For my Grandma it would be: her honey, her kids, her grand kids, the gospel and taking care of the church library (AKA ward). (My Gran looks lovely in this picture)
For my dad it would be: telling jokes, pondering about things for many hours, his calling and his family.
For my mother it would be: entertaining the masses and serving others (and of course the gospel). She tends to always be doing something for someone else or talking to a wall. (She is a cute mom!)
For my brother Joseph it would be: SPORTS, what ever is in season and maybe his other one would be talking mom into pretty much anything.
For my sister Addie, it would be: perfecting everything. She is perfect at pretty much everything she does whether it's sports, school, making friends, reading her scriptures, obeying her parents... She is perfect.
For my brother Brigham it would be: a tie between being the baby of the family and eating ramen noodles (my dad says he could feed Brig for $1 a week and Brigham would be content every night on ramen) or maybe it would be his bird buddy. (I put this picture up because my mom says he is her favorite kid)
For my husband Clark it would be: Brazil, horses, the outdoors, western novels and I would say me.
So all of these people have these amazing passions. They are unique to them but I don't feel like I have any unique passion. Some people have a passion for fashion, some have one for cooking or interior design. I do not have those passions. I can't pin one for me. I have the regular passions: my family, the gospel, my husband etc. but I don't have a Brazil or a bird. I don't have a sport or kids. I don't have a knack to serve all day everyday. So I constantly tell Clark I'm passionless. I have not one thing that is all mine... except for him.
This was our discussion the other night. Clark is in the other room studying and I am looking at a fashion blog. I realize again that I'm passionless. I am just a fish in the ocean of students at Utah State. I work for Parking of all places... parking. I then get depressed. I go into the room sit by Clark and say, "Clark, I'm passionless." He replies, "No you aren't." I say, "Yep, I am. I don't know fashion, interior design, cooking or crafts." He then says, "Those fashion people are selfish. (NO OFFENSE FASHION PEOPLE) You take care of me. You pay attention to your siblings. You're good at school. You run a lot. You are fun. See, you do have passions." Needless to say, I guess I was looking for passion in the wrong places. I just wanted something cool that I could blog about and get famous off of, like this fashion girl I was reading about. So pretty much, I was being shallow.
I decided that I do have a passion and mine is: "Becoming a Someone". I have so many things I want to do in this life and I have goals I want to reach. This is why I am in school and why I go to church and why I develop talents that I have. I think it is a good passion and an experience the other day confirmed it for me. As I said, I work for parking and I see many many people come through everyday. Nice people, mean people, stressed people, sad people, happy people, lovely people and all kinds of other people. I get handed many blue tickets from all these people everyday that tell me how much to charge them and then this old lady with arthritis comes through, a really BAD case of arthritis.
Her knuckles are turned the wrong way. Her fingers don't come together right and she hands me a crumpled parking ticket. I usually get frustrated when they are crumpled because I can't run them through the machine and I have to un-crumple them and run them through a separate machine and it slows me down. I want the tickets handed to me perfectly in crisp condition. Then it hits me like a ton of bricks... this analogy is strange I know but... I want to be a crumpled parking ticket. When I've grown old, I want the experiences in my life to have shaped the person I am. I don't want to be the perfectly crisp parking ticket that has never experienced anything in life. I want to be the crumpled isn't perfect but will still do.
My grandma has a quote I read when I go to her house and I can't remember it now but the point is that the lady makes in the quote is when she shows up to Heaven she doesn't want to recollect her Earthly life as having the biggest house, the most money, the prettiest clothes etc. etc She wants to show up with peanut butter on her dress from the sandwich she made for a child in an old volks wagon with calloused hands. The analogy reaches quite far from a crumpled parking ticket to this quote but the lady wants to be a crumpled parking ticket. She doesn't want to look prim and proper all the time, she wants to be that someone that didn't have everything and didn't live the 'perfect' luxurious life but she still enjoyed the ride and was shaped into the someone she is because of it. I want to "become a someone... a crumpled parking ticket."
BECAUSE in the end it doesn't matter how perfect you are...What matters is:
How much you LOVED the people in your life...
How GOOD YOU WERE to the friends you made...
the DECISIONS you made...
and how HARD YOU TRIED.
Because the Lord will un-crumple your ticket and make up the difference.
So from passions to parking tickets I found that, I do have a passion and I love it. In the end, what will matter most is, "that someone I became."
So from passions to parking tickets I found that, I do have a passion and I love it. In the end, what will matter most is, "that someone I became."
