tonight

I'm working with my window blinds open. I can't resist because it's so awesome outside.

In other news, the lilacs are blooming in Salt Lake City which is one reason for the clouds of happiness around my brain today. Other reasons: working on wrapping thank you notes in brown paper envelopes & there's been rain storms every day this week.

Strangely, the messiness of my work station is also making me happy.

the desert

Suddenly, all I want to do is hike in Moab or another place with strange-shaped rocks.  Then, I want to go somewhere and cry because there is so much to do in the next four weeks. Four weeks people. That is not very much time for all the things that need to be written, completed, and visited.

More on this later, but my time in the desert is over. In January, I thought I'd die before April came. I'm serious. It felt years away. And now it's a few days.

I made it.

easter + perplexed

I recently found a talk by Elder Maxwell that is changing my life. I was 14 when he gave it. Which doesn't mean anything except I'm real grateful for the technology that allows me to listen to old conference talks pretty much wherever I want, whenever I want. The first half of the talk will kick your butt. The second half will make you weep from love and the promise of hope. Oh that promise. 

Do we understand—really comprehend—that Jesus knows and understands when we are stressed and perplexed? The complete consecration which effected the Atonement ensured Jesus' perfect empathy; He felt our very pains and afflictions before we did and knows how to succor us." —Neal A. Maxwell "Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father"

I really love that word perplexed. We talk a lot about making it through hard challenges, painful challenges, but not very often about the hurt of confusion. But, the atonement offers perfect empathy even for that rubik's cube of a wound. Especially when we have to wait one hundred years for understanding.

some letters

Send me a letter (tell me why you're lucky), or a sticky note, and I'll send you something letterpress printed. hint = hope.

PO box 2932
Salt Lake City, UT
84045

Sometimes I think of doing good things like building a stack of lego-sized blocks. Actually, normally, I don't think of doing good things like a stack of small blocks at all, except today because I had to do something terrifying. But, I knew it would be good in the end. And, I thought about how that good would be a small yellow block I could put on a stack of other yellow blocks. It would be worth it. Even though a lot of effort was going into getting the block onto the actual stack. You know.

(This analogy may not make sense if you never made anything out of blocks when you were little. But, I was a master of building things out of blocks. There didn't need to be a purpose. Just a castle. Or a tower.)

But then, I realized after the project was over, that I'd actually been carrying a small yellow block of gorgeousness and it was so stupidly and lovely heavy I had to sit down and cry afterwards. 

Someday I will tell you this story.

—but really it's about how God doesn't abandon us.

And how faith is creative.

a note to the brimhalls

Dear Brimhalls,

First, I'd like to thank you for your kind, kind, kindest comment on my blog post a few weeks ago. I would like to send you a proper thank you. Could you please leave your address in the comments (I won't publish it).

Also, my best friend finally convinced me that talking about my life cryptically on this blog won't really help anyone in the long run. She said I should stop selfishly posting inside jokes & half stories. She said, if you're going to be single you might as well write openly about it. So—I'm going to. Because, it's true: there are lots of mormon mommy bloggers, but no single girls consistently talking about issues and telling stories.

Will you read it?

love,
em

p.s. don't forget your address (and any one else who wants to leave their address, go for it, I'd love to send you something in the mail). 

after a date

It's lovely to come home feeling prettier.

He didn't even say anything about how I looked.

And that takes some serious skills.

(of kindness) (of sincerity)