Issues with Life

Last night I attended institute and had the most amazing lesson that really got my thoughts going.  The lesson was on true and appropriate repentance. About wasting time dwelling on our shortcomings and sins as opposed to getting up and getting to work.

 I don’t know if I will share this publicly, but feel a strong desire to get this off my chest. I have so many truly amazing friends, I have not always been so fortunate to have friends who show such love and support. Therefore I am grateful beyond what I can express for those friends I have who are there. 

Through much of my life I’ve always been pretty good at telling people either take me or leave me as I am. I am a spazzy, quirky person overall. Sometimes I wish I was a little less so, at least less awkwardly clumsy anyway.

Unfortunately, I have spent far too much time recently allowing others to define me and tell me who I am and what I am worth. I have wasted too much time listening to the negative voices in my life telling me that I am not good enough. And believe me when I say that it has been coming from all fronts—both external voices and internal thoughts.These thoughts have led me down a dark road of late. I have moped around feeling that I had nothing to offer the world because I was so worthless. I feel like Satan has been working overtime on me to coerce me to feel this way. Which leads to the question why? What I am supposed to be doing in my life that I am not because I am wasting time hating myself and focusing on the things I don’t like about myself?

There are things in my life I wish were different or that I wish I had handled differently, but I need to stop defining myself based on those moments. I need to acknowledge that there are things in my life that are out of my control but that is ok. I don’t have to fix everything. I can only do what I can do.  Because that was the main point of the lesson last night. To not let ourselves become so bogged down in our transgressions that we forget to go out and help others. I am human, I will always make mistakes. There will always be things in my life that I wish I could change or wish I could be better at. But to sit around blaming myself and beating myself up will serve no one. And I can honestly say I love serving those around me. With so much misery and sadness in the world, how can I not try to ease the burdens of people who mean so much to me?

I am not valued nor defined by my marital status, my family status, where I come from or what I look like.

Inane Conversation

So I work at a college. And sometimes while at my job we have to send employees out with checks to pick up things we need immediately that we cannot wait to come in with a delivery. As a state run institution we are tax exempt, it is in big bold letters on every check we send out.

The other day one of our food service employees needed to make such a grocery run. Upon returning he brought me the receipt and check stub and informed me that the store would not deduct the tax because they claimed that they did not have the appropriate information to prove we were really a tax exempt entity. Well, I thought to myself, this is easy to resolve. I will simply call them and get an email to send off a copy of the proper forms. Well our conversation went something like this (if only I could include copies of my facial expressions during this conversation, I was told they were highly entertaining):

Me: Hi this is so and so from such and such company and I understand that we just had one of our employees come in to your store and he said that you needed documentation showing that we are tax exempt. I was wondering if I could go ahead and email you a copy of a W-2 that should have all the information you need on it.

Manager: (deep long suffering sigh before she continues, sounding very angry throughout the entire conversation) Well, your employee just walked into our store, took what he needed off the shelves and then just took it all up to the cashier.

(long pause. I was scratching my head and repeating to myself what she had just said trying to find the problem)

Me: Is there, um, another proceedure that we need to follow?
Manager: Yes! He just expected the cashier to just ring everything up right then and there!

(another pause, with me biting back the numerous funny yet so unprofessional comments coming to mind)

Me: Ok, so...... is there a different proceedure that we need to follow when making a purchase?
Manager: Well my cashier didn't know that it was tax exempt until after the fact and then we would have had to issue a return, and then go  ring everything up again and..... (I'll spare you all the long explaination she gave as to why issuing a return was such a hassle. I mean really, if it's that much trouble to fix a mistake a cashier or customer makes then this store really needs to analyze the way it does things, I mean really this went on for several minutes)
Me: So in the future what do we need to do if we need to purchase anything else from your store?
Manager: You guys need to call ahead of time so that we can have everything pulled and so that we have warning that you are coming into our store and be ready for you.
Me: So you would like us to call ahead if we are going to purchase anything from your store?
Manager: Yes! I just said that!
Me: All right ma'am thank you for your time and we will be sure to give you advanced warning if we need your services in the future. (I figured the conversation was a lost cause at this point).

Seriously, we have never had these kind of problems from any grocery store we have gone to ever before. I made a note to the department director that she may not want to use this branch again.

April Fools Days Gone By

This year I did not pull any April fools pranks--mostly because I just didn't care enough to do so. However I did get a good chuckle remembering April Fools pranks I used to participate in.......

--Such as putting alarm clocks in the heating vents
--kool aid in the shower head (I simply stood by on this one, it seemed a bit more mean than funny to me)
--silverware in a bucket of water in the freezer
--filling up someone's basement doorwell with balloons filled with tootsie rolls and confetti
--filling someone's car with same balloons
 --wrapping saran wrap in front of a roommates door and filling the opening with balloons
--tying the doorhandles together from opposite facing bedroom doors
--placing a mattress in front of a roommates door
--a strategically placed poster of the joker from Dark Knight to a poor roommate who is creeped out by said joker
--snap-its under the toilet seat or on the hinges of doors

The last one had me laughing out loud. I had an old roommate who tried to pull this on myself and the girl I shared the bathroom with. She put snaps under the toilet seat. You know, the snaps that you get on the fourth of July that you can throw on the ground and they make a loud snap sound, yeah those ones.

Well, neither my roommate or I were home much and were both tiny girls. So the snaps never went off. My roommate playing the prank was disappointed thinking that she had simply missed the snaps going off. Well a few days later we had a game night at our apartment. One of the boys went in to use the bathroom. Shortly after he shut the door we all heard a long snap followed my this poor boy making a yelping/screeching sound. Everyone turned and watched the bathroom door when he came out, curious as to what on earth was going on. When he came out he exclaimed loudly that he thought our toilet had just blown up on him. My roommate who had played the prank suddenly burst out laughing and sheepishly told us of the prank. 

Disease called Perfection

I have recently come to recognize a disease that I have suffered with for my entire life, one that I am constantly trying to overcome. It is a disease of the need to be perfect. For as long as I can remember I have felt a strong need to be perfect. Perfect at school work, house work, cooking, craft projects, event plans, dating, friendships and so forth. Part of this need for perfection I have come to realize is based on pride and part of it is based on a strong desire to genuinely be a good person.  The true irony in this is that when I see others around me who are not perfect I never give it a second thought. All I know is that I enjoy spending time with this person or that because they are fun and not afraid to be themselves. Why can I not be so kind to myself? Often times I see only the flaws in my own life and wonder why anyone would want to spend time with me when I am such a mess so often.

The pride part of perfection is the part that everyone around me sees. The part of me that has to be perfect at homework, perfect in dance class, perfect at cooking for others, and anything else I try that others will see. When I go to activities or am asked to share a talent I spend tortuous hours making sure that whatever I am going to share is perfect. I can't show anyone what I am doing until I am convinced it is beyond critique. I refuse to share my talents until I am certain that those around me will be impressed by my accomplishments. Part of this is pride, part is my lack of confidence in my own abilities. This is part of a vicious cycle that I have ever so slowly been learning to recognize and therefore stop.

Then there is this other part of the disease called perfection that stems from a deeper place that is more difficult to address. It stems from the fact that I really do want to be a good person, to treat those around me kindly and fairly, never to be cruel or unfair to my friends and family; to be able to face the Lord with clean thoughts and conscience. Yet I am a human being. Perfection cannot and will not be achieved in this life. It is a difficult lesson for me to learn. Accepting the imperfections is the first step. Sometimes I will be cruel or unfair, sometimes I will judge too hastily or unkindly or lose my temper with those I care about. I wish it wouldn't. But it has happened before and will happen again. As a human it will happen. But when these events inevitably occur all I can do is ask for forgiveness from the person I have offended and try to do better next time.This is all part of the painful growing process each and every one of us must endure. We will all offend each other, and be offended at some point in our lives. Then we learn to forgive and move on from past grievances.

There will also be times when I have thoughts that I should not. Or waste too much time watching the television or fall asleep before I read my scriptures. These are all things that I struggle with frequently. Yet I know I will continue to commit these transgressions. I was in a church lesson the other day when the teacher spoke of a misconception she had had since childhood that she could not truly repent of a particular sin until she stopped the sin completely. Yet is is important to repent constantly, always try to do better the next day. I realized that I have also had this misconception. I tend to put off repenting until I am certain that I will never, ever be tempted to commit that sin again. I want to show God that I am sincere in my repentance, to go and sin no more. Unfortunately, I am human, and therefore will continue to sin. I can still ask for forgiveness and then try my utmost to abstain from that particular sin to the absolute best of my abilities. However, if I should fall again I have to get up and try a little harder next time. This does not mean that I am less sincere in my repentance or my desire to be righteous, it simply means that today I fell down and tomorrow I will try harder not to.

These thoughts are not stemming from any great grievance recently occurring. In my ward, however we have had some very interesting lessons on the problems with trying to be perfect-or rather how we handle life when we fail to be as perfect as we would like. Today my bishop and his wife gave a wonderful lesson in Sunday school about this disease called perfection and it really brought to light to me the fact that I also suffer from the disease. But there is hope, that is the bottom line. Perfection will not occur, and it is vital to recognize this fact in order to keep going.