Make a Difference;

{It was my senior year at lunch time. I was with my two best friends cruising on main after eating some deliciously greasy and fatty burritos. One of my friends was venting about her old boyfriend and what he had done to her that week to make her upset. As good friends do, my friend and I replied with comments like:

"Oh yeah, he's so stupid."

"He said that? What a jerk!"

"Oh my gosh boys are so dumb."

Somewhere in the midst of our conversation, we pulled back into the high school parking lot and came up with a terrible idea. We would take our garbage from our greasy lunch and put it on the ground by the crappy boyfriend's car so that he wouldn't be able to get into his car without tripping over a pile of trash. 

At the time, we thought that we had concocted a genius plan.

Who would of thought that years down the road, I would never feel more guilty about anything in my entire life!}

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In honor of EARTH DAY/WEEK, I decided to write a post about the thing I'm most passionate about; environmentalism! 

Now you may be thinking... oh great, a tree hugger... I don't want to get involved in this. 

Believe me, I've been in that position! I used to think it was a silly waste of time and caught myself rolling my eyes when someone brought up recycling or highway cleanup. However, I feel that most people are simply unaware of how environmentalism directly effects YOU. After taking an energy class at USU, I was not only interested in going green, but it turned into something that would be a new hobby and passion! 

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It's so incredibly easy to participate in Going Green! The smallest things matter! 

Coca-Cola website said, "Throwing a can into a recycling bin may feel like a small act—but if everyone in the U.S. did the same; we’d save enough energy to power a dazzling 16,916 bulbs continuously for a whole year."

Here are some of my most favorite ways to make a difference:

• RECYCLE... holy cow it's so easy. Just do it! It makes a huge difference!
• Pick up trash on your walk home, while you're at a park, walking around campus, hiking etc. 
• DO NOT.. I repeat DO NOT spit your gum out on the ground! Ah! People don't realize this is LITTERING! Gum won't decompose over time. The sidewalk will begin to have black dots everywhere. (You've seen this before.)
• Invest in a reusable bag! They're super cheap and save you from a cupboard full of plastic bags.
• RECYCLE your cupboard full of plastic bags! You can do this at most grocery stores. 
• Stop idling! The DailyGreen.com says: "Every moment you spend idling your car's engine means needlessly wasting gas, as well as rougher wear on your vehicle. Idling for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than is needed for startup. Overall, Americans idle away 2.9 billion gallons of gas a year, worth around $78.2 billion."
• Turn off your computer! You can save up to $90 a year just by turning your computer off after using it.
• Plant a tree! It's actually really fun. My best friend and I planted a tree at our high school our senior year and we go back to check on it regularly. 
• Most importantly...STAY INFORMED. So many people are just completely unaware of what they can do/are doing that make a big difference for good/bad. Stay up-to-date and have an open mind. 

Finally I want to share one of my FAVORITE websites about recycling. 

This website lets you calculate the amount of energy you can save from each product you recycle! It's a neat way to see how you, individually, can make a difference. There are also a lot of great facts and ideas throughout the website that are really interesting and fun!

Check it out!: Coca Cola Recyclometer

 I know that finding something that I am so passionate about has really helped me move closer to becoming the best version of myself! It has helped me feel like I am making a difference in not only the community, but in the world. By going green and informing people on the changes they can make, it makes me feel like I have something I can offer to the world!

Make a difference!

Wake Up & Live!

Time to Heal;

So... last night my iTunes deleted ALL of my music and playlists.

If anyone knows me really well they know that is one of the WORST things that could happen to me!!

I have a playlist for literally every mood I could possibly be in.

Because all of my playlists got deleted, I am starting from scratch. This reminded me on my efforts to be my best self.

Sometimes you have to literally start from scratch to get where you want to be. There will be hard times and easy times and tender mercies throughout. One tender mercy in regards to my music was that all of my files were saved, so I just need to download my music back onto my iTunes.

See? Tender mercy #1.

So for today's I want to express how thankful I am for good music.

In difficult times, music is a great way to relate others' troubles and triumphs to our own lives.

Music is a perfect way of not only connecting with yourself, but others around you too. In fact I'm quite certain that good music brought my boyfriend and I together! And that's worked out for about four years now!

I've put together a small (my idea of small) list of songs that I believe everyone should know and listen to often because of their healing properties.

These are some of my most favorite treasures:

Don't Know Why -- Norah Jones

Josh McBride -- The Head and The Heart

The World Spins Madly On -- The Weepies

Patron Saint -- Regina Spektor

Rocketman -- Elton John

Danny's Song -- Anne Murray

River's and Roads -- The Head and The Heart

Wonderwall -- Ryan Adams

Such Great Heights -- The Postal Service

A Lack of Color -- Death Cab for Cutie

Free Fallin' -- John Mayer

Ghosts -- Laura Marling

When You Were Young -- Benjamin Frances Leftwich

Hallelujah -- Jeff Buckley 

Let it Be -- The Beatles 
Seat Beside Me -- The Head and The Heart

Upward Over the Mountain -- Iron and Wine

Landslide -- Fleetwood Mac

Wake Up -- Arcade Fire

Chasing Rubies -- Hudson Taylor

Lovers' Eyes -- Mumford & Sons

The Way I Am -- Ingrid Michaelson

Samson -- Regina Spektor

Down in the Valley -- The Head and The Heart

Comes and Goes -- Greg Laswell

Welcome Home -- Radical Face

Won't Turn Back -- Needtobreathe

Gosh. There's so more I could mention than that.. but I will stop! 

I am extremely interested in hearing your favorite songs that mean something to you!

Feel free to share by leaving a comment! I promise I will listen to every/any song that gets posted.

Wake up & Live!

A Little Touch of Heaven;

This week has had it's fair share of up's and down's. Nothing in life is perfect or goes exactly the way you were expecting it. (I should know this by now.) However if there is one thing that has really helped me this week it's been the Gospel. 

The past couple of years have really been a struggle for me spiritually. 

I will throw it back to my Senior Year in high school: young, naive and not a clue what I wanted out of life. 

My senior year is a specific year that stands out to me of when I was the most in tune with the Spirit. I attended seminary, young women's, went to mutual and even read my scriptures daily. I loved to be at church and share what I knew to be true with my friends and family. I attended the temple regularly and even was on a stake committee. Life seemed incredibly easy because I had an eternal perspective that everything was going to be okay and work out. I had such a strong testimony and felt bulletproof against any trials. 

While trying to decide where to apply to colleges, my first thought was to head to BYU-Provo. (Of course.) I had a "boyfriend" on a mission who was headed there when he came back, and I figured I would have an excellent education that was paired with good moral values. While I still applied to other schools, I had decided I would go to BYU to follow in my father's footsteps and carry on the legacy. 

Getting my college acceptance letters was really exciting. It made me feel smart and accomplished and I even was offered scholarships! Unfortunately none of the scholarships were for BYU, but I decided to head there anyways after a long and thought out prayer. However, the summer after graduation presented me with my own trials and I slowly began breaking good habits of reading my scriptures every night. I found that I wasn't do bad things... but I wasn't doing all the really good things that I was doing before out of habit.

Upon arriving in Provo at the end of summer, I found I was completely unprepared for college. I had an extremely hard time making friends and I was away from my family, best friend and new boyfriend. High School work load was nothing compared to the work load of college and I found myself not getting enough sleep or having much motivation for anything. Most importantly I found that even though I was in a school that was immersed by the Gospel, I still felt distant from my Heavenly Father. I was in a Book of Mormon class and although I was learning about the book, I never read it because I wanted to. It turned into a text book that I didn't feel like reading.

Although I was faced with so many trials, I decided to try and make the best of it. Luck found me shortly after when a girl from my dorm named Erin came and knocked on my door. She asked me what I was doing and I had replied that I was watching Grey's Anatomy. (I should mention that I watched all the seasons that were available during this semester for the first time.) Erin asked if she could join and somehow we were instant best friends. I clicked with her and everything was really great. She helped me out of a really depressing time in my life and showed me that I could make friends and enjoy college. She changed the rough course of my life at that time in my life and I don't know how I could ever thank her. 

At this point the only thing that was holding me back was myself. I became prideful and decided that I didn't really need to read my scriptures everyday and it wasn't that big of a deal if I slept through church instead of attending. I found myself forming habits that I would have never dreamed of in high school. I became unhappy with myself and after multiple trials, I decided that I didn't want to be at BYU anymore. My parents were furious and even after talking to my bishop for comfort, they couldn't believe that I wanted to transfer.

After an extremely difficult couple of months, I decided to live with my best friend Hillery and transfer to USU. I had no idea why I wanted to attend USU because it was never on my preferred list of colleges to attend. I hoped for a new start with a comfortable surrounding. I was closer to home and now attending college with my boyfriend Jason. I decided to rededicate myself to the Gospel and signed up for Institute. Life seemed like it was going swell.

It didn't take long to find myself in bad habits again and swallowed up by pride. I found that I was so preoccupied with temporal things making me happy instead of wanting to go to church, reading my scriptures or personal prayer. I'm sad to say that this has continued for over a year now. Although I knew that the church is true, I had a really hard time staying motivated to do the things that I knew I should be doing. Unfortunately pride is a terrible source of pain and teaches a nasty lesson.

However someone once said, "It will all be okay in the end, if it's not okay; it's not the end."

This semester however has been completely different. Once you find yourself at the lowest of low, you realize that you can't do it without God, or at least that's how I felt. I am now in a fantastic ward with an amazing bishop. I find that I love to go to church each week and learn. I picked up my Book of Mormon for the first time in long time and decided to commit to it. (I have read every night since and hope to finish by the 4th of July.) I find myself in the midst of tender mercies on a daily basis and prayer isn't so difficult anymore. I even bore my testimony on Easter Sunday for the first time since  high school graduation. I have really come a long way. 

I began this blog as a way to keep track of the changes that I am making in my life to become the best version of myself. I think I would be completely ungrateful and untrue to myself if I didn't include my spiritual life as part of those positive changes. I didn't write this post to be boastful; I still have a long way to go... but I posted it because I am hopeful that better things are to come for my future because of the choices that I am making now. I am so thankful for a Father in Heaven who never turns His back on me even when I walk away from Him. 

I encourage anyone who is reading this that's having a hard time, to hold on. 

To persevere. 

To commit. 

There are good things to come. 

(Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nczw6xHJ0I)

Heavenly Father is so completely mindful of each of us. Everything that we go through, we go through for a reason and for growth. I wouldn't take back my years of trials for anything. They have taught me more than I could ever imagine. I know now that He was with me all along but I was too stubborn to ask for help. The entire point of this life is to Come Unto Christ. However we find Christ in this life is eternally significant to our happiness. 

We all find Him differently, with completely different backgrounds and stories, but the point is that we find Him. 

I am eternally grateful for my personal Savior, Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifices he made specifically for me. 

(Watch this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOf2gC-dm-0)

This song is particularly special to me at the moment. 

My favorite versus are 2 & 3. They read: 

 "Come unto Jesus; He'll ever heed you. Though in the darkness you've gone astray. His love will find you and gently lead you, from darkest night into day.

Come unto Jesus; he'll surely hear you, if you in meekness plead for his love. Oh, know you not that angels are near you from brightest mansions above?"

Wake up & Live! 

Or as a good friend once said, Look to God, and live!