They missed me....

Ok maybe missed is the wrong word, but they noticed I wasn't there. Let me explain...

I have this favorite restaurant - well it's not really a restaurant it's a catering company that opens it's doors for the lunch time crowd - it's seriously has the best yummiest salads out there. I always get the trio - a sampling of 3 salads of my choosing (and they have tons to choose from).

Anyway I digress.

I used to frequent said haven for all things yummy once a week, they know be by name there I stopped by so much.

Well I hadn't been in a while - like months - I was going through withdraws (yes I'm addicted to their signature pasta salad) so on a whim I decided to not eat my peanut butter and honey sandwhich for lunch today and feed my addiction treat myself.

When I got up to the cashier -who was the only guy I recognized in the place- he said "Sandy, haven't seen you in a while! how've you been?" There's nothing like the feeling of someone noticing you were gone.

That sealed the deal - I need to start going more often again. I've missed them too.

Black and White

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of there only being black and white. Light and Dark. No middle ground. No fence sitting. Either it is good and comes from God or it bad and comes from Satan.

At first it seemed a harsh way of looking at life and things. There is so many good things - tv shows, movies, music - that are basically good except for that one part. Those shades of gray in between, what about those? The mostly white things with a little bit of black. (Hopefully we have enough sense to stay away from the mostly black things with a little bit of white.)

I'm reminded of a scripture from the Book of Mormon:
2 Nephi 9:9 And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself; yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder and all manner of secret works of darkness.

The devil can transform himself nigh unto an angel of light! Yikes!! He looks goods - like an angel in fact, perfectly harmless - and yet he's still the devil. He's still black. Makes you think, huh?

In October's General Conference Randall K. Bennett of the Quorum of the Seventy stated: "In reality we have only two eternal choices, each with eternal consequences: choose to follow the Savior of the world and thus choose eternal life with our Heavenly Father or choose to follow the world and thus choose to separate ourselves from Heavenly Father eternally. We cannot successfully choose both the safety of righteousness and the dangers of worldliness."

So in reality there really is only black and white. Light and Dark. You cannot sit on the fence. You cannot have your residence in the kingdom of God and your summer home in Babylon. You cannot serve to masters.

Here comes my rationalizations to satisfy the 'black' in my life- Choosing mostly white with a little bit of black (the lightest shades of gray) won't hurt our eternal outcome too much. But, as any painter knows, a little bit of black goes a long way so choose carefully.

"Breathe, just breathe"

Who knows where that quote is from? It possibly may at one time have been my favorite movie. Ok there's no possible about it- it was my favorite movie (I may or may not have watched it daily for a few months), not quite sure why now but the teenage mind is a mystery.
Anywho that doesn't really matter. Life has gotten crazy busy and work has gotten crazy slow so while I'm at home it's nice to be reminded to take it slow. While I was cleaning my room (finding homes for the piles of junk that have been on my floor since my parents moved out - a year and a half ago, yes I'm a little slow) I found this quote amid the stacks of paper that I think (judging by the paper it was written on) I picked up at a rubber stamp convention (don't laugh you know you wish you'd attended):

It was a good reminder to take life one day at a time - live in the present and when it gets fast and furious remember to just breathe.

August Rush

Last night I watched the movie “August Rush”, it's one of my favorites, one I can watch again and again. I don't know how many people really listen to the voice over sections but they really touched me as I listened the last few times I've watched. Really listened:

“Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind. In the air. In the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do is listen. They try to stop me from hearing the music, but when I'm alone it builds up from inside me and I think if I could learn how to play it, they might hear me, they'd know I was theirs and they'd find me. Sometimes the world tries to knock it out of you but I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales. I like to imagine that what I hear came from my mother and father. Maybe the notes I hear are the same ones they heard the night they met; maybe that's how they found each other; maybe that's how they'll find me. I believe that once upon a time long ago they heard the music and followed it. I know they're out there somewhere. I don't know where it comes from, but it's what I hold onto and I can't let go. Somewhere inside me I know that they always wanted me, maybe they just got lost. The music is all around us; all you have to do is listen.”

I love these words because with just a little change they remind me of how the Lord can be found all around us:

Listen. Can you hear Him? The Lord. I can hear Him everywhere. In the wind. In the air. In the light. He's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do is listen. The world tries to stop me from hearing the Lord, but when I'm alone it builds up from inside me and I think if I could learn how to answer, He might hear me, He'd know I was His and He'd find me. Sometimes the world tries to knock it out of you but I believe in the Lord the way some people believe in fairy tales. I like to imagine that what I hear comes from my Heavenly Father. Maybe the voice I hear is the same voice the prophets heard; maybe that's how they found Him; maybe that's how I'll find Him. I believe that once upon a time long ago I heard His voice and followed Him. I know He's out there somewhere. I don't know where, but it's what I hold onto and I can't let go. Somewhere inside me I know that He always wanted me, maybe I just got lost. The Lord is all around us; all you have to do is listen.

The more I see and learn about the earth we call home the more I realize that all creation points to Jesus Christ. That He truly can be seen everywhere. That He can be found in everything. He can be felt all around us. All we have to do is look and listen.

You know you're tired when...

You curl up in your favorite chair to read a book and end up like this for the next three hours:

my favorite napping spot

They call me Fungi

Wednesday night as I pulled up in from of my house after a long day at work I saw what I thought was a branch with a lot of fall leaves that had fallen in the storm the night before so I went to pick it up. Ummmm, it wasn't leaves. It was this:

A nice bouquet of fungus! Isn't it pretty? Yeah, well now it's gone and it's little spores, too!

The Wise Man built his House upon the Rock

We all know the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. One builds his house on a rock, the other on sand - which in reality is composed of a bunch of tiny rocks but that is beside the point. The point is they were both building houses to guard against the storm.

I work in the construction industry and so I happen to know a thing or two about building sound structures. A firm foundation is not the only element that is necessary for a structure to be safe. It is the most important but there are other supports required  to keep a building from toppling when the wind blows. The formula goes something like this (very simplfied):

Firm Foundation + columns + beams = secure structure

I've been thinking a lot about the wise men's house and what are the columns and beams of the gospel that make each of us strong as we face our whirlwinds. This is what I've come up with (the gospel according to Sandy):

So to recap: to build ourselves a strong safe haven from the whirlwinds we need:

1) a firm foundation = Jesus Christ

2) columns = the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel

3) beams = additional ordinances (the sacrement, worthily excersising the priesthood -ladies we get a pass here- and ordinances found in Holy Temples), covenants, and endurance (which kind of brings us back to faith)

If we are missing one element from our lives or are not vigilent in protecting the structural integrity of even just one of the structural members regardless of whether our house is built on the rock, we run the risk of having it topple just as easily as if we had built on sand.

Words with Friends

Ummmm, I think I might lose this one...

A present from conference

I went to a friends house to watch General Conference. On sunday their granddaughter was over and she drew me a picture during one of the sessions, it will soon reside on my refrigerator. But which side to show I have yet to decide:

Mommy loves her (Sandy) OR the Giraffe

To Act or the be Acted Upon

To act or to be acted upon really is the eternal decision. It's the choice we had to make in the beginning when all the hosts of heaven gathered around Heavenly Father to hear His plan and watched in amazement as someone had the nerve to counter that plan with another. Then, as now, we had a choice to make: do we choose to:
           a) follow Father and His plan guaranteeing our ability to continue being "agents unto ourselves", the freedom to make deicisions for ourselves - to act of our own accord
           OR
           b) follow Lucifer - forever relinquishing your power to act to him, becoming his agent - to always be acted upon.

We chose 'a', others chose 'b'

And now the choice continues to have to be made everyday. Do we:
            a) choose to keep the commandments of God and make/keep sacred covenants with Him and therefore preserve our ability to think and act for ourselves
            OR
            b) choose to follow after our own 'natural' appetites and desires, turn away from the commands of God and slowly bind ourselves to Lucifer and become enslaved to him and those very appetites and desires - to be acted upon by the whims and fancies of the world and the master it chooses to serve.

Some are choosing 'a', far more seem to be choosing 'b'

And so it will continue - for as long as we are progressing the question will always be before us. Do I continue to act and thereby progress or do I want to be acted upon and stop my progression? How far we go will always be up to us.

The Power of Positive Thinking - An Experiment

I was chating with a friend on facebook today and he was complaining about how he only attracts "crazy" girls and how he just wants to find a "sane" one. So naturally I told him he needed to think more positively and to do so he needed to repeat this phrase every morning and night "I attract only attractive sane women" for a month. Yeah, he didn't go for it. And since I have never technically done it I couldn't give it a glowing review.

So I told him I'd do it for a month (different phrase of course) and let him know how it works for me, while he works on improving some other things. So starting tonight I will be repeating out loud to my lovely reflection in the mirror a yet to be determined phrase of something I would like to change in life this next month. I'll keep you updated. This should be interesting.

Forget-Me-Not

Because I wanted something a bit more creative then what showed up on sugerdoodle (not that it was bad, I just wanted something different - a little more of the hand-drawn look) minutes after Elder Uchtdorf's talk...