i am afraid i lost sight of my main goal in life.
to be like a lighthouse.
ever since i was 7 or so and heard some efy song about being like a lighthouse it's been an underlying theme
even before then my family nicknamed me their sunshine (i probably didn't deserve that one) but it always meant a lot to me :)
bottom line, I've always wanted to be like sunshine and spread joy.
i clearly remember the sunbeam song always being my favorite in nursery :)
if there's anything I've been learning about lately it's living in scarcity vs. living in abundance.
i tend to be able to trace all of my problems to have been living in scarcity or fear.
my anxiety and panic attacks? that's a result from living in fear.
hording and not being able to let go or things? a result of scarcity
feeling insecure or threatened? from living in scarcity.
I've been living in a state of melancholy emptiness lately.
and today's post is a result of the resolutions I've felt today and the answers I've found.
and the goals I'm making so i can live a higher quality of life.
i had a lesson in my sunday school class a while ago that has been stuck in my head
it was about light versus darkness and how darkness is just the absence of light. it never prevails.
if you shine light in your life there isn't room for darkness.
to me light is the good things you fill your life with. the things you choose to dwell on and the things you spend your time doing.
light can be so many things depending on who you are and what you want in life, but to me light is love, service, learning, exercising, being alive and seeing the world, expressing yourself, reaching goals and developing talents. good things are everywhere if we seek them out.
I've had so much opportunity so far to fill my life with good things and I'm so grateful for that.
so grateful for the people who have loved me, so grateful to my parents who have supported me and given me opportunity, grateful for education that's available to everyone, grateful that I'm capable and gifted. so humbled at how big and beautiful the world is and how much i have available to learn. I'm so grateful to live in freedom. so happy I've had certain people in my life. in wonder at how I've found so many things i just love. so glad i have tools to take with me through life. i'm so excited to live. my heart feels so full :)
becky is a light in my life. today we talked for hours and that's what helped me pull through my melancholyness and see the good.
something we talked about was that to receive something you need to give it.
what a concept :)
when i'm in scarcity mode i horde everything. i feel like i don't have enough good, enough talent, enough self, enough anything, and anybody who is trying to share their life with me and have me share my life with them feels like a threat.
so naturally all my relationships struggle.
i get distant and protective.
it's like my soul's in starvation mode and i'm not capable of moving forward in life with loving service because i feel like i'm gonna run out.
but things just don't work that way, and that is such a relief.
shine light and light will be shone back at you
love people and receive love. it's this wonderful abundant circle.
be the person you want to be
be the kind of friend you wish you had
give something and it'll come to you.
be the person you admire. the person you admire will have their great qualities shining back at them through you
you'll be blessed and they'll be blessed.
and those great qualities have a chance to spread further.
optimism truly is contagious.
be the smile
be the hug
be the needed sunshine
be the lighthouse
and light will shine back at you because light spreads.
my second week up here in british columbia becky justin julia and i went on a road trip to the Oregon coast (it was amazing). on the way home we had car troubles. the alternator went out and it was a hard situation. we were parked on the left side of a busy freeway, standing in ant piles, with a not so happy 2 year old, a practically dead cell phone, and i had to pee. within the first 10 minutes 3 cops drove by and none of them stopped. i was kinda ticked.
but um, becky and justin are amazing. i didn't hear one cuss word the entire time. they smiled and handled the situation with grace.
i'm not sure exactly what the meaning of grace is but if it's facing a problem head on, hand in hand with a smile on their faces and making the best of a bad situation..
yeah, they handled it with grace.
so first, that was inspiring. seeing them handle a problem like that as a couple. how lucky we were that my cell phone turned on again for a quick 911 call. how calmly they handled julia and the financial stress of getting the car towed and fixed.
i want to work towards being able to handle sticky situations like them.
at first i was doubting any goodness i hoped to find left in humanity, what with 3 cops driving by and nobody stopping to ask if we were okay.
but thankfully my doubts were proved wrong.
eventually people pulled over. and it wasn't people who seemed specially well off or anything but just good people. people asked if we needed a phone, water, cliff bars, anything.
right as we were about to hop up into the tow truck and take off somebody pulled off behind us and started running up. It was this amazing amazing inspiring lady. she had seen us on the side of the road, pulled off on the next exit, picked some stuff up from a store, and come back around with a bag of cold bottled water and some food. she gave it to us without giving us a chance to turn down her hospitality and with her booming black lady voice said god bless you.
becky and i were both sobbing by the time we got into the tow truck. how amazing is that lady? how thoughtful. i don't think I've ever gone so far out of my way for a stranger.
god bless her.
i know it's a bit cliche, but i think she changed my life a little bit.
i want to be that kind of person.
she's a lighthouse.
everybody who helped us that day were lighthouses to me.
a few days after that experience i found myself at girls camp. i swore to myself at the end of last years i was done.. haha. but with becky being the young womans president up here, i found myself at my seventh year of girls camp.
i'm kinda shy sometimes. and that has been a sad hold up in my life.
the day girls camp started and before any of the other girls had showed up i was sitting on the bathroom floor hyperventilating. i was anxious about all the social situations and not really knowing anyone. i was anxious bout lots of things and basically hiding, when becky walked in. she was kind of freaking out too, with being in charge of everything and we had a good chat. cried a little, and i came out much more prepared to face girls camp. again.
i love big sisters.
at girls camp we had secret sisters but it wasn't the whole gift giving thing, it was a being there for each other and serving each other thing.
my secret sister was really sweet and helped make jumping into things a lot easier for me and all the girls were just really awesome and accepting of me. it helped me get insecurities out of the way of a great experience.
i want to be able to be like that. not to be worried about myself and what other are gonna think of me, but helping everybody else feel comfortable, okay and loved.
the whole girls camp was fairytale themed after president uchtdorfs famous talk about living happily ever after. and we had a lot of good discussions about being the hero of your own story and finding your own happily ever after. but the things that stood out most to me are what this whole post is on.
everybody is living their story right now and we are lucky enough to share our stories with each other, to be leading characters in each others stories as well. we're all so connected.
in the story Sleeping Beauty Prince Phillip has to slay the dragon and save the day but where would he be without the good fairies? still stuck in the dungeon.
i came out of girls camp with the goal of being a good fairy.
i wouldn't have made it very far at all without all the "good fairies" in my life :)
I've been so self centered at times it's embarrassing.
and i have so many things i can improve about myself it's overwhelming.
but i want to focus on the good parts of me and love myself, so that i can love others. because it starts at home base. and i want to be able to accept myself and then see past me and things that i'm going through so i can notice people pulled off on the side of the road, people in need of love, and people in need of help.
i'm ready to trust myself
to trust my life
and let go of insecurities. insecurity has been the battle of my life so far.
and i want to stop focusing on all the things i could fix about myself and focus on helping others.
there was this essay prompt on an english test a while back that made me think.
it was- is a good act a good act even if it's done for the wrong reasons
i decided it is. even if your reasoning is off, you are still doing an act of good in the world.
it's just not benefiting you the way it could.
i've been realizing how applicable that is in my life.
what is the motivator behind my decisions?
even if i'm making good decisions, if i'm acting in fear or resentment or just duty i won't feel the benefits of good decisions.
i need to start choosing the right reasons to be my drive.
be a good friend to help someone feel loved, not to help yourself not be alone.
don't develop you're character and talents to outshine people
do it to share, teach, and empower.
there's enough good to go around.
i want to live a life full of abundance and light :)
i love life so much.
and how much my trials strengthen me.
and after days of melancholy survival i feel empowered and hopeful.
in the end, i hope this post will take me a step closer to being a better person. and i hope it will help any body who reads it be little better off.
anyone reading this is probably like wow sarah.. haha took you till you were 18 to figure all this out?
weell yaa :) but at least i figured it out at some point. it seems like people have been telling me this kind of stuff my whole life and it just clicked.
i'm constantly growing learning and changing and even though i know i'm going to have issues and insecurities i hope writing all this out will help me get out of the rut faster next time :)
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