Learning from Dog Poop

Visiting this lady

Lisa Hale (aka: Angel on Earth)

last weekend reminded me that the name of my blog insinuates I believe there is good and bad in life. Happy and sad. Incredible, fabulous, fantastic experiences, and things we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies. I also realized I have almost exclusively written about the positive lately. Time to talk about the negative...but not necessarily in a negative way.

This woman?

She either volunteered or was volunteered by her husband (the story is different depending on who you ask :)) to watch my brother and I (ages 2 1/2 & 8) when my mother died suddenly in 1994. Heaven knows my dad-who was left with two young children, a full-time job, and a bucket-load of grief-needed the help. She and her husband honestly saved the lives of a little family whose world had been turned upside-down. Subconsciously, I was learning for the first time that positive things can come from crap (for lack of a better term).

When my dad's brother died my freshman year of college, I learned again, more poignantly this time, the same lesson. My uncle the science teacher, happy and always full of life, who would answer the phone with something like: "Hey sweet girl! Did you know an elephant can fit on the tongue of a blue whale?!" had died. Amidst wrapping my mind around the concept of mortality, I flew to Texas the next summer to help my aunt and cousins make the drive to New Hampshire for our family reunion they had always made with their dad. IT WAS FABULOUS. I had an incredible time with their family and met my aunt for the first time. She had always been in my uncle's shadow (at least from my perspective). I talked to her SO MUCH-her personality came to life for me and I gained a great friend.

In summary, when terrible, almost impossibly difficult things like this happen,

I have always learned more than I would have had God allowed my life to be perfect or simply easy or entirely peaches and roses. ALWAYS! I am so thankful for each experience I have had in life. I learn something from every single one.

Morgan Freeman's Doppelgänger

He takes the same bus home that I do every night. And he makes my day every night. 

So that's a picture of Morgan Freeman, not his look-alike. As much as I love taking pictures, I don't whip out my camera in public and take random pictures of people without them knowing like a creeper or a paparazzo...usually.

Anyway, every night on the bus, Morgan Freeman's doppelganger (we'll call him Morgan) is the happy and calm figure in the front of the bus who talks up the four year old next to him about how his day at preschool went and finds the open seats for young mothers and their children. Thanks for making me happier each evening with your example Morgan. I need to be more like you!

Be the Hero!

So this resonated with me BIG-time! Mostly because the fact that USU students pulled a classmate out from under a burning car just makes my little Aggie heart scream with pride! However, it is also because I was reminded that what they did earlier this week is expected from all of us. Maybe we won't be presented with the situation of risking our lives to save someone else's but we probably will run into people lost trying to navigate streets or public transportation that could use a little help, a mother who just needs a break from her kids for a while, or roommates or family members who would really appreciate it if the house was extra clean when they got home...you get the idea. And almost certainly we will meet someone who could use a smile or a few kind and sincere words and YOU will be called on to be someone's friend when it seems they have no one else. So instead of awkwardly looking around for someone else to lend a hand or take control of the situation, go out there and just be the hero!


The first 2:12 are the best!

We ALWAYS choose our reaction!

Forgive me for being behind again, maybe I am unnecessarily adding a somber tone too late in the game, but I felt like I should add my 9/11 tribute and remembrances. 


I was sitting in my first period class in my second week of 10th grade. I was having a hard time adjusting to high school, I was worried about doing well in that particular class and I really didn't like that teacher very much :) My priorities seemed to change very quickly as I watched thousands of people lose their lives and their loved ones over the course of 7 periods. I don't remember much of what they had planned for us to learn in school that day and was trying to verify my Grandma, who was supposed to be flying out of Dulles, hadn't... (She hadn't. She didn't get to go where she had been attempting to for about another 3 days!) It was just about Biology (7th period) when they started putting faces of Al-Qaeda operatives up on the screen, linking them to the attacks.


Through all of the tragedy and horror of what happened 10 years ago, I have found the most comforting, fascinating and wonderful thing to be the positive things that came either immediately or slowly but surely over the course of the last ten years. I love to see the kiwi come out of people as a result of being faced with absolute dog poop. As President Thomas S. Monson recently said, "Destruction allows us to rebuild our lives in the way He teaches us, and to become something different than we were. We can make Him the center of our thoughts and His Son, Jesus Christ, the pattern for our behavior."


Below are two of the best examples I have EVER seen illustrating this principle:


BOATLIFT

Yankee Stadium gravel inspires memorial for 9/11 victim

Home Run!