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?