Currently

Doing:  driving home from North Dakota

Looking at:  wide open spaces.  It's Wyoming.  The sunset is nice though.

Listening to:  Don't Stop Believing Glee cast version.  Haha remember when my VHS mads tried to sing that song?!  HA!!  

Eating:  nothing.  Starving.  

Feeling:  pain.  In my booty.  Tired bum, anyone?  

Wishing:  I had a large plate of fresh fruit in front of me.  

Wanting:  that boy to text me.  

Needing:  to lose a good 10ish pounds before by best friends wedding in August.  

Loving:  that new nephew of mine, holding my momma's hand WHEREever we go, the fact that several of my art pieces have sold in a boutique, and Ellie Goulding.  

Despising:  tired bum. 

Learning:  my soul.

Okay!  Well that about sums it up as far as currently current goes.  On a more general note, I am living at home for the summer and working for my dad at the mortuary.  I digitalize old pre-need records.  Sometimes I have to do some detective work and find out whether or not someone is still alive or not.  For that I look in a big ol black book of every person who has passed away and used Russon Brothers since the 30's.  Yeah.  It's a pretty cool book.  Along with that I get commissioned to so hand-lettering and watercolor art pieces.  Several of them are on sell at a boutique near my home town.  That's great fun and has brought a lot of satisfaction to me.  I set aside a couple of days of the week to stay caught up on those.  Other than that, I play with my family (Scott and Shandee are living with us until they move into their new home only 5 minutes away!), play with friends, and try to figure out what exactly I am supposed to be doing in this thing we call life.  I am learning more and more about myself everyday and find that so extremely important.  I'm single as ever...trying not to be...but also trying to be patient with the Lord's timing and plan for me.  Several things in the last few months have put me in a weird spot where I beat myself up a lot.  I compare, compare, compare.  I didn't used to be that way and I'm slowly crawlin out of that.  Slowly embracing all of Hannah again and that feels good.  It's all progress isn't it?  If we allow it to be.  

Anyway.  After summer, I'll go back to good ol Utah State University for my LAST year in undergrad!!  Whaaaa???!!  I'm so excited.  Shoot!  I'm running out of time to become a true aggie!!  After graduation????  Well...that's for another post.  Bet you can't wait to hear about that!!  Let's just remember that sometimes our own plans are not the Lord's and He is kind enough to let us know.  A hecka lot of that has been happening in my life this last year and boy, under God's wing is a good place to  be.  Know what I'm sayin?  

Well that's my currently post.  Stay tuned for my post grad school post!!  Woot!  Make it a good day, kids. 

Men and Women Alike...or should I say...Men and Women Different?

I need to get this down while my heart is so full.  I have been thinking about this post for a good while now, knowing that I needed to defend my beliefs, but not knowing exactly what words to use.  I have written, revised, and re-written what I think might be okay to say in order to explain why I believe women do not need to hold the Priesthood.  Let me start by sharing a little experience I had the other day.
Several of my friends and I drove down to Zion's National Park for a fun weekend getaway of enjoying God's good green (and red rock) earth.  We decided to hike the narrows - a hike that is 60% wading through water in a river.  The hike is beautiful, but finding the right footing in the bottom of the rocky/slick river can be pretty difficult.  We young adults slipped and lost our balance multiple times throughout the hike.  After we reached a certain point we turned to head back down to the base of the water hike but found an older woman sitting on the ground with her wrist in the freezing water.  She and her husband were hiking the river when she fell and broke her wrist.  We immediately offered her some ibuprofen and asked what we could do to help.  Her husband was making a sling out of a plastic bag when my cute CNA girl friend whipped out her first aid kit.  I watched as she kindly spoke to the lady and as she gently wrapped her arm in a sling and cushioned her elbow with a towel.  She was one prepared woman!  She nurtured that sweet old lady and provided her care when she needed it.  Half of us then walked further down the river while we waited for the rest of our group to come down with her.  I turned around and watched as my sweet friends formed a safety circle around her:  two of my good strong, guy friends held on to her waist and arms on either side of her as she made her way down those slippery rocks.  Imagine the comfort she felt knowing that if she did misstep, those good young men would be there to protect and stabilize her and not let her fall yet again.  I was so  overwhelmed with gratitude for those good boys who would be tender enough to offer this woman, a complete stranger, their strength when she needed it.  My mind immediately went to the Priesthood.  The Priesthood of God is never about benefitting and blessing ourselves.  Anyone who is benefitted from this power of God is benefitted at the hand of another.  The Priesthood is not about woman being "strong" or "prepared" enough as men.   It is not about women earning more responsibility and being promoted.   It is about blessing the lives of others.  The other girls on the scene at the hike were not competing or thinking they should be the ones holding on to the woman going down the river.  Everyone's priority was simply to get the woman the help she needed - everyone's individual gifts and abilities involved.  Woman with her preparedness and nurturing abilities.  Men with their strength, sense of duty, and willingness to help.
 The priesthood is about serving others and we women offer other gifts and ways to serve others that men do not.  God given gifts and abilities.  But besides that, it's not a competition.  Nothing about this gospel is a competition.  Our true competition is against sin.  And ALL men and women alike, high status or low, prophet or nursery leader have been drafted to fight in that competition.  I support my Priesthood holders.  I love watching the young boys pass the sacrament and serve us.  I love feeling the protection of a humble man of God righteously using this gift.  Yes it is a privilege for these men to hold the Priesthood, but I consider it an extreme privilege to be the recipient of the blessings that come from supporting and watching and encouraging the practice of Priesthood authority and ordinances -  even if I am not ordained as a Priesthood holder myself.  They are not the Priesthood.  They hold it, yes.  But it is God's power and we honor Him and His designs.
Despite "the need to be needed" (that everyone innately has) and my personal desire to give all that I can to this gospel, I do not feel inferior and discriminated against.  I do not feel that I am less needed because I don't hold the Priesthood.  Why?  This is what it comes down to:  I know my Savior Jesus Christ.  I have a good enough relationship with Him to know that He is not a being to oppress, discriminate or be unfair in any way.  He suffered for the very cause of justice.  I encourage, no plea with, you to come to know Him as well.  Come to know of His love.  Faithfully seek for answers of truth, not for answers of power and validation.  Come to know of your value to Him.
What are each of our priorities?  To be recognized with certain authorities?  To be considered equal?  To have numbers and statistics be exactly matched?  Those are not Christ's priorities.  Just like with my friends and the woman who broke her wrist - their priority being her comfort - Christ's priorities are each one of us.  People matter.  Not status or title.  The building of God's kingdom, requiring all of us men and women alike (or should I say different), should be our priority as well.   The perfecting of the saints - everyone's individual gifts and abilities involved.  It comes down to each of us becoming more like our Savior and preparing to meet Him again.  It is about helping each other get there as well by practicing the pure love of Christ.
I love the Priesthood of God.  I love watching my sweet male friends honor it and honor God - they seem to glow with the future godliness inside of them.  I stand by them.  I support them and offer the individual gifts all of us women can give as well.  I support the prophet and his counselors.  They are called of God.  They are His mouthpieces and I will crawl to follow them.   Joseph Smith was not just ahead of his time (a time when woman's rankings were just above prisoners) when he gave women places in the church, when his wife Emma was commanded by personal revelation to help in the building of Christ's church.  It was necessary and prophetic.  We pray and speak and expand scriptures.  We serve missions, we work in the temple, we create human beings, we kiss scraped knees, and wrap broken wrists.  Does this sound like a church that oppresses women?  Does this sound like a church that holds women back? (See Sherri Dew's "What Do LDS Women Get?" video HERE). No.  Not to me.
God has His own agenda, and if women were ever to receive the Priesthood, and I firmly believe that will not happen in this earth life, it wouldnt be because the human race petitioned it.  It would be in His time and way.
I know He loves us with a perfect love that we cannot comprehend and that He has a plan and divine assignment for each of us.  Man and woman alike...
Different.  

"Look to God and Live"

     One bible story that has always amazed me, especially the way it is talked about in Alma 33, is the story of the fiery serpents and the brass serpent.  The account in Numbers 21 explains how many of the people of Israel were sinful, so the Lord sent serpents as punishment.  Many of the people were killed from being bitten by these serpents, but Moses prayed and was instructed to make a brass serpent for the sick people to simply look to.  That's it.  All they had to to do was look at it and they would be healed.  The accounts in Alma are my favorite.  Alma 33: 19 - 22 says, 

19.  Behold, he was spoken of by Moses; and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live.  And many did look and live.  

20.  But few understood the meaning of those things and this because of the hardness of their hearts.  But there were many who were so hardened that they would not look, therefore they perished.  Now the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them.   

21.  Oh my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly, or would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief and be slothful, that ye would not cast about your eyes, that ye might perish?

22.  If so, wo shall come upon you; but if not so, then cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead, which has bring to pass the resurrection, that all men shall stand before him, to be judged at the last and judgment day, according to their works.   

     1Nephi 17:41 reads:

41.  ...[the Lord] prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.  

     Those who refused to look saw the healing power the Lord had prepared for them and I'm sure they were happy for their loved ones being healed, yet they wouldn't be healed themselves.  Why?  It's so easy just to look!  They just had to look.  In the past whenever I have read this I have just been dumbfounded at...well...how dumb they were NOT to look!!!  However I look back at the last several months and realize that I have related to them as well.  Their hearts were hardened, perhaps mostly against themselves.  We can be so hard on ourselves.  Perhaps they didn't believe they were deserving of such healing.  

     I think of how often I will sit down with a dear friend and testify with all that I am that the atonement of Jesus Christ can work for them - that if they keep their covenants they can be happy - these are things I know with all my heart.  Yet, when it comes to my sorrows, insecurities, and hurts, I forget that the plan of happiness is not just for everyone else, but it is for me.  Christ will heal even me.  

     This has been a humbling yet empowering realization for me.  Our Savior and older brother is in this with me - not just the people around me.  We are in this together and I am His.  Making a constant effort to have my focus and vision be on Him has made such a big difference for me in the last several nights.  I too can be healed.  

     I need Him and the way is simple.  It is through Him and only Him.  Whatever else I don't "understand" at this time...whatever else may not be "simple" in my mind...well, I still look.  Eye on the target, I will believe that Christ's miracles will work for me too - that He loves ME enough to make me happy as well.

I will allow myself to do as it says in Alma 37, and "look to God and live."