this evening i was reminded of a story. and there's nothing i love quite as much as a story to tell. once upon a time, about a year ago, in a land far far away, called arizona, there lived a beautiful princess, me.
anyway... so i had applied to be transferred to virginia and went through a wildly extensive interview process (which is absurd to look back on now, knowing how the last year has played out) and after many months of fretting over whether or not i was going to get the position, i was finally given word that i had indeed passed the tests and would shortly be packing up my belongings and moving across the country. a few days later the panic set in. i remember standing in a hall looking at the flier for the richmond, va location, seeing the pictures that represented this city that had more chosen me than i had it, when the kitchen manager walked up and asked me what i was doing.
this is when i went into girl panic mode and began rattling off the list of things that i was thinking mostly along the lines of how will i get all my stuff in a uhaul? how will i drive it across the country? who will unload it? what will i do when i get there? what if it snows (which of course it doesn't do in virginia... riiiiight)? how will i meet people? what if i'm all alone?
and he turned and looked and me and said, well...
what would mary tyler moore do?
at which point i laughed and said you're right and walked back to my office and created the above image which i kept pinned up next to my monitor until i left. when i got to virginia i put it on the fridge, which is where it is currently. mary, ever vigilante, reminding me that we're gonna make it after all, every day.
today at work my domo and jimtwo were telling secrets. i happened to catch them and was able to snap a picture before yelling: secrets secrets are no fun!
thursday i have a tour of a local school. i'm looking into a massage therapy / associates program. it takes 16 months to complete. i'm pretty excited about it. i've had the idea of going into massage therapy on my mind for years... probably about 7 or 8 years i've been thinking about it. but i just never really thought of it as a real option before. but now i think it might be. and i'm pretty excited. i feel good about the decision to pursue this. it's hard to explain why i feel like this is the right choice for me, but trust me i have reasons for moving in this direction. if you want further clarification let me know, i'd be happy to indulge you.
a lot of big things have happened in life over the last few months. i keep on moving along. some times when i stop and think about the things that have happened i don't believe it. i'm thankful that the lord has blessed me with resiliency... and probably a bad memory.
i'm sure i've said this before but i will tell the story again... it was a few months back that i realized i'm an eternal optimist. i was in one of those periods where everything just seemed to be going immensely well and i found myself thinking 'i don't know how i could ever stop feeling this happy.' it seemed totally inconceivable to me that anything could happen to make me feel sad. and then i realized that this happens all the time. i get to a point where i am just so happy that i don't think it will ever stop... and i know in my head that eventually i will have pain again but in my heart i just don't remember what it was like... even though yesterday was painful and tomorrow holds that possibility, for today it's just not fathomable. today i am happy and way down deep inside me where all the important stuff is (like my social security number, pictures of my family and the memory of the way chocolate tastes) something just screams EVERYDAY WILL BE LIKE THIS! and i believe it. every time.
i think about the story of the brother of jared a lot. the brother of jared is a figure from the book of mormon. the brother of jared builds a barge for his family to travel across the ocean in and it's much like a walnut shell. the brother of jared at one point realizes that they're going to need a way to be able to see while traveling in the barges. so he makes some stones out of molten rock and takes them to a mountain and asks the Lord to touch them with his finger so that they will shine in the darkness and light the barges. at which point the brother of Jared sees the Lord's finger touch each stone. the story continues on but this is the point that i like to think about. one time we were discussing this in class and someone asked if the Lord's finger came from the sky and i thought about that a lot and i realized something... probably the thing that was the most shocking for the brother of jared... the Lord's finger didn't come down from the sky or anything like that because the Lord was there with him the entire time. the Lord has been there standing beside him, speaking to him, watching him. the same as any man sits in a room with you but it wasn't until he saw His finger that he realized just how close the Lord was. What a shock that must have been! often as we pray we feel as though God is some where distant, a millions miles away, but in all actuality, He is standing beside us. kneeling beside our beds, riding in our cars, bowing His head over our dinners.
i'm on a classical music kick. i don't know what it is. it just makes me feel good these days.
2 comments:
Ha! That last line is true Elaina - jumping topics.
I would like to be further indulged in your choice.
And I love what you just said about the Brother of Jared. I never thought of it that way, but it's beautiful! I always pictured the finger bigger for some reason, like how the Greek gods are always bigger than us puny mortals in movies. I know...deep down, that the finger is the same size as any person's but I can't change how it pops up in my mind. :)
I would like further clarification.
That's a very inspirational thought.
I like J.S. Bach.
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