Prayers, Phones, and Self-limitations

My Dear Reader,

As a lifelong Mormon, I have often been encouraged to seek for spiritual guidance on a daily basis, in even the most trivial matters. These spiritual experiences are the foundation of our faith, and we build it scripture by scripture, prayer by prayer.

Even for the little stuff.

Stuff that isn't necessarily in the spiritual category. Stuff, for example, like when things go missing. Even then, I have always been encouraged to get on my knees and pray about it. God knows everything, right? So He knows where I left my keys, or my wallet, or that thing I was supposed to bring to the party. And as Mormons, this is something that we regularly do. And I know so many people who have asked this seemingly trivial question in prayer and have received genuine spiritual guidance that led them to find what they were looking for.

But it never happened to me.

And you might think that it's not really a big deal. And it isn't until it's the end of the school year and you have to either return your graphing calculator to your calculus teacher or forfeit one hundred dollars of your hard-earned college fund.

And when you're running out of time, and you've turned everything in your house upside down trying to find it, and you're crying tears of frustration and failure because one hundred dollars is so much money when you earned it working minimum wage and you were so careful to save it, this becomes a pretty big deal to you.

And, yet, I didn't get my answer. Or any answer, really. Let me tell you, I was not happy to write that check.

But, you know, I told myself to get over it. It didn't break the bank or anything, and once high school was over and I moved on to greater things, I realized that it didn't matter much. Losing one graphing calculator, in the grand scheme of things, was such a small thing, right? Talk about your teenage drama.

And it's not like I didn't have more than my fair share of spiritual experiences. I received answers on all kinds of other things. Big, important things that shaped my life. Experiences so powerful that I could never doubt that they were real, even today. So it didn't effect my faith in God or my dedication to my church, or anything like that.

But it planted a seed in my brain that started to change my opinion about myself.

And I started to think that I was incapable of receiving answers to certain kinds of prayers.

And if that sounds silly to you, you do not understand how many times I prayed for help finding something, full of faith, and got nothing.

Not to mention the doctrine found in D&C 46:11-12 that offered a reasonable explanation to what was happening to me. God gives people certain gifts, and that was just one that I didn't have. No worries, right? I mean, I don't sit around worrying that I don't have the skills to be an Olympic gymnast. Why should I care if I can't do this?

But I probably should have cared, because I stopped trying. I assumed that I was limited, and that there were some things that I just couldn't talk to God about.

And maybe there was a part of me that thought that I was limited because I just wasn't good enough.

I have so many opportunities to feel inadequate, and you know, I tend to take advantage of them.

But one day, after I graduated college and was in desperate need of a job, I lost my phone. Which, at the time, would not have been a great concern to me except I was waiting to hear back from possible employers. This time, I was in a situation where if I didn't find it, I would break the bank.

I looked everywhere for that phone. Everywhere. I had other people pitch in to help me, and I even asked for them to pray to find it. Because that seemed a lot more productive than praying myself.

After two weeks, things were looking pretty bad. Imagine if you were expecting an important phone call and you had to go without your phone for two whole weeks. I almost tore my hair out.

I got desperate enough, in fact, to pray about it. And man, did I pray with feeling on this one. I'm pretty sure I prayed myself to sleep.

One thing I remember very clearly is that I woke up with this unshakeable compulsion to look under things. I just had to do it, just like I would have to take a drink of water if I was dying of thirst in the desert. I could not stop until I had looked under everything in the house. Could. Not. Stop.

I don't have OCD, so I'm not used to compulsions of that magnitude. There was nothing in the world to me except what I needed to do at that moment. And I kind of felt a little crazy, but I also felt this really amazing spiritual connection that told me where this urge was coming from.

And in just a few minutes, that phone was good and found.

Is that one of the lamest spiritual experiences of all time? Possibly. I won't rule it out.

But it's probably one of the most poignant moments of my whole life, because I had found something a lot more important than my phone. I found a piece of myself that I feared could never exist.

And I think that we are all aware, to some point at least, how much other people try to limit us. There's the bully who said that we were stupid. The coach who cut us off the team. The well-meaning friend who told us to move on long before it was time.

But how often do we become aware of the ways in which we limit ourselves?

Do the names we have been called on the playground or in the office really matter as much as the names we call ourselves?

And how many times do we let a small seed get planted in our brain, like a mold spore that multiplies and grows until it causes the decay of our own self worth?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the things that I think I can't do, that I have no hope of ever being good at. Is it really a fair judgement of myself? Or am I letting myself be limited by the pain of the past and the fear of the future?

Because God can do all things. All things. And I am His daughter.

Doesn't it follow that if I continue to endeavor to be like God, at some point, I will be able to do all things?

And I'm starting to think that prayer is about more than just building our faith. I'm starting to think that through prayer, we are building ourselves. With every spiritual experience, we are not just learning what we need to do; we are getting a glimpse into who we really are.

And this is something I really wonder about: when God makes the acorn, He knows that it will grow into the great oak. So when God made me, what did He intend me to become? How great can I grow?

And, yes, in the great scheme of things, maybe finding my phone really isn't such a big deal. But that part of myself I found? Well, I never intend to let that go.

Regards, best wishes, and shattered boundaries,

-Cecily Jane

Books, Books, and more Books

My Dear Reader,

As one of my 2013 New Year resolutions, I decided to read ten classic novels within the course of the year.

It's actually not as challenging as you think, though, because a while ago I started a habit of putting a classic into my shopping cart whenever I found one at a decent price, and now I own somewhere around thirty-five classics that I've never read.

So, you know, creating a habit of reading those classics is probably a good idea.*

And it's not that I don't enjoy classic stories. I really do. I have seen almost every BBC period adaptation that presently exists.

Yes. That many of them.

I even read a lot of classics as a child. Or at least, I thought I did. I had a lot of those children's editions that had a lot of pictures, and it took me way, way too long to realize that they made room for the pictures by taking out all of the depth. I'm still not over the betrayal.

And I do read classics now, just not on a regular basis. As an adult who has finished(?) her schooling, the vast array of books that are considered classics can be a little daunting. Sometimes it's hard to know where to begin. And since reading is a skill that requires practice, and classic books tend to require more skill than others, sometimes it's hard to know which books you're ready for and which ones you need to work up to.

And some of them are just long. Long stories are a challenge all their own.

But life is about challenges, right? Besides, thirty-five unread books on your shelf is a bit embarrassing for a girl like me. I don't keep them around for decoration.

And beyond that, I know from experience that there's a reason that classics are classics. These books get put in this category because one way or another, they're the stories that changed the world. And that means that there's a good chance that they can change me.

I've already read three of my ten required books, so I'm going at a good pace so far. At this point, I need to choose six out of the following:

• The Iliad
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Treasure Island**
• Black Beauty**
• Peter Pan**
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles
• The Sign of the Four
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• Ethan Frome
• The Wind in the Willows**
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz**
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• White Fang
• Vanity Fair
• The House of Mirth
• Moll Flanders
• The Moonstone
• Dracula**
• Little Women
• David Copperfield**
• The Three Musketeers**
• Moby-Dick
• Wuthering Heights
• A Tale of Two Cities**
• Anna Karenina
• War and Peace
• Middlemarch**
• Little Dorrit**
• The Rise of Silas Lapham
• Lord Jim
• A Passage to India
• The Pit
• Hard Times
• The Big Sleep
• Bhagavad-Gita 
• And probably more that are in storage somewhere. I really need a new bookcase.

Why only six, you ask? Well, I decided that one of the books has to be Atlas Shrugged. That's why I need the extra two months.

So yeah, I've got my work cut out for me, don't I?

Regards, best wishes and wish me luck,

-Cecily Jane

*Besides, I already read so much dystopian fiction that they can't print books fast enough to keep up with my demand. It's only fair to give the genre a break.

**These are books that I read a watered-down version of, I half-finished, or I read so long ago that I barely remember them. And a lot of them are books that were assigned reading at some point, but let's just skip over that part.

Cecily vs. Girl World

My Dear Reader,

Most girls don't like me.

Mind you, this is not an emotional conclusion; it's a logical one. I have always struggled to have friends of my own gender, but as a kid, being friends with girls means playing Barbies, and Barbies were boring. Climbing on top of the roof and reading the most recent Baby Sitters Club book was, in my young opinion, a much better way to spend an afternoon.

Oh, right. Most girls don't like me because I'm really weird. Darn.

But when you're seven years old, climbing on the roof was the most exciting thing that you could do, so I did it regularly. I also liked climbing really tall trees. Trees were better, actually, because the roof gets really hot in the summer Sacramento sun. Just so you know.

And I liked doing other exciting things, like riding my bike down the steep hill as fast as I could. Or catching bugs.* Or pretending to be a super hero. And while I was occasionally able to find girls who would come with me on my adventures, they usually didn't stick around for very long. So I had a lot of guy friends, and I got labeled a nerd and a tomboy, and it really didn't bother me much. I figured that the girly girls were just missing out.

As an adult, I know that I missed out on things, too. I still know hardly anything about makeup, clothes, or flirting, and I'm just starting to realize how that affects my (lack of) romantic life. Instead of seducing men with feminine wiles(?), I try to be comfortable and honest with them, which is apparently the worst dating strategy there is. There's also the part where I am super awkward and treat the guys I like as if they don't exist. I'm sure that's not helpful. My guy friends definitely failed to prepare me for that aspect of my life.

And while you would think that a life-long study of several prominent areas of geekdom and a long association with male geeks would come handy in the dating department, it does not. Geeky guys, in my experience, do not like geeky girls unless a) the geek girl is so deep in the geek closet that only he knows her level of geekery, or b) there are no other alternatives.** And there comes a point where if they don't want to date you, they don't really care to be friends with you, either.

So yeah. There were some drawbacks there.

It took a long time for me to develop friendships with women that were actually healthy. Like, where I didn't feel like some charity case. I was in my twenties before I was able to find other girls who were as interested in deep conversations and grand adventures as I am. And sure, I'm still weird. I'm the strangest person I know, really. But it turns out that when you grow up, you're able to find people who actually appreciate that. It turns out that every once in a while, you're not on the outside looking in.

And, believe it or not, the older I get, the more I start to think that certain feminine traits aren't really so bad.

Don't get me wrong; I still skip the boring stuff. I've never been the kind of girl who fits easily into any kind of box. And sure, that means that a lot of girls still don't like me. But some of them do, and I am so grateful for that. I'm grateful for the women in my life who understand that I do my own thing. And I'm grateful that I'm able to understand that they do theirs.

Understanding can be its own kind of adventure.

Regards, best wishes, and sappiness,

-Cecily Jane

*I was one of the best bug catchers the second grade has ever seen. Believe it.

**It's a sad reality. All of my fantasies about Star Trek date nights have been dashed to pieces. All of the time I spent watching every single episode and movie has apparently been a huge waste of time.

Wait, no it's not. Star Trek is awesome.

Dating and Dollar Bills

My Dear Reader,

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about an address given by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf in April 2010, entitled “You Are My Hands.” One part in particular sticks out to me:

"One woman who had been through years of trial and sorrow said through her tears, 'I have come to realize that I am like an old twenty-dollar bill—crumpled, torn, dirty, abused, and scarred. But I am still a twenty-dollar bill. I am worth something. Even though I may not look like much and even though I have been battered and used, I am still worth the full twenty dollars.'"

As I consider that quote, I couldn’t help but think that there have been so many times in my life when I’ve wanted to shout a similar message to the world. I’ve just wanted to take out a megaphone and say, at full volume, “I am worth something! I am battered and worn, but I am worth something!”

And let me tell you, nothing in my life makes me want to shout that more than the decade or so that I’ve spent in and out of the dating scene. But I’m not alone in this. I know too many people who have, like me, gone through some trials in life. Sometimes these trials leave scars that we try desperately to hide, but all of the storms we’ve weathered have made us stronger. And what is so incredibly frustrating is that when it comes to dating, people ignore the strength and fixate on the scars.

So, for today, I’d like to riff off of the ideas in that quote for a bit by telling you a story I just made up.

On a nice, spring morning, I walk into a store. After a few minutes of thoughtful browsing, I pick up a book and bring it to the cashier to pay for it. When the cashier informs me that the total due is twenty dollars, I pull out that crumpled and worn twenty-dollar bill and place it on the counter. I see the cashier’s face twist into an expression of disgust as he picks up my bill between his thumb and forefinger as if any more physical contact would be bad for his health.

“This isn’t enough,” he says.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“This bill is obviously used, and who knows where it’s been. You’ll need more if you want to buy the book.”

“But,” I politely counter, “it’s still a twenty-dollar bill. It’s worth just as much as any other twenty would be.”

“Really?” He sneers at me. “Says who?”

“The Government of the United States of America.”

“Oh,” he waves a hand in the air as if to dismiss the notion, “them.”

Before I can say another word, the cashier rummages around behind the counter, eventually producing a rubber ball attached to a wooden paddle.

“Here,” he says, beaming with pride, “your ugly twenty-dollar bill can buy this.”

It’s all I can do to stare at the man in stupefied confusion. How can he think that a paddle ball would be an apt substitution for the book I want? I didn’t just grab the book on a whim because I thought it might look good on my shelf. I chose that book because I read the back of the cover, flipped through the pages, and came to the conclusion that the book might do me good. How can a paddle ball even compare?

“Just out of curiosity,” I finally say, “how much would that cost if I had a clean, crisp bill?”

“One dollar,” he answers.

And that’s the point where I just get mad. How can this cashier think that a crisp one-dollar bill was worth as much as my battered twenty-dollar bill? Doesn’t he know that I could go to any bank in the country and easily get that ragged bill exchanged for a new one?

And for one, brief moment, I almost want to do just that. I want to leave the store and come back with exactly what he thinks he wants, just to show him that I can.

But then I regain my senses, and I realize how childish I’m being. I don’t need to take this! I earned that twenty dollars with my own sweat and tears, dime by dime, and there is no way that I’m going to hand it over for something I could get at the fair for free.  I know what it’s worth, even if this pompous idiot doesn’t. If I give him what he wants, isn’t that the same as saying that my bill is worthless?

So, instead, I walk out of the store.

There are other stores out there, and other cashiers who have at least a rudimentary understanding of how currency works. I’ll find one of those. Maybe they won’t have the same book, but at least they’ll take my money for what it’s worth. Maybe they’ll even have something I like better. I won’t know until I try.


And that, my Dear Reader, is kind of how I feel like the dating world is sometimes. Sometimes, you just want to stand on your soap box and tell the world that even though you may not look like much, and even though you have been battered and used, you're actually better for it. You're not a soldier who earned badges sitting behind a desk; you've been out there in the field and you have the scars and muscles to prove it.

If only other people saw it that way.

Oh, well. You and I, Dear Reader, know better than that. We know that we are too valuable to give away what is precious to us to those who don't understand our worth. Because, really, that would be self-betrayal, wouldn't it?

Regards, best wishes, and people who see the strength inside of you,

-Cecily Jane

How to Poison Yourself: A Guide

My Dear Reader,

I know that I always say this, but sorry about the lack of recent posts. I've been trying to get back to my previous reliability, but I'm not there yet. Mostly because I really have not been up for writing lately.

And I haven't been up for writing because I've felt really, really awful.

I mean, I've just felt absolutely lousy. I've had horrible headaches and nausea with varying degrees of intensity, but mostly I've been drained all of my energy to the point where I wanted to do nothing but watch the entire series of Wings from start to finish.

Which I did.

And the funny thing was that for the majority of this period, I knew that I wasn't sick. I would occasionally feel fine, and then later the same day, go back to feeling like my brain was trying to escape through my ears. And really, when you already feel drained, and then you have to lead a normal life as if you weren't, you don't have the energy to try to figure out what's wrong. You just go to the internet and say, "Entertain me, for I am too tired to think."

Which, of course, means that I wasn't paying much attention to my health as much as I was just trying to get through another day.

I'm sure you're familiar with the idiom of putting something on the back burner. My life, especially now, seems like a stove with thousands of burners, each simmering one concoction or another. This stove contains everything I'm trying to work on, creatively, spiritually, financially, professionally, personally, psychologically, and so on. I'm trying to turn into an insurance agent, but I'm also trying to pay my bills, learn to play the ukulele, make new friends, train for a 5K, grow and sell flowers, edit a novel, write three other novels, keep in touch with my friends, do my laundry, read, deepen my commitment to my faith, eat, and about a million other things. All of them are contained in a pot on that metaphorical stove I've got. Unfortunately, all of these things require my attention, and it's hard to stir more than two pots at once. So some of them get neglected for a while.

But I'm not always the best at choosing which pot to stir when. The "watching Wings" pot, for example, has obviously gotten more than its fair share of attention lately, while my laundry pot hardly ever actually manages to get stirred.

And while in real life, pots on a stove are separate and contained, many of my metaphorical pots are connected. I want to pay my bills, so I've been growing marigolds on my windowsill* with the hope of selling them to make some extra cash. But growing things really needs a burner of its own, right? Because I have to figure out the how, what, when, and where of it. And I have to make sure that they stay alive.

I'm telling you; it's hard enough to keep myself alive these days.

And sometimes, these pots on all these burners have connections that you don't even realize until it almost destroys you.

For example, I had several ideas as to why my head and my stomach were staging a revolt, most of them involving a brain tumor. But it wasn't until last week that I had enough spare brain matter to realize that:

1. My symptoms were the worst during the early morning and late at night

2. These are the times when I'm usually in my room, or specifically, in bed

3. I happened to be growing dozens of marigolds on a windowsill right by my bed

4. Marigolds are a common allergen

Therefore:

5. I'm probably allergic to marigolds.

And:

6. If I wasn't aware that I had a marigold allergy, and the marigolds were developing slowly enough that it was hard to notice the gradual deterioration of my sanity, it could create a very uncomfortable situation.

I can tell you, it's weird when you realize that you have been accidentally poisoning yourself. I'm still not sure what to make of it. But I am sure that:

1. My health should probably be on one of the from burners

2. Those marigolds need to go on a different burner altogether. One that is not so close to my respiratory system.

Once that is taken care of, I'm hoping I'll have some energy to stir my other pots. Like the one for my blog posts.

Darn marigolds!

Regards, best wishes, and a breath of fresh air,

-Cecily Jane

*If you're curious, I'm pretty much doing the thing I wrote about here. Except this time, it's working, because I remember to water them.I know, right?