So, Thanks, I Guess (Anne)

29 days ago, a friend pressured me into trying National Novel Writing Month. Technically, I don't fit in their parameters, because most of the writers focus on works of fiction, and I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than my own life.

So I wrote a memoir.

50,000 words of a memoir. Most of which I will likely hack to pieces before sending it out to publishers in anticipation of many rejection letters.

(Sidebar: I think all of the dating rejection has completely prepared me for a life as a writer. How can rejection by a stranger be worse than rejection by someone I love? But I digress.)

The most recent boy to bail on me told me that what attracted me to him the most was my writing. He looooooooved reading my writing. He encouraged me to write a book, too, but I was too wrapped up in him and other summer pursuits to really take it seriously.

So when my friend challenged me to write an entire book in November, it was simply germination for a seed that had already been planted.

So to this boy who bailed on me exactly four months ago this week: thanks. Thanks for believing in me enough to encourage me to write a book. I never would have seriously considered it, had you not repeatedly told me you thought a book of mine would be great.

Oh, and thanks for being a chapter.

Moneyball. (Anne)

I saw Moneyball with a friend today. I'm an Aaron Sorkin fangirl, and he co-wrote the screenplay, and I'm a baseball fan, so it met the litmus test for being worth the price of matinee admission.

It didn't have the typical pizazz of a Sorkin script, but near the end of the film, the statistician shares a metaphor with the General Manager, Billy Beane.

He shows Beane footage of a minor league catcher—way overweight for baseball standards with an admitted fear of going to 2^nd base. He's at bat, hits a perfect pitch, and can tell from the contact that he hit it well. So he takes the leap. He approaches first and we see him round the base to head to 2^nd.

And he falls down.

He belly crawls back to first, because he doesn't want to be tagged out. Head in the dirt, he clings to the base, almost hugging it, despite the first baseman and the first base coach tugging at him, motioning for him to get up. He was so focused on staying safe at first base that he didn't see he had hit a home run.

In the movie, the metaphor was intended to persuade Beane to take a lucrative contract in Boston. But the metaphor wasn't lost on its applicability in my own life. I have this great career. People with whom I work respect me. I chair a committee that can affect true change. I write in my spare time. I teach piano lessons, raising a piano army for church. And I do a million other valuable things with my time.

But sometimes, my face is in the dirt and I'm belly crawling to first base, believing that I'm not valuable if I'm not married—and I can't be bothered to see all the home runs I'm hitting.

So. The next time you trip and fall into the self-esteem spiral that often accompanies being single and LDS, look up, as Elder Cook counseled Saturday afternoon in Conference.

Look up and see what you just knocked out of the park.

Lessons from the Mission.

Thirteen years ago this week, I returned from my mission. I remember feeling like I would never forget the lessons I learned, and many of them I haven't. But one very important lesson I had forgotten, until today.

Whenever God's children try to do something right and good, they might be met with opposition. As a missionary, when someone chose to be baptized, I saw this so often—suddenly she was tempted with things she didn't even know were weaknesses. It's been said that Satan knows our weaknesses and he exploits them anyway he can. And I fell victim to that today.

One of my biggest weaknesses is assuming men do not like the way I look. I come by it honestly—more than one boy has broken up with me and given my looks or my weight as the reason why.

After a particularly rough day at church, I walked to my car, and this principle came to my mind: just like Satan tries to keep people from choosing to be baptized, or go to church, or make simple right choices, he was exploiting my deep-seeded self-loathing to keep me from opening my heart to a good man.

As I reflect on the past couple of days, I can see clearly how it happened—how the thought was planted, how it grew, and how I felt strangled by it by the day's end. And when I floated my theory past my sister this afternoon—that the adversary was pitting me against myself to sabotage a potentially good thing—she said, “I had that thought last night.”

“Why didn't you tell me then?” I asked.

“Would you have listened to it?” she countered.

Good point. I may have, I may have not. But making that connection on my own was certainly more powerful than hearing it from my sister. Finding a spouse is a good thing, an important thing, a righteous thing. So of course Satan would want to thwart that any way he can.

I don't want to give him the satisfaction.

Guest Post by Stella Skywalker

Hi Friends! My name, well codename, is Stella and I can’t even begin to describe how happy I was to find this blog. As a single, never been married woman I have finally reached the place where it's really starting to bother me. 40 isn't too far away and my 'patience' (if I ever had any) is starting to wear thin. I unfortunately live in an area where too many singles are inactive especially those in their 30’s and 40’s and more often then not I find my heart aching to have someone who ‘gets’ it and who can share the ups and downs of this time of life. Too often I feel completely alone and while I have been blessed with some truly amazing friends my bestest and dearest are all married with families and though they love me, empathize, cry for me and with me and pray for my blessings to come they don’t understand. Sometimes you just need someone who gets it and who is struggling the same way you are, striving to stay strong and doing their best to avoid taking the seemingly easy way out. So all that said I’m happy to be here and I’m happy you’re here too. Hopefully my thoughts and ideas are shared and not further evidence that I really have finally lost my mind. So here we go…

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the one I call “the jerk.” We’ve all met him; we’ve all been under his predatory attack; some have succumbed and some have fought with all they’ve got. He is relentless and I have come to finally figure out he will never ever go away. I have to become stronger then he is until his attacks are merely barely noticed annoyances rather then the “knock me off my path with the force of a nuclear explosion” events that I have recently experienced.

Now that I have your attention let me make it perfectly clear who the jerk is. He is not one of our sweet brothers who struggle, as we do, with making it through this life. The jerk is the adversary - the one who lives to see all of us fail. The one whose sole purpose is to keep us from happiness, keep us from knowing who we really are, who lies and deceives to make sure we stay confused and unfocused.

Have you ever really stopped to ponder who you are? What lies within you to achieve and become? Every now and then I can feel it. Actually feel who I have the potential to become. It’s all there and wow she is SOMETHING. Granted the Stella I am today is far from that amazing being that I can occasionally sense but just knowing that I could someday become her is a rather sobering thought. How do I get there? How do I hold on to this idea even though this time of life is pummeling my self-esteem, my faith, my hope and sometimes even my belief in Heavenly Father’s promises? The jerk is making sure that I am challenged every step of this particular part of my path and quite frankly I’ve had just about enough.

So why is he trying so hard? Why is he making sure that every happy feeling is hard earned?

As I think about these things only one thing comes to mind. Something great is coming. Something wonderful and eternally important is headed my way and he wants to stop me. If he can keep me from going to church, going to the Temple, saying my prayers, reading the scriptures, paying my tithe, and following the guidance of the Holy Ghost and the Lords servants then he wins. Heavenly Fathers plan is thwarted and yet another eternal family is yet to be created and my eternal misery is laid in a very firm foundation.

I have a new favorite talk. It is Russell M. Nelsons: Stay in the Boat. His council is to beg us to stay in the boat until we get to the other side. Sooner or later this trial has to end. It has to change and though we may not yet see the shore it’s out there. I know it is. After all, if it weren’t the jerk wouldn’t be working so hard to convince you (and me) that it isn’t.