Daddy Dear

I have daddy issues. Anyone who cares enough to listen has heard bits and pieces about that part of my life; I've never made a point of hiding it. My parents were separated before my first birthday and I grew up in a single-parent home where my dad's appearance only seemed to create conflict. Every other Saturday I got spoiled with money-- movies, McDonalds, the circus, Gameworks, Golfland, Diamondbacks games, State Fair... that's who my dad was in my life and that's all he has ever really been. It took me years to learn how to forgive him for all that I felt I missed out on and all the hurt I went through because of him.

It probably goes without saying that out of all the dreams I've had for my life I always wished I had a real dad. You know, the one that you run up to for a hug when he gets home from work every day. The dad that teaches you how to play baseball and build random projects in the garage. The dad who you go to for advice when you need someone to confide in. The dad who meets all your boyfriends and then one day lets one of them marry you. The dad who dances with you at your wedding and loves you more than the entire world. That's what I have always wanted. 

I always without fail get teary-eyed at weddings, watching the bride dance with her dad. I also really love the song Butterfly Kisses but that too provokes another wave of emotion.

 Here's the thing.. this post is not about my failed relationship with my father. 

As far as I'm concerned, that's a thing of the past.

Even though I didn't have the best experience with my own father, I have the dream that my own husband and the men around me can be better examples than I had in my own life.

Back in October 2011 there was a talk given in General Conference by Elaine S. Dalton titled "Love Her Mother." I can't even begin to tell you how moved I was by this talk. I've gone back multiple times since then and read/listened to it over again. 

Sister Dalton begins by asking the question, "How can a father raise a happy, well-adjusted daughter in today’s increasingly toxic world?"

Here are my favorite parts to her answer:

"The most important thing a father can do for his daughter is to love her mother. By the way you love her mother you will teach your daughter about tenderness, loyalty, respect, compassion, and devotion. She will learn from your example what to expect from young men and what qualities to seek in a future spouse. You can show your daughter by the way you love and honor your wife that she should never settle for less. Your example will teach your daughter to value womanhood. You are showing her that she is a daughter of our Heavenly Father, who loves her.
"You are your daughter’s guardian in more than the legal sense. Be present in your daughter’s life. Let her know your standards, your expectations, your hopes and dreams for her success and happiness. Interview her, get to know her friends and, when the time comes, her boyfriends. Help her understand the importance of education. Help her understand that the principle of modesty is a protection. Help her choose music and media that invite the Spirit and are consistent with her divine identity. Be an active part of her life.
"Fathers, you are your daughter’s hero. My father was my hero. I used to wait on the steps of our home for him to arrive each night. He would pick me up and twirl me around and let me put my feet on top of his big shoes, and then he would dance me into the house. I loved the challenge of trying to follow his every footstep. I still do."

In these paragraphs she makes a point of emphasizing fathers leading as examples that play active roles in their families lives. My favorite paragraph from The Family: A Proclamation to the World supports this concept:

"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families."

My new hope and dream on the topic of fathers is that I will marry a man who will be everything for my kids that I wished I had had for myself. And not just the man I marry, I hope this for all the wonderful men in my life who have this opportunity presented to them now or soon in their future. 

I have a little book I found at thrift store one day called A Father's Book of Wisdom. Here's a quote I really liked out of it: "Fathers are pals nowadays because they don't have the guts to be fathers." ~Dad

It is my hope, dream, and prayer that more men will have the guts to be fathers. 

The potential is there.

I Am Born Again

Yesterday morning I woke up from a dream that did an excellent job in reconstructing my waking situation and fears. I decided to make a final effort to permanently resolve things in my life and discovered that the finality I was searching for came much quicker and easier than I had expected, leaving me absolutely devastated.

At that moment I had a decision to make--

I could continue in this heart-breaking pain 

OR..  OR.....

I could realize that I'd already experienced several moments like this before in my life and that I'd healed from them before so there was very little point in making myself miserable before I let that happen again.

And I chose the second option.

The lines from an old favorite song came to mind:

Caught in the middle of a crossfire
Lost my balance on a high wire
Trying to figure out what to do

Pushed to the edge of my reason
Everywhere around me it's treason
I don't want to do that to you

Kamikaze airplanes in the sky
Are we going down or will we fly?
This could be a shipwreck on the shore
Or we could sail away forevermore
This time it's sink or swim, sink or swim

I realized I was floating. Not drowning but not going anywhere either. Not just in this situation but for the past 6 months of my life. 

Looking back on that choice I thought about a scene from Titanic that, although I'm being awkward and comparing my own life to it, I feel describes my situation very well.

You can start at 2:00.

I've been out in the middle of the ocean freezing to death, holding on to something that is dead and gone. And yesterday, I let it go and started swimming.

I pulled out one of my journals and I began writing. And writing.... and writing.

As I wrote, I found myself again. That wonderful, beautiful girl who smiles and laughs and defies average expectations.

In case you've forgotten or never really had the opportunity to meet her, here she is:

:)

Hi-- my name is Amanda.

Today is my 22nd birthday and it has been one of the best so far. No, I'm not in Hawaii kayaking on the ocean or in San Francisco eating clam chowder in Fisherman's Wharf.. I'm home in Mesa attending institute and eating pumpkin roll while I work on one of my favorite hobbies, blogging. What makes this birthday so special? I've spent it in contact with so many people that love me.

I am proactive, positive, and alive.

When I woke up this morning I thanked God for another beautiful day full of sunshine and joy.

Some things about me-- I own my own house, have a bachelor's degree in geology, and am moving to China in a month. Those things don't really matter very much though because it is what brought me to them that I am proud of. I had a vision to succeed in each of those areas and my deep love for each of those things, along with my desire to create and work have made me proud of myself.

I'm a protector of those close to me, often to a fault. I try to give my best to making those I love happy and develop deep emotional bonds that I find extremely difficult to break.

I'm a clean freak although you wouldn't know that by the state of my bedroom right now. (That's why I'm currently hiding in the clean living room.) I enjoy cleaning and organizing and the drop in stress level when I do. You'll find most of my DVDs, CDs, and books in alphabetic order along with a style, color, and size organized closet.

I am a Mormon and I love the options that have been added to my life because of it. I love studying scriptures, especially the General Conference talks. I love going to the temple weekly and the joy and peace it brings into my life. I love that I can be sealed to my best friend some day and that my family can be together forever and have the blessings of that covenant both for the eternities and for this life.

I'm a traveller. I crave going to new places and experiencing all they have to offer. It's where most of my money goes and I try to take every opportunity I am offered to get out of town. I enjoy being a tourist but the true reward of traveling comes when you get to experience the people and culture on a personal level.

I love the outdoors. My body needs fresh air whether I'm camping, hiking, tanning by the pool, kayaking, swimming, or simply taking a long walk around the neighborhood at night. I'm guaranteed to be happier and feeling better.

I'm fascinated with relationships. I read about them, watch them on TV, and analyze them in real life. I can't get over how incredible love between two people is-- that even though a million things could make a relationship fail, somehow it still survives.

I love event planning whether we're talking about weddings, birthday parties, trips, or youth camps... They all have this energy about them and after a complicated process of scheduling everything together you create a happy outcome.

My love language is quality time and that is what I will offer to you to show I care and what will mean the most to me in return.

I'm fascinated by mass deaths. The Holocaust, the Martin & Willie handcart companies.. those kinds of things. It's the total awe of such events existing and the curiosity about the why and how these people played their own roles that reels me in.

I'm a creator. I love taking an idea in my mind and then building it whether I'm making a Bellatrix dress for the final Harry Potter premier or remodeling my house or developing a relationship. I feel very rewarded in accomplishing these tasks and realizing the capabilities I have as I learn new things in the process.

And finally, 3 words to describe me:

Rebellious, Honest, Adorable

Rebellious- in the sense that I challenge expectations. I don't like people getting too set on one part of who I am and I want to prove to them that I have so much more to offer. I don't like always doing what people expect of me so sometimes I simply don't.

Honest- you want the whole truth? Ya got it. I like to say things how they are. If I have a comment or a question, I speak up. I'll never lie to you- I value the truth too much.

Adorable- It's my hope that I am at least a little bit cute and witty and spunky enough to be deemed as someone that one could adore.

That incredible girl who has finally found herself and is here to stay,

Amanda.

It's amazing the change and happiness I've felt from merely having a couple hours of contemplation and a new mind set. I'm not perfect and I don't always know what to do with myself but I know who I am. Perhaps I can be categorized as perfectly imperfect? I've always loved the phrase "a sparkle in your eyes." It's something I've related to love but thinking of it now its more of a pure happiness. I feel like Yvainne in Stardust- glowing with joy.

The Vision to Do

I've pulled this draft up on my screen at least ten times in the past month and it is time I actually get it written. 
This post originates from 4 different parts of my life-- church meetings, How I Met Your Mother, Once Upon a Time, and an old roommate. It began with one but every few weeks another thought was added. 

It all started a few months back at my friend's talk in church she gave when she returned from her LDS mission. The thought that got through to me was that we have to hear and do sometimes before we can see. It's that act of trust, or faith, that gives us the power to run confidently toward an unseen future. We're not guaranteed an outcome nor do we necessarily even know where we want to end up but it is all a process of learning that must take place by making an effort. That thought was solidified with another church meeting in which Elder Kopishka said, "Learning by faith is another word for learning by doing." Another friend left on his mission during this same time period and his farewell talk at church was based on "the vision to do." I loved how well that phrase summarized my thoughts. It's not "the vision to succeed" or "the vision to finish" but it's the idea that you can see the potential in simply acting and working- even if that's all you can see.

As I was searching for an image to accompany this post I stumbled over something I've become very familiar with as I've added How I Met Your Mother to my list of loves in my life. 

Intervention.

In the series, any time one of the group gets a little too carried away with something, the other members hold an intervention in which they bring up the problem and offer their help to solve it. 

I like the idea of taking a moment to throw up a big "Intervention" sign in our lives. In the case of this blog post, sometimes we become far too complacent with ourselves and we need to take that moment to pause for a minute for a personal intervention. We need that time to evaluate ourselves and our own potential and happiness and ask ourselves is there more? Do I have the vision to do?

We have to want it. 

"Do" is an action word and it's not going to matter much if we're still lounging around with our past and present. We have to want something out of our future and really want it.

I really liked a line that Rumpelstiltskin says to Regina in Once Upon a Time. He's an evil sorcerer who is training her in using dark magic. Here's what he has to say:

"So long as you harbor foolish notions of bring back the dead, so long as you live in the past, you'll never find your future. Teaching you is a waste of time."

We can't just keep sitting around reminiscing on how great our life was and how much we want to be that happy again. We have to accept that life has happened and now we have the opportunity for something new and incredible and then push ourselves to go out and find it. 

One of my old roommates had a poster stuck to her wall that if I remember right was a Mary Kay poster. It had cut-outs of many pictures and words that formed her goals and dreams for her life some day and it was her motivation to accomplish those things. It gave her the vision to do.

What a great opportunity we have every moment of our lives to have the option of stopping our normal cycle and sitting down and figuring out where we're at and where we can be. We have the opportunity to take on the challenge of being something more, even if we have no idea what our final goal is. All is takes is a step at a time, knowing that being active in the things that matter most will bring us the greatest happiness and will refine us into people beyond anything we ever thought realistically possible. 

The vision to do.

See it.