The Prize

"Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows."
-Isaiah 53:4

 

"I could promise you this. If two people believe in something, really believe, anything even the impossible, is possible."
-Castle

 "I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand."
-Benjamin Alire Saenz

"So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead. Even though you have to endure many trials for a little while."
-1 Peter 1:8

"Talk to yourself life you would to someone you love."
-Brene Brown

 "Breathing dreams like air."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I've found time can heal most anything and you just might find who you're supposed to be."
-Taylor Swift

 "Love isn't what you expect it to be. You imagine being drunk on happiness, but the truth is, you worry all the time. There's a moment when you realize that you've gotten everything you wished for. And right on it's heels is the understanding that this means you have so much more to lose."
-Jodi Picoult

 I love life
even when it hurts so much it knocks the wind out of you...
You still CAN breathe and OH how that breath of fresh air feels amazing. 
I've still been going to Singles Ward. 
It's bittersweet. I love drawing closer to the Lord and learning more, yet all the talk of dating, eternal marriage, and families cut like a knife to the heart, and I worry I'll bleed out all over myself and everyone will see it and stare. 
I decided I HAD to move on, stand up, and walk away.
I couldn't build a future from a broken past.
I had to start building a wonderful now for an incredible future.
I couldn't hold on to someone who let me go. 
There was no hope in what I was doing.
There was hope if I changed. 
I have to believe that there's a future out there for me.
I have to believe something wonderful is about to happen.

"The only cure I have ever known for fear and doubt and loneliness is an immense love of self."
-Allison Malee

The prize is every second you're alive. Your endless potential to change the world for the better. Your chance to find love, give love, and receive love.

That, my lovelies, is the prize.










Today's music-spiration was brought to you by: The Prize (Acoustic) by The Kite String Tangle

And I'll Wait Forever If I Have To

Today I went time traveling.

I know... you're deeply confused and/or questioning my sanity at that last sentence.

I went time traveling.

Allow me to elaborate.

Time travel (noun): To go back and read through old journals filled with pictures, words, and more from the past.

It makes me forever grateful that I journal and write everything down and save things. I can literally go back down memory road. 

The above pictures are from 2012.

I H I G H L Y recommend journaling.

Now I present to you, five years ago words that retain every ounce of feeling and relevance. 

I was born on October 14, 1989 which makes me 22 years young.

I could go on about how I adore long walks on the beach, how I am a Grey's An-addict, how I am obsessed with One Tree Hill, how pink and purple are my absolute favorite colors, how I love rain, how spiders terrify me, and all the other millions of little details that make me, me, but I assume if you're reading this that you either know me or have read previous entries and know me. 

Otherwise, first of all: you don't know me.

Second of all: you don't know me.

Even you who think you know me probably don't entirely so never make assumptions. I might just surprise you or sweep you off your feet.

Here are some details relevant to my life...

I wish I lived in a castle or my dream house... a white house with blue shutters and a porch that wraps around the entire house over looking a river...

aka the house from The Notebook.

A girl can dream, even when she's awake [especially then], and boy or girl do I dream and believe and wish and hope and pray and wait.

Family is everything to me. 

My home. 

My purpose.

My center.

My love.

I love my family and friends more than words could express or describe. This goes for my few true best friends as well.

I will give you everything I have; the good, the bad.

I am LDS (Mormon)

Families are made and meant to be together forever. I know it's true with all of my heart. Love and charity are the answers and way to live. I know the Savior, my Savior, Jesus Christ, died for me so I could truly live. I seek to emulate this kind of unconditional love to those I come across. I know my Heavenly Father loves me and has a beautiful life in store and ahead of me. He hears my prayers and answers them. 

The same goes for you.

I hope, but cannot promise, that when you read this, as you read these words, this blog will become a place you can go where everything's better and everything's safe.

People always leave. Sometimes they come into my life and then just go, leaving without another word or explanation. They will stay in my heart forever. And sometimes people come back. The most important ones, the ones that matter, will come into my life and never leave, stay forever, clinging to my heart and never letting go.

I am a flight risk with the fear of falling, wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts.

What this world needs is a return to sweetness and decency. Sometimes I feel incredibly disconnected, really uncomfortable in my own skin, kind of a sense of un-belonging, like I don't fit in this world. Like I was born at the wrong time, the wrong decade. Just alone. I want someone to want me, to fight for me, to pick me, to choose me, to love me, but I'll never admit it in words by saying it out loud.

I wish for impossible things. I write the things I cannot say. I think we've got one life, one chance, and what we do with it is up to us. I sometimes wonder if maybe I'm just destined to be alone. Maybe I am currently single but it doesn't mean I'm weak, it means I'm strong enough to wait, and trust that he is out there, the man I deserve. I'll close with a poem...

The Bride

I wonder if ever

I will be a bride

with a white lace gown

standing in front of everyone

looking beautiful

because someone

loves me

that much

When it comes to the heart, things are never simple.

The heart has a language of it's own. You have to take chances and follow your heart while fighting against the doubts and overthinking in your head. It's heartbreak warfare.

I think one of the things that scares me is this: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by or you pass them by.

-Me, 7/3/12

I'm going to end with some quotes from my journal that day penned by other people.

"Be bold and be brave and trust in your heart. It knows things you cannot imagine. Trust that it understands better than you can ever realize. It can never be bravery if you never feel scared."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"You, and no other and for you I truly hope, me, above all else."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"I wonder, every moment I write I wonder, what will be the final word I ever write to you? If I am honest, which I always and only am with you, I already know the final and last word I will ever say, write, or breathe to you. I know it down to the letter itself, the concluding letter of the crowning word, and it will belong, married forever, to the word 'you', which will follow directly the word 'love', and that word will be the exact and penultimate word that follows the word 'I' I and you and only the word Love will separate us."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"and maybe we have to break every to make something better out of ourselves."

-Fight Club

"The world and we are ending every minute of every day. It is up to us to decide if this is the single most horrific thing we will ever hear or the most breathtakingly beautiful."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"I want us. I want to swim in the way you make me feel. I want it to soak my clothes until they become a skin, and I want that skin to soak into my bones. I want to become the way it feels in the instant you stare at me from across this crowded place."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

"This is what I believe to be true: You have to do everything you can, and if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining."

-Silver Linings Playbook

"Nothing in this world is nearly as invincible as it might seem."

-Passage on the Titanic

"We are ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day."

-Brad Meltzer

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs."

-Phillip James Bailey

"It's true that not everything is meant to be. But always remember that everything is at least worth a try."

"You don't care about impossible.

Something I wish I could learn from you.

Write me down as the best idea you had.

Watch the firefly cause I struck the match tonight."

-Amber Pacific

"The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you. It is when you don't understand yourself."

"We don't need boys, we just need Jack Dawson."

-Me, to Brie (the best friend) as we watched Titanic

"You're so far away or am I just out of reach?"

-Matthew Perryman Jones

Alive Poets Society

I am more than anyone knows

None of the darkness around me can take me out

The brilliant, beautiful, blinding light that glows

inside of my heart displacing any doubt

When life gives you lemons, you. . .

I see love and my family in shades of white

Well why are you so blue?

We have to get down in these depths to appreciate the heights

I am worth it will always ring true

Who doesn't feel lonely once in a while whether it be lonely for a person, place, feeling, or thing? Sometimes we even feel alone in crowded rooms. Remember, the word alone has never lived inside the word lonely.

It's been a hell of a year for me [over a year]

A literal bit of hell

I didn't know how to bring back the heaven I built on Earth.

I felt surrounded by darkness that would be my constant and only companion.

People all around me tried to tell me that one day things would change. I would find the light again. I didn't want to listen though or more like I couldn't. When you're in the middle of grief it's like you're on another planet and nothing around you makes any sense. It's something you have to get through, push through, endure, fight. There is no shortcut and no way around it.

The light is inside of us.

I am the light.

You are the light.

We are the light.

We chase and search and claw for light like it's something we can find outside of us in someone else or in something. The reality is the light is inside of us all along. The problem is sometimes we let people dim our light to the point where we can't see it or feel it, but it's always there. Always. We are made of light. We have to nourish and feed that light. We can't neglect it. The best, beautiful secret is the more we share our light, the lighter and brighter it grows and glows.

One day, recently, I woke up and could breathe again. I began to not only like but love myself again. I realize I cannot change the past... nor do I want to. All I can change is myself. Now. This moment. I love me. Do I want to fall in love again and find my love story? I'd be a complete and utter liar if I told you anything but a resounding, roaring YES. I hope and pray that there's a man out there who will love and want me someday for forever. 

For now though, I'm surrendering and giving my heart to Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ. They love me more than anyone. I am also surrounded by endless, unconditional love from my amazing-in-every-possible-unimaginable-magical way family and friends. And oh my goodness, how I love them all. In the words of my spirit animal Taylor Swift: "She lost him and found herself and somehow that was everything."

That is everything.

I SAVE ME.

(along with the Savior, of course)

I am ready

to take life in my hands (good&bad)

and make it beautiful and mine.