"And two thumbs WAY up for our leading actress" -Hades, God of the Underworld

PS: I got this VERY cool thumbs up picture from the following website:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/karinn/540977462/in/faves-krisvdv/

         Once upon a time in a land not so far away there was a king who liked to hunt wild beasts in the forest. One day, he took his servant hunting to look for beasts when all of a sudden out of nowhere a particularly large one jumps out at the king and his servant and before the king could kill it, the beast bit off the king's thumb. This made the king angry and frustrated and, not to mention, quite pissed off.
        "How could this happen?! What am I supposed to do with only one thumb?"
        And the servant, who happened to be very wise, considering his station, told the king, "Don't you worry about a thing, King. Everything will work out. The Lord knows best."
        Feeling that the servant wasn't the least bit interested in validating the king's feelings, the king became even more angry and ended up throwing the servant into the dungeons (after he made the servant carry the giant wild beast home for him, of course).
        The next year, the king went hunting again. This time he had the unfortunate opportunity to be captured by cannibals who wanted to sacrifice him to their gods and then eat him. Fortunately for the king, the cannibals had a whole-person-sacrifice-only policy and were unable to use the king to satisfy the appetite of their gods because of his lack of a thumb, so they sent him home. The king was so excited that he immediately released the servant from the dungeons and begged for forgiveness.
         "I can't believe it!" the King told the servant, "You were right! The Lord DOES know best! They were going to kill me and eat me, but I didn't have my thumb and that saved me! I am so sorry that I was angry with you and threw you in the dungeons."
         The servant said, "Don't you worry about a thing, King. The Lord knows best."
         Shocked, the king replied, "How on earth can you stand there and act like everything's fine when you just spent a year locked up in the dungeon with the rats and the cold and the gross food and not enough water all because of me?"
         The servant smiled his unshaven smile and said, "well, if you had not thrown me into the dungeon, I'd be out hunting with you today." Then the servant gave the king two thumbs up, "And I have both my thumbs!"



It's crazy the things you learn when you're actually listening to the talks in Sacrament Meeting.  :)

Thought of You

I LOVE this video! The song is great, and the animation is SO beautiful. It speaks to my heart. It's just.... so moving to me! I know I posted it on my Facebook page, but I just REALLY like it, and want to be able to find it when I want to. Mostly, I love it so much, I just want to share it! So enjoy! <3


Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

It's official, I've lost count!

So, I've decided that I HATE scorpions. I hate spiders more, but the spiders don't crawl up my pants and sting my knee! And scorpions are gross cause they have 8 legs! did you know? they do. PLUS they have that ugly stinger-tail and them suckers hurt when they sting you. Since moving back to the deep desert I've come across I don't even know how many of those stupid things. They've been in my bed and crawling on the wall, and mozying around on the floor while I sit on the toilet (seriously's happened twice). And, I'm totally sick of them! I don't want them near me ANYMORE!! do you hear me, scorpion gods??! NO MORE SCORPIONS! The End. That's all. No more. Go away. Leave me alone. Go invade someone else's house. And I think that's all I have to say about that. Gross.

"One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish." -Dr Seuss

So sometimes I like to just come to my blogsite and feed my fish. They're just so cute, swimming around in that little rectangle of theirs. And they just seems so hungry that I want to just sit here and feed them! It makes me think of a pond in some sort of Japanese garden somewhere, which, I suppose, is the idea.  Feed my fish. It's fun! (Click the mouse inside the rectangle. Watch what happens!)

Alone, but not lonely

Here's the trail, where the sun shows. Where it goes, nobody knows.... except the guy that was hiking in front of me.

Here are some trees, some shrubs too. The dirt is brown the sky is blue.... with a few clouds here and there

This poem dumb, I'm not going to lie. But there was a big space here, so I felt the need to fill it with something.  :)

 

I went on a hike by myself today. It was beautiful weather, and I can't resist hanging out outside when that happens. The trail is just up the road from Brian's house, and I love a good adventure, so I decided to check it out.

This is a pond...filled with Water Lilies

It...was...a little steeper than I would have liked in some areas, but the good thing about hiking alone is that you can huff and puff and gasp for air all you want, and no one finds out you're really a sissy on the trail!

It was a good little trip. I didn't even hike the whole trail. After about an hour I turned around and came back down. In another 3 weeks or so, it'll be even more beautiful cause the leaves will all have changed. I wish I was going to still be out east for that one. I LOVE fall!!

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything." Samuel Johnson

A few months ago I went to this seminar that literally changed my life. The basic jist of it was that as human beings, we experience things in life that create these beliefs that we believe about ourselves. Much of the time, these beliefs are holding us back and weighing us down because we think they are truth. (I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not lovable. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't fit in.) How sad it is that people actually believe that about themselves. And then, I found out I was in the same boat. What a strange realization! So, in the seminar, you're taught that, for one thing, we ALL have these types of negative core beliefs, which was the first thing I learned, and then they teach you to create a new belief and help you make goals that "prove" the new positive belief. You literally CHANGE how you think about yourself. (I can. I deserve to be loved. I am one smart cookie. I belong HERE. etc) You end up taking a sledge hammer to the cement boot, if you will, that you've been wearing around getting nowhere in.

So, I learned to think in positive beliefs, (I am. I can. etc) and this brings me to another thing I've been thinking a lot about lately: Charity.

We read in the scriptures: (Moroni 7:45-48) "...If ye have not charity, ye are nothing..." And then you read what Charity is: "And ^acharity suffereth long, and is ^bkind, and ^cenvieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily ^dprovoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things...But ^acharity is the pure ^blove of Christ, and it endureth ^cforever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him."

And I think, "Well, that's a huge list of stuff that I'm failing at." And I get all bogged down by the thought of having charity, and so I don't try as hard. But then, about a month ago I had an experience.

I was at a Young Single Adult Fireside where the Bishop of my single's ward gave a short lesson on charity. The girl who had planned the whole activity happened to be named Charity, and bishop just happened to have her read in Moroni 7:45. And as Charity read, I was thinking how weird it must be to read those verses with her own name within the scripture, so I tried it out. I changed "charity" to "Rachel". And, it may not make much sense in a scriptural way, but to me, with my newly found positive beliefs attitude, it spoke to me. The scriptures were telling me that I am the pure love of Christ, that I am kind, that I am not easily provoked, that I am not puffed up. And for the first time, charity seemed attainable to me.

Substituting my name created the new belief in my mind. I immediately thought of charity as the Light of Christ, which we all have, which we all came to earth hardwired to recognize, which I already believe I possess, even if it is just a small amount. This made charity attainable. And then I went back to Moroni. Charity is the pure love of Christ, and we're supposed to possess the pure love of Christ, but it never says that we're supposed to have the pure love of Christ for others, just HAVE the pure love of Christ. We can't have that kind of love for others without having that kind of love for ourselves and I remembered that Christ has immense, vast, huge, extensive, unfathomable, expansive amount of love for us, for me. And add that to one of my new-found core beliefs, I deserve that love. I deserve every fantastic thing that Heavenly Father has in store me, especially love. And if I deserve it, and I do, then what makes anyone else in the whole wide world any less deserving of the love that He has for His children? And because, as his children, we are here on Earth to help one another, to love one another, to provide charity to one another, I know that it was necessary for me to realize this whole chain of thoughts. I'm begining to see that because Heavenly Father loves one child, He loves them all, and so should we. And, I just wanted to share that. We are here with great capacities to feel, give and show love. And just because we ARE, we deserve those love blessings. Not only to be loved but to love is a blessing as well.

Charity can be broken down into small goals and over time can have super huge effect. We shouldn't be wondering how to have charity all at once, because then we'll probably never get there. But there are things that we can do daily that prove we have charity within us. Find them, do them, and move forward. It's there, we just have to figure out how to bring it out of ourselves.

“Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than remember me and cry.”

You want to know what's strange? It's September 07, 2010, and I really DID forget had a blog. And does it matter? No, I guess not, but how does that happen? I decide one night that I'd try the "blog thing" and 2 years later Google tells me I have one and I think, "why is that picture of me on the internet?" Then, I read the one and only post I wrote and think of all that's happened in the last 2 years. And the funny thing is, not much has changed for me, if you look at my job, my money, my direction in life. But does that matter either? No, because in the last 2 years I have had experiences and have done "life experiments" and have become a completely different person, a better person. And that, oh internet abyss, is quite an accomplishment. I wonder where I'll be in 2 MORE years.