11/21/2012

{Great Wall of China - May 2012}

Journal entry - 11/21/2012:

''...As always I have so much to be grateful for. I'm so grateful that I get to spend Thanksgiving with both of my siblings and so many of my extended family members. I'm finishing up school next semester. My graduation date is set and even though the end is in sight, I think the mountain I have to climb to get there will be the tallest, toughest, and maybe even (in some ways) the loneliest of all.

6 years of school straight is a long time to get an undergrad. Two more years than I planned or even wanted to. I could have been getting my Masters during this time... clearly that was not the greater plan.

But in the past two years I have been tested and I have been stretched and have I developed some of the greater qualities of my personality and character. I have also been blessed with the time to nurture and learn from relationships and friendships that have come to mean the most to me in the past couple of years... [I would never have met a couple of people that have become closest to me] ...And mine and Kacee's friendship would not have grown the way it has if we hadn't experienced some of the adventures and trials we've had together. 

In the past whenever things got hard I would have this insanely overwhelming desire and need to get out, escape, run away, and leave it all behind me. I would literally get in my car and start driving and I wouldn't want to stop or turn around. Heavenly Father knows best. Obviously I know that, but it's so humbling to see his hand so intimately working in my life. His fingerprints have marked every part of this journey, especially through college.

I'm excited to see what things are up ahead, because even as I remember the lowest of lows and the best of the best, I am filled with gratitude for all of it. I know without a doubt that I have been where I've needed to be. Not only do I know that I'm where I need to be, I'm where I want to be. That is a huge mark of how far I've come emotionally and spiritually..."


I'm climbing that mountain. 
And it is a climb.
It's everything I thought it would be and at the same time not what I expected at all.
But I'm grateful for the things I've come across on the path and I'm pretty excited for the things up ahead. 

Come what may and love it, right?

I've figured it out...

... I'm a really bad blogger because I kick butt at writing in my journal.

Seriously.

I can fill up an average size journal (about 250 pages) in no more than four months. I've been writing in journals since I can remember. I can remember my first journal from when I was about 4 years old: it was this Lisa Frank journal with a lock on it. Don't know what Lisa Frank's designs look like? You must not be a child of the 90's. Let me give you an idea.

(notice that gypsy pig fortune teller one? What in the world...)

I promise have better taste now. 

I write in a lot of detail in my own journal and don't have the energy most days to re-create another entry for the blog.

So here's what I'm going to do. I have a few of my journals from the past 10 years of my life with me here in Logan. At least once a week I'll post an entry from one of my journals (names will be changed to protect the innocent, and maybe not so innocent...). And of course I'll try to keep up on the most recent happenings of my life, because there have been a lot. Good, bad, definitely ugly, and definitely hilarious... Like getting trapped in a bathroom stall because someone parked one of those handicapped cruisers right up against the door of the stall I was in. Not cool. 

We'll see how this works out for the next little while. This could be really funny or really bad. Ha.