Space & Everything

When you say everything,

Do you mean everything?

You say some things are quiet for you, okay maybe

not quiet but slow.

Makes me wonder, with my patterns and pacing

how that would go.

Would I overwhelm

overuse the space

not know how to pace or give grace for the trace

of new in a place where we've existed for so long?

Well not long, but we've lived so deeply in it

That I wonder what it would feel like to win it.

Would we un-spin a weave so tightly wound

and feel free knowing now it has no bounds

or would the wide open show just how bare the unknown is

and vast

would it pop, fizz, then pitter and clash?

leaving just space.

Space for anything

Space for everything

Space for knowing again and getting to know

When you say everything,

Do you mean everything?

That space for knowing

would it have bounds

because of the things in our hearts that cannot be rewound?

Everything.

All the things.

Shared.

We think we know ourselves but are we really prepared

for the visibility, vulnerability, that would exist in that space?

An open room with the twinkling lights of what we started

splashed with the colors of what we already knew

Before there was you.

Am I curious?

Do I want to know what you might say?

Do I want to know you?

A dream world where that can play.

Is "everything" really everything when neither allow

It's good to be present but are we caught up in the now

so much that we don't broaden and heal and grow...

If we had the space what would it show?

Everything?

Do you really mean everything?

A heart that pleads/A letter from the heart

 Are you curious?

Do you want to know what I might say?

Do you want to know me?

That's okay.

Unacknowledged.

Find a way to express

Is trapped knowledge

Of my own experience

Sticking to me -- finding ways to pinch and press?

A desire to know and to understand

To reach out and see if you'd take my hand

These swirling thoughts, would they ever become plans?

Will you let me speak freely and take a stand?

Rather than the trapping and wrapping my impressions away

in boxes tucked perfectly so they'll stay

Unacknowledged.

Are you curious?

Do you want to know what I might say?

Do you want to know me?

That's okay.

Turn the feelings into knowledge

The wonderings to something concrete

Allow to process and be complete

To fold out the boxes instead of retreat

Unacknowledged.

Reach Out

 Mentally planning to reach out

Only to freeze up and not

When the distance and space you thought you'd have to prepare

And gear up

Closed more quickly than you anticipated

Entice. Tease. Request. Implore.

All the same connection we're vying for.

Worry and excitement, inseparable twins

Linked in a pattern so the heart can win

Running through the paths where my thoughts spin

Looking for something to express, akin

To what I desire to have or be

The messy and tangled of thoughts left unvoiced

Beside clacks of bangles of words I've made the choice

The share

Even though part of me wishes to erase

To go back to before you knew

Return to the chase

Of finding me

Not binding or blinding me

Walled off with doubt

To before all those spills you now know about.

Of building this person who's puzzled, corrupt

Willing my thoughts to interrupt

And find ME

Authentic and refusing to hide

But maybe it's better to keep the unfinished inside

No. No more magic in jars.

It's time to unscrew the cap

Let it fly to the stars.

Whole

 when breath only loops around the throat and chest

sipping down to the heart like a straw

tight,  unfullfilling, surface

while breathing is meant to push life through the veins

into the arms, legs, down to the feet

life to feel refreshed and whole

deep and complete

Gingham Protection

 I had a dream last night about a beheading, which lead to a zombie apocalypse, which led to a discovery of a coven in a high school basement. A dream where I ran into my sister who had a surprising way of warding off zombies and an aversion to accepting gifts from cricket-sacrificing witches. It was strange and beautiful. Here's how it went:

The reason for the beheading is blurry, but myself and six other people had upset the governing body of the time (who in my mind was just "parliament") and were sentenced to be beheaded. As I watched the others line up to have their heads sliced off, I screamed. It was as if I felt their pain again and again as their heads, one by one, were severed and rolled. Then something strange happened. Some of the bodies started getting up, heads somehow intact and attached, their mouths bloody and frothing with craze, eyes hungry. They attacked the executioners, who then also became the ravenous undead. I was the only one in the room to get away, and snatched the opportunity to relinquish my culpability in the whole affair as my executioners were no longer capable of performing their assignment or the reporting thereof.

Soon the entire campus, for now it would seem our setting was a high school, was rampant with zombies. I panicked and ran to stay away from them, finding myself going down a flight of stairs I didn't recognize and into the basement of the building. This previously-hidden part of the structure was mysterious and intriguing. The walls were an off-white cement, with symbols of scryings and divinations carved or painted throughout. Most of what I could see was a long hallway, but had small prayer-coves on the end and sides with altars whereupon were placed modest statues or spell-books. Unexpectedly safe from the breakout of the undead above, I felt somehow at ease here, like a force was protecting me. I basked in the feeling for a moment, not fully aware of anything around me. Catching a glimpse of a being approaching one of the shrines near me, I was snapped out of my reverie.

She was dark and beautiful, wrapped in black lace, her hair pulled half-up to show her distinct features. I felt I should tell her of all that happened and ask for her help. I asked her for the most direct way out of the building to avoid the zombies, and she pointed toward a door. Somehow, as she pointed, droves of people also realized this was the safest exit and filed out. Wary, but trusting the apparent wisdom and power of the witch, I found my way through the exodus. Unfortunately, it was difficult to remain protected in the crowd, and several zombies soon pulled me to the ground. One bit into my wrist. I stiffened and screamed, but she stopped, hissing and exclaiming that I tasted awful. The others of her party climbed off me and sought prey elsewhere.

Concerned that I might become infected and transform, but confident that their poison had not yet entered my blood (maybe I was still being protected by the coven...and maybe it was the Gingham Love lotion I recently bought as a Valentines day treat), I went in search of my car. On my way, I found my sister working her way to safety as well. Worried she may have already turned, I whispered to her "are you still you?"

"Yes, I'm just pretending so they think I'm one of them. I'm also pretending to be lesbian as a backup."

...so these zombies are homophobes who are also repelled by preppy lotion scents??...

Somehow we found ourselves back in the underground coven. I had a sense that we were at the north part of the structure. My sister seemed particularly drawn to a shrine at the end of the hallway. She touched one of the symbols engraved on the wall, which shifted and made an unlocking sound. A wooden feature, not unlike a chandelier, started to float down from the ceiling. When it reached us, it opened and revealed a small box, delicately engraved, with a metal latch on the front. She opened it to uncover several glimmering broaches and bracelets. A voice from the female portrait in front of us reassured her that these were a gift to her. She almost took them, but then spoke her discomfort at knowing this particular coven requested sacrifice of crickets. Sure enough, the lid of the delicate box was indicative of her claim: carved to look like a cricket. She turned and left.

I lingered, sensing something unfinished. As I looked around I realized the portrait we heard from was not a women after all, but a very handsome warlock. This discovery was undoubtedly brought on in part because that very warlock was now standing within view, halfway across the room.

He took a few steps forward and addressed me. His manner was not unkind, but I was still afraid, not knowing why he felt to show himself at this time and not earlier. His portrait had obviously been shrouded  while my sister was there -- we had only been aware of the females in this coven up to this point. He spoke his interest in my sister refusing the gift. His tone was sincerely curious rather than malicious or proud, though, so I felt my fear assuage somewhat.

Suddenly another warlock blundered into the room, battered and bloody. He had been attacked by the throng above. He began to explain that, because of his already-existing immortality, he would regain his true form rather than succumb to the infection, but the process was painful and debilitating. He then fully noticed my presence, though the fact that he felt he needed to explain himself as he came in the room told me that he had already been somewhat aware of a mortal guest in his realm. I remember both of them talking with me for a few more moments, but then I woke, the conversation unfinished.

Once upon a time you brought me peanut butter M&Ms

For anyone interested in mapping out my heart a bit, this one is connected to this other poem.

Once upon a time you brought me peanut butter M&Ms

Was it love, was it longing, was it hope?

Shaking with emotion as my heart tried to cope

with the realizations I was making about you.

Then in ensuing months as it threatened to come back

And I wanted to accept the thoughts with grace

I let myself feel the feelings

tried not to judge

because I thought maybe I should learn from them before they can budge.

Mixed up with those few times you asked

and I refused.

Wondering if those chances should have been used

if I was pushing not to choose

and if I should not have let us lose

what ended up being the only...

The only chance to make more of those talks on the bench-seat

(on the bench, green stripe

helping me to see the light)

DENIED.

But denied by myself or denied by an else.

So as I let the feelings flow

to observe them and not quite let go

the way I talked to you I thought would show

And so I sat in suspense.

And then nothing.

No indication of a smile, or even a glimpse of deja vu

Nothing to reaffirm the personality I was assigning to you.

To a past you

Who admired me,

inspired me

a special feeling I've been missing

why to those thoughts I've been trying to listen.

FLATTENED.

Opened so much and tapped into the past.

Past me who could talk about these things

Expecting that certain ring...

And I felt it,

Oh, it is so.

But nothing reflecting to show

to let me know

if any of the light I gave caused a glow.

Making too much of a feeling of mine

but then looping back to once upon a time

when you brought me peanut butter M&Ms.

Smitten

I believe that, sometimes, it's cathartic to think back and to feel emotions long gone, feelings about parts of your story that are long closed. Our past selves are part of our present self. It's helpful for me to be in tune with myself in this way. Maybe these poetic musings of mine will be cathartic to someone else out there, too.

I was so incredibly

undeniably

smitten with you.

I knew, somewhere in me, the types did not--would not

That I would be forever flustered by your attention

or lack thereof.

 I wondered:

If I was more alluring, more enticing,

less needy

less available

If I would have been viable to you.

Because it wasn't that you weren't ready.

It was that you knew a lack of steady

would be you -- smitten with me.

What changed?

What difference?

Why now a reaction?

"Nothing,"

his response.

Just my persistence

but not even a fraction

of himself did he trust to remain. To give.

To allow to see me and live

in the idea of us.

You could pretend, but were also honest

And I, honest with you and myself said

I was so incredibly

undeniably

smitten with you

That just pretend

I could not do.

The Visual, A Dream

 THE VISUAL, A DREAM.

Combining memories and making new.

Recalling what it was like with you

On the bench, green stripe

Helping me to see the light

To be the light

I wanted to be.

Fondness

But conflict

I was pressing against

Expectations

Both and un-expressed

Like I wanted to tempt

My mind away from the known

Denied desire, maybe.

I wanted to be.

I couldn't see

The light.

It began to creep in and we realized

Just how drowsy for the hours we

Had led on and on.

The whole night was gone.

Recollecting

Reconnecting

Redefining

What heart pining

Could mean in my new context.

Too complex.

Too unknown to know.

Mind away from the known...

Could I never have been

There with that certain ring.

Denying the thought for the feeling of aught.

Same then

Same now

But not quite

Different how, now I see more light.

Whole light

But not quite

Just closer to full

Or not?

So I thought a right choice would make full.

Why must the mind reach away from the known.

Is it dullness, is it suspense

I want to be shown

It's hard to say just what.

Denied desire, maybe.

But denied by an else or denied by myself.

Combining memories and making new.

Remember what it was like with you.

What I was like with you.

I see.

Who I wanted to be.

Recollecting.

Reconnecting.

BLANK SLATE

a foundation

sure in it's makeup but not application

my heart a blank slate, ready to be crafted

without hesitation

defined and designed by another's care and words

refined yet confined by everything is heard

a malleable heart, molded to another

but what to do when the two go asunder?

so ready to be painted by your color and lines

so ready...

allow tainted by unplanned design

unplanned? un-canned. untapped.

contrived to thrive unwrapped.

More thoughts about how joy works:

This is a two-part post. Click here to read part one.

Last time we ended on a question:

Do you think God loving us means He wants us to be happy now? Does He care about our immediate, present happiness, or just the happiness we will feel when we return to Him after this earthly journey?

I've thought a lot about this question over the course of the last couple of months. As I've been pondering it, my thoughts have been led to things that help me better understand God's love. What ideas are you led to as you think about this? Some of my ideas are:

1. Learn more about God's plan for His children. For me, this is best done in the temple. Here, we learn more about the direct result of God's love for us: His PLAN for us to improve in this life and ultimately return to Him. It is His plan for our ultimate happiness. There is a reason we feel good when we worship there, and I'm starting to think that's exactly it.
2. Study the scriptures looking for examples and teachings of the Plan of Salvation.
3. Pray. There is something about prayer that opens my heart to feel God's love for me, and the reassurance that comes from that, especially when life feels really difficult.
4. Help others. In my first post about this, I mentioned a talk from General Conference by D. Todd Christofferson. Another thing he spoke of in his talk was how joy comes when we help show God's love to others. 

Christofferson told the story of a woman, named Joanne, who cared for her husband who was in an accident and was wheelchair-bound for most of their married life. Joanne said that while she was his caregiver, her heart was light. This made me wonder: how could a light heart be the result of such a challenging circumstance? Another question I considered at this point was:

What are the things that make my heart heavy?

How can the potential answers to the other happiness-related questions we've talked about so far help me heart be lighter?

As I thought about Joanne's story and how it applies to me, I wondered what it means for how God helps us. Is His influence, felt through the Spirit, only there to help us help others? What about when I personally need help from Him? Must we hope someone else will follow a prompting to help us individually, rather than receive a blessing or help straight from God? 

I've heard many times that the way God answers prayers is often through the people around us. But thinking that the Spirit doesn't help me directly doesn't sit right with me. The thought makes me disappointed. When I realized it makes me disappointed, I asked myself why I feel that way about it.

...maybe because my brain and heart expect to be helped in specific ways. We're not always conscious of it, but we tend to have pre-defined expectations and ideas for what we want things like answers to prayers, comfort, and help to look like. And we might feel like God isn't helping us if those expectations aren't met.

A couple of weeks ago in a church meeting, something one brother shared made me think about this. He talked about how he and his wife are trying to teach their baby how to fall asleep on her own. (Maybe this stuck out to me because I definitely know how that goes!) This brother talked about how they've been thinking about how their daughter must feel when she discovers she's in her bed instead of in mommy's or daddy's arms. She must feel alone. She must feel abandoned. She might even feel cold, helpless, and overall sad. When we think about this when it comes to babies, we might think it's silly because we know the baby is safe. Mom and dad are right on the other room, and if anything bad were to happen they would be there in a flash. We know this, but the baby doesn't.

This is probably similar to how our relationship with God looks sometimes. All we see is our life, which could be compared to a baby's crib. God knows how to make sure we're safe, and He's always close, kinda like the baby's parents in the other room. Sometimes we just have a hard time remembering He's there. We want His help in a certain way, and usually we want it immediately.

This connects to the next topic I felt I should share. I said in the first post about this that I would talk about two topics. Two topics that I believe go hand-in-hand. The first, which we've spent a lot of time on thus far, has been on how the Gospel of Jesus Christ helps us be happy. The second topic is emotional independence. I think the brother's thoughts about sleep training is a good example of how these topics are connected. Sleep training teaches a baby to independently sleep. God's training for us (you could call it "life training,") helps us independently...life. :)

Now don't get me wrong, we definitely need God in our lives, just like a baby still needs her parents even when she starts to learn things for herself, like sleep. But maybe the way we think we need God could be adjusted. What would it look like to assess the way we expect help to come, and then adjust it? Would we be more satisfied with the way things are? Would we find it easier to be happy?

I mentioned earlier that we each tend to have ways we expect to be helped and comforted, and that we are usually disappointed when these expectations are not met. Sometimes the emotion is actually stronger than disappointment; it may be loneliness, helplessness, sadness, resentment, or a variety of other hard things to deal with feeling. So what if we assessed those expectations? What if we asked ourselves what other ways we can accept help from God (or, for that matter, from others around us)?

Thinking about it this way came from a podcast I recently started listening to. The podcast is called Live from Love and it's by certified life&marriage coach Amanda Louder. It has helped me a lot as I've been dealing with difficult emotions and thoughts about myself, mostly surrounding what we've been talking about in these two posts.

This is Amanda.
@amandaloudercoaching on Instagram

Her podcast really is amazing. I listen to it on Spotify, but I know it's also available on iTunes. Here is her website if you're interested in more information.

One of the main things she talks about is how we each have what she calls a "manual" for how we'd like to be treated and how we expect people to act around us, particularly our spouses. We have a manual for our parents, our co-workers, our spouses, our kids, other drivers on the road, people in line at the grocery, etc. And we are disappointed when people don't follow that manual. Much of her podcast centers around how to be intentional as we think about these manuals, and one thing she talked about really struck me. She said: don't have any expectations of your spouse, or any other loved one. Fulfill your own needs, and just have your loved ones there for you to love.

I'll repeat that.

Don't have expectations of your loved ones. 

Fulfill your own needs, and just have your loved ones there for you to love.

At first this seemed totally unrealistic and dumb to me. No expectations? None? Isn't it okay for me to want to be loved, comforted, and cared for in a certain way? But then she goes on to talk about how the things we feel (loved, comforted, happy, at peace, etc.) all come from our own thoughts. They come from how we perceive things. Our emotions come from how we choose to react to our thoughts, and the idea that we can learn how to control those thoughts, and the emotions that follow them, is actually very empowering.

So, what would happen if we thought differently when it comes to our expectations of God, others, and ourselves? How does that apply to the happiness theme we've been focusing on here? Let's take a good look at what our expectations are of:

• How we feel happy
• How God answers our prayers and pleas for help
• How we feel God's love

Think about how you expect things to look, and then consider how you feel about those expectations. Do you like them? What could you change about them? What would that change look like for you? What if that statement about expectations also applied to God (i.e. don't have any expectations of God. Fulfill your own needs, and just have God there for you to love)? Something I've discovered while thinking and praying about all of these things is that the Lord's help comes in the form of me changing, not from my circumstance getting better or from others being better to me.

What do you think? I love thinking about this stuff, so if you want to keep talking about it with me please know I do NOT think it's weird for you to contact me with questions or comments about what I've shared here. Feel free to contact me and let's keep pondering together.

I invite you to include your Heavenly Father as you ponder and discover things about His love for you, His plan for you, your emotions and expectations, and ultimately how you can look for Christ's example as you decide how to be. 

He loves you.

Thank you for thinking about this with me.