How I Married a Mushroom....in Small-Town America

Gotcha!  I didn't marry a mushroom.  I married a fungi.  Get it?  A "fun guy?"

Yeah, I know it's bad, deal with it.

I open with that gosh-awful joke because Jay and I recently went on an adventure.  What was only supposed to be a date to a new place downtown turn into a fantastic journey into an unknown world.  It's like someone said we were going to the park, and then later finding out "the park" was Disneyland.  Or, more applicable, thinking we're on our way to the Easter candy aisle at Macey's, only to find out we were headed to the Wonka Factory.

There is a little area in downtown Provo that never seems to have the same businesses for longer than a year.  Seriously, you'd think a pod of restaurants would be quite comfortable in a college town where everything is within walking distance of the dorms, but no.  One of the suites in this area seemed, to us, to be cursed.  The newest installment of the unlucky suite is a little store called Pop'nSweets.  The idea of the store is described in the name: soda pop and candy.  That's it.

I personally thought it was a lame idea for a college town.  "It'll never last."  "I give it three months."  And so on.  Day after day, we would drive by, only to see the cashier starting forlornly at the big screen TV mounted on the wall, nary a soul in the store.  We began to feel sorry for the employees, bored out of their minds.  And then, we realized that if little businesses like that can't succeed, then the American Dream is essentially dead.  The values of small-town America are threatened enough as it is.  So we decided that we should take a date night to go and explore Pop'nSweets.  It's within walking distance, there should be something there worth buying, and what could it hurt?

But when Jay and I walked in the store....let's just say we were picking our jaws up off the floor. According to their Facebook page, there are "way too many" kinds of soda pop and candies from Switzerland, Mexico, Germany, Japan, and many other countries.  Every variety of root beer, all sorts of fruit colas, and even more flavors I've never even heard of.  It was a sight to behold.

Pop'nSweets isn't just a candy shop/soda bar full of possibilities in its merchandise.  Every aspect of it screams "a modernized malt shop, for hipsters."  I adventurously picked out a birch beer from the shelves, a slightly sweeter cousin to root beer.  Jay chose "Leninade" (A Party in Every Bottle! Get Hammered, and Sickled!).  We also each got a candy (he from Germany, me from the UK).  We purchased our goodies, then sat at the bar for some floats.  Jay got a concoction called "The Prohibition" with a mix of root beer, birch beer, and sarsaparilla with vanilla ice cream.  I had my eye on "Blue Magic," featuring blueberry and white birch beers topped with vanilla ice cream.  We thoroughly enjoyed our treats, proceeding to shoot the breeze with the cashier and discussing the Jurassic Park film on the big screen.

For a small moment, Jay and I felt like we were living the small-town America life.  Conversing with a friendly stranger, supporting a small business...call it the Romantic in me, but it was wonderful.

The next day, Jay and I pulled our soft drinks out of the fridge and listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong while we toasted to our future.  I lucked out with finding a guy who not only has strong values, is smart and a "fun guy," but he's pretty cute, too!  (He's probably going to give me the stink eye for putting that.)

I encourage everyone to go out into the world and live some good, clean, America living.  Support a small business.  Find a friendly stranger and chat for a while.  Brighten someone's day.  Whether it's going to a place like Pop'nSweets (which I highly recommend), or just cracking jokes at the grocery store, you'll feel this great big world getting smaller when you make another human smile.

Lessons of Faith

I'm a hopeful gal.  I often wonder how hard life would be without hope.  It's what gets you through those really hard days.  I also consider myself charitable.  If charity is "the pure love of Christ," it is definitely something I'm striving for.  But I have found many tests of my faith lately, tests that caused me to question the amount of faith I really had.

We're currently looking for music teaching jobs to which Jay can apply and hopefully have for the Fall.  I feel that I am very hopeful and optimistic about finding at least one job for him, and I've even been doing some of the legwork for finding opportunities.  And yet, for a while, whenever it came to asking the Lord what we should do, little pangs of doubt throbbed in my heart.  I was scared.

I had to get over this fear.  This week has been one of testimony-building study.  I'll be honest; scripture study for me has always been reading the next chapter in the Book of Mormon before bedtime.  So this week, I realized I needed to put a greater deposit into my spiritual bank account.  I decided that in order to understand the will of Heavenly Father, I needed to actually learn how to understand His will.

On Monday, I focused on revelation.  This is how Heavenly Father speaks to us about our lives.  This is how He answers our prayers.  I learned that revelation in and of itself is a miracle, and because that is basically what we were asking for while job-searching, I moved my focus to miracles.

Reading about the miracles of Christ broadened my definition.  Miracles do involve a divine power, but that power is not limited to healing the sick or giving the blind their sight.  I seriously think I receive divine help when I get out of bed in the morning (senioritis is hitting me hard, y'all).  Most importantly, I learned that in order to receive a miracle, you must have three things: prayer, a felt need, and faith.  I certainly had two out of the three.

It all comes back to faith.

"Faith is things which are hoped for and not seen," according to the scriptures.  Hope is something I have plenty of.  Is this where my faith stems from?  More than a belief, but a sound knowledge rooted in optimism?

Yesterday, my studies turned toward the Book of Mormon chapters we had read the past few evenings, and I remembered the story of the brother of Jared.  The Lord commanded they build ark-like boats to sail to the promised land.  Because these boats looked pretty similar to what two bowls look like suctioned rim-to-rim, the brother of Jared wondered what his people would do for air and light.  He asked what should be done for each, and the response was interesting.  The Lord gave an additional commandment to solve the air situation (cut a hole in the top and the bottom of the boat and plug them up when not in use), but allowed the brother of Jared to come up with his own solution for light.  The brother of Jared pondered a while, created 16 stones out of molten ore, and then returned to his place of prayer and specifically asked the Lord to touch each stone with His finger, imparting light into them.  Upon ending his prayer, the brother of Jared found that the finger of the Lord literally was touching the stones before his eyes.

Last night, I experienced a mighty miracle.  No angels appeared by our bed to tell us to pull out our laptops and go to specific websites for jobs.  No booming voice sounded in our ears with any instructions.  No, this miracle occurred within me.  Jay and I pray together each night, and it was my turn to offer it.  I thought of the brother of Jared, his specific prayer with a solution he had studied in his mind.  I offered up my own prayer with the solution Jay and I had discussed.  I took a step into the darkness, looking for the Lord to light the way.

Tears rolled down my face as the pangs of doubt and fear ceased in my heart.  The love I felt for my Father in Heaven grew exponentially with every word I spoke.  I continued to pray as Jay put his arm around me.  God heard our prayer; He has been listening all along.

The fact that I felt the change, that is the miracle.  I no longer think Jay and I will be alright in the future.  I don't believe or even hope.  I know.  It is fact.  There is no doubt.  Our prayer will be answered, and very soon.

God still reveals His will to man.  We see it every day, we feel it in our hearts.  Whether you call it revelation or not may be a personal preference, but that's what it is.  And it's beautiful.  God loves us too much to leave us comfortless, in the dark, without hope.  Sometimes we just have to open our eyes to see the finger of the Lord.  Sometimes we have to ask for the miracle.

And that takes faith.

My First Blog Post

Rather than do the homework that probably should be being done right now, I've decided to create a blog.  

I used to be an avid Facebook user, but now the fun has been sucked out by ads, apps, and opinionated people sharing pointed articles that always seem to end up in your feed.  And yet, I get sucked into it anyway.  Soon, very soon, Jay and I will say goodbye to Facebook.  To those of you reading this, thanks!  It shows that you care about whatever it is we are doing.  Hopefully, we will prove to be interesting down the road.

I think I'll end it here.  (Don't want to become long-winded right from the get-go!)