Adventures in Wyoming

Hannah can walk down all the stairs all by herself now.

Monday Devan was able to get some work in Evanston, Wyoming. It's about an hour and a half away, which isn't terrible, but it also isn't great and he probably wouldn't have bothered with it if he'd worked more than 2 days in the last 7 weeks. So, he went up there to work and got a nice 12 hour day and I took a Portuguese test that I'm pretty sure I didn't fail. On my way home from school that night I called to see how much longer he'd be and found out he'd broken down in the middle of an intersection in Evanston. So Hannah and I drove out to save him. It was my first time ever traveling to Wyoming, so that was a little exciting. The next day he had school all day so we had to wait until Wednesday to do anything about the car.

On Tuesday I had to drop him off at school so I'd have the car for school. When I picked him up during his break we decided to go out to lunch because that always seems to make us feel better when we're sad that our car is broken, however counterproductive it may be. During lunch we taught Hannah how to dip her french fries.


I'm just so proud!


I've been feeling completely unmotivated about school lately. I sometimes feel like my classes are a waste of my time. For example, last week my physics teacher didn't show up to class twice in one week. If she isn't taking the class seriously, why am I? I feel like the last few weeks I've been putting in less and less effort and I'm still getting good grades. I get frustrated when I feel like I'm not being taught as much as I'd like to be. So...on Wednesday I decided to blow off school and go with Devan and his brother and sister-in-law to rescue the car. We rented a trailer to pull a car and towed it home with their truck. It was actually a nice day. I got to see the scenery on I-80 in the daylight.

After we got home we worked on homework for about 7 hours, taking turns to throw crackers to Hannah and restart the "Bolt" DVD. Usually if I miss a day of class it's that much harder to go the next day and it becomes a downward spiral. But yesterday really was a good day to recharge my batteries and I went back today with a renewed resolve to work hard even if I hate ALL my classes.

I don't know what's been wrong with me lately, but I've just been feeling blah all the time. I had a really bad cold a couple of weeks ago and I was exhausted all the time and it seemed like anything I tried to do was so much harder than I thought it should be. I think that it really shook my confidence in myself and my belief that I can "tough it out" when life gets hard. I felt like all my zest for life had been beaten out of me and I couldn't seem to get it back. The last couple of weeks it's been a major struggle just to get myself to exercise one or two days a week and I've been eating worse than I had in months. I was so scared that everything I'd worked so hard for was slipping away and I was too lazy to work to get it back.

Assessing my life these last few days I've realized a few things. First, I can't make excuses, ever. I either do something or I don't. It doesn't matter if I'm tired or don't feel well or am busy. I either find a way to get things done or I don't. At the end of the day all the excuses and justifications fall away and all you have left is what you actually accomplished.

Second, no matter how hard I try I'm never going to feel happy and positive and successful all the time. What matters is that I do what I need to do whether the good feelings are there or not. I love the way that C.S. Lewis put it in The Screwtape Letters (for those who aren't familiar with the book, it's a satirical series of letters written by a demon named Screwtape on how to best tempt a human and eventually win his soul for their side. The "Enemy" he refers to is of course the enemy of the devil, Heavenly Father.) Screwtape talks about how humans, by their very nature, will always have peak and trough periods, especially pertaining to spirituality. He writes, "You may have often wondered why the Enemy [God] does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But now you see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.

"He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them...But he never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdrawals, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs -- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during these trough periods, much more than during the peak periods that he is becoming the sort of creature He wants it to be...

"He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles."

I think that this can be applied to most of our undertakings in life. Anything we do to try to improve ourselves so that we can better serve the world is spiritual in nature. I think that when we begin to change our lives we're blessed with motivation and energy to get us going. But I think part of Heavenly Father's plan is to not always have that motivation. We need to learn to "carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish." And we are promised that if we just keep trying and come unto Him, we will find rest and refreshment (Matthew 11:28-30). It doesn't matter if I stumble; it only matters that I keep going, even when I don't want to.

So I'm recommiting myself to study hard, and to take care of myself and to be the best parent I can be. I'm going to remember that it's just about making small improvements everyday. We will all wander off the path we want to be on; all the matters is that we find our way back as quickly as possible.

One of my favorite quotes is by Calvin Coolage, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Geneius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

That's all there is to it: press on, be strong, just keep going.