Oh how to begin this? I've not written on my blog in so long I'm not sure I'm still good at it. Heck, I haven't told a good story in almost as long. ha, that's not entirely true. I got really good at telling stories last March, when my co-worker and good friend Eric asked me, daily, for stories. He quickly heard all the stories I was willing to tell him about my life (ok, all the stories. He weaseled some out of me I wasn't planning on telling him) and I moved on to retelling other's stories, and making up my own. but since I've done a lot of living since then, I have a few stories to tell. and since Eric is on a mission right now, I guess I'll just have to start telling them to my blog instead.
Today's story actually just happened yesterday. although to understand the beginning I'll have to back up a little farther. I recently graduated and moved in with my grandma for the summer. I'm excited to be living with her, but she isn't really up to hiking these days, or doing a lot of physical activities. we go walking in the mall and grocery store sometimes, which is fun (but it does get us into trouble, like when we walked down the gadgets isle at the grocery store and ended up buying a bottle stopper and microwave egg poacher, and saw quite a few other items only with difficulty we were able to talk ourselves out of buying). but I realized this winter when my SAD was hitting me especially hard that it's being outside in the sun that makes me really happy. go figure. someone who has spent 20 months working outside as a lifeguard (cumulative over a 5 year period) would be conditioned to enjoy activities where I can soak up maximum sun--and that is not to say I'm just trying to get tan. don't worry mom, I still religiously put on sunscreen. I've had enough bad burns in my life to understand the importance and the effectiveness. but, hiking, biking, etc. have become some of my new favoritest activities. So I've started making new friends in my new neighborhood and piggy-backing on their outdoor adventures.
yesterday I went on a motorcycle ride, shot some guns, hiked a mountain, went spelunking, and rode an atv up a mountain. all very outdoor and altogether a LOT of fun. but the story is not about how bad an aim I was yesterday, how good I was at throwing the targets to be shot at, how rocky and bumpy the road was (although that plays a part in the story) or how dumb we were not to bring flashlights to the mine we were exploring. My story is about loosing my phone. Now I've lost my phone before. Last year I was playing laser tag outside, in the dark, with a nearly dead phone when it fell out of my pocket. I spent a good hour looking for it and got most of my friends in on the search for the last 20 minutes of it. By the time I realized it was gone, I was pretty sure the battery was dead though, so calling it did no good. Nor did the "Find my iPhone" app, since you need the phone to be on to locate it. but miracle of miracles I ended up finding it that night after everyone but my ride had left. That's probably when I realized that all those primary stories of children loosing things and praying to Heavenly Father to find them, and then they do, can work for adults as well. This time was somewhat similar: had my phone in my pocket, during the bumpy ride on the atv it flew out of my pocket, and I didn't realize until later enough that it could have been a hassle. luckily 1) I had more battery this time, so the chances of finding it were slightly better (although being way up in the mountains meant that it could be in a dead zone for service, in which case it wouldn't have helped) and 2) apple has since updated its "find my iphone" function so it works better. Since I've lost my phone before, I'm no stranger to the "Find my iPhone" app, and how to work it. back to the story: we seemingly located my phone, although the map on the app isn't satellite, which makes it harder to locate things when you aren't near roads and buildings, and I started to explain how the app worked since I would not be the primary searcher. A couple of the men I was with had offered to take the atvs back up the trail to look for it, and I was explaining than when they got close to where the map indicated the phone was to press the button that makes the phone beep loudly. I pressed the button during my explanation and we immediately heard beeping. The guy I was explaining it to thought the beep was coming from his phone (that's how close the sound was) and that the beeping was going to get faster when he got closer to my phone. Luckily there were other people standing around and they heard the real source of the beep. It was coming from the atv I had ridden on and had even driven around a little while we were getting the truck situated to get the atv on. Evidently somewhere along the ride my phone had fallen out, but because we were going an average of 7mph and there was this huge trunk on the back of the atv, it had bounced into that, and then under it, getting trapped between the trunk and the atv itself. There are a lot of metal rods keeping it all stable that criss-crossed under the trunk and my phone had gotten stuck in one of the little pockets. the space between the trunk and the atv is small enough that I couldn't wedge my hand in there to easily grab my phone (which is good because if there had been that much space my phone wouldn't have stayed where it did). We did eventually get it it, by having one person on each side push my phone towards a more easily accessible spot for me to grab it. it was so dusty! so it must have been there for a while. but the trail had been so bumpy I had been more worried about myself flying off the atv than about my phone at the time. but that's why my Heavenly Father is so great. He had my back, so when I realized my phone was no longer in my pocket, it was still close so I could find it.
ha, I just thought of something. I've been trying to work on prayer for the past few weeks. Prayer is such a personal thing between us and God, but it shouldn't be formal, and hopefully it isn't too whiney or demanding. Part of building our relationship with God is figuring out how to talk to Him and make him a part of our daily life, and that's where prayer comes in. But sometimes we pray when we are suddenly stressed or worried about things in our life, like when we loose phones out in the wilderness. They always tell us to pray and then go out and do something about it ourselves. I still remember in one of my books from my childhood (The Children's Book of Virtues) there was a story about a man who got his cart stuck in the mud. he hopped off and tried to make his horse pull it out, and when the horse couldn't he started calling on Hercules. Hercules appeared to him, but told him that because the man himself was not doing anything to budge the cart, Hercules felt no inclination to help him. it ended with the moral of "God helps those who help themselves." Well, you can bet your britches I was praying to find my phone yesterday, but I didn't sit around and wait for a vision of where it could be. After, and while I was praying to find my phone, I was also downloading the app that could help me find it, and actually using the app. I was helping myself instead of trying to let Heavenly Father do all the work, and in this instance it paid off and I found my phone. This experience was not only another testament of prayer, but also a testament of what I need to be doing in my life as I pray and ask my Heavenly Father for blessings. and since I did find my phone, my day wasn't tainted and I can still look back fondly on everything I did and say, "That was a fun day in the outdoors."
Today's story actually just happened yesterday. although to understand the beginning I'll have to back up a little farther. I recently graduated and moved in with my grandma for the summer. I'm excited to be living with her, but she isn't really up to hiking these days, or doing a lot of physical activities. we go walking in the mall and grocery store sometimes, which is fun (but it does get us into trouble, like when we walked down the gadgets isle at the grocery store and ended up buying a bottle stopper and microwave egg poacher, and saw quite a few other items only with difficulty we were able to talk ourselves out of buying). but I realized this winter when my SAD was hitting me especially hard that it's being outside in the sun that makes me really happy. go figure. someone who has spent 20 months working outside as a lifeguard (cumulative over a 5 year period) would be conditioned to enjoy activities where I can soak up maximum sun--and that is not to say I'm just trying to get tan. don't worry mom, I still religiously put on sunscreen. I've had enough bad burns in my life to understand the importance and the effectiveness. but, hiking, biking, etc. have become some of my new favoritest activities. So I've started making new friends in my new neighborhood and piggy-backing on their outdoor adventures.
yesterday I went on a motorcycle ride, shot some guns, hiked a mountain, went spelunking, and rode an atv up a mountain. all very outdoor and altogether a LOT of fun. but the story is not about how bad an aim I was yesterday, how good I was at throwing the targets to be shot at, how rocky and bumpy the road was (although that plays a part in the story) or how dumb we were not to bring flashlights to the mine we were exploring. My story is about loosing my phone. Now I've lost my phone before. Last year I was playing laser tag outside, in the dark, with a nearly dead phone when it fell out of my pocket. I spent a good hour looking for it and got most of my friends in on the search for the last 20 minutes of it. By the time I realized it was gone, I was pretty sure the battery was dead though, so calling it did no good. Nor did the "Find my iPhone" app, since you need the phone to be on to locate it. but miracle of miracles I ended up finding it that night after everyone but my ride had left. That's probably when I realized that all those primary stories of children loosing things and praying to Heavenly Father to find them, and then they do, can work for adults as well. This time was somewhat similar: had my phone in my pocket, during the bumpy ride on the atv it flew out of my pocket, and I didn't realize until later enough that it could have been a hassle. luckily 1) I had more battery this time, so the chances of finding it were slightly better (although being way up in the mountains meant that it could be in a dead zone for service, in which case it wouldn't have helped) and 2) apple has since updated its "find my iphone" function so it works better. Since I've lost my phone before, I'm no stranger to the "Find my iPhone" app, and how to work it. back to the story: we seemingly located my phone, although the map on the app isn't satellite, which makes it harder to locate things when you aren't near roads and buildings, and I started to explain how the app worked since I would not be the primary searcher. A couple of the men I was with had offered to take the atvs back up the trail to look for it, and I was explaining than when they got close to where the map indicated the phone was to press the button that makes the phone beep loudly. I pressed the button during my explanation and we immediately heard beeping. The guy I was explaining it to thought the beep was coming from his phone (that's how close the sound was) and that the beeping was going to get faster when he got closer to my phone. Luckily there were other people standing around and they heard the real source of the beep. It was coming from the atv I had ridden on and had even driven around a little while we were getting the truck situated to get the atv on. Evidently somewhere along the ride my phone had fallen out, but because we were going an average of 7mph and there was this huge trunk on the back of the atv, it had bounced into that, and then under it, getting trapped between the trunk and the atv itself. There are a lot of metal rods keeping it all stable that criss-crossed under the trunk and my phone had gotten stuck in one of the little pockets. the space between the trunk and the atv is small enough that I couldn't wedge my hand in there to easily grab my phone (which is good because if there had been that much space my phone wouldn't have stayed where it did). We did eventually get it it, by having one person on each side push my phone towards a more easily accessible spot for me to grab it. it was so dusty! so it must have been there for a while. but the trail had been so bumpy I had been more worried about myself flying off the atv than about my phone at the time. but that's why my Heavenly Father is so great. He had my back, so when I realized my phone was no longer in my pocket, it was still close so I could find it.
ha, I just thought of something. I've been trying to work on prayer for the past few weeks. Prayer is such a personal thing between us and God, but it shouldn't be formal, and hopefully it isn't too whiney or demanding. Part of building our relationship with God is figuring out how to talk to Him and make him a part of our daily life, and that's where prayer comes in. But sometimes we pray when we are suddenly stressed or worried about things in our life, like when we loose phones out in the wilderness. They always tell us to pray and then go out and do something about it ourselves. I still remember in one of my books from my childhood (The Children's Book of Virtues) there was a story about a man who got his cart stuck in the mud. he hopped off and tried to make his horse pull it out, and when the horse couldn't he started calling on Hercules. Hercules appeared to him, but told him that because the man himself was not doing anything to budge the cart, Hercules felt no inclination to help him. it ended with the moral of "God helps those who help themselves." Well, you can bet your britches I was praying to find my phone yesterday, but I didn't sit around and wait for a vision of where it could be. After, and while I was praying to find my phone, I was also downloading the app that could help me find it, and actually using the app. I was helping myself instead of trying to let Heavenly Father do all the work, and in this instance it paid off and I found my phone. This experience was not only another testament of prayer, but also a testament of what I need to be doing in my life as I pray and ask my Heavenly Father for blessings. and since I did find my phone, my day wasn't tainted and I can still look back fondly on everything I did and say, "That was a fun day in the outdoors."
I love that :)
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