And Straight on 'Till Morning

There's a girl in my ward named Haley, and she is one of my favorite people. She was baptised just a few months ago, but she has jumped into the church and the gospel with so much enthusiasm. I love listening to her share her experiences and her testimony. Today during fast and testimony meeting she got up to bear her testimony about Relief Society and the gift of the Holy Ghost and how it helps her continue to build her testimony of various aspects of the gospel. Right at the beginning she said thanks for listening to another month of "things I have a testimony of." I liked the phrase and the idea so much that I thought I'd write about it. *I almost wrote " share it" but then I realized that no one actually reads this so really it's just for me .* I am so grateful that this is not a gospel that requires us to have testimonies of every principle all at once. There are days when I'm not sure if I really deeply believe anything. I'm not usually ...

Thursday was a pretty bad day for me. I was feeling really anxious so concentrating at work was really difficult. *Explaining those conditions would take too many words so just imagine or extrapolate for yourselves.* I also felt like I was being attacked in that I couldn't do anything right and everyone felt the need to tell me what I'd done wrong. *Once again I could go into a description of the spiralling thoughts, but that is not the point of this story.* Adding to the previous points I was also worried because I'm scheduled to take the audit section of the CPA exam on Saturday (tomorrow) and I really didn't feel prepared or able to put in the time to study without having a full on meltdown. Forward to me getting up the courage to email my manager and ask if I could change my PTO (paid time off), which was scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday, to this Friday and next Friday. Now I know it sounds like a simple thing, and I had perfectly good reasons that the ch...

The closing night of the Savior of the World production that I was a part of was last Friday. I've really felt a sense of family and comfort with the cast and crew throughout the rehearsals and performances and I wasn't ready to let go. After our final performance we all worked together to take down the set and clean up the stage area. It took a while, and I was grateful since I didn't really want to leave. After we were done there were a few people still there the adults and YSAs (young single adults) were standing around talking, but I opted to play tag and a few other games with the kids instead. Really it’s just easier for me to interact with kids because all they expect of me is my attention and a sense that I actually care about them. (Adults are much more complicated.) Finally parents called to their kids and everyone started to leave. As I was walking out our set guy asked for someone to come back and lock the gate behind him after he pulled the truck out. I was ...

Yesterday I pulled my extra set of sheets out of the trunk at the foot of my bed to re-make it. Having been folded for several weeks they were quite wrinkled. As I put the flat sheet on the top, the crazy part of my brain thought, "You should iron that top sheet. It would look so much nicer!" Then the realistic/sarcastic part of my brain cut in, "Are you kidding? You'd get halfway done, give up, and then not even finish making the bed." Long story short, I did not iron the sheet, but I did finish making the bed.

I had a literary turn of mind this morning as my cramps started. My cramps always start right before I start bleeding, and I've always wondered if cramps are just my uterus being angry at me for not being pregnant. Now I'm not the one choosing to ovulate each month so she can't be mad at me, but this thought stream had me imagining what my uterus would say if she could talk. The Menstrual Cycle: A Monologue by My Uterus *OVULATION* “Ooh look, an egg! I must be about to grow a baby! I’d better build up a huge cocoon of softness to protect it.” *ALMOST TWO WEEKS LATER* “Hmmm, this baby isn’t really doing any growing… I wonder what’s up. Wait… this was a trick! I’m not growing a baby! I grew all this squishy gross stuff for nothing! GET OUT!!! *CRAMPS* “Ahh, all that squishy gross stuff is gone. I’m never doing that again!” *A WEEK OR SO LATER* *OVULATION* “Ooh look another egg! I’m sure it will actually grow to be a baby this time. I’ll start on...

When I'm feeling anxious it usually gets progressively worse over time. When I've had a bad day or two I'm often very, very anxious by my second class of the day. (Kind of sad when my second class starts at 9 in the morning.) This seems to happen especially on Mondays and Wednesdays for some reason. My brain is often going, going, gone by the time I get to my financial accounting class. Monday was one of those days. I sat through class, but my mind wasn't there, so instead I wrote a few poems. Now, I am not a poet, but they do describe how I was feeling. Just hide in your mind, it's the only safe place. If you let yourself go, then you won't have to face the fears and the freezing, the tears and the pain. You'll be safe in your mind and you'll keep yourself sane. Constricting and squeezing, everything's tight. My mind is in panic. My body must fight. If I hold it together then no one will know of the panic inside me. ...