'Tis the Season to be Single

Y'all. Remember my post from the other day? Things are a lil different now. I don't know who was praying for me, but it helped! There I was last night, watching the Stranger Things 2 finale (party of 1) when I had some revelation. I remembered a time last year when I was really dreading winter. Nothing about it sounded very appealing (except Christmas and New Year's Eve) -- the wet, cold feet for four months, freezing weather, and especially the lack of sun. My favorite season is summer, so winter is my nemesis. Until I heard my friend say that her favorite season is winter. How?!

Somehow, the thought came to me that maybe if I tried to do the same things that people who love winter do, I could love it too. I could replace all the parts of winter that I hated with things that I could love. Around the same time, I found out about the Danish concept of "hygge," which is all about coziness, candles, time with friends, blankets, etc. Even though the Danes are in freezing, dark weather more than most people in the world, they have been ranked as some of the happiest. I think it's the hygge.

So, I went all out: hot chocolate, staying cozy, hitting up the Target Dollar Spot way too often to find beautiful decorations, Pinteresting up a storm, watching Christmas Hallmark movies to my heart's content. And it worked! I did love last winter and I plan on loving winter always now. (In fact, so much so that there was a drizzly day this summer and it kind of made me miss winter. Bona fide success!)

So, what does this have to do with airplanes? (President Uchtdorf reference) Nothing, but it does have to do with dating. Y'all. It is the single season for this girl. And I was really sad about it until last night. I realized that marriage isn't all happiness (despite what Disney has raised us to believe) and singlehood isn't all sadness. They are seasons! And -- as I found out with my winter experiment -- if you focus on the best parts of the seasons, you can learn to love all of them.

Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6bNJaoYUTc

HI

In the words of mi compa, "vida vida." I think blogs are a good thing! I have abandoned mine entirely for the past several YEARS, but maybe it will help me "find myself" (is that even a real thing?) if I get back into it. I think blogs are a good way to see more of people's lives than the sassy lil snippets we get through Facebook posts. Now, for all who desire to see deeper into my life than the cat memes I post, here are the struggles. Indeed. I want to chronicle my spiritual journey, because it's an evolving one! I thought I had life so figured out spiritually a few years ago (chuckle). Introduce trials -- bam, bam -- and my true spirituality lies under the layers. The most true version, but I just wish it had a little more meat on it. Maybe it does and I just can't see it. All I know for sure is that I need to live the gospel out of joy, not fear. My anxious predisposition led me on the right path for a long time, but when I overcame my fears, my fearful motivation stopped too. Thus, I find myself at a turning point, and I choose to truly understand the gospel so that I can love it fiercely.

Starting with -- understanding Heavenly Father. Folks, if you wanted to hear my secrets, you came to the right place. I have always always struggled to understand Heavenly Father's love in my life. It has been baffling to see most everyone else talk about how much Heavenly Father loves them. At best, I have imagined Him giving me indifference or a blank stare for doing something that was already expected, or mainly, a longer spiritual to-do list. No bien. You can imagine that if someone acted this way in our tangible lives, we would be hard-pressed to feel joyful or loving around them. Okay, so logically I know that Heavenly Father isn't this way. But Satan has crafted in my mind since...my entire life?...that Heavenly Father is this way. Basically, the adversary has projected some of his attributes (coldness, etc.) into my image of Heavenly Father. I will tell you though, this is changing! I have been feeling closer to Heavenly Father ever since I got fed up with being overformal in my prayers (read: repetitive and surface level). I probably need to work on reverence in prayer, but first of all I’m going to work on PRAYER. A few weeks ago I told Heavenly Father that if I couldn’t joke around when talking to Him like I do with my earthly father and adopted mission father, then I am going to be hard-pressed to actually want to talk to Him. Maybe that’s irreverent...but seriously, one of my biggest pet peeves is feeling like I have to act reverent when I’m not feeling that way. And if heaven is that way — always reverent...I’m not very interested. Maybe I’m a heathen. Maybe I’m just a girl who likes her cat memes. Either way, I have been talking to Heavenly Father a lot more lately, and finally feeling like we are on the same team instead of Him critiquing me and my prayers. So basically, I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I like the direction things are going. My relationship with Him is growing, so how could that be a bad thing?

Feb'ry

February

Good

• I found a new blog to love! danicaholdaway.com. I have been reading on it for hours lately. When I find something I like, I tend to suck the marrow out of it...I just love how real and fun she is and that she lives in Orem, so it makes her lifestyle seem more attainable for me! One of the things I've liked the most is that happiness sometimes is just having something to look forward to. I'm trying to work on that, since discouragement kind of closed me off to getting excited about anything, because I don't want to get my hopes up over things that seem so out of my control. But! I'm starting again! This time with Saint Patrick's Day (since holidays make an easy way to look forward to something). She said she tries to plan an outfit, food, and an activity for every holiday. I will Susie d disbelief for now and try it out/try not to overstress about making it perfect.
• I'm starting to exercise against! Honestly, it has been basically a year and a half since I've exercised regularly. I'm definitely seeing the effects. I'm gaining weight, was getting stressed, being low-grade sick basically all the time, feeling unhappy, not sleeping very well. After the first day of exercise (a short walk), I slept so wel, my face was clear the next day, and things have not been stressing me out. I have been amazed to see that such a small act has turned my mood around 180 degrees so fast. I seriously felt overpowered by negative emotions, but now it seems so easy to handle! I'm happy! My teacher told us there are no silver bullets in the health world; but if there were, it would be exercise. I agree with him! T has more benefits than any other single thing I can think of.
• My most exciting discovery has been that decreasing barriers and increasing benefits increase self-efficacy. I have been applying this principle to every goal I have and I'm have been seeing the results that I have been searching for for 24 years. It is amazing and so simple!! I finally feel control in my life and I have seen a lot of success. Last night I had the thought it that at nred to apply this to preparing for marriage.

Bad

• I totally did not plan anything for Valentine's Day and the pressure to have it be perfect and failing got me really frustrated. Zach and I improvized and ending up at Panda Express, which he was happy about! The sad part was his fortune cookie..."A distance romance will begin to appear more promising." On Valentine's Day? For re-re?

On My Mind

• Group projects. My life is one group project this semester and it's crazy. Five classes, five groups. It actually is really nice because the workload goes down a ton and makes assignments a lot less stressful. So, I'm grateful for them, but also wish I was better at my soft skills.