Be Dedicated and Be Content

As I was thinking of a new post, these two ideas came to my mind. "Be Dedicated" and "Be Content" (if you haven't noticed, I've been running with the "Be" theme since I seem to get so many ideas that work with it). At first they seemed like different ideas, but as I started to write them separately, I realized that they go together.

I was thinking about being dedicated while I sat in church listening to a Sunday School lesson (way to focus, Lindsey). I was overwhelmed with thoughts of how being a member of my church has effected my life. The things I have done and the people I have met all because of my decision to dedicate my life to living up to what I believe in. I thought of all the ways a person could be dedicated and all the causes one could dedicate their life to. Even if you were an evil villain, you would be dedicated to a cause (an evil one, but whatever). You can focus on smaller goals and larger ones at the same time and accomplish each one step by step. Maybe you feel like writing so you, like many others, decide to dedicate the month of November to writing a novel. Maybe you feel like reading so you decide to dedicate an hour each day to reading, no matter what else happens in your day. There are so many things in this life we can devote ourselves to, the question is how can those things uplift us and help us as women?

My thoughts turn to motherhood. Is there a better example to set for your daughters? To be dedicated to them, to your family, your faith, your livelihood? To be dedicated to being happy and confident? Being actively engaged and committed to a cause can help us in our effort to becoming lovely. Dedication leaves no time for self pity or doubt. There is no time to listen to discouraging words and, better yet, there is no temptation to believe them!

I also thought of being content while sitting in that Sunday School lesson. The two concepts seemed to be connected in my mind. Dedication turned to thoughts of being busy and being busy made me think of being stressed and being stressed made me think of appreciating the small happy moments and then I felt content.

I think, as women, we can focus too much on progress. Have we finished the laundry? Are there dishes in the sink? What is due tomorrow? What have I accomplished today? What have I accomplished this year? There are so many tasks to complete and chores to do. How often do you stop and just enjoy your surroundings? Progress and improvement are necessary and important, but they should not be placed above our personal happiness. It's also important not to get caught up in deadlines...don't set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Look at what you have accomplished and be happy with that. There are days when I'm watching my nephews and absolutely nothing has been accomplished around the house, in fact, it actually looks worse. A lot of times, though, those are the days when I most enjoy being with the boys. Chores are put aside in order to enjoy and take part in their crazy toddler antics. Likewise, when I was in school, I would stress about whether to continue working on an assignment I had spent all day working on or to take a break and go do something fun and pointless. I usually talked myself into being frivolous pretty quickly, but in the end, focusing on both things made college a much better experience.

So, yes, it is good to be dedicated and keep busy, but don't be so busy that you miss out on the joy and satisfaction that surrounds you...the joy and satisfaction that come from devoting yourself to your family or your friends or your career or your favorite cause. Look at how your dedication is effecting others and be happy...be content.

Guest Post: This I Believe

Sydney lived across the hall from Miri and me a few years ago. She and I became friends and concert buddies one night when we decided to go and see a Ben Kweller concert on a whim, the first of many concerts we would attend together. For the last couple of years, I've watched Sydney do all kinds of amazing things, from running off to exotic places like India and Nepal, to organizing BYU's annual Hunger banquet. This essay was written as an entry for "This I Believe," a very cool project that just recently stopped being a radio show on NPR. Enjoy! -Megan

This I believe… The Power of Two

I believe that two people can find each other and be happy for the rest of their lives, together, forever. As an unmarried college student, I am surrounded by various theories of love. I have heard about a sort of free, non-committal love that is supposed to be threatening the youth of today. It is based on the idea that ‘monogamy is dead’ and that it is the collection of our experiences that will make us whole. But I still believe that one person will hold the key to my heart and we will find everlasting happiness in the well of life, sharing our love, saving the world, raising our kids, spoiling our grandkids and growing old together. I volunteer at a Domestic Violence shelter and have seen some awful effects of bad marriages. In my training they told me over and over again that this can happen to anyone, anywhere. Yet, I still believe that my marriage will be special and different, if I believe enough. And I have heard the divorce rates, one of every two marriages ends in divorce, it’s higher if it’s the second and even more if it’s the third. Despite these odds, my parents have been married thirty years and my grandparents have been married fifty two. Somehow, I feel exempt from it all. In the face of shattering families and broken marriage, I still believe in the power of two. This I believe.

Guest Post: Rockin' the Stretch Marks

My name is Melissa Turney. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it is hot and miserable, but after three years I can finally call it home. I am a wife and a mommy to a three month old daughter, Hannah. I will graduate from UNLV in December and become the first female college graduate on my dad's side of the family. I became acquainted with this blog through Megan, who was my first friend ever, and I've decided to adopt the attitude that I'm pretty awesome (in a completely humble way).


I was recently saddened by a status update from a pseudo friend of mine who is 25 weeks pregnant. She said “_____ told me today that cocoa butter doesn’t work on stretch marks... sad face.” I can’t fully blame her for her dismay. I admit that I, too, had qualms about my post-baby body while I was pregnant, as my body was distorting to epic proportions. But I also recognize that I’ve never felt more beautiful than when I was pregnant. If pregnancy is wonderful and beautiful, then post-pregnancy is a mess.

Before I had Hannah, I had a pretty average body. I weighed in at about 130 pounds; my boobs were small, but firm; and my skin was all around smooth and stretch free. Naturally as my body changed I became a little self conscious. While I’ve never had to really watch what I eat, I confess it took a while for me to eat fast food in public because I didn’t want to be the girl with the pudgy tummy eating a Big Mac. I didn’t even enter the building to buy any food until I had an obvious baby bump that was obviously not just an extra flab of fat.

My friends told me that it was the coolest thing to give birth and watch your stomach go flat (in reality it is the coolest thing to actually give birth and watch a human come out of you… a human you already love so completely). I was intrigued by this, as I could no longer remember what it was like to NOT have a pregnant body. About thirty minutes after I gave birth (I was a little too occupied with my new daughter to care about my body) I finally looked down to notice my stomach. To my amazement it WAS flat. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, to touch it felt like kneading dough but who could have time to care about that (TOES! HOW I MISSED YOU!) when my body was so small. Well... not quite. I stood up for the first time and my flat stomach became a replica of 4 month pregnant me. Did I miss something? Twins perhaps? Alas, I still looked pregnant when I stood up and let it all hang loose--literally. Not only that, but my body continued to change drastically over the next few weeks. My small but firm boobs had become large and voluptuous during pregnancy. I couldn’t wait to try those babies out after the stomach was gone. Unfortunately, they were still NOT sexy. They were leaking all the time and when they were not large and in charge, they were shriveled and resembled old man breasts.

I have to admit for about a month I didn’t want my husband to see me naked EVER. I didn’t even want to see me naked. The boob situation got worse as I’d lie down and they would flop to their respective sides of my ribcage (lovely), and I had long circular marks stretching across my once taunt stomach. I was not an attractive sight. Then something happened that changed my whole perspective…

I went to church two months after Hannah was born and a woman stood up to the pulpit. She introduced herself and her husband. She talked about how they had been married for five years and had been very blessed in the beginning. They managed to buy a house in a time when the sellers had the upper hand, and decided to start a family in their new home. While they were blessed in almost every aspect in life, they were not conceiving a child--and after over a year of trying they were told that the woman would never carry a baby conceived naturally. They started on fertility treatments. Nothing worked. They went into debt to try costly alternatives and still nothing worked. Finally, they gave up their house in order to do invitro fertilization, and happily, she is expecting a baby girl in February.

I sat there and listened to her story, sobbing as I held my baby close to my imperfect body. That imperfect body had created, carried, and delivered the perfect little angel who now lights up my life. My unattractive breasts now sustain that life through the milk my imperfect body creates. I went home, bound and determined to be grateful for a body that was so perfectly able to conceive with hardly a thought and have a successful, comparatively easy pregnancy. A month after that life changing moment, I still am in awe at my beautiful stretch marks swirling around a body that obviously has accomplished something miraculous. I roll out of bed, pick up my boobs off the floor, and face each day feeling more beautiful than ever, and grateful for the opportunity to be a woman. Grateful to carry the scars of childbirth, the dark circles from a lack of sleep, the lines on my eyes from smiling too much; and grateful for the perspective that I may now share with my daughter when she is feeling less than perfect.

Express Yourself (Or Else)

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple years ago (2007, I think) that talked about how women express their feelings, and why it is important. I actually saved the hard copy of that article up until this past summer when my husband and I moved into our current apartment, but alas, I think I threw it away in the move. Now that I want to write about it, I can't find it. But I have found another article that says something similar, and I will try to summarize for you.

Women use verbal communication differently than men do. This we know. Women like to talk about their feelings more than men do, and men often have a hard time understanding that we don't want them to solve our problems, just to listen to them. This is why we have girlfriends.

But what you might not know is that women need to have this kind of communication, and if they don't it can affect their health (not to mention relationships). The article I linked to above mentions that women sometimes use conversation to figure out how they're feeling, not just to convey something that they've already identified. This is important, because if you can't identify what you're feeling, you can't resolve it; and unresolved issues don't just disappear, although we might stop thinking about them.
Think about how stress can affect your body, especially after many years of it. (I'm thinking of an episode of Friends right now, where Phoebe works for Merrill Lynch and has two heart attacks because of the stress... remember?) Well, not identifying and expressing your feelings creates a lot of stress in your body, and even if you don't see any effects of it now, it can manifest itself physically later on in your life. Now this is the part where I really wish I could find that article, because it gave the results of a study that I would love to be able to quote more accurately. However, I will summarize and tell you that the study showed that women who didn't talk about their feelings were literally more likely to die than others who did. (By the way, if anyone knows what article I'm talking about and can tell me where to find it, I would love to have it again. I did many extensive Google searches that were, unfortunately, fruitless.)
You really shouldn't need studies telling you that you'll die if you don't give yourself the chance to talk about what you're feeling. I think that this is something we should all learn to do because we deserve to do it, to be able to express our thoughts and feelings. If you have really good girl friends, talk to them about you for a while. If you have a husband or boyfriend, make sure he understands how you communicate, and help him learn to listen to you in the way that you need to be listened to. If you don't have someone you feel comfortable being totally honest with, write in a journal or get a blog! You can be anonymous if you want, and writing a blog gives you a feeling of having talked to someone, because you know that anyone can read it. However you do it, make an effort to pay attention to your own feelings and learn to express them. It can help improve your relationships with loved ones, and you'll improve your emotional and physical health too.

What Is Your Favorite Flaw and/or Trait?

This topic has been brought up once or twice so I thought I would try an experiment. I put the question out there (via Facebook) to be answered. It is a difficult question to answer and, truthfully, not something everyone really wants to think about, but we did get a few answers. I'm a little surprised at the similarities. Some things that were mentioned are things I deal with myself (blotchy cheeks) and some things are things I have noticed about my friends and things that I think are charming.

Here are a few answers:

Megan said, "I definitely have a freckle in my eye (just like the Postal Service song!) and I really like it. I especially love it when my nephews notice it and want to know why it's there and then think it's cool."

Two people mentioned naturally rosy cheeks because it saves time and money on make up (no blush).

Two people mentioned moles (beauty marks if they are on your face, tres chic), one under the eye and one on the corner of the mouth "...like it's almost being eaten. So whenever I'm eating chocolate or something brown, people tell me I have a little bit on my mouth. For some reason, I think this is hilarious instead of embarrassing."

One person mentioned her "half grin" and how happy she is her daughter inherited it. Also, her under eye circles (with the help of concealer), which we all know are almost impossible to appreciate so she deserves a pat on the back.

And Hayley mentioned in her guest post how she likes her vampire teeth.

Miri learned to love her curly hair, even though in Texas humidity it's more often frizzy than not, and her giant smile, which shows her top gums but has kind of become her trademark.

I have already mentioned that I like my crooked smile...I'll add my blotchy cheeks to the list and my easy to take care of, but sometimes unruly eyebrows. I guess I like my face! That's good, right?

That's me with my brother. Crooked smile (notice how my bottom lip goes down on the left? it gets much worse), no blush (and yet the cheeks are rosy), and happily untamed eyebrows.

I guess my point is that even if you didn't answer the question, it's an important one to think about. Embrace your quirks and take pride in the things about you that make you different...the things that make you beautiful.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Vqr3LLT40