Brightening the Shadows

[DISCLAIMER: I've been in something of a funk lately and I've found through experience that one of the best ways for me to get out of a funk is to write.  So here I go.] 

All of my life, I have felt like I am destined to walk in other people's shadows.  I have always fought hard to be in first place but I always come up just a little bit short.  Even if I get the best haircut in the world, I will never be the prettiest girl in the class.  Even though I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent person, I have never gotten the highest grade.  My career path perhaps doesn't seem as interesting as others.  Though I have musical talent, my voice isn't the most powerful and is more suited to blending with other voices than to solo pieces.  I have, what others have called, a "quiet humor" and so will always be outshined by louder, more outspoken comedians.  I try to serve in my own little ways but I struggle with feelings of inadequacy when I see others who seem so much more capable of comforting others and talking to them about their problems.  I haven't traveled the globe (though I want to) and my life experience seems fairly ordinary.  I have realized that, despite my best efforts, most of the time I will be in second place.  My personality is kind of a back-stage personality rather than that of a stand-out actor.

I think all of us feel like this at some point (or many points) in our lives.  Even those popular, extroverted people who seem to constantly be in the limelight probably feel like they do so much yet receive so little acknowledgement for their efforts.  I think it is human nature to desire praise, to feel validated, to feel like people appreciate your contribution however small it may be.

There were many good talks in General Conference but Elder Ringwood's talk entitled, Truly Good and Without Guile, was especially timely as I have struggled these past few weeks with feelings of inadequacy and self-criticism and the (probably stupid) notion that my life is boring in comparison to others' lives.  Elder Ringwood spoke about Alma's sons, Helaman, Corianton, and Shiblon.  Though he was perhaps the most steady and diligent in his faith, Shiblon received the least recognition.

"It appears that Shiblon was a son who wanted to please his father and went about doing what was right for right’s sake rather than for praise, position, power, accolades, or authority. Helaman must have known and respected this about his brother, for he gave Shiblon custody of the sacred records he had received from his father. Surely Helaman trusted Shiblon because 'he was a just man, and he did walk uprightly before God; and he did observe to do good continually, to keep the commandments of the Lord his God' (Alma 63:2). As seems truly characteristic of Shiblon, there is not much recorded about him from the time he took possession of the sacred records until he gave them to Helaman’s son Helaman (see Alma 63:11).

"Shiblon was truly good and without guile. He was a person who sacrificed his time, talents, and effort to help and lift others because of a love for God and his fellowmen (see Alma 48:17–19; 49:30). He is described perfectly by the words of President Spencer W. Kimball: 'Great women and men are always more anxious to serve than to have dominion.'

 ^"In a world where praise, position, power, accolades, and authority are sought on every side, I honor those wonderful and blessed souls who are truly good and without guile, those who are motivated by a love of God and their neighbors, those great women and men who are 'more anxious to serve than to have dominion.'"

I'm not saying that I'm as good of a person as Shiblon but I feel a certain kinship with him.  He didn't hold positions of power.  He didn't gain world-wide fame.  He didn't stand out in a crowd.  He probably lived a relatively quiet life.  But he put forth his best efforts to do good within his sphere of influence.  Though he lived in his brothers' shadows for most of his life, he chose to keep the commandments and endure to the end in righteousness simply because it was the right thing to do.

My life may seem dull to some.  I may not be a model.  I may not be the funniest kid in the class.  But I have the same capacity for good as everyone else and my life is just as valuable as the lives of business owners or the rulers of nations.  If it is my lot in life simply to brighten up the shadows cast by others, then I guess I'm alright with that. :)

When Life Gives You Lemons

When I was twenty-years-old, I went to a state-wide YSA conference at the Oakland Interstake Center.  As a general rule, I really hate these kinds of things but I went because all of my friends were going and I knew I would get an earful about being an anti-social, party-pooper if I didn't attend.  So I sat and listened attentively to all of the workshops on marriage and dating, even laughing at some of the jokes that were said because I was young and idealistic and thought that I would, of course, be married by the time I turned 22.

Around 4:00, things started to go a little downhill.  There was a meeting in the large auditorium in the Interstake Center.  I was sitting in a row with all of my friends when a guy came up, sat in the row in front of us, and turned around and smiled.  Being the naive girl that I was at the time, I returned his smile to be nice but realized too late that I was the only girl in my row who had; everyone else was ignoring him. 

I soon learned that a small act of kindness can, unfortunately, have bleak consequences.  The guy followed me around for the rest of the day.  He didn't speak English very well and I found myself involved in a lot of awkward conversations which, if you know me at all, I do not excel at. I have a hard enough time with native English speakers as it is.  I tried to avoid him but he somehow kept on finding me, eventually handing me a handwritten note that read, "I'm an accountant.  I make lots of money.  Give me a call sometime."  Being young and inexperienced, I wasn't sure what to do so I crumpled up the note and threw it away.  All of my friends said I should have kept the note as a souvenir.  By this point, I was regretting my choice to come to this activity.

Of course, the conference had to end with a dance.  I've never understood why people love dances so much.  What is the appeal of dancing around in a circle for a few hours, occasionally being asked to dance by a stranger who can't hear you over the music anyway?  But apparently I'm the odd-one-out with this opinion, so I reluctantly stepped onto the dimly lit gym floor and spent the next thirty minutes trying to avoid "my accountant friend."  As it turns out, he wasn't the only one I should have been avoiding. Another boy randomly came into our circle of friends, singled me out for some reason, and tried to freak dance with me.  This was the straw that broke the camel's back.  My friends tried to laugh it off but I had had enough.  I went outside and called my dad to ask if he would come all the way out to Oakland to pick me up and take me home.

Maybe that doesn't sound like that awful of a night and when I compare it to others that I've had since that time, it actually sounds pretty tame.  But the things that happened to me that night compounded with all the other unfortunate things that had happened to me that summer just about put me over the edge.  I went into my room, got ready for bed, and tried to sleep.  Instead I spent the next three hours crying and praying.  I had always felt like I had a testimony that God was there and he listened to my prayers but, in that moment, I wasn't really sure.  I realized that all I wanted in that moment was the assurance that someone was listening to me and knew that I was having a rough time.

At about two in the morning, I finally stopped crying.  I laid there in bed for a few minutes until the thought popped into my mind that I should read my scriptures.  I was tired and worn out from all the sobbing but I turned my light on and pulled my books out of my scripture bag.  Normally I would flip to a verse in the Book of Mormon when looking for something to sooth my soul but that day I felt like I should go to a random page.  After flipping through, I landed in the middle of the book of Psalms in the Old Testament.  After a few verses into Psalm 66, I was crying again.  "I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue...Verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer.  Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me."  One of the worst summers of my life actually led me to one of the most spiritual experiences I have ever had.  I knew that God was there, that he heard me, that he listened to me, that he was aware of my situation, and that he wanted me to succeed.

I am especially grateful during this Easter season that I have a Savior who not only knows of my situation but knows exactly what it is like to be in my shoes.  Christ is not a sympathetic observer of our lives; he is an empathetic participant.  If we rely on Him, He will carry us through our hard times and help us to overcome anything that stands in our way of true happiness.

The last few weeks have been rough.  Things never seem to go the way we plan.  People say bad and unfair things about us behind our backs.  People's lives are turned upside down by tragedy.  The world is a scary place.  But I know that, through it all, God is there.  Bad things will eventually turn into good.  The sour will become sweet.  Trials can be overcome and we will be better and stronger people as a result.

Highway 1

Sara, Katy, and I decided a couple of months ago that we needed to just take a breather from life for a couple of days.  We thought it would be fun to stay at a hostel for a night while we explored up and down the coastline a little bit.  We concluded that the hostel at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, about an hour and a half away, was our best bet so we made our reservations for this past weekend.  We had a very loose itinerary for the trip so if we saw something on the side of the road that we wanted to check out, we could do it and not have to fight time.

The first thing we spotted was a group of greenhouses near Half Moon Bay that had a sign that read, "Carnivorous Plants."  You can't see a sign like that and not stop and take a look.  Katy bought a couple of succulents from one of the other greenhouses dedicated to less violent flora and then we were on our way again!

Around noon, we saw an English pub on the side of the road and thought that it was high time to have some lunch.  Katy said that the views along the California coast reminded her of her time in the British Isles so it seemed appropriate.

It's an inside joke but Katy finally found her amputee!

Because I'm a sucker for a good landscape, we stopped a couple of times along the side of the road just to take pictures of the yellow flowers and the green grass and the blue sea.  I may have let out a few sighs of contentment and some potentially annoying exclamations of "It's so pretty!" throughout the whole drive. But I just couldn't contain myself!  It was so beautiful!

Our next stop was actually on our itinerary.  In Pescadero, there is a little goat farm called Harley Farms. First of all, Pescadero is a very picturesque little coastal town that was established in 1856 so it appealed to both my historical and romantic sensibilities.  And despite my professed dislike for animals, I actually get ridiculously excited when I see miniature versions of larger beasts.  So as you can imagine, my tender heart may have thumped a bit more than usual when I saw a sign saying that there were over 150 baby goats at Harley Farms that day.  And the three of us are big fans of goat cheese and bread so we made sure to stop into the little Harley Farms shop to try some samples.

I tried to be friends with this donkey but he...didn't really react to my supplications.

The adult goats.

And the cute little baby goats!

Just down the road in Pescadero was the Pie Ranch.  While the establishment definitely has some political views we don't agree with, I can't really fault their pies in any way.

It started to rain a little bit so we took shelter under these awesome trees.

Around 3:30, we checked in at the hostel and walked around the lighthouse and down onto the beach called Whaler's Cove.  My phone ran out of battery just before we went down to the beach so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was beautiful.  There were some sea anemones down on the rocks and a couple of cave-like areas to explore.

If you look closely, you can see some seals laying on the rocks.

I accidentally photographed this seagull several times.  No offense to the seagull but this is probably its best angle ;).

Such a beautiful place!

It was both slightly rainy and sunny so there was almost a constant rainbow all day.

We ate dinner in downtown Pescadero, picked up some bread and goat cheese for breakfast the next morning, and then drove along the coast while the sun was setting.  We stopped in the small city of Davenport, California for dessert before turning around and heading back to the hostel to bunk for the night.  We were in a six-person bedroom but no one else had checked in as of yet.  We got ready for bed and then played my historical trivia game for a couple of hours until a couple of other women checked into the room and spoiled our fun.  How dare they! ;)

I'm not sure if any of us slept very well.  I struggle with insomnia anyway but staying in a strange place aggravates my already less than healthy relationship with sleep.  I was still awake a couple of hours after everyone else had fallen asleep and got to hear Sara wake up and freak out because she couldn't remember where she was.  HAHAHAHAHA!  The ladies in the room that we didn't know treated poor Sara like a child after that.  ("It's okay, sweetie.  Did you have a bad dream?")  I finally fell asleep around 1:30 and maybe got four hours of shuteye before I woke up for no reason at 5:30.  I waited for everyone else to wake up and then we got ready to go back home.  We checked out of our room and then ate our breakfast overlooking the ocean.  I could get used to waking up to that view!

It was a great little trip and it reinforced my belief that the California coast rivals some of the prettiest places in the world.  I love my home state!

Childhood Reminiscing Session #6: Grounded

My parents had specifically told us that day not to leave the safety of Stillwater Court.  Most of the time we were content to ride our bikes up and down the street and hang out with the numerous children that shared the cul-de-sac with us.  But since we had been expressly forbidden not to venture outside of our street's boundaries, curiosity overcame us and we crossed the threshold into the unknown. 

The next street over really wasn't that exciting.  My brother had an early morning paper route that we occasionally helped with and we found that the scenery was far less mysterious in the sunlight than it was during the wee hours of the morning.  After doing our due diligence exploring, we returned to the familiar sights of Stillwater Court only to find that during that seemingly short time we had been away, Mom had, of course, noticed we were not where we had promised we would be. 

We were immediately ushered into the house and told we were grounded.  We were not to go outside and play but to spend the rest of the afternoon in our room. We protested.  We tried to explain that the next street over was boring and that there were no scary people about.  But Mom and Dad were deaf to our explanations.  They simply stated that our innocent fun could have resulted in one or all of us getting lost or stolen away.  We needed to learn that when we break the rules, we have to accept the consequences that come with our actions.

So we grumbled.  We stared wistfully out the window into the sun-filled backyard.  We heard the sounds of our neighbors splashing away in their pool next-door.  We felt the full weight of our actions.  We were sorry that we had given up our freedom for a few moments of fun.

As our eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bedroom, we began to look at our surroundings a little more.  Our blankets were strewn across our beds.  Our dolls were on the floor.  Brittany picked up one of the blankets, Brigitte found some hair things, I found some heavy books, and brilliant ideas began pouring into our minds.  An hour later, we finished building our three-room fort, fully equipped with beds (made out of towels) for our dolls and fake furniture made out of whatever random objects we could find.  We had made the ultimate doll house and we had a ridiculous amount of fun playing inside of it.

We had discovered how to make the most of a difficult situation.  Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. Though we missed the warmth of the sunlight and the opportunity to see our friends that day, being cooped up indoors gave way to ingenuity and creativity.  We learned that with a brain, a little hard work, and determination we could turn the darkness into light.  Our punishment turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  And Mom realized she might need to change her methods of punishment for the future ;).

(DISCLAIMER:  I write my Childhood Reminiscing Sessions in a lighthearted, slightly sarcastic tone but I actually just realized after finishing this that there are some gospel parallels and life lessons to be gleaned from this story.  Feel free to make whatever allegorical assumptions you so choose ;).)

The City by the Bay

Living near San Francisco makes for some fun weekends.  My friend Jen, who was my roommate for two years in college, came to visit me this past weekend which gave me another opportunity to explore the city a little more.

Day 1: Since there were protests planned for Friday morning that would disrupt BART, Mom and I drove to the San Francisco Airport to pick Jen up.  We then went to Town's End Restaurant and Bakery.  I had never been there before but I wanted eat at a place that was near our first stop, AT&T Park.  It was a really good breakfast!  I would definitely go there again to try their waffles! Mom drove back to Walnut Creek for work and we walked over to AT&T Park where we took a tour of the Giants' stadium.  My junior-year history class toured the stadium for a field trip in high school but I thought it would be fun for Jen to see it since she loves baseball.

Obviously I throw just like Willie Mays.

The view from the Tony Bennett suite.

The view from the Tony Bennett suite.

The visitor's dug out.

Getting the call.

On the field.

On the field.

Charlie Brown is a Giants fan. :)

After the tour, we started the LONG walk along the Embarcadero to Pier 39.  My feet are still recovering from that walk but it was worth it.  We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch/dinner and bought a necessary bag of salt water taffy.

We got a good view of the Bay Bridge on our walk.

Alcatraz looking eerie through the fog.

Sea lions at Pier 39!

Part of the plan was to go to Ghirardelli Square but we were kind of tuckered out from our long walk and felt our efforts would be best exerted in the walk to the BART station (which, luckily, had reopened by the time we got to it).

Day 2: A couple of weeks ago, I got tickets for us to go see Alcatraz!  Even though I have lived in the Bay Area all of my life (except for my college years, of course), I had never actually been there before.  We got to the boarding zone a little early so we had some time to kill before we got on the ferry.  We went into the arcade where a scene from the movie the Princess Diaries was filmed.

"He looks like Rupert's cousin from Liechtenstein."

Then we meandered on over to the pier where you board for Alcatraz Cruises.  It was really fun and interesting to get to know the history of the island and to visit the place where the likes of Al Capone and the Birdman were imprisoned.

On the ferry.  The Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz are in the distance.

Arriving at Alcatraz!

Getting ready to start our tour!

If I remember correctly, this was kind of the recreation building for workers at the prison and their families.

Alcatraz went through a period called the "Indian Occupation" following the closure of the island as a prison.  The graffiti on the water tower is from that period.

The first corridor of prison cells.

It would have been insane to be locked up in one of these for any space of time!

The recreation area.

Alcatraz has great views of the San Francisco Bay.  One of the prisoners said it was awful to feel so close yet still so far from regular society.

Some of the famous prisoners.  Al Capone is on the far left.  The Birdman is the third from the right.

View of the San Francisco skyline from Alcatraz.

One of the paper-mache heads that three prisoners who escaped Alcatraz used to fool prison guards into thinking they were in their cells.  The prisoners' bodies were never found so they either made it to shore and to freedom or they drowned.  The case is still under investigation.

We then boarded the ferry to get back to the mainland.  Our next order of business was Lombard Street.

Driving down Lombard Street.

We then headed up the steep streets of San Francisco to Grandview Park.  I love that place!

My friend Katy suggested we go see the vintage paper fair in Golden Gate Park.  There were a lot of really cool vintage advertisements.  This one reminded me of you, Shelley!

We made it to the Sutro Baths just as the sun was setting.  The cave and waves coming up through the rocks are just as cool in the dark!

We went across the Golden Gate Bridge on the way back.  I tried to take pictures but my camera doesn't take great pictures at night.  We ate at Pieology in Berkeley and then got dessert at the Cream in Walnut Creek.  It was a good but exhausting day.

Day 3 and Day 4: The next couple of days were a little more low key.  We went to church in the morning on Sunday and then the linger longer afterward.  We drove down to Saratoga to attend an Alex Boye fireside.  It was...rowdier than some other firesides I've attended, that's for sure.  We rounded out Jen's trip the next day with some shopping and lunch in Downtown Walnut Creek.  I got a couple of new books (I can't resist sales at Barnes&Noble) and Jen got a couple of really cute shirts at H&M.  It was a fun weekend!

Thanks for coming, Jen, so I could have the opportunity to explore the city some more!