Boring

My blog is super boring. How should I fix that? Maybe it's because I'm just a normally boring person. And how in the world do I fix that? Suggestions? :)

Chelle got married on Saturday. It was a pretty crazy, stressful weekend with all the baking and sewing and just  general preparations. I kinda forgot all about finals in those few days. That was really last week? Weird.

Seeing Chelle get married was kind of weird for me. It's been 5 years since the last wedding in the family, and I wasn't as close to Lise when she got married as I was to Chelle (because Lise lived away from home the whole time). Mostly, though, it was because I almost got married. It would've been in 13 short days from the time I called it off. But seeing Chelle and Jason preparing and then after, and especially seeing how excited and calm Chelle was about it (not at ALL how I was feeling) made me realize that I was never very close to getting married. Yes, I had been engaged, and planned a whole wedding, and talked about it and read about it and gotten advice about it and taken a class on it, but I really wasn't ready. Because deep down I didn't really want to get married. I had not been able to give up all those things that I had to give up when I got married. Like living at home, having my best friends be my siblings (not my husband), being able to tell my Mom everything that I was thinking, everything I was struggling with, everything that I was feeling.  Being able to spend my money exactly how I wanted (this wasn't a big deal for me at all--only when I donated to Ron Paul and realized that if I was married we would have had to decide that together was I a tiny bit grateful that I wasn't married for that reason :), being able to get up with my Dad in the mornings and go help him on the farm without having to tell anyone or have anyone with me, being really only accountable to myself. Those were things I still hadn't given up. I didn't want to give those up. And I think that will be a good indicator for me when I've found the right one to marry--being happy to give those up for him because I'll want to.

I don't think any of these things bothered Chelle at all. I asked her if she was nervous about making such a big decision, but she just said that she felt good about it, she wanted to marry Jason, and she had made that decision already. I want to feel that peace the morning of my wedding.

Realizing this has done two things for me. The first one is that it has helped me realize that I really did make the right decision. I still don't know if it was a prompting from my Heavenly Father or if it was just a lack of that peace, but it was what I really wanted, what would make me happier in the long run. The second thing, though, is not as good. It has kind of made me dislike the idea of marriage even more. The experience I have with planning a wedding, with being engaged, is predominately stressful, anxious, dreading, very fearful, painful emotions. So that's what I associate with getting married. Even though I saw Chelle and how happy she was, my own experience speaks louder than what I've seen in others. And I really hope that goes away.

But I've been so much happier lately. Things are looking up :) I love Christmas time and all the time I get to spend with my family. I have been amazed at how quickly Heavenly Father has helped me heal. Memories and thoughts (generally) get less and less painful everyday.

These next few days I really want to get more into the Christmas spirit. I think what I'm mostly looking for is to be more grateful for my Savior, for what He has done for me, for how much His birth changed my eternity. And still the answer to that, I believe, is more service :)