just needed a protractor.

I am getting near the end of this semester. I only have two tests left and two projects! It's very exciting. After that I have three more classes to take during spring term and I'm officially done! It's becoming more and more real to me that I will graduate.

Yesterday I was working on a project for one of my classes. I thought a cool visual for it would be a pentagon to represent the five parts of the project and I bought my posterboard and started trying to draw out a pentagon on the back. I say "try" because it ultimately didn't work. I tried for about an hour to draw out this pentagon using various techniques; I drew a five-pointed-star in the middle with all kinds of angles and measurements and I just couldn't do it. This is where anyone who remembers geometry starts laughing at me. But this was an important moment, I believe. I like to think of this whole incident as the parable of the pentagon. At that point my friend quickly calculated the angle of a pentagon (108 degrees) and told me I needed a protractor if I wanted to draw a perfect pentagon. I scoffed and tried to improvise a little more. Then I humbled myself a little and finally went to the bookstore and bought a protractor for $2.50. I went back to my project and in less than a minute I'd drawn a perfect pentagon with the help of that little, plastic protractor. What a concept! With the correct knowledge and appropriate tool, I could do it. I felt like I was trying to re-invent the wheel with my initial approach. It was frustrating. I didn't know that producing something so simple could be so difficult.

I almost immediately saw a way to apply this to broader concepts in my life. True, this was just a small project, but I also saw it as a metaphor for doing things the Lord's way. The scriptures from Isaiah 55 (verses 8 and 9) came to mind:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

For me this was about humbling myself to have the faith to do something outside my realm of knowledge. I saw eventually that it was a very simple task. I only needed a small, plastic device to accomplish what I needed to do. I compare this to living righteously or keeping the commandments. Life can seem very complicated without guidelines. We can make plenty of mistakes and take so many detours without the simple bounds of the commandments. Life mathematical rules, the commandments are eternal. They make my life easier (notice I didn't say easy). If I have learned anything from this experience (besides how to draw a pentagon), I have learned that I should turn to the Lord more quickly in my times of need and more frequently in general. My knowledge is flawed and mortal. His is perfect and eternal. He always knows the correct way. In order to do something perfect, or become perfect, I cannot rely on my own strength or knowledge. It just isn't sufficient.

Another interesting thing to note about this metaphor, a pentagon is based on the number five, of course, which is often connected with perfection. How interesting that I could not make something perfect without the correct knowledge.

I hope you enjoyed this little parable. I think I will use it in my Relief Society lesson next week. Any ideas on what talk from conference I should center my lesson on?

lives in a house called "nostalgia."

It's already been six months since my missionary left. I am really amazed at how quickly time does pass and sometimes it catches me by surprise. Like right now. I don't wish for it to pass more quickly, well, not always. I recognize that that is ingratitude and each day is important. My life is only a sum of days, whether I used them well or wished them away. I want to enjoy each one.

But sometimes I wander into the realm of nostalgia or saudade. I am feeling a little anxious and nostalgic for the future right now as I approach graduation. There are many things that are still undecided about my life. I suppose there will always be something undecided about life and that is just how it goes. Right now my tentative plan is something like this:

1. Graduate in April, finish my last classes spring term
2. Move back home to Oregon
3. Get a job there and pay off as much debt as I can
4. Take the GRE this fall
5. Apply to grad programs this winter
6. Keep working
7. Keep writing my missionary
8. If I get into a grad program, go back to school in September 2009
9. See what happens when my missionary gets home in November 2009

I am trying to focus on the things that I do have control over, like my schooling, instead of things I don't have complete control over, like what happens with my missionary. I feel actually very accepting of my life right now and I am happy. It would just be inhuman not to feel anxious at this point. When the present gets to be too much, I go to my favorite place. As my missionary put it, it's "that old, quiet house with the curtains drawn and the lamps lit, that I've never lived in. I think that house is named 'nostalgia."

He goes even further saying, "Can't you just see the two of us - two authors in some remodeled farmhouse surrounded by trees? Piles of books next to the fireplace and by the stairs, portraits of Virginia Woolf and Pushkin in the kitchen, a mug of pens by the front door - just in case..." It sounds like heaven to me. Now don't criticize him and say he's distracted. He's just human. I loved the image and while it is not real yet, it gives me hope for the future, "a point to walk toward on the horizon," as he once said too. And is it wrong to hope? I don't think so.

So I walk forward toward the horizon. And sometimes I'm scared. Sometimes I'm hopeful. Sometimes overwhelmed. Today I felt a little mix of all three.

Days

Each one is a gift, no doubt.
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and a thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eyes of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like an impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more, Just another Wednesday,

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.

Billy Collins

is a beggar.

"For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have...And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name...And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy" (Mosiah 4: 19-20)

I just wanted to post one simple thought I had today. It is about happiness. I know that there are many who could come up with many exceptions to what I am about to say, but I believe whole-heartedly that the pillars of happiness are: 1. acceptance and 2. gratitude.

Acceptance because it is imperative to first accept your life in order to love it. No matter what the circumstances are, they are what have been given to you. It is like a metaphor I read in a book by Sue Bender called Everyday Sacred, you hold your life in your hands like a beggar holding a bowl and must be content with what is placed in it. You may reject it, but if you accept it, you must recognize what you have been given. And it is always "enough," as Sue says.

Gratitude because it is the mindset of receiving rather than taking. If a person goes about their life noticing what is missing from it instead of noticing all the good things around them, they neglect gratitude and thus suffer from it by constantly feeling disappointed, neglected, and unhappy.

Happiness is a choice. I know that every day I have this choice before me. Will I choose to be happy because I can hear birds in the trees as I walk to school? Or will I choose to be unhappy because I didn't get all my homework done and my hair is unwashed? Will I choose to see the good around me? Will I reach out with the goodness that I feel inside of myself and share it with others?

"And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another" (Mosiah 4: 21).

My happiness is greatly multiplied when I can share it with someone else. I know that one of the best remedies for a bout of discouragement is to serve someone else.

Here are some things that have been placed in my beggar's bowl lately:

1. A new job
2. More debt
3. A letter
4. Phone calls from my family
5. Rainy or snowy, cold weather
6. Plenty of homework
7. The messages from General Conference
8. A math test
9. A free movie
10. Dinner with friends
11. Meeting new friends
12. Fatigue and stress

Not all of these things are positive, but I accept them all. I see that as a whole, my life is good. It is enough and I am filled. I recently got a letter from my missionary in which he said, "I hope that you find the joy you need in your life-not just with each letter you receive from me, but also in those you serve and the things you are accomplishing." I do have joy in my life. I am learning to accept it and be grateful for all the things that come into it. I pray that you may feel the same and have joy.