It will rain

I love the rain ... from indoors. I can't remember playing in the rain as a kid. I think I had too healthy a fear of my mother's disapproval to be an all out dancing in the rain kind of kid, but I know I loved jumping in puddles. I didn't get to play in the rainfall, but I sure benefited from the aftermath!

Dancing in the rain is on my bucket list. I don't know why it's taking me forever to do it. There's always rain this time of year. I guess it's not something I really want to do before I die, but an experience that I would enjoy (and I'd possibly catch a cold...there goes my mother again).

My sophomore English teacher taught me that rain is used in movies and novels to denote change. I didn't have much fun during our Shakespeare unit, but the one useful piece of information I came away with is rain = change. It might be a realization, death, windfall, etc. We can't always have sunny days and sometimes the adversity of rain and dark, gloomy days is the kick in the butt we need in order to level up.

It's raining lightly outside :)

The other thing on my mind is planning. Many of us plan our lives. The details aren't always clear, but we have a general idea of where we want to go. When I was a teenager I wrote a letter to myself to be opened in 10 years. I think I ended up reading it at year four or five. I had a whole plan of things I wanted to accomplish and where I wanted to be at...at marriage and baby in a baby carriage, the whole nine. Fast forward 10-15 years and my plan is not coming to pass on my timeline.

It's interesting how many of us make plans without counseling with the Great Planner himself, our Heavenly Father. I hope I can truthfully say that I'm better at including Him in my plans now. I know for sure I didn't plan to be unemployed for this long, but somehow we're making it. I'm grateful for my family's support and non-judgmental stares when I tell them I'm tired after staying home or only working a few hours at my part time job. I'm trying.

He will guide us through the storms of our lives when we let Him. King Benjamin told his people to turn their tents toward the Temple. This is my trying to turn myself in the same direction.

Love & Blessings.

I did something bad the day before. I let other people's success and happiness be a stumbling block to my joy. I slipped into the cavernous wormholes of Facebook and started creeping on people from my past. They seem to be very happy, fulfilled, successful individuals and instead of stopping at being happy for them, I progressed to being discomfited for myself. 

Go back to 10/20/2011 - my life was very much the same.

Go back to 10/20/2010 - ditto

Go back to 10/20/2009 - same

Go back to 10/20/2008 - setting up for the same

I've done some great things in the last four years and progressed a lot in certain aspects, but the one that got me down the other day was more of a professional dilemma.

"Whatever our vocation, we should be sweetened, not hardened."

A couple of years ago I heard a talk by Neal A. Maxwell and in it he said, "Whatever our vocation, we should be sweetened, not hardened." I had become a robotic employee, only concerned with my own responsibilities and not very enthusiastic for venturing out of that realm. I listened to that statement and decided it was just for me. I took an active role in my team position and felt a difference in my satisfaction in a day well spent.

Today, and if I'm being honest for the last year, it doesn't seem like enough. I'm a year away from a teaching credential I don't desire, if the requirements remain the same; four years with a company that has been relatively good to me; and ten years with a boss who challenges and tries me, and generously compensates my time.

There's my professional state of the unit ( me ) address. I'm still figuring it out and some days I wish someone would just tell me "you're supposed to do this", but in the meantime I'm taking it day by day. I hope to be able to update this post soon with some kind of resolution, but until that time...

Sweet by and by.

I like analogies, food analogies in particular. I have been teaching choir songs for a little over a year now. It's not customary to have a young choir mistress, especially in a Samoan ward, but I am; and there you have it!

One of my funnier teaching moments involved dynamics and McDonald's portion sizes. I told them not to be stingy with their super size (ff), large (f), medium (mf), small (mp). We never really got past mezzo piano because it's very difficult to get consistent sound when they're singing any softer than "soft". I used to yell out "SUPER SIZE" or whisper "small". They laughed, but were very compliant.

A few Sundays ago I took too much advantage their good humor. I told them, "when I close my hand you close your mouth." I didn't realize how rude I was until I saw someone snicker at me. I do believe they let me get away with too much.

Anyway, back to the food analogies. The speakers in sacrament talked about faith and as I heard their messages I had the following funny thought. Here's the bit I recorded on my phone:

Faith is like food the Lord continually puts in front of us. If we ignore it, what happens to the food? It spoils and then the Lord puts another plate in front of us. The process goes on and on, He doesn't give up on us, don'tcha know. What will happen to us? We'll starve and our faith will get so skinny and weak that eventually we won't recognize it.

I giggled silently to myself as I thought out my newest food analogy.

Downton Abbey.