A year ago.

A year ago, I started to write, mostly for myself, but for friends to read what I am thinking.  I do ramble at times, and have tried, and mostly failed to focus the writing.  It doesn't matter, I am writing for me.

I have unintentionally hurt feelings, sometimes harshly.  For that I ask forgiveness.  That has never been my purpose.  However...I need to write, to give digital ink to thoughts that I feel are important.  I have evolved over the year, spinning off a political voice, to separate from my spiritual feelings.  It doesn't mean that my politics are not influenced by those feelings, on the contrary, they are intertwined to a great extent, as it was with the founders.

I think often of those pioneers that traveled west.  Whether they were heading to Oregon, California, or a persecuted people heading to the Great Basin.  As I drive along I-84 and 86, I can't help but imagine the trials, and the physical exertion those heading west must have experienced.  Eliza R. Snow, a Mormon, when she first saw the Salt Lake Valley, said that she would rather travel a thousand miles back east, than live in this land.  It was far different than it is today.  It was a very harsh desert where noted frontiersman, Jim Bridger, said that he would pay a thousand dollars for an ear of corn grown in the valley.  It was that bad.

 Last night I watched the movie Seventeen Miracles on BYU-TV. (A movie about Mormon Pioneers, but would encourage watching it to everyone.)  I cried, at those that gave everything to come from England, and head west, with next to no supplies.  Some gave their lives.  Years later, when the leaders of those companies (Willie, and Martin Handcart companies) were criticized for leaving as late in the season as they did, one of the survivors of the company stated that he wouldn't have traded the trials for anything.  It was a price that they willingly paid to come to Zion, as the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints referred to Salt Lake.  Would I do the same?

I feel at times that I am extremely broken when it comes to my spirit.  I see every flaw as a gaping wound that should kill me, but doesn't.  I feel that I will never be good enough, strong enough to be acceptable to my Savior.  I know that none of us, without His help will ever be good enough to return to Him.  I also feel that I take some pride in feeling like I can't be fixed. (I mean, if you have to be good at something, and you're not, you might as well revel in thinking that you aren't good period, right?)  I just have to figure out how to let that part of me go.

It has been a fun year.  And enjoying the outlet of this space has been a key part of that.

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