Things that terrify me!

* I started writing this blog post almost a year ago, and I have decided to finish to celebrate it being an entire year since I left for Switzerland. Crazy! Where does time go?


Hey so lately I have been doing things that scare me!!!! I wrote a whole blog post why, if you want to read it you can click here. Any who one of the things that really made me want to throw up every time I thought about it was leaving the United States and experiencing somewhere else. I had always always always always wanted to do this but I was to scared to even try. Well I finally did it! It began almost a two years ago when my friend mentioned a study  abroad program to me. It sounded cool but I didn't think I would ever actually go but then I started doing things that scared me and I thought Hey why not? So without letting myself think about it too much I applied for the study abroad program and paid the application fee...which was a couple hundred dollars....and non-refundable. Lets just say I felt pretty sick after I paid that fee. It seemed like a huge gamble to me especially if I didn't even get into the program but it was too late to get it back so life went on. Then I got into the program and I had to pay a lot more money....yep...talk about major anxiety.BUT it was so worth it! It really never felt like I was actually going to leave for the trip and suddenly it was there and then I was in Switzerland!!! Cow bells ringing in my ears, gigantic bees and some pretty spectacular views. I don't think I could ever write it all down, everything that I experienced and learned. It was amazing. It is funny how sometimes you have to go so faraway to realize things about yourself that really you knew all along but you just didn't see.  Since I could never ever tell you everything about my Swiss trip I think a few stories would be fun to write down.

The Jules Verne Restaurant! How cool!

Gimmelwald

Lake Geneva

It is never a good idea to slide into a door.

The moment the airplane landed in Geneva it was a totally different world. It wasn't a very big airport. I waited behind everyone to get money out of the ATM machine and when it came out it was weird to see how colorful it was. It wasn't long before we were on a train heading to Aigle ( which I am probably still pronouncing wrong.) I was so tired from the plane ride that I felt like I could drop anywhere and fall asleep but as soon as that train came out of the tunnel my face was glued to the window. We passed big estates right along Lake Geneva, town after town after town we went through, I couldn't even tell you all of their names. The one thing that surprised me was the Graffiti, it was mostly closer to the train stations and it was odd to me that they would graffiti English words like SALAD on a building. I couldn't help but laugh wondering if there was some sort of gang in Switzerland called Salad. Probably not but hey it kept me awake.

Lots of times I couldn't speak with people because they didn't know much English and I didn't know ANY French, or German, or Italian other than hello and thank you. So when I would go into shops to buy food lots of times I would just point. One Day I went to this pastry shop in Soloturn. I just used my pointing method but I should have looked more carefully at what the shop attendant actually put inside the bag. I went back outside and sat on a bench just outside the city with a friend. The birds there are so annoying! They sit there and stare at you inching closer and closer until finally you share some of your bread with them because you feel so bad for eating in front of them. Well my friend hated them! She would glare and stomp at them until they would finally go away. I was laughing at this when I reached into my pastry bag and instead of finding what I had thought would be there it was something else. It turned out to be a delicious mistake, and that pastry became my favorite one of the entire trip.

The delicious pastry I still have no name for

Also in Soloturn we visited a hermitage. It was one of the most peaceful places I have ever visited. It was like this little piece of wilderness tucked into a city. It was fun to imagine what is was like hundreds of years ago to be a hermit, who know if it was even around hundreds of years ago.

This was next to the Hermitage Chapel

One of my favorite tours that we went through, was the Cailler Chocolate Factory. It really felt as if we were going on a Disneyland ride that told us all about the history of chocolate. It was amazing! That best part was at the end, the very last room is filled with chocolate and the best part is you get to try all of it! Talk about a chocolate lover's dream come true. 

CHOCOLATE!

The hands down best part of Switzerland though was all of the amazing people I met! 

Motes and Beams

I love going to church! It's an amazing place where you can feel of the Saviors love and learn about the gospel. It's a wonderful place to be, but sometimes I wish people were more real. Let's just all admit it right here and right now, we put on this grand show to make people believe that everything is alright. We don't want to be judged or considered weak or have people think we are crazy.

But then it gets worse because we go to church and it seems like everyone else around us is perfectly okay. And then you start to feel like a complete failure again! See, most human beings have this problem with vulnerability. We don't want others to know how vulnerable we are, but being vulnerable isn't a bad thing.

I didn't learn that until I started bawling in front of one-hundred people. There was literally about one hundred people watching me sob. And my nose kept running and I didn't have enough tissues. It was not fun and after I had finally stopped crying, which took the better part of an hour, everyone kept coming up to me and giving me hugs. If you want hugs just start crying in front of a bunch of Mormons and they will magically appear ;).  But after this happened I was so ashamed of myself. I wished I could take back that moment but I couldn't. I was so afraid of what people would think of me. I was so afraid that they would all stop talking to me. See how Satan puts those little lies into your head. He wants us to be miserable and keep everything inside, and let people think that you are perfectly fine when you're not.

I learned a very important lesson that day, God doesn't want us to go through things alone, if he did there would only be one human living on the earth at a time. We are meant to help each other.

So back to that horrible time when I couldn't stop crying, it turned out exactly opposite of what I thought would happen. People didn't stop talking to me because I was a big crybaby, instead they just loved me for me. And that helped a TON! Because lets face it we all want to be accepted.

I have heard it said that Church isn't for the healthy it is for the sick. We all make mistakes, we all struggle, and sometimes we have a hard time having the faith that we need.

We all have motes and beams in our eyes (Matthew 7:3), but that doesn't mean we can't help each other. 

Divorce

I am a child of divorce. 

I don't write this to make anyone feel bad for me. To me it is just a fact of my life. They divorced when I was very little. I honestly don't have a single tangible memory of when they were actually married. Again I don't write this to make anyone feel sad. To me being so young was actually a blessing. I count it as a great blessing. I don't have anything to feel bad about losing. I have no good or bad memories of them together. I feel worse for others who can remember what it was like when there parents were married, I feel like the older a person is when their parents divorce, the harder it is to deal with. The more hurt you feel. 

I am not saying that my parents divorce didn't affect me. Because it definitely did. How could it not? Every other weekend I went to a different house. Holiday's were always split up between each side. I imagine it's like getting in-laws, except when your four. Some things about this arrangement were totally awesome! One Christmas I opened up a fairy toy at my mom's house and then another one later that day at my dad's house.  I was pretty sure I was Santa's favorite person in the world. 

I read a blog post about children of divorce. It talked about things a person should know if they were in a relationship with a child of divorce. As I read it I kept thinking Does this describe me?  And with most of them the answer was No. Or at least I think they are a no. 

I guess my point is that no one is going to fit into the same box, even if they have experienced the same or similar things in life, because we all handle things differently. While I feel like I can connect with and understand someone better who grew up with divorced parents, me and that person are still different. We don't necessarily fit in the same mold. It's like that piece of clothing that says " One size fits all". One size is never going to fit every single person in the world, unless they invent some cool type of fabric....which would be pretty sweet.

People often think because you go through something in life you should be a certain way. This could be with anything: divorce, depression, death of a loved one. Just because my parents were divorced does not mean I am afraid of commitment or marriage. Honestly I am a cheesy hopeless romantic and I do believe that you can find someone to spend forever with and be perfectly happy. Perfect happiness though doesn't always mean that everything will always be easy because it won't. Even in fairy tales bad things happen. Take any of the fairy tales you heard growing up and they are honestly not very swell and dandy all of the time. In fact sometimes they are down right scary. 

Whatever happens in this life it's okay to be who you truly are. There may be times of despair where it seems that there is not even the slightest bit of sunlight but you can get through it! No matter what!

Self worth and body image

*So I have debated back and forth whether to write this post or not so here it goes :)

"You are somebody special and if someone doesn't like you....TOUGH! Because you are cool enough, smooth enough, and dog' on it you are HOT enough to be who you want to be!

You are a daughter of God!

Read this to yourself until you truly belief it!"

"Are you Anorexic?"

I can't remember the first time somebody asked me this question, but I do know I have been asked it countless times. I do remember when I first began to learn what the word meant though. I overheard my older sisters having a discussion one day it went somthing like this.

"I hate when people ask me if I am anorexic!" my older sister said 

"Ugh me too! I mean I eat! It's so annoying"  my other sister replied 

My young little self didn't quite understand what they were talking about. I didn't even know what anorexia was. All I knew was that my older sisters found it annoying or that people asking them if they were anorexic was annoying.

"Are you Anorexic?"

Flash forward to middle school. By this time I had learned all about eating disorders and what they meant. I had also learned to hate being asked if I was anorexic. You see my family gene pool tends to spit out people who are naturally thin, twigs, bean poles, sticks, however you want to say it, we tend to be on the skinny side of life.

As I sat there in front of my lunch tray a boy sat down next to me and asked " Hey are you anorexic?"

For that split second I snapped. I was so tired of having to tell people that I was not anorexic.At the time I thought it was ridiculous. I mean I was sitting at a lunch table with my tray full of food about to take a bite. Instead of angrily saying no like I usually did I punched the poor kid in the arm, and harder then I meant too. Not one of my most shining moments in life.

"Are you Anorexic?"

By high school I thought I might die if I had someone ask me that question one more time. It had also began to hurt a lot. Did I really look anorexic. Was I that skinny that I looked sickly?

"No, I'm bulimic."  I replied trying to joke off the sting of the question. 

Joking the question off didn't help. It actually made me feel sick inside. A person shouldn't joke about any kind of eating disorder. So that response quickly faded into dust after I had used it a couple of times.

Then came the question " Why do you go to the bathroom everyday after you eat lunch? Do you go and puke up what you just ate?"

Honestly the first time someone asked me this I was stunned. I was able to form some kind of reply like "No I have to actually use the bathroom." 

But the question stung.

The people asking the questions usually didn't do it nicely. To me they didn't seem like they were truly concerned about me. The way they asked questions about my weight was not in a kind gentle manner you would expect if you were truly trying to find out if someone suffered from an eating disorder.

When I was about sixteen someone posted a comment on a picture of me on Facebook. It said something like this.

"You need to start eating."

I remember looking at the computer screen and being so angry, upset, and hurt. I had thought I looked adorable in the picture but when I looked at it after I read the comment I hated it! And worse yet was that no one stood up for me in the comment section. At that time I was positive that if someone had commented on another persons photo and said something like...

"You need to stop eating!"

The comment section would have been in an uproar with people screaming out "Cyber bully" and "That's a horrible thing to say".

But my comment section was eerily quiet. I thought What if they are right? What if I am sickly skinny? Maybe I do need to eat more? And then the scariest thought of them all popped in my mind If everyone says I have an eating disorder then I probably do.

Now what people say or don't say on Facebook shouldn't be a big deal to anyone, but for me as a sixteen year old girl, it was a huge deal. When no one stood up for me, I started to wonder

I was really freaked out. I had heard so many people call me anorexic and bulimic that I started to believe they were right. How could so many people possibly be wrong? Was it possible that I was hiding a secret eating disorder even from my own self.

I had this scary thought rolling around in my head for months. No I didn't stop eating or start throwing up my food. But I was scared that somehow I was to blame for the way I looked. That I was unconsciously harming my body somehow.

Finally I spilled the beans of this very scary thought to one of my cousins, who had also always been tiny her entire life. I will never forget how relieved I was when she told me that she had felt the exact same way once upon a time in her life. But no matter how many people said she had an eating disorder it didn't make it true. 

I was utterly relieved! It seems silly to me now looking back at that time in my life Because honestly I knew deep down that I truly did not have an eating disorder no matter how many people said I did. The way I am is how God made me and it is ok to be skinny.

I still I had to deal with feeling like I was sickly skinny. And people asking me if I was anorexic. And people commenting not very nicely about my weight. I even have some of my favorite comments

"Wow it's a good thing you weren't born in the middle ages or you would be dead because of how skinny you are and you probably wouldn't have gotten married because men didn't want a wife that was stick thin" 

I had to try not to laugh when someone told me this. I am actually very glad I was not born in the middle ages but not because I think I would have died because of how skinny I am, nope I am glad because we have contacts and glasses! I would have been as blind as a bat without them :)

 Another time I was at a dance and someone said "Hey Ashley look there is the one girl in the world who is skinnier then you."

I looked over at the pretty dark haired girl. She was in fact skinnier then me and taller, but what did that matter? I had to wonder if she had dealt with the same questions I had dealt with all my life. And I wondered how she had handled them. I hope she handled them better then me.

When I was about seventeen I didn't like the way I looked. I didn't want to be so skinny. But I also didn't want to gorge myself with food to gain more weight. I knew that was not a healthy solution, but I still wanted to change. Then my sister told her children something.

"God created people in different shapes and sizes but he loves us all the same."

God had created me just the way I was and he loved me not matter what I weighed. Suddenly it didn't matter what anybody said about the way I looked because I knew God loved me for who I was and not for what I thought I should look like. I used to look at myself in the mirror and say "Ashley you are beautiful! Got it!"  Most every time when I did this I would always giggle at myself because I felt so silly.

Around that same time I was given the quote at the top of this blog post. I taped it to my mirror so I would remember that I was "HOT" enough to be who I wanted to be and the only person I wanted to be was me! I didn't want to have to change to conform with what was deemed the best by others, I just wanted to be me.

I wanted to run and dance and sometimes act a little crazy because that is what made me, me! And I loved that. Of course I sometimes still struggle with the comments that others make about my weight but I can't control what they say. But I can control what I do with what they say. 

I guess what I want people to know that read this is that no matter what you are struggling with, the way you view yourself, school, work, friends,  you've got this, because "dog on it you are cool enough, tough enough, and hot enough, to be who you want to be" and do what you want to do. So go take on the world because you are amazing!

Things I have learned since graduating College.

So I know I have been graduated from college for about half a second but hey there is still a lot that can learned in just a couple of months right?

#1 I can cook!

Yep that's right people this girl has discovered that she can cook. I guess I never really tried before (besides making cookies and brownies. I can make some pretty awesome sauce brownies). I mean what college student actually has time to cook a truly home cooked meal? A good meal back in college for me consisted of instant potatoes and gravy with some canned chicken and green peas. I know it sounds disgusting but it was actually pretty delicious for a starved college student.

Oh Enchiladas in a skillet how I love you! 

I can make bread sticks!! How cool is that? They even rival the famous Olive Garden bread sticks! Which is good for me because I LOVE those bread sticks! Though they don't look as pretty as Olive Garden's but still super delicious!

2. I miss school!

Wait....What? It has barely been two months and I am already missing going to classes. Now don't get me wrong I don't miss homework or tests or writing papers but I do miss learning all of those cool new things everyday! The great thing is just because I am not in school anymore doesn't mean I have to stop learning new things. You want to know something really really strange? For the past couple of weeks I have really wanted to go buy a book entitled mechanical engineering for dummies. Which is really weird for me because I have never been interested in engineering before or most sciencey (which I know is not a real word) things honestly. I just want to learn new things and build bridges and cool museum exhibits.

3. No one is failure at life!

Okay listen peeps as long as your living you aren't failing at life because you are living! Does that make sense??? I mean how can you fail at life if you are alive? People get so down on themselves because they aren't where they think they should be in life. I have been guilty of this. But really why get so down and depressed about where you are? That isn't going to change your circumstances one bit. There is always something good about your life no matter what stage you are in or where you  are.  And the cool thing is where you are right now in your life isn't always where you are going to be. Change is constant.  Each new day is a day to try something new and different.  Yep it can be scary but what would life be if we were never scared?

He is the Gift

Once upon a time on a cold wintry night the sky glittered with stars in the heavens in beautiful Cache valley. It was cold and the roads were icy but I could never turn down the opportunity to go Christmas Caroling. I love to sing! Tonight was a special mission, we had been given  a basket full of delicious treats by some kind soul to give to a family. This little family had just lost their Father but I had never met them. We ice skated through the parking lot as we tried to find their apartment. As we gathered around there door we spoke in hushed whispers and then KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Sooner then I would have expected the door swung open and we started singing. I can't remember the song we picked but soon the doorway was crowded with little children and their mother. The little kids stared at us like we had lost our minds. Why where we singing? There mom just smiled. When the song ended we gave them the basket. Then one of the carolers asked  the little girl " Hey what's your favorite Christmas song?"

She promptly replied "Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer." We all started singing it just from memory. It is one of those songs from childhood that you don't ever forget. The looks of the children were replaced with smiles as they started to sing with us. And for that brief moment a group of strangers felt love for each other. The love that always comes with the Christmas season.


Mormon.org put out this video. I love it! It talks about how the first gift of Christmas wasn't Frankincense or Gold, or Myrrh. It was LOVE. "For God so loved the world he gave his son"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Cold sores of life

I get Cold sores. This is just a fact of life for me. It's in my genes as they say. Whenever I get super stressed or sometimes when I get a cold, a cold sore just happens to accompany it. I strongly dislike cold sores! They hurt, they make me feel yuki and not very pretty!

Once upon a time a couple of years ago back when I was a teenager I was sitting in a seminary class ( A religion class for high school students) and the seminary council members had made a little movie to get across a message. As the video started I just wanted to sink down lower and lower into my seat until I disappeared. The video went something like this.

Girl1: Oh wow where did you go to get that?

Girl 2: I went to Jared! (at this point the camera zoomed in on her face and you see she has a gigantic cold sore on her lip. Of course it was fake..but they made it look huge and disgusting probably more huge and disgusting then real cold sores ever look)

The video continued on and eventually they found Jared, who of course also had a gigantic disgusting fake cold sore on his lip.

At that moment I knew that they were trying to get a point across about staying true to your standards and values and morals but all I could think was "Do people really look at me and see THAT when I have a cold sore?"  It didn't make my self confidence any better especially when I did have a cold sore, I wanted to just put a bag over my head to hide that horrible ugly disgusting thing on my face that I couldn't get rid of quick enough.

But the fact is I can't ever get rid of them. I will get cold sores for the rest of my life, there is nothing I can really do about it.  And that's okay there are some things in life that we can't change! The thing is having a cold sore doesn't make me a different person. I am still me and that is what really matters.

All this thinking about cold sores got me thinking about the things that we can't see. The things that people struggle with silently, cold sores of the soul ( yuk even just saying that makes me cringe.) Each person has something that they are struggling with that is unseen. Sometimes these struggles take years to overcome and sometimes they can take a life time. But that doesn't make that person worth any less.
        " Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" Doctrine and Covenants 18:10

Every soul's worth is great in the sight of God! Every single person on this planet who has lived or every will live is loved dearly by him. He sees our cold sores of the soul, when no one else can.  We are loved even though we are imperfect! Isn't that amazing? And even better is that this is True, he loves us!


So this week remember that we are all struggling with our own personal "cold sores". Maybe this will help us be a little kinder... a little more understanding. We all have struggles, we are human.

The most amazing thing of all is that one day those "cold sores" that we have been struggling against our entire lives will be taken away, swallowed up in Christ, the son of God. One day when my time on this earth is done I won't have anymore cold sores! And that is all because Jesus Christ atoned for us,each and everyone of us! You, me, the guy that lives down the street, All of Us. Isn't that amazing! This is something to truly be Thankful for!