O Happy Day!

Here is a list of reasons why life is worth celebrating:

1. THIS SONG EXISTS

     (listen to it while you read)

2. EXTENSION

My group paper on Health Security just got extended to Monday! Seeing as we haven't even started it yet and it was supposed to be due tomorrow, this is certainly worth celebrating.

3. LONGEVITY 

And the Lord did bless Renoir and multiply his days upon the waters of his fishbowl. That's right. Against all odds, my goldfish, Renoir, has outlived his expiration date and is still alive and swimming!

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

4. HEALTH 

Specifically mine. Though I am also happy that there are many other people in the world who are healthy. They live fulfilling lives, they make significant contributions to society and, must importantly, they don't infect me! (Can you tell I've still got pandemics on my mind from that health conference I went to? yeah...)

5. AFRICA

Oh, what's that? I hadn't mentioned it? Well, for anyone who still doesn't know, I am officially traveling across the great waters and embarking on my next great adventure. Destination: UGANDA. I am going with Professors Dan Nielson and Mike Findley of the political science department at BYU. I will be helping with their field research as well as implementing my own project with two other students (there are about 20 students going total). My group is going to be interviewing former child soldiers in Northern Uganda and finding out their opinions about the peace building process. I'm so excited!

6. WHEELS

Thank heavens I have a car. It's the only thing that makes this bubble bearable. Ok. That was melodramatic. It's not the only thing. But it sure does help!

7. KNOWLEDGE

You know I'm super stressed all the time. I have all these words I have to write and endless sentences I need to read and countless people I need to play nice with in class. But when you boil down to the heart of it, I'm receiving an education! I'm absorbing the conglomeration of wisdom garnered through the ages. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants! I'm learning. What's more noble than that?

8. TREASURES

Chocolate...

9. MUGGLE MAGIC

 I benefit from magic every single day! I turn a knob and hot water gushes out into my sink on the third floor! I hold my hand to my ear and talk with people several time zones away! I watch moving pictures on this rectangle screen! I dance to music when there is no band in sight! Amazing...

10. COURAGE

  I've been getting out of my comfort zone lately. I didn't make a conscious decision of "I will leave my comfort zone". It just so happens that I've been meeting really cool new people lately and forging refreshing new friendships. And I've been proactive about keeping those friendships going. Instead of just leaving them in school, I've been trying to take them outside the classroom. Maybe these new acquaintances (no friends! really, they're my friends!) secretly think I'm weird. But that's good. Because I am. And the sooner they figure that out, the faster our friendship will progress :) 

Alright folks. That's all for now. My health paper may have been canceled, but I've still got to go up to campus and work on stats...and read D&C...and skim polysci...and... well, you get the idea. Basically, I've just got to get back to this celebration we call life and hope that the party isn't too crazy.

And So My Knees Are Scraped

When was the last time you scraped your knees? When you were 7 maybe 10? For me it was this past Tuesday.

See, Smitty and I trade off driving our other roommate, Lacie, to work every morning. She needs to be at work at 5 am so she wakes us up at around 4:45 and we stumble out of bed and drive her. For whatever reason, this Tuesday I was particularly tired. As I shuffled out to my car in borrowed sandals, inside-out sweatpants and eyes squinched up behind my glasses, I ....fell.

Yeah, seriously. I was just walking, and then I stepped down maybe an inch to the driveway and collapsed. It was so strange. The weirdest part was that I was totally unfazed by it. The thought process was just 'hmmm I'm on the ground. I suppose I should be embarrassed. But I don't have the energy. In fifteen minutes I'll be back in bed.'

So I practically sleep-drove Lacie to the bakery, got home pulled up my pants to see that I did in fact have scrapped knees and then curled back up in bed.

Ok, what does this have to do with anything? Well. There is a popular LDS children's song called "I Am a Child of God." The Second verse of this song begins with the line, "I am a child of God, and so my needs are great." However, when my older sister, Laura, was a kid she thought that the words were "I am a child of God and so my knees are scraped." I actually think I like her words better.

I mean, they make more sense. It doesn't logically follow that being a Child of God would make your needs great. If anything, it seems like being God's child should lessen your needs because He would provide for you. Scraped on the other hand does follow logically in my mind. Usually when you scrape your knees you are in the pursuit of something. You can't really hurt yourself just sitting on a couch. You only scrape your knees when you are trying to get somewhere. In the context of the song, I think that destination we have in mind as we scrape our knees is God. We are separated from God on this earth but yearn to do everything we can to be with him again.

All humans are in the pursuit of something more than themselves. As C.S. Lewis argues,  there must be a higher power if there is a higher moral law which all races, religions and nationalities appeal to when they protest some injustice or strive towards some universal concept of 'right'. This means that we are all, at least a little bit, aware of the God within us. If we weren't trying to be like God from whom we gain the concept of good and evil, why would we ever do good things? Why on earth, when being bad is generally easier and usually much more fun?

Well, that's where scraped knees come back in. There is a God within us, but there is also a carnal man. When we struggle to balance and overcome the more base parts of our nature as we work towards what we know is right it is only natural that we will miss up. We'll fall down, we'll scrape our knees.

But that's okay. The fact that our knees are scrapped means that we're trying. We're working towards something. We may mess up, but we have a goal. We aren't being stagnant. We know that God is perfect, that we are not, and we are trying to get there.

How do we handle these failures? Well, I would argue that we should handle them the same way I handled my little tumble on Tuesday: we shouldn't let them affect us. Remember these are scrapes I'm talking about- small problems- not broken limbs. In these cases, though we may be discouraged to suddenly find ourselves sprawled on the pavement, we should just remain calm and think things through. A fall of this caliber is more embarrassing than anything else. It's a sign that we reached too high and came up short. Maybe we were clumsy, maybe we weren't prepared, but I say there is nothing in the world wrong with that.

I'm gonna keep scraping my knees. Again and again and again until I don't anymore. And at that point, I'll probably start scraping my elbows. But it doesn't matter; just as long as I progress. I want to get better. I want to do better things, I want to be better. Not because I have a conscious wish to become like God. More just because its my natural moral compass. And I'm pretty sure its yours too.