester was probably the worst I have been in a long time. Anyway- a few nights ago got really bad really fast. I was feeling alone and in the dark. I sat in my car and just cried because of the rush of emotion and dark thoughts filling my head.  I decided to look up a talk by one of my amazing professors, Brad Wilcox. In this address, he talks about grace. I really love the talk and would encourage you all to read it . One thing he said was "So grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at...

Yesterday, I took a group to go Hospital singing. We were having a rough time on the second floor. We were being told 'no' or 'not today' by every person. I was feeling sick to my stomach. Here I had gotten 15 people to give up their precious time on a Sunday afternoon and we weren't even able to do what we came to do! We got to sing to one person on the second floor. Then, I felt like we needed to go to the third floor. Realize that I have been going hospital singing for eight months now almost every Sunday. I had never been to the third floor before. But yesterday, we needed to go there. My goodness. It is indescribable the events that went down on that third floor. I am going to try to write them down for my own sake, but I will not do them justice. First we visited Lynn. He was an old man sitting in a dark room. I don't even remember what songs we sang, but afterward we just started talking to him. He had such a strong testimony. One person asked ...

I was talking to a friend today. He told me that depression was a choice. He was totally convinced that I could just turn off the depression and be fine. I told him it wasn’t. We agreed to disagree, but I feel like there are a lot of people out there that believe the same as my friend. I am here to say that depression, at least for me, is not a choice. Why would I choose to feel this way or have these thoughts? I wouldn’t. However, I do have a choice in something. I have a choice in how I react. For people who have not been depressed before, know that it is a dark place. Sometimes you cannot feel the light or see any hope. Even with the view of the Gospel, some days are really hard. Elder Holland said the following “But today I am speaking of something more serious, of an affliction so severe that it significantly restricts a person’s ability to function fully, a crater in the mind so deep that no one can responsibility suggest it would surely go away if the victims would just sq...

I am going to do the impossible right here, right now. I am going to quote a General Authority and Katy Perry in the same blog post. Please don't strike me down! So I am kind of obsessed with this song right now:   "You held me down, but I got up. Already brushing off the dust You hear my voice, you hear that sound Like thunder gonna shake the ground. You held me down, but I got up Get ready 'cause I've had enough I see it all, I see it now.   I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire Cause I am a champion and you're gonna hear me roar. Louder, louder than a lion Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar."   I have opened up recently about my struggles with depression. If you haven't read my story, you can go to that post HERE . But anyway, it is a very real thing for me. Some days are better than others. Last week was incredibly bad. Every time I heard this song, I would turn my radio ...

In my 21 years of being a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints I have learned a thing or two. I have gained a testimony of my own as I have grown through the years. Last year on my birthday, I wrote down 20 things that I had a testimony of. I thought it might be fun to do this again this year with 21 things. This year, I decided to find a quote or a scripture for each part. This is more for my own learning and growth, but please enjoy: 1. Heavenly Father knows us. He loves us more than we can comprehend. He is watching out for us even when we feel like there is no one there. "Just think of it: You are known and remembered by the most majestic, powerful, and glorious Being in the universe! You are loved by the King of infinite space and everlasting time! He who created and knows the stars knows you and your name."- Dieter F. Uchtorf 2. Heavenly Father answers prayers. Sometimes He does not answer them in the way that we want or the way that we expect, b...

Last week I was watching General Conference. First off, AMAZING! I always love this time of year. And I always love Elder Holland's talks. When he got up to speak in the Saturday afternoon session, I knew it was going to be good. If you have not heard or read his talk yet, please click here . Elder Holland talked a lot about depression and the real struggle that goes along with it. I thought that it might be time to share my story with the world. When I went into ninth grade, everything was going great! I had friends, family, and faith. What more did I need? Then my world came crashing down. That year, I found out that I had an acute hearing loss. The doctors had no idea how fast my hearing would disappear, but I left the office that day with an amplifier and a note telling my teachers that I needed to sit in the front of the class. This news hit me hard. I had always felt the need to be perfect all the time. Isn't that what being a Mormon meant after all? The idea that I w...

A few weeks ago, I had a little mini breakdown. I was observing a kindergarten classroom and it hit me. In a year, I am going to be a teacher. In a year, that will be me in front of those children. Granted I will probably not be teaching kindergarten, but I was still just struck by fear. Can I do this? Is this really what I want to do? I had a good friend just talk with me about my life goals and decisions. He mentored me in a way that I really needed. I am grateful I work at a place with so many mentors right on hand to help out in times like this. Anyway- so these questions have been on my mind recently: What am I meant to do? Where am I meant to be? Who am I meant to be? I have been unsure about a lot of things in my life recently and that drives me crazy. I am slightly a control freak who likes to have a nice neat plan laid out. It scares me that I don't know where I am going to be in a year. At the General Relief Society Meeting yesterday, President Monson reminde...

Yesterday, we went hospital singing like we do every Sunday. There was one patient that we sang to that I haven't seen in a while. His name is Rob. He can barely speak. He wanted to request a song for us to sing. It took us several minutes of guessing to finally get what he was talking about. As we left, I heard everyone else talking about how hard it would be to live like that and how grateful they are that they can speak. I can see where they are coming from, but I left grateful I can hear. I have a hearing disability. Maybe sometime I will share the story on here, but if you really want to know you can talk to me about it. For now, I will say that in Junior High I found out that I had a hearing loss. Some days are better than others. Some days I just smile and pretend that I actually heard what someone said to me. Some days are hard and I can barely hear. This week has been pretty hard. Going to the hospital, seeing Rob, that made it all too real. I felt so disoriented no...

This has been something that I have been studying out for a while now. For those who have not heard the EFY Medley (or want to listen to it again because it is amazing) you might want to listen to this first: (Side note: I got to sing a new version this in a fireside that was conducted by Sister Janice Kapp Perry- the woman who wrote both the songs sung in this medley. Needless to say, I was crying the entire time.) All of my life I have been told (along with all the other youth) that I was saved for these latter days. We sing about it. We hear talks about it. We have Sunday School lessons about it. This Sunday, Elder Russell M. Nelson gave a wonderful CES Devotional about this idea. It sparked some questions in my mind... Why was I saved for these days? What do I have to offer? How can I make a difference? I would like to tell you about an experience that happened almost a year ago... The week before General Conference in October, I started thinking about a mis...

Four months ago, I was the new girl in the ward. I did not really know anyone. If you know me, you know how awkward I felt trying to get to know people. Anyone, one day a guy asked if I would like to go hospital singing with them. It sounded like fun, so I went. This actually was also the first time that I rode in the back of a truck, anyway that has nothing to do with the story. So every Sunday since (besides Fast Sundays), I have gone hospital singing. The two guys that were kind of leading it left for other endeavors, but I wanted to keep it going. So every Sunday, I would go door to door inviting everyone in my ward to come singing with us. Some weeks were better than others, but each time was amazing. I have been incredibly grateful for the opportunity that we have to go sing to brighten people's days. Yesterday was the last Sunday of the Summer. I have been begging people to come for weeks and we got a good sized group. Afterwards, I was kind of sad because a lot of these...

STORY TIME!! There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. The Farmer replied, "Maybe." The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "What wonderful luck!" the neighbors exclaimed. The Farmer replied "Maybe." The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy. "What bad luck!" The Farmer replied "Maybe." The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "What good luck!" The Farmer replied "Maybe." --------------------------------------...

It has been an emotional week. I have been seeing my inadequacies a lot this week. After getting home tonight, I broke down and cried. I decided it was time to just write a blog about my feelings. I feel like where I am in my life, I am expected to be perfect all the time. Sometimes I am not. Actually...I am never perfect. And that is okay. "Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God."- Deut 18:13 This is not saying that we will be perfect now, but we will be eventually. One of my favorite quotes is from Lorenzo Snow. "As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be." This says so much about our divine nature. The way I am feeling now is not odd. We are not meant to be exactly like God right this moment. Someday though we can be. Knowing that makes all of this worth it. It makes the trials, the troubles, the afflictions all worth the pain. At the same time though, we are not going through it alone. I know that we have a brother who has been throug...

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. I love these days that we get to recognize and remember our fathers. I have some pretty great examples of father's around me. These men have taught me lessons all my life about what it means to be a good father and husband and have given me examples of what I want in my own future husband. My Dad Steve Shiflett My dad has taught me so much. I am so grateful that he has been a part of my life my entire life. He has loved my mom unconditionally and the marriage that they share has been an example for me of what I want someday . He has always been a worthy priesthood holder . Anytime I needed a blessing, he was ready to give me one. He has taught me that the temple is an important part of our lives . When I went to do baptisms for the first time, he was there. I am so grateful for this. He also has taught me that you put 110% into everything you do . He is hardworking at work and at church. I know that he puts his whole self ...

(Please excuse the Hannah Montana song title. I couldn't stop myself!) There was a time that I thought I had to be perfect all the time. There are still days when I do not feel like I am enough. I feel like as a member of the church, sometimes we are expected to be perfect. We are given a lot of expectations and if I fail at even one of them, then I must be failing my Heavenly Father, right? Wrong. I feel like as we have feel like we must be perfect, we feel like others are judging us if we are not. I felt that a lot in high school. I felt like if I didn't do everything right 100% of the time then my peers would judge me and my faith. I felt like I could not make a mistake because everyone was watching. But WHO CARES? We weren't sent to this earth to be perfect. If we had, then we would be living Satan's plan. But we are not. We have agency. We came here to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy" (is it bad to quote Ms. Frizzle in a semi-serious blog ...

Okay people. Brace yourselves for a really long blog post about my life. It has been way too long since I have blogged and I have the burning desire to get it all out! *NOTE: There are grammar and spelling errors. I know. Get over it. Life is good. That is the first time I have been able to say this and mean it in a long time. This last year has been one of the hardest ones for me, but at last I am in a spot where I feel good again. I still have sorrows and trials. Life is still not perfect, but it is good. I have friends. Isn't that a good thing to have? I have a better relationship with my Heavenly Father- also a wonderful thing to have! So I moved. I forget if I already blogged about this, but if I have then you will have to bear with me. I moved from a situation that was not the best into one of the best places I have ever been. Can I just say that my ward is the best ward in the world? Seriously though! I love it. If you are in my ward and reading this, then this is a sho...