Adventure Time!

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all." (Oscar Wilde)

My life has been crazy busy of late. Between work, my responsibilities at church, and trying to maintain my own personal goals to exercise and study a little each day my time is quickly eaten each day. I've started to feel like I'm merely existing as opposed to truly living. Saturday, as I sang throughout my childhood years, is a special day; a day to get ready for Sunday. Well, I do my chores, and run my errands, but today I woke up knowing I was in desperate need of...an Adventure!!!



So I headed out bright and early this morning to go exploring! I've lived in Utah off and on for many years, but throughout that time I have rarely been around for the summertime, and I've done very little exploration in that time.

I headed for Provo Canyon, and took a different route from my norm, Dr Seuss' words resonating in my soul: "You're off to great places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!"




It was a glorious morning! Beautiful weather: mid 50's, not a cloud in sight and a bright beaming sun overhead. Couldn't have asked for a better day. The trail I happened to take was straight up, but it was so worth it. Pretty soon my path was lined with sunflowers, which are one of my favorite flowers...

Until suddenly the path opened up and I was in this awesome meadow of flowers...

Every now and then my path would open to a view of the valley...

or would curve back around to see the canyon below...

Unfortunately pictures can never quite do the real thing justice. I can't quite convey the whole experience without being able to help you feel the kiss of the sun on your skin, listen to the whisper of the wind's secrets, smell the spice of the dirt, flora and fauna, hear the chatter of the birds in the trees or the bees among the flowers; I can't impart the peace that fills your soul by being out in God's lovely landscape: a peace that fills to overflowing so that I could hardly restrain the need to sing in exclamation, "How great Thou art!!!"

So while most of my days may just be existing, surviving, trying not to drown, I appreciate days like today- a day when I could escape, live a little, and renew my reservoirs to keep going another week. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience;" or in other words, "men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).

Don't worry, Dr Seuss, I climbed my mountain; today was a great day!!

HANGER: Hunger+Anger

So there we sat: Hollie, Bethany and me. We sat, and sat, and sat.

It all started when Bethany and I decided to watch a movie. Hollie, being a sort of a gypsy this summer with no official place of residence, had crashed at my apartment waiting for me to get home from work. After a long day at work I slunk through the door to collapse in my living room, Hollie reclining on my couch, and Bethany soon bursting through my door with all her wonderful bubbly-ness.

After briefly catching up with one another we began to discuss our course of action. We had planned to watch a movie, but Hollie was hungry, and wanted to grab dinner first. Bethany and I were both relatively indifferent, each having had a late lunch. We ventured forth in search of Thai Curry. Now, you need to understand something about Hollie: she is willing to try new things, but when she's paying for her food she wants what she is used to, and she's very particular about where and what she eats. So as we headed out Hollie commandeered the search for food. We ended up at Bangkok Grill, and we were promptly seated.

And there we sat: Hollie, Bethany and me. We sat, and sat, and sat.

My relative indifference to having dinner was soon becoming less indifferent. Bethany was only slightly behind me in those feelings. And as for Hollie...well...let's just say Hanger was definitely settling in. Her fidgeting was becoming more pronounced, and was slowly spreading to me.

After being ignored for nearly a half hour I looked at the others and declared that we were leaving. Hollie, despite being Hangry was somewhat hesitant to try a different Thai restaurant, and it took several minutes to persuade her to leave in search of food. We ended up at Thai Mango, hanger definitely settling in for each of us.

If you don't know what hanger looks like just imagine Katie-Ka-Boom from the Animaniacs. And then remember that there were three hangry girls...

We were quickly seated, and our water brought. After a couple minutes the waitress came to ask if we were ready to order. I responded in the affirmative, letting her know rather testily that we had waited for a half hour at Bangkok Grill without being served, and we were more than ready!! She said she would do her best to get our food to us as quickly as possible. To our great delight and relief that blessed waitress was true to her word!

And there we sat: Hollie, Bethany and me. We ate, and ate, and ate. And it was awesome!

Best tip I ever left.

HANGER: don't let it happen to you. 

My Soul Hungered

For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them...Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord (2 Ne 4:15-16)

This is often how I feel about the gospel; but there are times when I become a little more lackadaisical in my spiritual efforts. Every now and then it seems that those "small and simple" day-to-day duties of reading my scriptures, or saying my prayers, or even worshiping in the temple, etc, become...rote. There are other times when my life gets rather hectic, and finding the time for those daily acts of worship becomes difficult. (I know, I know; I'm totally alone in this! Who ever really gets *that* busy! Call me crazy...) 

Lately, my life has made a few turns. In the midst of these changes I've been trying to re-figure out how to juggle the balls of life. In many ways I've been successful at getting most of those balls juggled fairly well, but my scripture study has been one ball that just hasn't stayed air borne too well. I have been determined, though, to make a more concerted effort to reestablish the habits I had of studying my scriptures daily. I'm still working on getting the "daily" part of that goal down, but I'm doing significantly better. 

But I mention all this mostly as a set up to what I really wanted to express.

About two weeks ago I was ready to crash into bed, when I was suddenly hit with a strong desire to read my scriptures. I acted on that feeling, and ended up reading for quite a bit longer than I thought I had the strength or acuity for at that particular moment. I was reading in 2nd Nephi 9. This happens to be one of my favorite chapters. I remember that this was the chapter that night because part of the reason it had been a while since I'd last read my scriptures was that this was the next chapter sequentially in my reading. It's a longish chapter, and I wanted to read it when I had time to read the chapter in its entirety. So I kept putting off reading my scriptures due to "lack of time."

Anyway...

Reflecting now I don't recall gleaning any particularly stunning insights as I read, but I felt like I had been dehydrated for a really long time, and was finally getting a drink. And I couldn't stop; I couldn't get enough to slake my thirst. I felt this glow start to well up inside me. I knew with distinct clarity that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, is scripture, and is another Testament of the Christ. I felt the overwhelming peace of Heavenly Father's love. 

I love the scriptures. My soul really does delight in the things of the Lord. I love moments when I can simply be still, ponder, and enjoy the quiet stirrings of the Spirit. And that's the point. I get so exhausted by the pace of this world, and my soul begins to hunger. So despite the ever demanding tasks of life, and the seeming lack of time, and even though I'm still no master juggler, I hope to figure out how to prioritize sufficiently to be able to incorporate that particular ball...even if that means dropping another.