The other day a friend and I were having a conversation about how the daily act of scripture reading and saying your prayers is not necessarily for the benefit of yourself. The Lord regularly prompts people who are spiritually prepared and attune, to answer each others prayers, acting as His angels on earth. I sometimes struggle, as many people do, with keeping those habits up. However, if I can see it instead as making myself open to receive promptings then maybe my motivation will increase. And..it has. I've really been working on reading everyday and keeping the Lord in my mind more often. I've actually stopped listening to as much rap hah, the bad kind of rap. I still love it and there's totally uplifting types of rap...just throwing that in there. But I think it's made a difference. Avett Brothers here I am! Mixed with a little Jay-Z? Yeah, it's cool. Off topic.

Anyways, I've in general been praying to be more in tune with the spirit. And know what, the Lord answered my prayer! This cutie pie, return sister missionary, from my hometown posted on facebook that she needed a place to live. I got outta my contract because of graduation, minus the deposit but I was just going to let that go. Trying to sell your contract is terrible. I've just had the worst experiences with that. So I hadn't even thought of trying to sell it. But here she comes along posting about how she needs a place to live in Provo. I thought, well i'll just email her anyways. I did and she's now buying my contract! What. When we were conversing..digitally she said a couple of times, "Oh, you are just an answer to my prayer!" And she came and looked at the house for like two seconds and then asked me who to contact to buy. When I acted surprised that she'd come to a conclusion that fast she just said, "I already prayed about it and feel good." Love those sweet sister missionaries haha.

Anywhoo, I realized that she was right. We had both been an answer to each others prayers. I was praying to be attune to help someone and she was praying for a place. Bam. Good job God. Two prayers at once. You're awesome. Plus I get my deposit back, win.

It blew my mind how young sexualized, misogynistic, demeaning images of women are seeped into the minds of young kinds. Yes, I watched Space Jam on Monday and two days later it's still driving me crazy.

"Firstly, there’s only one female in the whole movie that isn’t a wife, mother, child or housekeeper, and even those roles are very minor ones, appearing onscreen for less than five minutes in total. You can rest assured that Lola is objectified as the sexy, albeit sporty, “don’t-call-me-Doll” rabbit who wears short shorts and a midriff top, while everyone else wears actual basketball attire."

Yep. She can't just be one of the best players on the team, she has to be dripping with sexual appeal in order to qualify her value. And what's with that stupid scene where the monster is going to fall on her, Bugs pushes her out of the way, and she's instantly like, "my hero" and rewards him with a kiss. She can be an independent woman, but only as long as it's shown that she still needs a man to save her. She's the ultimate trophy girlfriend.

The most damaging is the one who "purports to be a Modern Woman – smart and powerful, but ultimately she relies on the men in her life to boost her esteem and supply her opinion."

I totally find truth with this too. "It’s a fact: most all of the coolest cartoon characters are men. The boys are allowed to have complex motivations and badass fight scenes. They typically get the best jokes and tend to be the main characters. The women’s motivations tend to be “SHE IS A LADY. THAT IS WHAT LADIES DO,” and their jokes are limited to nagging and histrionics."

And don't even get me started on Disney Princesses.

I was helping a male customer buy a ROC pass today over the phone. His password was hula dance. Thus, my conversation, "So you want to put in your student number, then 'hula dance' to get in." Then a mental image of what I just said floated to my mind. A grown-a white man in a grass skirt awkwardly hula dancing around. I had to stop and take a calming breath.

This one time my friend Liz was helping a customer at the Fine Arts center. She was confirming her contact information to verify it was the right account. Liz, in her serious-professional-i'm working-voice goes, "So the email we have down is Iheartwolvz. Is that correct?"

The girl goes bright red and mutters out a, "Yes."

Continuing in her no nonsense way, Liz says, "And that is wolvz spelled with a Z?"

The girl is visibly cringing and only manages a nod.

Sometimes my job is really funny.

Please, for your own sake, pick normal passwords and email addresses. As there is a high chance that that quirky phrase you picked in the solace of your home office, will be read back to you by a customer service employee trying desperately not to snicker.

It is interesting how often threads of life coincide together and form twine that twists it's way into a rope that leads up to another ledge of learning. Today I was talking to my roommates about the sex trade and how someone can take the humanity away from another person. How does a person get to that point where they can choose to take the purest form of our Godliness away from another person. A person has a right to use that as they will. I do believe that their are moral absolutes as to when that should be used that apply to everyone, whether they believe in it or not. But the point is that they should still have a choice. Then I went and saw divergent today. Cheesy but it made me think. It made me think hard. There is a simulator in the film that generates a field of your worst fears. Trish's last fear, the worst fear that lies deepest in your heart, was of her boyfriend raping her. What was specifically different about this fear compared to the rest, is that this threat is not physically endangering to your body per say; rather it is a danger to your identity as a human. That fear goes so far beyond all the other fears as it signifies losing your agency so far that you lose the right of one of the most significant choices we as human beings are given in this life. A choice that qualifies our basic humanity while being indicative of our divine nature of godliness. You strip away this choice, this characteristic, this right as a human and spirit child of God then you have truly ripped away at the soul.

Another point they touched on was agency. A leader of one of the groups was acting on a conviction that the nature of man was the enemy, so for anyone to have their agency it would lead to disruption of the peace. Okay, it's true that "The natural man is an enemy of God, and will be forever and ever." But, luckily for us we are not made up of just the natural man. We are children of God and have been blessed with attributes of Him. The mixture of these good and bad characteristics are what make us so beautiful as human beings. We have the choice to choose good over evil, which hopefully we do every time. But it's beautiful that sometimes we don't and that things can get screwed up. That sounds like a contradiction of what I said in the previous paragraph, but something can be beautiful and terrible at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I prefer that the choices we make that that screw things up, are small menial things that don't have a terrible impact on a large scale. But there still is beauty in the right of a human to make that choice for themselves. I think I understand more fully the plan that the Father proposed in the premortal existence.

I walked away basking in the beauty of humanity, glorying in the blessing of agency. My heart was open to feeling every emotion that came with my humanity. I left feeling fearless of heartbreak, doubt, love, pain and confusion. I may never have felt as open to embrace life and all of it's experiences that come with humanity as I was at that moment. I may never have felt so blessed with my ability to make choices as I did at that moment. Honestly, at this point in my life what I desire and fear most is a relationship. I left feeling fearless of that, even if it failed. That experience is a part of humanity, thus it is beautiful. My heart was open, my desire pure. I left that theater feeling passion for life. Something that we as humans often turn off to protect ourselves against the pain and heartbreak that passion can lead to. We lead shallow, calculating lives. There is something beautiful in a person that leaves the passion on and the heart open to embrace all that this life on earth has to offer.

Lately, I've had such a desire to feel spiritual things. The world can get so overwhelming, demanding and demeaning. I'll be on the internet and a strong desire to get away from all media, to enjoy the silence completely overwhelms me. I yearn for the comforting words and feelings that bring solace to my soul. I am loved. I am of value. I am not just what the world wants of me. I feel such an immense pressure to be gorgeous, shapely and flawless. Especially as a Exercise Science major. I am getting more in shape and I feel great. But it so so difficult to balance that healthiness with the need to be sexy and fit as the world expects. I see how women in the media are displayed as sexual objects and feel the pressure put on me to be one of them. I feel anger, disgust, frustration and the demoralization of my own worth. The media tells us that is what men expect, that is what other women expect, that is what I should expect. It tells us to view other women as competition. When I meet another woman I immediately start comparing myself to her. We are not competition. We are sisters. I struggle remembering that there are good men. Good men that I can trust that don't just want to use my body and the pleasures it offers to them. I find my mistrust of them, leads me to mistrust myself. Because as a woman, I want to be desired by men. It's natural. But I want to be beautiful to them, not to be lusted after. I want be seen as so much more. Because I am SO MUCH MORE. I forget that I am. I sometimes find that appearance occupies my thoughts, consumes my day. I forget that I am a girl that likes to camp, loves to read, fish, paint, and million things before what my appearance tells me. I have to consciously turn away, turn it off and believe in my value as a woman of God. Turn off the consumerism, turn off the commercialism, turn off the comparison. Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it OFF.

After spinning class today I was in the girls locker room changing into normal clothes, jamming to Beyonce. You know, the ushe. I put on my leggings and flannel button up, lumberjack style today, and walked over to the mirror. I looked in it, then did a double take. A handprint, in bright red paint, had somehow found it's way onto my booty!

I wore those leggings to a paint dance party a month or so ago, and apparently someone got a little touchy on my tushy. I have absolutely no recollection of when that could have happened. Creepy, mysterious groper, creepy. And somehow, out of all the paint I was covered in, that hand print was the lone survivor of the wash cycle?? Really?!

So, don't worry, I walked around BYU campus for a good four hours with a bright red handprint on my bum. Luckily, my shirt was long.