The Golden Handcuffs

There was a bit of a wrench thrown in my plans for change. From a purely monetary perspective it comes down to the "Golden Handcuffs". At least that is the term floating around with church employees relating to the difficulty of leaving church employment. The difficulty mostly relates to the retirement benefits that come to you after you have worked there 10-20 years. I will be at 9 years in September. Once I hit 10 years I get 50% of my supplemental insurance paid after I retire. That is worth about $150/month till the day I die. That could add up to $50,000 in today's dollars which could be worth a lot more in the future.

Don't get me wrong, I love working for the church and I have many friends who tell me that they would love to work for the church. There is something wonderful about working for a company that shares your values and beliefs so perfectly. I get to attend devotionals every Monday morning and learn about family history during our training meetings. There is something so wonderful about feeling like I make a real difference in the world. If nothing else my search has just made me very grateful for what I have.

The problem is that I feel stuck and I am not progressing. It is very competitive to work there, which makes it hard for me to be promoted. That part is frustrating. It may take a master's degree and some really hard certification tests to get some important credentials before I can really compete properly.

We had our annual broadcast today and it was so inspiring and made me feel so grateful to be part of something that does so much good and brings so many around the world to the Savior.  There are benefits that come from working for the church that I will never be able to quantify. What was slightly humorous to me was that while I was attending the broadcast I got an appointment for an interview with a real estate investment company and I got a job offer from a mortgage company.

I got myself pretty worked up wondering what I was going to do if I got an offer. I fasted last weekend and I went to the temple and prayed about it and I wasn't getting any clear answers but today I just feel sick when I think about accepting the position and leaving church employment. I know I just need to hold out for a better fit even if it takes me to Hawaii. I feel like God has a plan for me and I just need to wait for it to unfold.

The Gallon Challenge

I sometimes get these crazy ideas to improve my health. Sometimes I feel like my body is just my place for experimentation. I was listening to the radio in my car last week and the D.J.s were
talking about how they were going to do the gallon challenge for a month to see if their health improved. They were talking about all the benefits and mentioned before and after pictures of people who had completed the challenge so I decided that I needed to at least look into it.

I was reading about chronic dehydration and it turned out I had half of the symptoms listed, although I can't vouch for the accuracy of the website. The other thing I learned is that people at high altitudes have a greater need for water than the usual recommendations. I am also pretty sure that people who live in the desert need to drink more water. I figured I was a good candidate for the challenge so I decided to make the commitment.

So far so good. At first I had a few mild headaches before I went to bed the first couple of nights. I guess that is pretty normal because as your water percentage changes in your body, your brain swells and shrinks. As for drinking too much water, according to what I read, that usually happens when a person drinks six gallons in a day or drinks 2 liters within an hour. Yea for water!

Marie's Method

Marie has been out here in Utah visiting me for the last two weeks and it was interesting watching her meet people and make friends with total strangers over and over again. As I watched her I noticed that there were usually a couple of steps she followed.

1. Compliment the stranger on something, it may be their earrings, their shoes, their shirt, their sunglasses, their hairy legs, their dress or anything really to get a smile on their face and get them to acknowledge you.
2. Introduce yourself by extending your hand, telling them your name and then asking them what their name is.
3. If they have a dog ask them what their dog's name is and if you can hold or pet it.
4. Tell them that your birthday is coming up and ask them if they can come to your birthday party dinner at Applebee's.
5. Ask your sister if she can take a picture of you and your new friend.

I probably watched her run through this routine 20 times during her stay.  Somehow I think if I were to follow her steps I wouldn't quite get the same results. Here are pictures of a few of the friends she made. 

Sometimes she broke from the steps like the time we were leaving Applebee's for her birthday dinner and we were passing a waitress that was wiping down a table. Marie stopped and started to rub the woman's back along her spine before she introduced herself and told the waitress that it was her birthday. I think Marie might have caught her just a little bit off guard. It was moments like this and when she started to touch a stranger's tattoo or rubbing a guy's leg that made my mom worry and talk to her about appropriate touch. Such a crack-up. You never really know what that girl is going to say or do next.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARIE!!!

Time for Change

I finished my degree and now I feel like my world is about to flip upside down. I know I can't stay at my current position. It seems to have been made clear to me that there will be no promotion for me in the near future and I can't continue to stay underemployed for long. I have reached a point when I know that change needs to happen, I just don't know how big of a change it will be. Should I sell my place? Should I move out of state? What specialty should I go into? Should I get my masters? Should I get my CMA or my CPA certifications? Getting my bachelor's degree just seems to have opened up more doors and left me with more decisions to make.

It does feel really good to be done. Especially when I have worked so hard. Finishing three years of work in eight months wile working full time could have sent me to the hospital. I almost don't know what to do with all the free time I have now. The best part is hearing my mom tell me how proud she is of me. She is telling everyone about my graduation. She'd probably tell the cashier at the grocery store if she thought he would listen. She called and left me a voice mail singing, "Happy graduation to you..." She is coming to see me in a few days and I am really excited about that.

I guess only time will tell. Hopefully I will have it figured out within the next few months.

The Honest Truth

I have had lots of thoughts on my mind. Many of them have focused of the principal of truth. For starters I was thinking that perhaps I should explain the name of this blog.  I have thought about the phrase "the honest truth" and I just think it is silly because it is unnecessarily redundant. I always think of an uneducated hillbilly saying it when he may be in trouble and it makes me smile. The other reason I liked this phrase is that my name, Alicia means honesty or truth in many translations I have seen. I really do like that aspect of my name because I feel like truth is so important.

Sometimes we think of truth and we think that it should be easy to find, or easy to figure out but in reality we sometimes have to get through a tangled web of lies to get to the truth. There is the surface truth and then there is the deeper or full truth that is even harder to get to and harder to come to understand. The longer I live the more I feel like truth is anything but obvious.

Lately in the news we have a man who wants to pretend to be a woman. We also have a white woman pretending to be a black woman and it seems like everyone wants to throw in their opinions about if he is a she and if she is black. It almost seems like the media wants to help justify and legitimize the lies. Then we are all supposed to take sides. It is all just so silly and to some so confusing when the truth should be clear as day.

I often think about the scripture in John 8:32 when I think about truth. I feel like the truth in this passage even gets misunderstood. People always seem to focus on "the truth shall make you free" part as if they are saying that telling, or confessing the truth will set you free. I believe that is true in many ways but that isn't what the scripture says, It says, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." Truth is power. Only as we come to know and act on the truth we will be free. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well in this world we live in, it isn't always so easy. I can definitely see how confusion is a real form of bondage.

You just have to watch a few commercials to get your daily lies in. Everyone selling something seems to twist the truth for their benefit. People peddling things are constantly sending you messages, that even if they are true, they certainly aren't the full truth or both sides of the truth. This is why I knew I could never go into advertising and why I didn't want to sell anything. I could never live with myself.  I do try to always be honest and if I have lied about something guilt usually doesn't let me continue on in my way for long.

The scriptures even share times when it is okay to lie or not tell the whole truth, like when you are about to be killed by evil men who want to steal your wife. Or there is the deceiving that goes on during war to save lives.

The other thought that has been on my mind is whether it is better to lie than to hurt someones feelings. The dreaded question for a man is when an overweight woman asks him, "Do I look fat in this?" Are they just expected to lie? There aren't really any good responses to that question. We have all been faced with similar situations like this where we have to decide what is the right thing to say.

Then I think about the Savior and how people were always trying to catch him in his words so they would be able to condemn him to death and yet he very masterfully said exactly what he needed to say to both share truth and not be pinned down by them. I can't think of a time that the Savior ever compromised the truth to make someone feel better in a lie. I also can never think of a time that he ever wanted to hurt or shame a lost soul. He just wanted to love people and give them the truth that would make them free.

I think that is what we all want to do in situations like this and yet we often believe that we have to choose between truth and people's feelings. It just makes me feel like I need to be better about studying the life of Christ and then I would probably handle situations like the above much better. 

A couple of scriptures stand out to me on truth, One is John 8:44 talking about the father of lies and the other is 2 Timothy 3:7, "Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of God." The more I think about it the more I believe that we are foolish to believe that we can come to know truth in any real depth without the help of God. God doesn't just know the surface truth. He knows the whole and complete truth. He knows our backgrounds, our motives, our hopes, fears and desires. I am so grateful that not only is he all knowing but he also loves us and that is a pretty amazing combination.

Well that is the honest truth according to me, which doesn't necessarily mean much.  :) 

Bad Boys

I came home to about eight police vehicles, K-9 dogs and a fire truck outside my building today. Can't say I got the best picture of it all...

Thankfully they weren't looking for me. I asked one of the officers what was going on and he asked me if I lived in #3. I said I lived in the 1st unit and he said that #3 had been burglarized and they were looking for the girl who lived there. They said that the thief got in through an unlocked back patio door and I guess someone saw the guy running away.

 

I did notice yesterday when I took out my trash that the cover on my grill had been lifted up, like someone had been inspecting it. Not sure what else that was because it hasn't been windy for a while. If that was what had happened, they probably saw the chains that I had it locked to and wanted to see what I was trying to protect.

 

I wonder if her patio really was unlocked or if they broke in. Lots of questions right now very few answers. They knocked on my door after about 10 minutes after being home and they asked me if I knew who lived in #3. I imagine that they wanted to call her to have her come home sooner. Perhaps more info will be posted on my HOA board because I am sure everyone wants to know what was going on.

 

Right now I am just grateful that it wasn't my place. I don't doubt that they inspected my place to try to break in not knowing that my place is like a fortress, well not quite. ;) I am also glad that I am so vigilant about leaving a stick in my patio door. I am not feeling bad at all right now about the fact that I can be pretty anal about locking things up really well and being really careful. Phew!

Healing Trauma (chapters 5 & 6)

The last two chapters are pretty short. They talk about healing sexual trauma, growing spiritually and helping others avoid being or feeling traumatized.

In Chapter 5 he mentions the statistic that one in four persons worldwide are sexually assaulted in the world. He also says that there are other ways a person can feel sexually traumatized. He mentions gynecological procedures and abortions. He says that all sexual trauma is about violation and he mentions the following violations:

• Intrusion into our sacred space
• Rupture of personal, emotional, sexual and energetic boundaries
• A shock to our internal organs
• Feeling soiled, dirty, damaged
• Deep unexplainable feelings of shame or guilt
• The inability to form deep, sustaining relationships
• A sense of being frozen or shut down
• Overwhelming emotions such as rage, hate and terror
• Feelings of extreme isolation-a sense of not feeling connected to one's environment, the human race and to one's self

He compares humans and animals and says that when young animals are threatened they seek the protection of a parent, the only difference between animals and humans is that humans at every age seek the comfort of others when they are fearful or stressed. One of the biggest problems with sexual trauma is that many of the perpetrators that hurt, humiliate and violate are the ones that are supposed to help and protect us. This can set a child up for a lot of confusion. I am so grateful that I had two very loving parents and this was an issue that I have never had to deal with.

On the other side of the spectrum, he said that one of the biggest problems in sexual trauma is that feelings and sensations that are natural to human beings get pathologized and it becomes difficult for humans to know what to do with these feelings. In his mind, any attempt to dictate what thoughts, feelings and sensations are proper and improper creates a breeding ground for guilt and shame and I would probably add confusion. He said however that these thoughts and feeling do not need to be acted out in inappropriate ways. Families can become a model for shaping healthy instead of damaging behavior.

He talks about how parents need to maintain healthy boundaries with their children but not be afraid to show warmth and affection to them.

On spirituality in Chapter 5 he seems to say that it naturally develops when we overcome our trauma. He says that the energies that are released when we heal from trauma are the wellspring of our creative, artistic and poetic sensibilities and they can be summoned to propel us into the wholeness of our intelligence. Trauma is about thwarted instincts. When we allow them their rightful domain, with the full presence of body and mind we gain access to our own energy and enthusiasm and naturally become closer to God.

When I was in my institute class a few weeks ago the teacher asked us what can keep us from feeling the Spirit of God and I am sure she was thinking about things like not reading our scriptures, not saying our prayers and all the other easy answers. I raised my hand and I said "trauma". She really didn't know what to say or do with my comment and she wrote up on the board, "low self esteem" instead, but after reading this book I can see more clearly how trauma can affect us spiritually even if it isn't the first thing we think of or the easiest to understand.

In the end of the book he gives helpful tips and techniques for preventing trauma. He said that trauma is inevitable and we will all feel it at some point in our lives. The key is to help prevent the long term damage. His steps include the following:

• Act immediately
• Encourage a sense of safety
• Stay with the injured person
• Encourage the person to fully experience their bodies sensations
• Stay fully present
• Don't go it alone
• Allow time for processing
• Allow the emotions to be felt without judgment
• Focus on sensations
• Let the energy discharge

In the end of the book he says that the reason that traumatic reactions can hide for years is that the maturing nervous system is able to control the excess energy. Children are wonderfully receptive to experiencing the healing side of a traumatic reaction. Your job is to simply provide an opportunity for this to occur. A few minutes spent with your child in an appropriate way can not only minimize the chance of lasting effects, but also make the child more resilient to later life stresses.

In the end I am very grateful that my brother in law recommended this book to me. For me, like I have said previously, it has been very eye opening to me and has helped me see and understand what is going on with others in the world around me. It also helps me to see that I probably have some work I need to do on myself. It has given me simple ways to heal and be aware of my own feelings and reactions.