full blown blitz

lately i've been trying to figure my life plans out. as a sign of my naïveté i always thought that the decisions post college wouldn't be much like the big, scary, harry decisions i had faced in the past. of course my god wouldnt let my progress stop at 21. graduation was the goal post that has intensely consumed my vision for the past few years. yet now that i'm here, i'm so uncertain of what is next. i've been thinking a lot about your examples, about my saviors will, and about my desires and gifts. where do they all fit in? where can i best help the lord achieve his purposes?

Given twenty-three years ago, Pat Holland, whom i'm coming to adore, said,

“Surely there has not been another time in history when women have questioned their self-worth as harshly and critically as in the second half of the twentieth century. Many women are searching, almost frantically, as never before, for a sense of personal purpose and meaning; and many LDS women are searching, too, for eternal insight and meaning in their femaleness.

If I were Satan and wanted to destroy a society, I think I would stage a full-blown blitz on women. I would keep them so distraught and distracted that they would never find the calming strength and serenity for which their sex has always been known.

Satan has effectively done that, catching us in the crunch of trying to be superhuman instead of striving to reach our unique, God-given potential within such diversity. He tauntingly teases us that if we don’t have it all—fame, fortune, families, and fun, and have it all the time—we have been short-changed and are second-class citizens in the race of life. As a sex we are struggling, our families are struggling, and our society is struggling. Drugs, teenage pregnancies, divorce, family violence, and suicide are some of the ever-increasing side effects of our collective life in the express lane.

Too many of us are struggling and suffering, too many are running faster than they have strength, expecting too much of themselves.”

so i'm going on a bear hunt...goin on a bear hunt... i'm not afraid... i'm not afraid. Hunting to find that 'personal purpose and meaning', that 'eternal insight and meaning in my femaleness', mostly that 'unique God-given potential within such diversity'. the decision will work itself out. cant go around it, cant go under it, cant go over it, have to go through it. I know it'll all fall perfectly into place in the most surprising and unimagined ways, just like it has for all the historical accounts for god's children, just like it has for all of you, just like every big beary scary harry decision i've made in the past.

photos via denmark