Accentuate the Positive

These past few weeks have been, interesting, and actually really cool. In the last two weeks I managed to 'pick myself up' and start thinking more positively. I also stopped going to my therapist. THAT HELPED. Turns out, I really didn't do well with their style of therapy. I was so SICK of focusing on the negative in my life: there will always be negative in my life! Hence the post about the knots!  I decided, "I'm DONE!"

I'm done with therapy, for now.
I'm done excessively fussing over my health.
I'm done worrying whether or not my medication is working; we'll figure that out.
I'm done obsessing about the negative experiences in my life!

I'm done focusing the negative. 

Baring the emotional scars and chemical road blocks to feeling happy, I believe that sometimes in life, we just need to choose to be happy. Choose to think about the positive. For me, I need to choose to believe:

1. Heavenly Father really does have my best interests at heart.
2. I have an excellent marriage.
3. My daughter is a blessing, not a burden. Motherhood really is my greatest mission.
4. I am a wonderful person.
5. The future is bright, exciting, and full of opportunities for me to fulfill my dreams.

Those are just a few of the thoughts I've had. Thankfully, I'm on a good enough mix of medications that I'm able to think this way. It's more of a fight, but now it's a REAL fight. It's not like those dumb fights where the older sibling is keeping the younger sibling an arm's length away such that the younger isn't accomplishing anything: it's really a fight and I'm GOING TO WIN!

This life is about using our agency and I'm going to use it to

CHOOSE the happy 
CHOOSE the hope 
CHOOSE the positive
CHOOSE the light

This little diddy summarizes what I've learned and provides and excellent one-line sermon!




-Cool Mamma

St. Patrick's Heart

Couple days late, I know, but I have some thoughts I wanna share.

The Google Doodle for this year's St. Patrick's Day was this:



My mother taught me to appreciate the beauty of stained glass, but what caught my eye was the heart, hands, and crown. I thought, "Claddagh ring!"

Some of you might be thinking, "Claddah ring? What's that?" Well, I shall tell you. Claddagh rings come from Ireland, and always have hands holding a heart that's wearing a crown, like so:

One cool thing is that every piece symbolizes something: the hands mean friendship, the heart means love, and the crown means loyalty (that one's my favorite). BUT the coolest thing about the claddagh rings is that the way you wear them tells others the status of your heart! I'll let Wiki summarize this for me: 

1. On the right hand with the point of the heart toward the fingertips, the wearer is single and may be looking for love. (This is most commonly the case when a young woman has first received the ring from a relative, unless she is already engaged.)
2. On the right hand with the point of the heart toward the wrist, the wearer is in a relationship. (This suggests that the wearer's heart has been "captured".)
3. On the left hand with the point of the heart toward the fingertips, the wearer is engaged.
4. On the left hand with the point of the heart toward the wrist, the wearer is married

I got super excited when I reminded myself about MY claddagh ring! My engagement ring is very small and ergonomic, but I haven't been wearing it because it has a loose bur in the metal near the diamond that catches on most fabrics. I usually just wear my wedding band which I'm fine with when I'm at home, but when I'm out in public I feel like people can't see that I'm married. I've worn my cubic zirconium replacement for several months out in public, but I lost it! I've been wanting another one, but don't want to spend the money. (We're superbly broke.) Then I was reminded of my claddagh ring! 

I ran to one of my many junk drawers, found my ring tackle box (it's a small one), and pulled out my claddagh ring. As I placed it on my left hand, with the heart pointing towards the wrist, I felt this deep connection, love, and loyalty towards Cool Apa. As I thought about the symbolism of the ring, I realized that my heart belongs to this man: 

Haha! I LOVE that picture! It describes my Cool Apa, PERFECTLY. He took it between posing for this one: 

Wow, I loved him so much when we took that picture! I only knew him for one month! This is my favorite picture of us together. It reminds me why we fell in love. 

We've been married for 2.5 years and after living together a while, you loose some mystery about the one you fell in love with. Life is stressful, finances are non-existent, graduation seems a millennium away, babies come, the house gets messy, and the hours in the day fly out the window; these make for some real good communication improvement exercises! You start to realize why he was meant to be your mate forever; he's the one that is going to scrape off your rough edges, and you his. BUT you know you can and do trust him, because you gave him your heart. 

In fact, I didn't just give him my heart, I made a  covenant with God and Cool Apa that I would be his, forever. I covenanted, by the power of God, that he could have my heart. After we were married in the Idaho Falls Temple, we were asked to hug all of our guests as they exited. My parents were near the end and my already weeping mother just held me tight. (If I hadn't been so shocked that the nature of my eternal existence had just changed, I'm sure I would have been weeping too.) Then she moved to Cool Apa and as he hugged her, he said to her, "I will take care of her," and had a confident, strong, protective look on his face. I'm very grateful I got to witness that moment.  

I know I can trust him because I gave him my heart. 

-Cool Mamma 

Images taken from www.google.com/doodle and 

http://claddaghring-meaning.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Love-Loyalty-Friendship-Reflections-Of-Ireland-Color-Changing-Claddagh-Ring.jpg

Knots: Part II

This is a continuation of my previous post. 

Where we left off was with the sentiment: "everyone has knots in their lives that they want to untie."

This reminds me of one of my absolute favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Tapestry." (For the full plot, you can go here. Warning: this episode is a little PG-13 due to violence and reference to a sexual encounter). The basic plot is as follows:

Captain Picard is shot on an away mission point blank in the chest, and finds himself in a white place with one of his arch-nemesis-es, Q.  

"You are not God!..I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed."

Q, an all-powerful being, tries to convince Picard that he is God and that Picard has reached the afterlife. Picard puts up a fight, but Q insists. He tells Picard that they are going to be spending eternity together and he doesn't want Picard whining about regrets forever. Picard says that he regrets nothing, until Q shows him the cause of his death: Picard's artificial heart. 

"A mistake."

Picard mumbles about how he came by the implant with a tinge of regret in his voice. He explains to Q how he got it: Picard picked a fight with three, big bullies and ended up getting impaled, right in the heart! Picard says that he was a very different man in his youth, and admits that he's not proud of who he was in those days. 

So Q gives him the opportunity of a life time: a second chance at life. 

"Nothing you do here will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you're not that important."

Q whisks Cpt. Picard to his past, a few days before the incident, offers Picard the chance to change his regrets, and promises him that he will return him to his time frame, alive. Picard agrees. 

Picard ends up alienating his two best friends and avoids being killed, at a price. When Q sends him back to the future, Picard finds himself a Lt. Jr Grade; he is no longer Captain of the Enterprise. 

"Just not one that stands out."

After a conversation with his now superiors, he finds out that because he changed who he was in the past, he became a different person in the future. Absolutely disgusted, Picard calls out to Q and insists he get things in order. The following conversation takes place: 

Lt. J.G. Jean-Luc Picard: You having a good laugh now, Q? Does it amuse you to think of me living out the rest of my life as a dreary man in a tedious job?

Q: I gave you something most mortals never experience: a second chance at life. And now all you can do is complain?

Lt. J.G. Jean-Luc Picard: I can't live out my days as that person. That man is bereft of passion... and imagination! That is not who *I* am!

Q: Au contraire. He's the person you wanted to be: one who was less arrogant and undisciplined in his youth, one who was less like me... The Jean-Luc Picard *you* wanted to be, the one who did *not* fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never led the away team on Milika III to save the Ambassador; or take charge of the Stargazer's bridge when its captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe - and he never, ever, got noticed by anyone.

Q, out of graciousness of his heart I guess, lets Captain Picard fix his 'fixed' regrets, and relive the events to happen the way they originally happened. And then, for some reason, he allows Picard to live, and finish his life as the person who he is. 

At the end of the episode Picard tells his first officer, Commander Riker, about his 'near death' experience. He states, 

"There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of. There were... loose threads - untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I... pulled on one of those threads - it unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Mmmm! LOVE that episode! It has it's dog poop, but I love what it teaches me about my past, my present, and my future. Even Cpt. Picard has knots in his past! He got stabbed in the heart  for crying out loud! But they helped shaped him into the person he is. 

I wish this episode would've concluded with the reading of this poem, written by Corrie ten Boom: 

“My life is but a weaving

Between my God and me.

I cannot choose the colors

He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;

And I in foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper

And I the underside.

Not ’til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas

And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the weaver’s skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares;

Nothing this truth can dim.

He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.”

Sometimes God weaves in the knots. Sometimes we do. I'd really like to get rid of my depression, this dark thread of the past couple years! I'd really like to yank out the colors that make me feel stupid and embarrassed, and untie the knots that lead to my depression. 

But doing so would change who I am, and who I will be. 

Who knows what good will come of my depression?
Who knows how many people I can help with my experiences?
In the end, who knows what my tapestry is going to look like?

God does. He knows. I just need to trust Him. I know that, in the end, the tapestry of my life will be very beautiful. 

-Cool Mamma 

Images and quotes found at the following locations: 

http://metapreneurship.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/JeanLucPicardmeetsQwhilehavinganeardeathexperienceTNGepisodeTapestry.jpg
http://www.therpf.com/attachments/f9/star-trek-tng-naussicaan-sword-tapestry-tapestry070.jpg-198990d1371523123
http://www.treksinscifi.com/trekdaily/pictures/2008-06-29-Tapestry.jpg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708782/quotes

Knots

I like writing on my blog and I like gathering an audience, but I'm really particular about what I put on the blog. I feel like it just has to be good or else. This means I usually ponder on posts for a while. I've been pondering on this one for a couple days.

Lately I've imagined my depression something akin to this:

A tangled mess. Have you ever tried to untangle some yarn or string? That's the kind of mess I'm talking about. It can be done, but it takes a long time.

About a week ago, I had my usual therapy appointment. I didn't feel like we made any progress, felt like my therapist wasn't listening, and assumed, by the way that they talked, they thought my condition was worse than I thought. Overall I left confused, frustrated, and more lost than when I went in.

A few days ago, I had a follow-up appointment for my medication adjustments. Before I walked in, I was prepared to say, "Gimme some more, doc! I can't take this grey, cloudy, depressing mess in my head anymore!" but I left saying, "Let's wait a little longer on this new dose. Maybe it will get better." I also left mad that I paid $120 for the 30 minute conversation we had.

As I walked into the parking lot, I just wanted to rip that tangled mess out of my head and say,

"THAT'S IT!" 

I've just had it.
I'm so sick of trying to find the right balance of medications.
I'm sick of trying to discover, uncover, and untangle unresolved issues of my past.
I'm sick of trying to figure out whether the depression is chemical, stress-related, caused by a traumatic event, or just a pile of bad mental habits! (The funny thing is, my depression is probably related to all four of them.)

I decided I was just going to get up and keep moving forward with my life. I was tired of sitting in one spot and untangling knots.

I thought, "I'll just try to fight it harder with exercise, sleep, and creativity!

I'm going to paint, write, color, draw, doodle, cartoon, sing, compose, yoga, and FIGHT my way out of this mess!! I'll untie all these knots later."

I want all the knots gone now! As I thought about untying all the knots, I realized a few things:

1. The goal isn't to get rid of all the knots and just have an easy time like a perfectly clean string. A perfectly clean string isn't possible in this life. (I'm comparing being 'whole' and 'problem free' to a plain old string.)

2. EVERYONE has knots that they're working on! 

We all have some kind of knot in our life: weaknesses, tendencies, sins, embarrassing moments, and regrets. Some of my knots are just weaknesses or bad habits or experiences that I need to let go. EVERYONE has knots in their strings.

I don't want to loose my readers' attention, so I'm going to stop there. This post:



-Cool Mamma

Eye of the Storm

I did nearly all of the dishes! I can't tell you how pleased I am! I gathered up the motivation to do the dishes BEFORE writing on my blog. *Sigh of relief*

We all have storms and I'm watching an episode of "Turning Point" on byutv.org talking about homeless youth and their storms. Suddenly, my storms don't seem that bad, but instead of saying to myself,"Oh shut up and stop complaining! At least you have a home," and suppressing in my emotions and my story, I'm going to write.

The past few weeks have been hard. The last weeks in February seemed to drag due to some hard hard hard hard trials. The queen trial: adjusting to new medications. Sadly, antidepressants don't work like Tylenol. After doctor appointments, new perscriptions, and a trip to the ER, I hit a breaking point. I was just DONE. So I called my mom and asked her to come down and be with little Starlet and I for a week.

Then Mom left.

Today I hit another head in the storm. You know the days: everything that's going wrong piles up and makes you cry. I even left church an hour early because I couldn't take it anymore, and that's saying something! I'm a devout Mormon and my leaders have asked me to go to all my meetings! And Mormons go to THREE meetings on Sunday! I feel awful if I miss any. But today, I just couldn't handle being with people anymore and little Starlet was super cranky. So my little family came home, I cried to Cool Apa, we put Starlet to bed for a much needed nap, and I took a nap myself.

But there was an eye in my storm.

At church, little Starlet found an abandoned baby doll. (I hope it was abandoned. We might have to take it back next week.) She fell in love with this little doll and brought it home. As I was crying to Cool Apa and even afterwards, my little Starlet was being such a good little mother to this baby doll. After her nap and dinner, she continued to be a good little mamma! 

Starlet got one of her diapers for the doll and tried to put it on her.

Starlet kissed the doll's face. 

Starlet hugged the doll.

Starlet got out her diaper changing pad, asked for baby wipes, placed the doll on the pad, and wiped her face.

Starlet wiped the doll's nose.

Starlet held the doll close. 

Starlet LOVED that little doll!

It was wonderful. As I thought about what Starlet was doing, I asked myself, "Where the heck did she learn all this? She's not even 2 yet and she's nurturing this doll." My dear, wonderful husband, Cool Apa, pointed out, "She takes after her mother." I let that sink in as I watched her. All of Starlet's attention and efforts were on the little doll. She loved that little thing and showered it with kisses. Even though the diaper overwhelmed the little baby, Starlet made sure she had a clean diaper. She was such a good little mamma to that doll! 

I realized: I'm a good mamma to my baby doll! If little Starlet knows how to show love to a simple baby doll, how to take care of it, and give it all her attention and love, then that means that I show Starlet love, care for her, and give her all my attention, time, energy, and love! 

It means that I'm a good mamma! 

I have never been able to really see what kind of mother I am until today. It was like looking in a mirror and I couldn't believe what I saw. It was such a sweet, tender mercy from Heavenly Father showing me how proud He is of me, how good I'm doing, and how much love I have for this little life I brought into the world. 

It was such a tender, wonderful, peaceful Eye of the Storm, one that I will treasure always. 

Thank you, my little Starlet! 

-Cool Mamma 

Confession

I am a Studio C Fan. I've seen every sketch at least once, I know all the actors' and actresses' names, and can tell you a great deal about the four main characters.

Oh? You've never heard of Studio C? Well, let me help you.



Stuido C is a show broadcast on BYU TV.

"Wait, BYU has TV?"



Yup! BYU (the Mormon school out in Utah) has a new broadcasting center that is as legit as other broadcasting centers such as ESPN, NBC, etc. BYUTV's mission is to create and share good, uplifting entertainment for all the world to see. Everything that BYU broadcasts is clean, squeaky clean. I mean, they are so clean I'd let my little Starlet sit in front of whatever was playing on there.

One of the most, if not the most, popular shows on BYUTV is "Studio C."

First, some history.

BYU, like many colleges and universities, has several comedy troupes: the most attended being Divine Comedy. Well, BYUTV decided to create a show that would feature all the comedy groups on campus. They started with the favorite: Divine Comedy. The rest is history.

After one season, "Studio C" raked in such success that they decided to create a second season. And a third. BYUTV and the cast of "Studio C" are filming and editing and producing the fourth season AS WE SPEAK. I have watched rerun after rerun to tide me over until the new season begins in April.

I HIGHLY recommend it. You have time to catch up on all the old sketches before the new season starts! To wet your palette, I will include some of my favorites right here, for your viewing convenience:









Hooked yet? I am. I am 100% a "Studio C" fan.

 -Cool Mamma