Adventures of 2017!

     As I look back 2017 was a year of lots of growing and from that growing came lots of blessings.  The one take away that I have learn from 2017 is the Lord know what He is doing.For years I have struggled with an addiction and for a few years I have been learning how to not give into the addiction. I have now been in recovery and haven’t give in for eight months! That is the longest I have ever gone, I am proud of myself!  But in reality, I would not be able to do that alone not without Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ help especially the Atonement.

    One of the big major decision happened in my life was deciding to further my education and and therefore started the process of applying for graduate school back in March. I decided to put all my effort in applying to Arizona State University (ASU). I had a found a program that fit with my career goals. Looking back, I can see how I was guided to pick this school. In April I had the opportunity to come and check out the program and explore Arizona. I loved campus the minute I set foot on it. I realized that I really wanted to move to Arizona. I submitted my application. The hardest part was the waiting game and not giving up on my dream.

     July of 2017 was probably the hardest month for me. I had to face a lot of challenges and feeling the weight of everything that was happening around me. I was still waiting to hear from ASU up to this point I have been waiting since April, I was about to give up. However, Heavenly Father continue to give me strength to keep moving forward.  July 7^th was a day of total very horrible day that also became a great day. I had asked work off that day for whatever reason  but work had forgotten that I had that day off. I had gotten dress and out the door. I get in my car and my dad said my car was making odd noises and that I needed to take it in. I didn’t like that either, so I called work told them that my car needed to be taken in. Took it in and learned that there was no problems but still had to pay $200 for something. As I was up with the cashier to pay my bill my phone alerted me telling me I got an email. Keep in mind I had been looking at my email everyday waiting for this acceptance letter from ASU.  I didn’t really want to open my email but something told me I should. I opened it and the first thing I saw was “Congratulations and welcome to ASU”. I began to cry, I had been accepted to ASU. While I was walking to my car I was thinking there is no way I am ready to make this move with everything that has been going on in my life. I ran the idea of just postponing until January. I get in the car and viewed my email more closely and had the strongest impression that I need to make the move and I needed to do it now! So I immediately went to work and told them that I got accepted. Went home and told my parents I have month to prepare to move to Arizona.

     August 7^th I drove my little green car packed so full with my things and drove 10 hours to Tempe, Arizona! I believe it was 110 degrees, I about died from the heat. I started school August 22. Arizona has been good to me. Looking back it was the best decision I have made. I finished my first semester with a 4.0 GPA. My first ever of getting a 4.0 in my life. It feels pretty good!

     Around Thanksgiving time, I met a pretty awesome guy his name is Nick. We met through a mutual friend who will remain nameless for the time being.  Our first date he took me out to Pizza from there we just became the best friends and look forward to more adventures together. Nick and I have some amazing connections, the first connection is through our mutual friend, the second connection is that his aunt is best friends with my aunt (small world I know), and his sister-in-law knows a lot of my friends from my days in Rochester, NY.  We both went to Utah for Christmas  we spend part of it with my family and part of it was with his aunt.

     So I guess you can say the biggest take away from the year of 2017 is learning how to trust Heavenly Father that he know better plan than what I have plan for myself. The majority of 2017 was learning about Jesus Christ and his greatest gift which is the atonement. Without the Atonement I would not have been able to go 8 months of not giving into my addictions. I have learned that Christ is the light and bring light into my life. I have had to learn to embrace Christ light and accept what he has done for me. In the past with coming home early from my mission and my addiction I felt I did not deserve Christ love. Why would he love a woman who is not perfect? Why would he want to help a woman who felt like she failed at everything? Well I learned that is the wrong way of thinking. I came to the understanding that through trials we are made perfect and allow us to improve better each day. Every time I think about this, Anne of Green gables comes to mind,

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

  I want to express my gratitude to my family for the support they have given me this year. When I opened to them not one of the judged me but simply said they are here for me and loved me. My parents are my greatest heroes and my true examples in my life. 2017 you have been a good year! I am so ready for 2018 adventures!

My Memory of Aunt Anita

   

     This blog is about my Aunt Anita who passed away November 17^th.  She was a person that had so much compassion and never judged. She was a person that could just find happiness in everything. I have several little stories that I want to write down before I forget them.

     First story takes me back to when I was a young girl. When the Bountiful temple house happened. We had Grandpa and Grandma Martin staying in Utah. I remember we had plans to meet up with Aunt Anita and Uncle Bob and they would be bringing my grandparents with them. They were late, and I remember my dad and Aunt Anita got in a small argument. We all ended up going through the temple and then we were to drive the grandparents back to Blackfoot, Idaho that night. I remember it was a few days later that my dad had to drop something off to aunt Anita house. I was with him and I remember she wanted to talk about what happened and asked for my dad for forgiveness for the spat they had. She showed example of not letting thing fester and not to have anger. My dad and her hugged, and it was amazing thing to watched.  

          

     Another story take place when I was a little older in Young Women’s in my church. I was working on my Young Women’s medallion. I was focusing on Faith. I had asked several members of my family to share a story of when they had to have faith to put in my book that I was making. Aunt Anita told me an amazing story that I still have packed away in a box. But the summary of her story was her desire to have children. She had several miscarriages I think it was 15. She said at first, she was angry but then it turns to having the most desire to have Faith that God know what he is doing and that she would have children one day. After each one she said that she would just pray and continued to have faith. She said it was better to have faith then to have anger. She said that in having faith she was able to have her two children that she loves and adores so much today. She taught me a lot about faith through that story that anger doesn’t get you very far.

     The last story take place when I came early from my mission. That was probably the biggest struggle that I was dealing with.  I didn’t want to come home at all but needed to. She was the first person to email me from all my family members. She Reminded me of love and that she did not judge at all. I was harder on myself and judge myself more than anyone in my family. In fact, looking back none of my family judge me. But she said the following:

Welcome home, good and faithful servant. We are all so proud of you. We will give you a week or two to rest then we want to see and visit with you.  We love you Uncle Bob and Aunt Anita and household.

She did give me a big Hug. She was an example, to me in showing love to all and not judge.

     She was always happy no matter what situation she was in. she found ways to be happy and positive. One of my fondest memory of her is every thanksgiving she would give each of her nieces and nephew a book. The best books were from her. My favorites that I got from her was “100 dresses” and first three books of “Anne of Green Gables.” There are so many other books I cannot remember all the names.

I Love you Aunt Anita!

Enjoy the Ride

What do I do to help me get refocused? Cycling is one of those tools that I used to help me.  I had one goal today was to keep my average speed at 15 mph. This is really hard to do when riding by your self. But I managed to stay strong and positive and made my goal. While riding though I had some thoughts about life. I was very much focused on what does it really mean to "enjoy the ride"? Life has it ups and downs. However there are things that can be learned in the ups and downs.

Life is like cycling in a way. It can either be fast or slow, it can even be easy and very hard. Today ride I would have to say it  was easy except  in a few places. Same with life. But its how we look at life. My life currently is not were I have vision my life to be at age 31.

Currently I do not like my job, I am single, and I thought I would be further along in my goals and dreams. But sometimes we tend to create havoc that set us back so we have to climb hill again. This week has been a climb. A very long climb and still is climbing. However, I am almost at the top of this hill. But in order for me to also make it up this hill I have to make some sacrifices to be able to "enjoy the ride".

First I had to make a conscious decision that I am going let go all the negatives that I see about my job and only talk about the positives. I told my parents and some of my friends that if I start to talk negative about work or about my job etc. that they are to stop me and remind me that I must only speak about the positive that happen. Which would require me to actually think of a positive even though there may not be a lot of positive that are happening at work. My hope and goal is that by doing this that maybe I will start to love my job again.That is one major hill I had to face this last week.

Another hill I needed to face was Facebook. I knew I spend way too much time on Facebook. I had it on my phone and on my laptop. I would search friends and see all the great things they were doing and how many "likes" they would get on their comments. It would literally eat up my time and cause depression for me. Technology is great but it can be a hinder in our personal and daily lives.  Facebook used to be a tool for me to just keep in contact with my friends out of state that I do not see.  But that changed and was taking over my life. I would wake up in the morning and look at Facebook. I would have it open while I was at work. It was with me all the time. I  would look at my post to see if I had gotten any "likes" or comments I would only find a few. I would get sad and depress over this. Last week I realized how much my "life" was depended on people.

Finally two days ago I deleted it. It was so empowering to get of something that I had allowed me not to be able to "enjoy the ride" I now have so much time on my hands that I don't know what to do with. But I can tell you this more hobbies will be created or I will improve the hobbies I currently have. Just in the last two days my life has been happier. I was able to look up and can smell the roses. Its a wonderful feeling. 

 So are you "enjoying the ride"?  Have you let go things that will help you to be able to enjoy the ride? I know by me doing these two thing my day will be better. It may still be "bad" but I will be able to see more positive than the negative to "enjoy my ride". I may not be where I want to be at this age. But I certainly can be happier and maybe those goals that I have set will eventually come in my ride. But I have to let go the things that are preventing me from getting there. That is I need to learn to be happier with what I have now.