Amazing Grace

I was just thinking about how imperfect I am. Constantly falling short of the glory of God.
I like to try and put my feelings into words, but as I listened to this song (the one below) I realized someone already beat me to the punch.

John Newton wrote 'Amazing Grace' in 1779, and the words he wrote so long ago say exactly what I feel. That man lived a great portion of his life with an incredible amount of profanity and obscenities. But before he died he saw what many of us fail to ever see- that God's grace has literally pulled us from the gates of hell. Because of that grace, because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we never need to feel trapped in our sins. He sets us free. He breaks the chains. All of them. No matter what it is. The chains of death, of despair, of fear, of feelings of inadequacy, of self-doubt, of feeling alone. And so on and so forth.

I know that Christ lives. And that it is because of Him that life is worth living. It is because of him there is hope. Because of him there is music and laughter and joy and peace and art and poetry and friendships and growth and change and redemption and strawberries with whipped cream haha But seriously, without him there is nothing, but because of him there is everything.

Here are the words to John Newton's poem. Don't sing it, read it. And really think about what it is you are reading.

1. Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
   That saved a wretch like me!
   I once was lost, but now am found;
   Was blind, but now I see.
2. ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
   And grace my fears relieved;
   How precious did that grace appear
   The hour I first believed.
3. Through many dangers, toils and snares,
   I have already come;
   ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
   And grace will lead me home.
4. The Lord has promised good to me,
   His Word my hope secures;
   He will my Shield and Portion be,
   As long as life endures.
5. Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
   And mortal life shall cease,
   I shall possess, within the veil,
   A life of joy and peace.
6. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
   The sun forbear to shine;
   But God, who called me here below,
   Will be forever mine.
7. When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
   Bright shining as the sun,
   We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
   Than when we’d first begun.

And here is the Carrie Underwood song that got me thinking of this in the first place.

Moving

I'm moving in a few days, leaving Centennial and going who knows where really. Haven't decided what I should do just yet.

Moving always puts me in an excited state of melancholy. My heart jumps in anticipation while at the same time aching with a sense of loss. I feel like this move might end in me leaving Provo, probably not for good, but for quite a while. My life has been absolutely fantastic thus far and I expect nothing less in the future. I'm excited to see what happens but also a little sad that in order to see the future I have to leave behind a past full of wonderful experiences that will no longer be my present.

When I left my last class at BYU it felt slightly anti-climatic. I was kind of expecting to feel some kind of finality or closure. I thought that I would feel different and that it would be in that moment that it would hit me that I was really done. Done with college. That I had finally achieved what I had been working towards since kindergarten. But instead I felt nothing. I felt exactly the same, well I did feel a little 'huh.' I thought, 'huh, I feel the same. And none of these people walking past me know that I have just accomplished what they are in the process of trying to accomplish. Or maybe they are in the same boat as me, I really can't tell. Nothing seems to be different at all.'

This is a poem I wrote after that class. When I read it I can see myself walking east along the south side of the library with the sun shining on me and people walking briskly past me.

And so I left.

There was no fanfare, no parade.

No clapping or shouts of congratulations.

I walked by them and they walked by me,

The sun shining, flowers blooming,

Snow on the mountains slowly melting.

No, there was no grand goodbye,

Just a quiet continuance of life.

Tessa McGrew

The very first words of a lifelong love letter...

I know I should be asleep right now but I love this song. It makes me feel an overwhelming sensation of wonderful anticipation of what could one day be. I just feel happy and excited when I listen to this song. The thought of me one day being able to have someone in mind when I listen to this makes me almost pee with excitement haha It's a beautiful song

Come Thou Fount

I'm sitting here listening to that song right now. It is one of my absolute favorite songs.

It became my favorite about two years ago. I was living at Glenwood with Kerri, Becca, Nina, Courtney, and Audrey. At Glenwood they have a main building in the middle of the other buildings that has a big room with a piano, foosball table, pool table, tv, and other random things. Kerri would always go use the piano to sing her heart out and I would sometimes go with her just to lay on the couches and listen.

I was sitting studying for my anatomy test and Kerri comes and says, 'come on Claire come listen to me play.' So I grabbed my anatomy book and followed her over there. I laid on the couch and tried to start studying as she was playing the piano. I can't remember exactly why but I was really sad that day and was worried about different things in my life. As I was trying to study Kerri starting playing the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I immediately stopped reading and just listened to the music and then the words. It was awesome. I felt such love from my heavenly father as I listened to the lyrics and I felt like the weight of my worries was being lifted. It was just great. So yeah that's why come thou fount of every blessing is my favorite song. In case you were wondering.

Graduation!

I call this picture- "Poor attempt at a time lapse"

Anyway. I graduated from BYU a few weeks ago. It is a very bittersweet feeling. I love BYU and I am very grateful for the opportunity I had to attend such a wonderful university. 

So. Here are a couple of lists I made awhile ago. 

Things I learned at BYU

1-     How to love myself for who I am

2-     How to be alone

3-     That dreams are nothing without action

4-     Life is uncertain, and that’s okay

5-     Sometimes your heart aches, but that doesn't mean it always will

6-     Life is right now, not yesterday or tomorrow, but this moment

7-     Your life is what you do every day, in every moment

8-     Change is a necessary and wonderful part of life

9-     The ability to let go is a blessing

10- Love is an action, not some magical feeling

11- I can choose how my life turns out

12- There is no such thing as a soul mate, but there is one person I will end up with, and I get to choose that person

13- It is very easy to start a bad habit, and rather hard to let it go

14- Life changes very quickly, it rarely remains the same for long

15- Sometimes no matter how much you want something to work, it just doesn't

16- Life is unexpected, so don’t worry about what could be, just live

17- It’s okay to say goodbye to people

18- Life is beautiful

19- How to say I love you

20- How to show affection

21- I get to choose if I will do what God wants me to do, or what I want to do- but I need to pray to figure out what God really wants for me

22- Living is an action

23- Eating gummy worms will not make me feel better, ever

24- How to be vulnerable

Things I learned about myself at BYU

1-     If I had to choose between a meaningful conversation with a friend and an adventure, I’d choose the conversation. Unless the adventure was with my friends, in that case I would get both so it’d be a win win

2-     I would do (almost) anything for a friend

3-     I care deeply for people

4-     I still can’t seem to let go of the past, I live there frequently

5-     I don’t like change, it makes me sad.

6-     I have a lot of dreams that I don’t act on out of fear

7-     I have a lot of potential and the ability to impact peoples lives

8-     The only person I can truly save is myself

9-     I don’t like doing or folding laundry

10- I wear hats a lot

11- No matter how tired I am I can’t seem to go to sleep at night

12- I often let my emotions control my actions

13- I have faith in God

14- I know that the Book of Mormon is a true book and that the LDS church is God’s church

15- I like to preach to my friends

16- I feel empowered when I’m trying to empower others

17- Sometimes I don’t listen because I’m too busy trying to say what I want to say

18- I’m afraid of love, but that’s a fear I want to face

19- I’m not very good at playing the dating game

20- I love mountains

21- I love being around people and interacting with them

22- Apparently I like to write poems to get out my emotions

23- I’m not very good at consistently doing laundry

24- Stressing gets me nothing but a headache

25- Sometimes it snows and is cold and wet and my foot hurts, but the view is great and my heart can still be full of joy

So yep. I graduated.

Friends of Provo

Quick shout out to some of my friends that have come into my life in the past four years. Actually, no shout out, just some pictures so you guys can see them before you come out and hopefully meet some of them. They are my family away from family...

So it started out with these guys freshman year. We had a great time living in the basement.
Order left t right: Me, Kerri, Becca

Then second semester at BYU these guys became me and Kerri's best friends. Story of how we became friends: Aubree (girl with checkered jacket laying across Jessica and Brianne) stole my backpack and I chased her into her apartment (across the basement from us) and ended up in Brianne and Nicki's room and joined in their random dance party to Whip my Hair by Willow Smith. And that's it.
Order from left to right: Aubree laying down, Jessica, Brianne, Kylie, Nicki (Nigs), Me

This is us sophomore year before Amy left on her mission (above picture was junior year)
Order left to right: Amy, Brianne, Jessica, Nicki, Me, Becca, Kerri

Then sophomore year I lived with these guys. Pretty great people. Love 'em
Order left to right, back to front: Me, Nina, Kerri, Audrey, Becca, Courtney

Order left to right: Nina, Kerri, Top of Audrey'e red head, Becca, Courtney, Me

Then we met Ben. He and Becca started dating.
Order left to right: Me, Kerri, Ben, Becca

Making up a song about our apartment, Ben was our photographer
Order left to right: Becca, Me, Kerri, Courtney, Nina

I think this might have been a thanksgiving meal. Not really sure. But sophomore year we spent a lot of time eating on the floor. (We didn't have enough chairs)
Order left to right: Brooke (lived in apartment next door), me, Kerri, Nina, Julia (lived with Brooke and was Courtney's best friend, she and Brooke are awesome), Becca, Jill (random roommate for one semester)

We also met Matt sophomore year. He was a sad little polar bear cause he had been dear johned on his mission and he was definitely in a dark spot ha So we adopted him. He often slept on our couch, but never past 12. We did come home one time to find him asleep on our couch when no one was home though. It was kinda weird ha
Order left to right: Ben, Becca, Audrey, Kerri, Me, Matt

This is Kerri's birthday. Not long after, like maybe a week or more, she and Jeff started dating.
Order left to right, back to front: Courtney, Becca, Me, Kerri, Jill (once again random roommate)

A month later to the day that she and Jeff started dating, they got engaged.
Order left to right: Me, Nina, Kerri, Becca, Courtney

Kerri's wedding.
Order left to right: Me, Bailey (awesome person, Kerri's cousin, we went to her house in Arizona for a weekend and her family is awesome. Her father passed away about a week ago, so pray for them), Becca, Kara (Bailey's sister, awesome person), Hannah (Kerri's friend from Colorado, I work with her now and she is cool)

Order left to right: Kerri's friend, Kara, Me, Bailey, Kerri, Becca, Hannah, Rachelle (friend from freshman year, never see her), Kerri's friend whose name I once knew haha.  And then Matt

Me, Jeff, Kerri

And then over a year after Kerri got married, Ben and Becca got married. It was pretty awesome. This was Junior year

Left to right front row: Jackson, Courtney (Becca's friends), Mike (Rachelle's husband), Rachelle, Becca, Ben, Me, Stetson behind me (friend from freshman year), Abby, Jason right behind her

Too many people to try and put them in order. Friends. But on the left second row is Elaine, my current roommate and an awesome person

This was when Courtney got back from her mission last semester.
Left to right: Matt, Me, Courtney, Becca, Ben

This is us a few weeks ago
Left to right, top to bottom: Audrey, Me, Julia, Becca, Courtney, Nina, Kerri

This is us sophomore year. But it's a good old photo of almost all of us. These people are awesome and I love them.
Clockwise from left: Me (graduating in two weeks), Courtney (Got back from her mission last semester I think, honestly can't remember exactly when), Nina (getting married in either June or July, can't remember), Ben, Becca (doing her thang), Audrey (getting married sometime this summer), Matt (going to Haiti this summer), Kerri (now has a little baby girl named Jane and is graduating in two weeks)

Life is Good. That's all.

I don't have a poem this time. No cry for help in this blog post mom haha 

I was just sitting here on the couch in my apartment, listening to music and I realized that I am excited to see my family in a couple weeks when I graduate. Because I AM GRADUATING. I will be an alumna of Brigham Young University in 17 short days. 

I've been avoiding thinking about my graduation. The truth is I don't want to be done with BYU. I love BYU. It has helped me grow in more ways than I'm sure I realize. But if I could stay here forever...I wouldn't.

 The motto for BYU is- 

Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve. 

Once upon a time I was going to go to Lugazi, Uganda to serve the people there. I was excited and couldn't wait for the wonderful experiences I would have. I was sure the trip to Africa was going to change my life. Before I was supposed to leave I started a blog so that the people who had given me financial support could see the results of their generous (and thoughtful) donations. I wrote the following statements on that blog, and two years later I read them again:

If you have a dream, go get it now. Life is about living. So live. Now by that I don't mean go party and do stupid things that could possibly end in death or some sort of liver disease. That's not living. Living is about serving. Service is what truly makes us feel like we are living up to our potential. We are always told that we need to have charity, which is the pure love of Christ. Well, that is Service. And service is Love. And love is Living. 

And that is why I want to go to Africa. To serve the people there. To love the people there. And to live and help others live.

View from my apartment at Stratford Court

I was sad when I realized I couldn't go to Africa. I spent a lot of nights crying myself to sleep, wishing I was in Africa rather than where I was. One night as I was doing my usual crying "woe is me" ritual I had a thought that changed my attitude. I thought, how ironic (not sure if this is a correct use of the term 'ironic'), that I am sitting on my bed wishing I was in Africa, when so many of those children would give anything to be here, where I am, having the opportunities that I have. How selfish of me to waste time being ungrateful. Those children in Africa are happy and enjoy their life, regardless of their circumstances. How pitifully first-world selfish I was being. I realized that I was wasting an opportunity that most of those kids would never get. The simple opportunity to appreciate the wonderful feeling that only comes from sleeping in a warm bed every night and the chance to drink clean water everyday. I'm not kidding. The simple things I took for granted I realized in that instant were wonderful gifts from my Heavenly Father. I never got to go to Africa, but even from thousands of miles away those kids changed my perspective on life. 

So when I leave BYU I will not waste my time by wishing I was somewhere other than where I am. I will thank the Lord for the wonderful experiences I had and then I will look forward, and I will live everyday. Because life is not what happened yesterday, or what might happen tomorrow, life is right now. Your life is this moment. So the answer to the question, will I end up happy? is found in how you live every moment. And so, even though change affects me in ways that I can't fully explain, I will be happy regardless of what trials I face in life.

Walking up the basement stairs of the JFSB

 I love BYU and am extremely grateful to the Lord for giving me the wonderful opportunity to gain a college degree, so wonderful in fact that according to the Huffington Post in 2010 only 6.7% of the world's population has that same opportunity. 

Stream of thought

Sometimes I write poems without spending a lot of time trying to make them perfect. I just let it out and put down what's in my head at that exact moment. Those are some of my favorite poems that I've written. The human mind is a beautiful gift that I am very grateful for. 

I wrote this poem yesterday. I had a lot going on in my head and decided to write it as it came. I had gone on a hike earlier in the day to let off steam and was amazed by the beauty and peace that I found in the mountains.

Listen to your heart

Stop searching for the answers in the dark

I’m feelin like I’m lost

Didn’t realize hesitation had a cost

Life’s too short to say goodbye

But I guess I’ll have to try

I’m not who I used to be

But still not quite the whole of me.

To trek the mountains, trek the sky

Make me stop and wonder why

The world seems to move so fast

Just want the view, moment to last.

Obviously blogging consistently is not my thing. I just don't feel like I have a lot to say, ever. 

But I'm graduating and that's gotten me thinking about a lot of things lately. The main concern being time and how it passes me by without a care. My life sometimes seems to be one big blur of indecision and fear. It's easy to get caught up in the fast pace of the world and forget the real purpose of life, which does not include anything remotely related to fame or fortune or whether or not I attain a PhD. I'm grateful for the knowledge I have of the Plan of Salvation. I know that I am here to fulfill an eternal role and that my progression is not, nor will it ever be, limited by time. 

(In order to see what day I was graduating I looked at BYU's academic calendar and as I did I felt a rush of emotion; so I wrote a poem and called it Calendar)

 Calendar: 

Number the days and watch them go

A wisp in the wind, footprints in the snow

Days into weeks into months into years

No way of knowing if there will be tears

Ink on a page apathetic and bold

Jealously guarding stories untold

Deceptive and cunning, hiding the truth,

That little black ink has stolen our youth.

How many memories trapped on a page?

The friendships and photographs yellowed with age.

The smell of the grass, crunch of leaves in the fall

Those little black numbers, concealing it all.

(View of Provo from Kiwanis Park)