publishing peace

Let me start out by thanking you for your opinions. I know it's not easy to voice them, because someone is always out to bash on your beliefs. Let me assure you I have no desire to be a basher of any kind. The second thing I'd like to mention is that no matter your religion or lack thereof, even and especially if you are an ex-member of the LDS Church, I respect your spiritual journey and the lengths you've gone to to know yourself better. I appreciate your struggles and triumphs and battles. I respect your decisions. I respect you. Now, please allow me to voice my own opinion. There is nothing in my life that has helped me more than Jesus Christ's influence. I have come to know Him on a deep and complex level through the guidance and teachings and morals of my religion. I have read about Him in the scriptures and have come to recognize His infinite grace in my life. That is what I believe. I have no qualms with what you believe. I have no qualms with wha

There are many things and people that are important to me. If you really know me, you know that I live by an unspoken internal rule, and that rule is "everybody matters, and everything matters." It's the reason for many of my worst and deepest flaws. It's why I'm impatient, constantly anxious and easily disappointed. However, it's also one of my greatest strengths as a human being. Since everything about you is important to me, it's easy for me to appreciate your personality and it's easy for me to love you. And it's true, too, that I really do love almost everyone that I meet. I tell you this about myself, not to brag, or to make myself seem better than I am. I tell you this because I hope that it puts the gravity of what I'm about to say into perspective for you. And my words today have to be this: Out of everything I've ever loved and cared about, nothing matters to me as much as the reason for my hope. The Reason for My H

I got surgery two weeks ago. They fixed a hole in the bone of my right ankle, smoothed it out, filled it in. I lived with constant pain for a week, but the pain subsided. I lived in a drug induced haze for four days (and had really trippy visions of Clifford the big red dog) but then I ran out of pain medication. I went through withdrawals that made me literally want to light myself on fire (don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school.) and then that ended too. And after all that, can I catch a break? Oh course not! My great aunt died, my friends stopped visiting, I finished season 2 of Dr. Who and cried way too many tears about that, and I got really bad acid reflux from ibuprofen. I felt useless and worthless and lonely and sad. Today was my first checkup since the surgery. I got put in a boot -and it hurt me so bad that I nearly threw up from the pain. I have exercises to do but I can't even move my foot on its own. I got pretty discouraged. You're all thinking "w

I am really excited about life right now. I am eighteen years old and working part time at a taco restaurant, where we listen to the "Build Me Up Buttercup" radio station on Pandora and help our (mostly elderly female) customers. I've grown up in Utah. I was born here, and I'll probably die here. The brief moments I've spent anywhere else have felt like getting a glimpse into another plane of existence. Utah is the only place I've ever called home. Utah is my whole world. And now my world is expanding. I have friends on nearly every continent - friends in Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. I have friends in every corner of this big world declaring to all men that Jesus Christ is Savior. I'm becoming aware of the lives lived outside my beloved "bubble" that is Utah Valley. I'm becoming more aware that so many good men and women in the world don't understand what I've been taught since my infancy - that their Maker and Cr

I have been AWOL for awhile now, because I've been so so so busy with a new job and writing a book and all that jazz. But I have some huge news: I received my mission call this week. I'm going to South Carolina! I love it so much. I'll post more regularly in the coming months, including mission thoughts. Love you!

In the pages of the most well-worn books in my house, there can be read the story of a young man who was not everything he seemed. Like so many heroes, he believed, in the beginning, that he was not anything special. Harry Potter started his story as so many of us did - young, lonely, friendless. And then one day, he was told that he, young, lonely and friendless as he was, was something special. Magical. Powerful. That revelation, to him, was life-changing, and we celebrated with him. As Harry grew, so did my siblings and I. Through him, we learned of the pains, the awkwardness, and the heartache of adolescence. We experienced them ourselves, and Harry taught us how it wasn't a big deal, how it could be overcome, how nothing was the end. Harry faced not only the terrifyingly brilliant and complex villain that is Voldemort, but also faced the common struggles of a normal teenager. He faced bullies, awful teachers, prejudice, jealousy, and failed romance. Harry's struggle wit

I was not blessed to be mighty in speech - in fact, I occasionally feel, like Moses, that I am "slow of speech and slow of tongue". However, I hope that God will give me words to express my feelings about the topic I want to address. True love is, I believe, seeing a person as not only what they are, but what they could be. It's understanding. It's knowing that someone is not perfect, but believing that they are still good. That is what I believe the Savior does for us. Ages ago, in a stable, in a manger, the Most Important Person Ever came to earth. From this the humblest of beginnings would come the Savior, the Prince of Peace. In the scriptures we're told that He grew to be "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3) - because He spent His time lifting the lowly, rebuking but gently forgiving the penitent sinners, performing miracles. Consistently the Bible accounts for His visits among the poor, the sick, the afflicted of mind and

There's always something good happening in the world. I wish that I could paint that on every street corner so that people who are losing hope everywhere could just see it and know that it's true. I don't know, maybe I'm just crazy. But despite everything that I know is crazy, there are some things that are just good.

About a month ago, I was able to go to New York on a choir tour. That was amazing. I saw three Broadway shows. I visited Ellen's Stardust Diner, the 9/11 memorial, Grand Central Station, and Liberty Island. I did NOT get cheesecake (not because I didn't want to, and not because I'm on some diet or something, I just got sick the night everyone went out for cheesecake). And given everything I saw or didn't see, I feel like I just barely scratched the surface of what New York is. I don't know if I could live there, but I could definitely visit for awhile longer than I stayed there. New York is a city filled with people who are lost, finding themselves, found, and everything in between. When people say the city never sleeps, they mean it - late at night in New York City, Times Square is packed, jam-packed, with people for whom dawn is just a concept. It's a dirty city - around every corner, there's cigarettes hanging out of mouths

this is an introduction of the best kind. i'm introducing myself to like EVERYBODY. hello, EVERYBODY!!! i'm em. em pew. as of twelve minutes ago, i an the official voice of pewnyblog.blogspot.com. why should you listen to me? you may ask. well, because. that's just it. you should listen to me because. because i am Human. and humans were made to speak. to be understood. you could argue that hey, animals might be too. but human language has gone farther as far as is able to be recognized than any other form of speech. to us, words are pivotal. and i have words for you. the world is full of words. stories. news. information. a lot of it is confusing, stressful, scary. it may be true, but it is also scary. the truth can be scary sometimes. i feel as though the scary stuff is vitally important and essential for solving problems, but we focus too much on what's going wrong and not enough on what's going right. i am fully aware that things are going wr