Deep Breath and Prayer

There is something freeing when you dance. Not dancing at a club, but choreographed dancing. No matter the style, you lose yourself in the movement and music. Life can't touch you when you dance because at that moment you are life itself.  For a couple years before I moved back up here, I had the chance to tap again with a dance company. Dancing was the last item on the list of things the doctors told me I would never be able to do again after hurting my back in the mission. I had danced from the time I was 3-13 and then again in college. To take to the floor again was exhilarating, fun, and even as big as I was, I was still good at it. Oh how I had missed that feeling. My only regret was that I didn't do it a few years earlier. I often joke that Heavenly Father gave me the heart of a dancer and the body of a linebacker. Since I moved I don't have the chance to dance with that troupe, yet each year I return for performance week and run the backstage crew. Once a dancer, alw...

Class starts back up again tonight. We are moving into the "emotional regulation" section. Anything with the word "emotional" in it makes me weary. Along with the emotional craziness of the past two weeks that has been my life, I've spent as much time as I could looking ahead, reading up, and trying to get my mind around what is down the line for this section. In my mind, preparation is going to be the key to this one. I feel a little more comfortable about taking it on in class, and although I may not know the correct words to use for an answer, I don't anticipate an internal breakdown. Disaster averted! I decided to start a new thing this week. Since I have such difficulty coming up with words to describe my emotions, I wanted to pay more attention to just what my body was feeling at different times. I am quick to slap one of the 3-4 standard emotional terms to a situation - I'm anxious, I'm scared, I'm sad, or I'm angry. I got to thinking ...

Growing up I always had this dream of owning a house on a lake. Never had too much idea what the house itself would be like, maybe a log cabin or something like that. What I did have in mind was the deck that would be off the back of it. You would be able to go out and sit on the it and look out onto the lake as if the water had no end. It would sit close enough to the edge water that you felt you were sitting right out on the lake itself. It would face to the west so you were able to watch the sun set and disappear into the horizon as many nights as you wished. It would be built of the sturdiest of wood - maybe a light stained teak, but not cheap cuts or that plastic-wood-looking stuff. No, this deck would hold you and surround you and always make you feel secure. Of course there would have to be a dock extending from it, I mean if you are going to live on a lake and have a great deck you have to be able to fish off of it. It would be a place of escape and peacefulness. No matter what...