Mirror Within

Poem 1--Spring 1999

Mirror Within Yourself--A Sonnet

She glances in a mirror while vacuuming, shocked
To see her reflection.  What is it that shocks her? She never
Recognizes the sweat-smeared, bashful woman who is reflected
Back each time.  Why is she so insecure?

She imagines a self-sacrificing analytical
Individual with perfect features; sparkling eyes; a detailed
Face full of light.  But in the mirror she sees a skeptical,
Plain, brown-haired girl, not who she is inside, only depressed.

She hears her own voice, frustrated that she is moody.
Why is it so harsh?  She wants it to be musical.  How idealistic
To have a voice like music.  Most times she is fussy.
Why is her voice not who she is?  She is not pessimistic.

She is a mother, perfecting lives but being too critical.
She is respectful to all but herself; to herself she is resentful.



Poem 2--3rd Person, Jan/Feb 2014

Mirror Within

She glances in a mirror,
Shocked at her reflection.
Why is she so shocked?
She never recognizes the face that is reflected back.
Why does she not see who she really is?

She imagines herself
Confident with perfect features,
Sparkling eyes, a detailed face full of light.
But reflected back is a despondent, plain, brown-haired girl.
Not at all who she really is.

She hears her own voice,
Frustrated she is so moody.
Why is her voice so harsh?
She wants it to be like music.
Why does she not sound like who she really is?

She is a mother,
Nurturing lives but losing her own.
She is respectful to others,
But to herself she is resentful.

Poem 3--1st Person, Jan/Feb 2014

Mirror Within

I glance in a mirror,
Shocked at my reflection.

Why am I so shocked?

I never recognize the face that is reflected back.

Why do I not see who I really am?

I imagine myself 

Confident with perfect features,

Sparkling eyes, a detailed face full of light.

But reflected back is a despondent, plain, brown-haired girl.

Not at all who I really am.

I hear my own voice,

Frustrated I am so moody.

Why is my voice so harsh?

I want it to be like music.

Why do I not sound like who I really am?

I am a mother,

Nurturing lives but losing my own.

I am respectful to others,

But to myself I am resentful.

Comfort

April 30, 2002 (19 year anniversary of the passing of my brother Cris)

“I am he; yea, I am he that comforteth you” (2 Ne. 8:12)

The LDS Bible Dictionary states that the word Atonement “describes the setting ‘at one’ of those who have been estranged, and denotes the reconciliation of man to God.”  Our estrangement from God is two-fold:  1) physical bodies that experience pain, sorrow, sickness and death, and 2) sin or willful disobedience to God and His commandments.  The Bible Dictionary continues, “The purpose of the atonement is to correct or overcome the consequences of sin” thus allowing us to be reconciled with God both spiritually and physically.

In Paul’s epistle to the Romans he stated, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (3:23).  We are all sinners and in need of reconciliation to our Father in Heaven.  Sin and death are part of the great plan of happiness that was prepared from the beginning.  All of us here on earth and all those who have ever been on earth or who ever will be on earth agreed to come to this world, to receive physical bodies, and to be tempted, tried, and tested in the flesh.  We willing entered this world of sin, sorrow, and pain to become human, subject to all manner of ailments and temptations.  We are here for a reason and that reason is to fulfill the measure of creation, to find joy, and to overcome sin and death.

In order to find joy and overcome sin and death we need the help of our Savior Jesus Christ.  He intercedes and sets us “at one” with God through his infinite and eternal sacrifice, the Atonement.   Thus his Atonement also is two-fold:  1) his resurrection or the triumph over the physical body, and 2) his sacrifice where he paid the price for our sins. 

Paul also explained to the Corinthians plainly the two-fold power of Christ’s Atonement; “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (15:22).   Adam’s death was both physical and spiritual.  Physical death is the actual death of the body while “spiritual death is hell” or sin, and both estrange us from God (2 Ne. 9:10-12).  

We are made alive through Christ by first receiving forgiveness from our sins and becoming clean again through his suffering.  Alma in the Book of Mormon stated, “The Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance” (7:13).  And secondly we are made alive by resurrecting and overcoming our physical bodies.  This triumph over the physical body and the pains and sicknesses associated with it is brought about by Christ and his resurrection; “Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of man should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself” (Alma 41:2). 

Christ’s Atonement is all encompassing as explained by Jacob in the Book of Mormon; “And he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam” (2 Ne. 9:21).  He has suffered for all the sins and all the physical ailments of every man, woman and child.  And this is done because he completed with perfection the Atonement, the most important event in our lives and our eternal lives.

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Poem 1--Spring 1999

She thought she was above it,

That it would never happen to her.

She almost made it through.

She fought, struggled, attempted to evade;

As a wounded falcon, fighting against the wind,

Grace did not evolve naturally.

Flustered, she paused at the cliff's limit;

Would she end or consent?

She lowered to her knees expended.

It can bewilder anyone.

She just prayed until she got the courage back.

She merely took her time to ponder

Her total change in form.

She is thoroughly developing into

The person she wants to be.

Experience conforms her,

Creating alluring butterflies.

She professed to be above it,

Until she conceded to seek

The Only Being

Who could succor her transforming.

She finally made it through.

Poem 2--November 2013

Thinking she was above God,

That faith would never happen to her,

She tried to make it through unchanged.

She fought, struggled, attempted to evade;

As a newly born eagle flying,

Grace did not come easily.

Exhausted, she paused at the cliff's limit;

Would she fall or fly?

She lowered to her knees expended.

Metamorphosis bewilders everyone.

Praying for courage,

She pondered her change in form.

Eventually succumbing, becoming.

Experience conformed her,

Creating an alluring butterfly.

She professed to be above God,

Until she conceded to seek Him.

She finally made it through changed.

Poem 3--November 2013

She tried to make it through

Unchanged.

She fought, she struggled, she was

Wounded.

She paused at the cliff's limit

Exhausted.

She lowered to her knees

Expended.

Succumbing to God she

Prayed.

Feeling God's love she was

Comforted.

She finally made it through

Changed.

The "Become a Writer" 30-Day Challenge!

I recently subscribed to a blog by James Clear that is very inspiring.  He writes articles two times a week about goal setting and achieving those goals.  Below is his latest update announcing his challenge to us to become a writer.  I  thought I would share it with all of you here on my writing blog to help inspire you to become a writer too!

My 3 Steps to Completing This Challenge:

1.  Pick a topic to write about and a place to record your writing.
*I will have two places to record my writing--here on this blog and in my journal.
*My topic is:  Thanks Giving

2.  Decide when you are going to write.
*Daily in my journal before going to bed each night.
*Weekly each Sunday evening.
*Monthly publish my writing on this blog.

3.  Stick to your schedule for the next 30 days.

_________________________________________________________________________

Announcing The “Become a Writer” 30-Day Challenge!

by James Clear — Get free updates of new posts here

Welcome to November!

At this time last year, I decided to start writing a new article every Monday and Thursday. What has happened since then has been unexpected and totally awesome. We have a community of more than 27,000 people reading each week, over 100,000 people visit the website each month, and more than 1.5 million people have read my articles this year. Of course, I’ve made a ton of mistakes and written terrible articles along the way as well, but I can safely say that starting this blog has been one of the best decisions I have made.

Because writing each week has been so valuable for me, I want to challenge you to also follow a writing schedule … for the next 30 days. There is no pressure to participate (I’ll return to regular posts on Thursday), but my hope is that this challenge will help you kickstart the consistency that is so important for making long-term progress on your goals.

My good friend Scott Dinsmore recently ran a similar challenge and so I’m taking a page from his book and calling this The Become a Writer Challenge.

Here are the details…

The Become a Writer Challenge (Examples)

You can approach this challenge however you would like, but here are a few examples.

• If you’re an aspiring author, you could write part of your novel every Sunday.
• If you’re an entrepreneur, you could start a blog and every Friday write down what you learned in your business that week.
• If you want to improve your fitness, you could start a journal to record your workouts each time you go to the gym.
• If you enjoy vegan cooking, you could start a website and post a “meatless Monday” recipe on your website every Monday night.
• If you’re pursuing any goal, you could start a blog and write about your progress each week.
• If you’re feeling lost or confused, you could just write about whatever strikes you each day during your lunch break and see what happens.

You get the idea. The goal isn’t necessarily to become a professional writer, but rather to write about something that is important to you, and do it consistently, for the next 30 days. This challenge is all about the power of following a system rather than setting goals.

Complete These 3 Steps

There are 3 steps to completing this challenge.

1. Pick a topic to write about and a place to record your writing.

DIRECTIONS: Personally, I think the best place to record your progress is on a website or blog. There are many options available, but I made a video (at the end of this article) that provides a step-by-step tutorial if you want to start a blog or website like I did. Obviously, you’re free to write in a notebook, Word document, or elsewhere if you don’t want to start a blog.

2. Decide when you are going to write.

DIRECTIONS: When it comes to building better habits, writing on a consistent basis has made a bigger difference for me than anything else. You are welcome to follow my Monday-Thursday writing schedule if you want. Or you can follow any variation you want: once per month, once per week, once per day. Whatever works for you and your goals. The most important thing is to have a schedule. When, exactly, are you going to write?

3. Stick to your schedule for the next 30 days.

DIRECTIONS: If you stick to your schedule for the month of November, you will have successfully completed the challenge. My hope is that this challenge will show you that progress is achieved by setting a simple schedule and following it each week, not by making outlandish goals and promises.

You don’t have to sign up to join the challenge, but if you want some accountability you are welcome to send me a message and tell me what schedule you will be following. Or you can share your plan in the comments.

Why Should I Do This?

Why should you join The Become a Writer Challenge?

1. You’ll learn.

Writing about a topic — whether it’s recording your workouts, hacking away on the book you always wanted to write, or sharing marketing ideas for your business — will automatically teach you more about it. In many cases, you will naturally become a thought leader and expert on a particular topic simply by writing about it each week.

2. You’ll teach, share, and contribute something valuable.

Sharing your thoughts and experiences with the world allows you to engage with other people and share helpful ideas with others. There are always people who will benefit from hearing about your journey.

3. You’ll hold yourself accountable.

What gets measured, gets managed. Whether you’re writing about your workouts, your business, or anything else, the act of writing makes you pay attention to that area. Paying attention means you’ll realize areas for improvement and be more attentive to mistakes that you make.

4. You’ll improve your thinking and perspective.

Writing forces you to think clearly. Good writers understand arguments and ideas from different angles and perspectives. That’s a great thing because you can develop a more solid reasoning for why you do what you do and become more respectful of other people’s opinions at the same time.

5. If you want, you can make a living from it.

I’ve been an online entrepreneur for 3 years now and my living has been made entirely off of my writing, blogs, and websites. And I’m not the only one. There are tons of freelancers, consultants, and small business owners who market their services and drive most of their clients through their popular blogs and writing. There are even technology startups like Buffer that have grown to over 1 million users almost exclusively through writing guest posts, their own blog posts, and the resulting word-of-mouth buzz.

Long story short, writing can help you achieve your goals in health, business, and life.

Memory

March 28, 2002 and April 10, 2002

Por los caminos del recuerdo
On The Road of Remembrance

“A medida que crecemos pasamos por una seria de experiences que dejan una huella profunda en nuestras vidas.”  Y “por los caminos del recuerdo revivimos memorias de tiempos pasados.  Algunas de estas memorias hacen florecer sonrisas en nuestros labios, otras en cambio nos ponen meloncólicos.”

"As we grow we pass through a series of experiences that leave a profound imprint in our lives." And "on the road of remembrance we relive memories of the past.  Some of these memories make smiles bloom on our lips, others instead leave us melancholy."

En esta tarde de mi vida

todas las imágenes

de los días se perciben

lejanas de memorias

vagabundas:

Marejadas de nostalgias

provocan recuerdos

que sin descuido

penetran rompiendo

la monotonía

de esta tarde mía.

--María R. González

In this evening of my life 
All the images
Of past days are perceived as
Distant idle memories:

Nostalgia swells
Provoking memories
That without trying
Penetrate, breaking
The monotony
Of this evening of mine.

Memory:  "the power or act of remembering; all that one remembers."  
While I was reading Virginia Woolf a few weeks ago, her use of stream of consciousness provoked me to wonder about my own thought patterns and specifically how often I recall past events and memories.  How often do I walk “por los caminos del recuerdo?”  
Our thoughts are constantly drifting back to days of old, days of when, days of youth and innocence.  Memories come and go, ebbing in cycles.  Events once thought forgotten emerge and take us back.  Smells, sights, sounds, and things take us back.  Or sometimes we are just transported for no reason at all to relish in our thoughts.  We play them out again, change them how we will, add details, events, acts, emotions not really there, or we relive them exactly. 

Why do we remember certain things?  What makes us remember and forget?  When do we start remembering events?  My first child is only 7 months old and watching her has me wondering these questions.  Will she remember living in Wisconsin?  What will be her first memory, but then, when will it fade? 

So now I question my thoughts and memories.  What is my earliest memory?  What have I forgotten that if I read about it in a journal or saw it in a photograph, I would remember it again?  
I have realized that I am forgetting things that I once knew.  I am forgetting events and losing memories that I know where once there.  So I began to write them down.  I brainstormed and came up with a huge list of “memories.”  It is a list of sentences, key words, etc. that trigger vivid, or not so vivid any more, and happy or not so happy, memories of my childhood.  Each day it seems that I come up with more.  I am expanding them, writing all I can remember about them, so that I will have a collection of my childhood memories.  It is amazing how one thought leads to another.  Our streams of consciousness are really streams—ebbing and flowing, mixing and leading into something new and once forgotten but which brings freshness and newness of life.

But boy do we mix things up in our memories!  I didn’t know that both those events happened in the same day!!  What time in my life was that?  How old was I?  What were we all doing?  What year was it?  How were we dressed?  What was my size compared to things around me?  I wonder if I visited it again would it be different or the same?  Is my memory true?  
How great will be the day when our minds are opened and we are able to remember all things and remember them as they really were. Or how sad will be the day.  Walking “por los caminos del recuerdo” we remember many things some put smiles on our lips while others can make us very sad.

Living in the past is good and we all do it.  Just like Virginia Woolf has described for us in her books, we all drift back to the past amongst our thinking of the day.  Memories always evoke feelings whether fun, hard, sad, depressing or good.  Was that really I?  I’ve changed so much!!  That seems like a lifetime ago.  See what we have learned and how far we have come. 

Collect your memories now, read and save your journals so that you will have a collection of your memories and you can more easily walk “por los caminos del recuerdo.”

Live Life

February 24, 2002

Live Life

I heard an advertisement on the radio for a web site. I thought they were saying www.livelife.com but they were actually saying “livelive.” Anyway, it got me thinking about what it really means to live life.

It seems that there are always opposing forces that are constantly working in our lives. For example there is order vs. chaos, joy vs. depression, and excitement vs. boredom. Living life seems to mean going through cycles of order and then chaos, joy and then depression, excitement and then boredom.  Life appears to resemble the stock market with its up and downs, the only constant being in its inconsistency. Yet in the end, even though there are daily losses and gains, progress is attained.

One of the biggest obstacles deterring us from becoming who we know we can be is inconsistency. For a few weeks or a month we can be consistent with our goals and desires, but then the cycle continues and we are brought back to our old ways or no ways, laziness. This then causes stress. We are not whom we want to be, we are not doing what we want or need to be doing. We were succeeding just last week or even yesterday but today there is no energy left to keep fighting, no desire left to be the person we envision or maybe the vision all together is gone. So the life cycles continue; excitement leads to boredom, order to chaos, and joy to depression.

The secret to living a happy life is in being consistent.  Of course there will be ups and downs but the goal is to keep the downs to a minimum and the ups higher. When we retire we want our overall stock market experience to be made mostly of gains. The losses are going to be there, but their effect at the end is minimal. If anything the losses have taught us to be resilient, to stick with it even through the hard times, and to not quit.  We continue moving forward and upward, adding the good and deleting the bad.

Deleting the bad is a survival technique. We forget the bad experiences, the traumatic times, or at least their impact is lessened over time, and we remember more clearly the good times. For example, why do women have more than one child? Pregnancy and childbirth are definitely not pain free. Both are difficult and trying not only physically but also emotionally.  So why after experiencing all of the pain and the bad do woman do it all over again and sometimes again and again. The answer is because a mother literally forgets. The joy and excitement of holding your baby and watching him or her grow and learn washes the pain away. She wants another child to nurture and care for no matter the costs. It is a survival technique.

Yet, we don’t want to totally forget all the bad that has ever happened. Learning from the past and from good and bad experiences help us live life. The cycles of life need to be and must be recorded, not only for our personal benefit but also for the benefit of our our predecessors.  Recording experiences is the only sure way to remember them. Journals, pictures, letters, scrapbooks, blogs and other methods help us record the cycles of life whether they are the losses or the gains.

So get out there and live life! Be as consistent on a constant basis as possible. Throw out the chaos with order, overcome depression with joy, and lose boredom to excitement. Living a happy life means winning over the long haul and not necessarily each day.  Being as consistent as possible is the key. Growing and improving on our daily investments is the goal so that over time we are better than what we started out to be.

Baby Love

January 24, 2002

Baby Love

I read an article out of a magazine entitled “Baby Love” about a three months after Ellie, my first child, was born. This was an article that stirred my emotions, kindled a flame in my soul, brought tears to my eyes, and all the other frequently used cliches that do little to truly explain our inner most feelings.

I hadn’t realized that I was “baby hungry” until I had given birth to Ellie and read that article. It expressed so clearly what I was feeling. My husband and I had decided to try and conceive because frankly I was getting old. I had no “burning desire” to have a child, even though I wanted children and knew that I would have several.

My main reason for getting pregnant was because of my age: 24 years old! I know that isn’t old but by my age my mother had given birth to three children and a fourth was soon to be on the way. We wanted several kids and also a good, early retirement; we needed to get busy.

To have a baby is an amazing feeling. It is one of accomplishment, shock and disbelief. Men should really be given the chance to experience this miracle first hand someday. The actual feeling of having a baby whoosh out of you with the warmth of the liquid is something difficult to explain. To see that your baby is healthy and whole and to hear her first cry and to feel her sucks at your breast completes the miracle of the actual birthing experience.

Getting to know each other is the truly difficult part. Making the adjustment is strange. Even though this child has been growing inside of you over the last 40 weeks and you’ve felt her kicks and movements and heard her heart beat, you are still strangers. You are both new at this. What do her cries mean? How do I feed her? Why won’t she go to sleep! But soon it all seems natural—it is natural. It is as if you were never apart.

You were together once as dear friends in the heavens. You are each a daughter of God and beloved of Him. You were a spiritual family, now an earthly family and soon will be an eternal family.

Such trust and love come from her eyes. Will I keep the promises I made before we both embarked on this journey here on earth? Will I teach her of Jesus, his teachings and resurrection, and of love and life eternal?

I cried when I could not feed my baby milk from my breasts. “All I want is to feed my baby!” I cried out in anger at God. But softly came the reply, “Be at peace, my daughter. More important than your milk is your love. Teach her to feast on the words of Christ for then she will never hunger nor thirst.” 

Baby love and baby hungry have taken on new meanings for me now: “Teach me to walk in the light of his love.”