In A World Where The Clocks Don't Sleep

I have this habit of finding good songs and then playing them over and over and over and over again. This is the current one now. Honestly, I love Built of the Architect, their music is absolutely fantastic, and it helps the the singer has a good face. (: So, here's my new obsession, I hope you like it as much as I do.

P.S. I hope everybody had a good Halloween. Personally, I sort of hate Halloween because it's an excuse to turn your kids lose to beg for candy at strangers' houses. . . If you think about it, it's sort of creepy. I guess that's the essence of the holiday, right? I still stand on my opinion, and I still hope you Halloween lovers had a good day.

"The essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ entails a fundamental and permanent change in our very nature made possible through the Savior’s Atonement. True conversion brings a change in one’s beliefs, heart, and life to accept and conform to the will of God (see Acts 3:19; 3 Nephi 9:20) and includes a conscious commitment to become a disciple of Christ." -Elder Bednar-

Here's what I know:

I know that Jesus Christ did not die for me so that I could be passive about life. Jesus Christ did not make eternal life possible so that I could forget how to trust in Him. 
I know that in order to believe in Jesus Christ and the Atonement and Eternal Life he made possible I must do the tangible: Study the scriptures and his workings and teachings, apply them to my life by really serving real people in need, and keeping a smile on my face everyday. Then, when I do the simple tangible, I must do the intangible: picture Christ walking with me everyday, whispering in my ear what I should say and do and be, and when I make a mistake because I will and always will, I must repent and have that faith that everything is going to be okay.
I know that life is hard and more than once inside everyday, I want to quit and just sit and cry and have everybody feel sorry for me because I'm having a bad day. But, if I did that, I couldn't call myself a disciple of Christ. Christ did not die for me so that I could feel sorry for myself. Christ died for me so that I can live. 

~If there's something bad in your life- get rid of it.
~If you're getting bad grades on tests- study
~If you're not happy- sing a happy song, and say hi to someone who look as unhappy as you feel
~If don't feel adequate- watch the video below or better yet, pray to your Father in heaven. He'll help
~If you don't feel like praying- start spewing out your day to yourself; he'll listen anyway
~If you don't know what to say still- read your scriptures to receive insight and inspiration
~If you don't know what to read- open up anywhere; the beauty of the scriptures is that you can open up anywhere and still learn something from whatever it is.
~If you feel discouraged because things just aren't working out- try again, and then again, and then again.

I know that life is hard, because honestly, the past couple months of my life have been hard. And it's never going to go away with a snap of your fingers, but Christ will help you through it because that was the entire essence of his life. I know that for a fact. 

"I had to get tears out of [my daughter] because if she didn't have an emotional connection to the mistake she made, she'd never fix it." -Jay Allen

Heavenly Father sends trials into our lives so that we can feel what it means to work and fail and have to drag our feet back up to try again. It's painful and emotional involvement is key to the success we receive after we are back on our feet. This is why we must pray, why we must read our scriptures, and why we must strive everyday, all day, in every single thing we do to be examples and disciples of Jesus Christ. He did not atone for us so that we can sit down after we fall, have a pity party, and say, "I can't do this." 

Yes. You can. 

In paintings of the Virgin Mary, she is always wearing blue. A thought someone had was that the color blue (at least within the young women's program) represents divine nature. See, we're taught that we have come to this earth with a purpose- with a divine role. Well, put it into perspective. Mary, as a 15 year old girl was visited by a spirit and was told she was to have a child. Unmarried, this proclamation was a little crazy, and dangerous. If people found out that she was pregnant and unmarried but still endowed to Joseph, they would only assume the obvious. She had committed adultery against Joseph, and the punishment for that was death. How hard would that have been to have to face? To have to go to your proposed husband and tell him that you were pregnant without any explanation to how that child was conceived, and to have to figure out the solution to keep yourself alive? How hard would it have been to be 15 and pregnant? Physically on the body, that would have been exhausting; mentally, it would have been completely draining. How many 15 year old girls now-a-days do we deem fit to be a mother, let alone a mother of the Son of God? She probably would have been daunted by the thought of the task and asked herself how in the world she was going to accomplish that. She didn't bow down to all the adversary inside of what her life was supposed to be, though. It was hard, yes, but she got up and did it. 

Paint yourself in blue and remind yourself that you are a child of God who has something to do. Get up, and prepare to do it. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it. 

This is what I imagine:
I imagine that if I myself get up and do what I need to do to make it to where I need to be, Christ will hold up viles filled full with all of the tears I cried because "life was just too hard" and he will say to me, "Look, look what you have done. Well, done good and faithful servant. You have loved me enough to be standing here, and through it all and even right now, I love you more than you can even comprehend. Welcome to my eternal kingdom."

The Atonement is real, and Christ really lives. He really loves us and wants to help us, we just need to get up, put our best foot forward and try with all our might. Because if we do, our reward is eternity.

"For the beauty of each hour,

Of the day and of the night.

Hill and vale and tree and flow'r-

Sun and moon and stars of light.

Lord of all to thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise"

Pretty

Don't sell yourself too short, people!!

Thanks, Ash, for showing me this video. It's Pretty Awesome. (: 

The Blue Aces

My friend Alyssa and I went down to Provo to a place called The Velour to watch this fantastic band play a couple of weeks ago. They. Are. Amazing!! They have this cool rocky, blusey tone to them, and the singer's voice has this perfect rasp I can't get over. I think the most amazing part about them is that they are all high school students. The main singer is  17, the drummer (which is also the singer's sister) is 14, and the two guitarists are both 17 as well. So, if you ever get the chance, go see The Blue Aces. You won't be disappointed! (:

Oh, and, the group before The Blue Aces was Built of the Architect. LOVE!! Check them out too. (:

"We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve"

Fall break has begun over in this little neck of the woods. Not really, Lauren's home on fall break too. . . Anyway, since last night was basically a Friday, Lauren and I decided to go see this movie. Honestly, I had never even heard of it. I saw a poster in the library a couple days ago, but I was really confused because I had no idea what it was. It intrigued me, however, because of the lovely title and because Emma Watson is in it (!!!). So, I asked Lauren if she wanted to go see it with me. She told me only if it looked good (because let's be honest, movies nowadays kind of stink). So we watched the preview. . . And then we watched the preview again. . . and then we watched the preview again!! We were now both excited to go see this movie. We hit a roadblock, though. We went onto the American Fork Cinemark website, but it wasn't playing. I thought that they were just joking with us, so I drove down to the actual theater to see if it was true. It was. I was a little devastated as well as confused and went in and asked the box office worker what was up.

Here's the mini story:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a limited roll movie. Meaning, the makers of the movie (Summit) made only a certain number of reel tapes and then sent them to the busiest movie theaters. In Utah's case this was Provo Towne Centre and South Jordan. He then told us that the movie was well worth our journey to Provo, however, and that the next movie started at 9:55.

Obviously, we were there. Upon my request, we left about an hour before the movie started. We made it to Provo Towne Centre 20 minutes before 9:55, and we were the first ones in the movie theater. YES! Basically we got the best seats in town.

Disclosure:
 This movie is not your typical, cookie cutter, hipster movie. (Once people started coming into the theater, Lauren and I were surrounded by hipsters. . .) The movie is very bad: a lot of vulgar language, a lot of drug reference, there's a homosexual relationship which teams up with a lot of sex reference. However, not trying to justify those kinds of things because they shouldn't be justified, the vulgarity of the movie is the point of the movie. During the summer, I went to the Shakespeare Festival. One of the plays they showed was called Titus Andronicus. Long story short, the amount of violence and suffering portrayed in this play made me physically sick to my stomach. The next day, my mother went to the literary seminar where they discussed this play and all the violence that was in it. The narration lady said this, "If you didn't feel anything towards what you were seeing, you have missed the point. You should feel sick, you should feel anger, you should not want to be in the play." Hence, this is the point of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. If you go to this movie with the intent of being entertained. . . .you're wrong. Granted, you can be entertained by the good music, or Emma Watson's American accent, or the attractiveness of Charlie, but that's, again, not the point. The point is, if you go to this movie, and really think about it, you could potentially change. . . . Because this is Nirvana.

So, for me, I highly recommend this movie. As the box office worker said, "It's highly worth the drive to Provo."

Hey, There's Pictures Coming

Here's my story to lack of blogging. I really do think of writing- I do! But, the problem is that I can't find my computer cord for my camera. I have really good stories to tell, but they're even better with pictures! So, just keep my status as pending and we'll all be good.

brb, folks.
(:

Something Funny

Is this just not the most hilarious thing you've ever seen?