Just Have Hope

 "Whoever decided that eighteen is the time to be an adult had too many expectations." -Liz I have just turned 19 (last Friday) and looking back being 18 for a year did not exactly go the way I planned. But then again, does anything go the way we plan it to?  Being an adult is hard. Half the time I felt like I was a kid pretending to be an adult. Sometimes I walk into a store and have to remind myself that I am old enough to be shopping on my own. Haha! In the eyes of the law, I am a legal adult but as for everything else I am adult-ish. As I have learned from going to YSA, no one has everything figured out. In fact, the people in YSA don't act the way I expected them to. Everyone is still growing up one way or another and facing whatever life decides to throw at them.  If I had another year of high school I would nail it. Now I am in a new stage of life and I have to learn to be a successful young adult in college. Turns out the next stage of life always occurs right aft...

 Do you remember...  Watching the lights,  From so far away? And we thought...  How could we ever be there? In the lights, brilliant, and bright. But ever so slowly.  We got closer. And we didn't even know it. We headed towards it. To embrace it.  The lights, so brilliant, and bright. And before it was only one direction. I could turn myself around. And miss it. But now we are surrounded. It's blinding. Oh so blinding. How? How am I ready? What if I don't shine? But we've come so far. It's time to accept your fate. And shine. Brilliantly! 

  Realizing A small tree grows towards the sun. Barely a foot large, its life has just begun.  It takes in the sun, the air, the soil.  And it grows, tall, strong, and determined. It grows until it can’t. The older trees have seemed to block its way. And it feels trapped. Every day becomes a struggle. Light has been blocked. The rainwater taken by others. The tree can no longer grow. She doesn’t grow but she stays the same. Just enough rain, just enough sun, just enough soil to stay alive. To make it by. But not enough to grow. And before she even knew that this would happen. It did. And now it’s too late. Only one thing can free the tree. She needs help, but she must allow it. To free herself from her feelings, her struggles, and her past. And then the woodcutter arrives. Dressed in black. And how long she has waited for this day. But he doesn’t help her.  He trims the trees far across the field. And she feels paralyzed. Her only comfort is her owner. A man dressed ...

  "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Gandhi Life is short. In just two years I will be graduated from high school. That's hard to believe.  One of the things I have always told myself is that tomorrow is not promised. We do not know the time we have been given to live. And most importantly we need to make the most of it. Live life to the fullest.  I started reading the book Life Everlasting by Duane S. Crowther. It is a wonderful book and an inspiring read. Never have I been so convinced of how important this life is and how I need to make sure I am following the commandments and keeping my standards. That way when I move to the next life I will know I lived life to the fullest and that I did my very best.  Learning is something that is very important in this life. It is one of the main reasons that we came to Earth. The inspiring part of that is that we will continue to learn after this life. We will learn forever and...

 "In a world with so many distractions, being able to give your full attention to one thing at a time is powerful." ~Gymaholic  "You never really lose your motivation and drive, you just lose sight of what you truly want." ~Joe Duncan  I have found the last three weeks I have been awfully distracted. And so I have a hard time starting things or getting things finished. I don't know how we stay undistracted in a world like this. Advertisements, phone notifications, emails, television, media the list goes on and on.  With the world that we live in it's a wonder we can focus on one thing. In fact, I have been working on this blog post since 4:10 but I didn't work on it the entire time because I got distracted. Many times. LOL.  In regards to spiritual things, we go up and down daily. We get distracted by the world and we make mistakes. So we are constantly choosing to return to the covenant path and repent. Choosing to give our attention to the gospel again...

 "Present opportunities are not to be neglected; they rarely visit us twice." -Jesse Neo I have learned that time has a way of changing things. This means that the opportunities we are given and the chances that come our way will change because our lives are constantly changing.  The opportunity of something that I am given now will not be the same exactly a year from now. That's because things will change. The circumstances may be different and your recent life experiences will alter from the previous year. So the opportunity will not be the same. Say for example you wanted to recreate a youth dance that occurred the month before. Same people, same decorations, same food, same kind of time frame as last time. The thing is you would not be able to replicate the same exact experience. Sure the decorations may look the same, but the people will be different.  What if a young woman had just had a fallout with her best friend a week or two after the first dance. If she comes ...

"If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk then crawl, but by all means, keep moving." -Martin Luther King There are days that are hard. You just wonder how you are going to make it to the next day. Those are the days that we definitely are not flying. However, don't give up. What matters is that we keep going, even if it's hard.  I really like this quote, even if we feel like we are barely making it we can still keep moving, still keep progressing. We can't give up, we have to move. What would life be like if things were the same all the time?  Just a constant. It would be like doing the same thing day after day. Nothing different, because all experiences can change us. Even fun ones.  So let us keep moving forward even if we are barely crawling. Please ask for help if it is unbearable. There is no reason to give up if you have the resources. Sometimes we feel like we are failures for getting help from someone, in some...

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! "God knows what is best for us and he gives us the best at the right time. So just have trust and faith in God." ~Ekta Umaraniya I was not super excited about moving to Fayetteville as you may already know. I was sad to leave everything I had behind, especially my friends. I still miss them. My seminary teacher wanted us to write letters to people in four categories: school, church, teachers/school, friends, and family. He wanted us to put five people in each category.  As I started to fill this chart out I had more than five names for all of the categories and most of them were people from Fayetteville. It's been one hundred and fourteen days since my family moved to Fayetteville and already I have been able to meet so many people. In fact, I have made so many more friends than I thought I would. In total, I have made about 9 or so friends. I had a friend group of three people and two other friends that I hung out with right before moving ...

 "If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere." ~Vincent Van Gogh. My new neighborhood is mostly just houses and sidewalks. We don't have a lot of trees in the neighborhood either. So, unfortunately, there is not much to look at. However, for the past two months that I have lived here, we have had some of the most incredible sunsets and sunrises. I have also seen two rainbows less than a month apart from each other.  This has been so amazing to me and has really made me appreciate the sky and the clouds.  Here are some pictures of what I have seen.  The two pictures above were taken in my backyard. The sun sets in the back of our house and rises in the front.  This picture oddly enough is what the clouds looked like during a sunset except the sun is setting on the other side of our house. I thought this picture was a great representation of light and darkness. The cloud on the left is all bright and rosy while the cloud on the right is dark and gra...

 My family really enjoys Ninjago. If you are familiar with Ninjago you will recall that the old man in charge of training the Ninja is called Sensei Wu. Wu is similar to Yoda if you have never seen the show before. This is one of my favorite quotes from Wu.  "Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today." ~Ninjago    I would say one of the biggest challenges people face is finding how to balance their time. It's so easy to spend the day lounging and playing games. However, it is quite harder to complete a to-do list in a timely manner and all on the same day. (Eventually, there is a limit to what we can do in twenty-four hours.) Wu's point though, was not that we should make life completely packed and overwhelming. His point was, let's not waste the time we have been given. Every day of our lives is a gift because tomorrow is not promised.   I will admit that sometimes I don't feel like doing something. And then I waste the time I have been give...

 "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." ~Helen Keller "We are only strong as we are united as weak as we are divided." ~J.K. Rowling  We need each other now more than ever. I know I couldn't have come this far without the help I have received in my life.  During the gas shortage, I realized something. Gas could have not been as big of a shortage if people had been more considerate of others. Who needs gas more? The guy with 3/4 of a tank or the female who only has 20 miles left.  There were many people who decided to get gas for themselves when they already had plenty of it, leaving zero gas for the people who actually needed it. Our van ended up being one of the lucky vehicles that only had thirty to forty miles left when all gas stations ran out. We ended up having to cancel plans and stay at home for two days in order to save gas.  I am not saying that getting gas when you had 1/2 a tank during the gas shortage was very unkind of you but wha...

 "Life is like steak. You can't eat all of it in one bite. Just take one small bite at a time." ~Sarah McLamb Okay, first off, I don't eat steak. In fact, I can't even think of a time when I have. Our family commonly eats more chicken than beef. LOL.  Anyway, the point is, you can't eat steak in one bite. It's not possible. Life is the same way. We can't live all of it in one moment. That's the beauty of it. Life is meant to be lived one moment at a time, not all at once. Let's say you get sick. I know, very unfortunate, but it happens. You are out of school, work, etc. for a week. You come back and bam! You feel miles and miles behind. The worst part: you have to make up for all the work you missed and on top of that you have to keep up with the work currently going on.  I find it very hard to believe that someone could make up a week's worth of work in one day. In fact, that would be pretty much impossible, unless perhaps you don't wa...

"Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today... Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever." ~Jerry Spinelli The first time I came across this quote it hit me hard. We can never get back the today's that have gone by, however, we can make today and the next day even better. So live today and don't waste it.  Remember that wasting time means you lose moments of your life. Be patient when it comes to the future. What better time do we have than now?  ~What moments mean the most to you?

"When we show up in the present moment with all of our senses, we invite the world to fill us with joy. The pains of the past behind us. The future has yet to unfold. But the now is full of beauty simply waiting for our attention." ~Unknown I strangely came across this quote in Driver's Ed. (Yes, I am taking Driver's Ed currently!!! Crazy! 😱)  Anyway, I really like what this says. I think it is very important for us to take in the present moment with all of our senses, so we can experience it completely. I think if we are always wanting what the future has to offer or if we're trapped in the past we miss things that are happening right now.  The present is one moment but it's always happening. Which means our current thoughts and actions make it up. Don't waste the present, use the time you have been given!!!  I have always thought about how we can either accept the past and move on or we can constantly have it on our mind and never truly let it go. I lik...