Intentions

It's pretty embarrassing that my Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy post has been chillin' up here for almost a month. One of my cousins who rarely updated her blog had a picture of a bison up on her blog for like six months. I would click on her blog only to see that stinkin' bison loitering on the computer screen time after time after time. In her defense, at least the bison is a step up from my stupid Jack Handy-ish musings. Anyhoo, again I'm off on trails unmeant to be traveled, time to rein it in. So, what's been shakin' around Casa de Young for the past three weeks? Well illness, visits, baby blessings, surgery, and as always escapee chickens. It's been pretty busy and perhaps at some point I'll fill in all the blanks...

But for now I'm having one random little thought... Most days I think of myself as a fairly decent person. But then as life would have it, you come across those people that actually are the person that you intended to be, but then somehow got lost in the translation of life. I know someone who never complains or says a bad thing about anyone or anything. If he finds something disagreeable, he just smiles and keeps his comments to himself. I love that about him. I know a girl who has a serious zeal for life and works hard at blooming where she's planted and does beautifully at it. I know a woman with the patience of a Saint. I have a friend who embraces creativity and finding beauty in simplicity. I have so many people around me that have so many good qualities...qualities that at one point I had envisioned for myself. It's amazing some days how far the paths of my intentions and reality have diverged. I don't like it. Life hasn't necessarily gone according to plans in some instances. In ways I've struggled with, but I've had to adjust. But I wonder at what point that gave me permission to stray from the well intentioned person I thought I was to the piece-of-work I currently am? I wonder at what point life inspired me to get so darn opinionated. To be so hurried. To be so impatient. One who has a hard time planting her feet and feasting on the moment...

A few weeks ago, Elder David A. Bednar came to speak in Roseburg. He said some things that has caused me to mull some thoughts over in my brain again and again. He said that we as people are not objects to be acted upon in life. We aren't like a book you can push across the table. Rather we are people who are free agents to our own lives. Rather than being moved where ever life would like to take us, we can control how we act and respond despite the circumstances that come into our paths. It was pretty profound to me. I've done my fair share of being that book on the table it seems. Allowing life to make of me whatever it deemed fit. I've adjusted to life not always being what I expected, but in doing so also adjusted the person I intended to be in some ways. Now that my eyes have been opened to it, I guess it means it's time to adjust again, back to who I want to be. It's hard though. Change is hard. And it seems when life already seems so very full, adding more to the plate seems crazy. But when I see the people who I admire so much being successful versions of themselves, I know in my heart of hearts I owe it to myself to do the same. I'm not an object to be moved and I deserve to be every one of my very best intentions.