ABOUT ME
I grew up surrounded by green
pastures filled with cows and corn, rolling blue-green mountains, and a predominantly
Protestant religious landscape. I
quickly felt at home amongst the people there, but realized I was set apart in
a way, too. Bridgewater, Virginia has
about 8 Mormon families living in its boundaries of varying levels of activity,
and many of my classmates in elementary and middle school had never even heard
of the religion before. There were only
2 other members of my church in my high school senior class of 300
students. Turner Ashby High School
(named after a famous southern Civil War general from the area) had a
traditional “Drive Your Tractor to School Day,” a very large Future Farmers of
America club, camouflage clothing school spirit day (during which I wore zebra
or cheetah print), and every year in the spring there would be fenced in calves
on the front lawn of the school which the farming students would take care
of. I consider the environment around me
at that time to be an integral part of who I am, although I threw my lot in
with the theater and choir kids then.
I made friendships and saw people
who had experiences far beyond where my own self-governed, safe choices had
taken me. This quickly opened my eyes to
where certain choices lead people, and what kind of lifestyles lead to lasting
happiness. I observed many members of my
church in the area, and I saw how happy they were living the principles of the
Gospel, as compared to much misery caused by the lifestyles of some of my
fellow students and their parents. As
soon as my freshman year in high school, it started to become clear to me what
choices would lead me to happy paths versus unhappy ones. I knew at that early age I needed to live
life deliberately.
I knew what choices I needed to
make morally, socially, and I began shaping my paradigms to match what kinds of
actions I wanted to take in life.
However, this came at some cost, such as not going on a date until after
I had already graduated from high school since I didn’t want to get
romantically involved with someone who wasn’t a member of my church for fear of
falling in love with someone who I wouldn’t eventually be able to go to the
temple with. My first date the summer after my senior year was a hike in the
woods with a boy from my stake I had known for a while who lived an hour away.
He would become my husband four years later.
Making deliberate choices became
much more difficult once I left home to go to school at BYU Provo. It soon became clear that I had no idea what
I should do with relatively limited a focused talents. All I really knew was that I excelled at art
and writing, two skills not in short supply and difficult to find a job with. My parents encouraged me to be practical, so
I had some idea of going into communications with an art minor. However, just before I would have applied to
advertising, everything fell into place for me to go on a church mission for 18
months. Previous to my freshman year in college, a mission hadn’t been on my
radar at all. However, before the
lowering of the age requirement for missionaries I felt impressed in the temple
that I needed to prepare to serve in a few months when I would be 21. I was soon
thereafter assigned to serve in the Philippines, Manila mission.
My mission quickly reinforced to me the idea that “decisions
determine destiny.” I saw many families
torn apart by infidelity, abuse, addictions, and the like. Despite the poorest of life circumstances
that many Filipinos suffer, when they were introduced to the Gospel many of
them chose to accept the joy that was being offered to them. Knowledge and action for them made all the
difference in their happiness; not the actual circumstances around them. People really can choose to be happy, I
observed at the time.
I believe that a happy life can be summed up in simple
equation.
Morally good choices + a
positive attitude = Happiness and joy
I really think it’s just about that simple. Here I am at the school of my choice, with
the major I eventually chose (news media), with the husband of my choice,
living a life that is composed of millions of choices I’ve made as purposefully
as I could. So many choices, but they’ve
all added up to one choice for me so far – and that is the choice to be happy.
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