inspire.

This video was so great that I knew I had to share it with the world. It's everything I could tell you summed up into one video. It's a little long, but so worth watching. 

not on God's time.

Tonight I went to a church fireside with my mom and some family friends, and picked up on a little quote that our Stake President said. 

It really made me think and I hope it will be comforting to those who need a little help at this time in their life. 

God's Time is not always Our Time.

As humans we naturally want things to happen right now, in this very moment. But we need to stop and take a look at the big picture. Our time here is just the beginning of what is to come, so what is the rush? I've said this numerous times before, and I'll keep saying it as long as it is true. Everything happens for a reason. What that reason is however, we might not know for a long time. Or even at all. That shouldn't matter though- because our Father in Heaven knows. Isn't that good enough? It sure was to me. I wasn't ready to be a mother, yet I was expecting a child. Even though I loved Cash so so much, it wasn't the right time for me to raise a baby. There was a woman waiting patiently for God's timing to catch up with hers so she could care for a child, 

and we were led to each other. 

I know a woman who recently lost a baby. She counseled me throughout my pregnancy, and was present when I placed Cash with D&Y. My heart aches for her and her husband, because they would have made great parents. Sadly, their timing just wasn't parallel to God's and their child was taken back home early. Some people might think this is unfair- why would something like this happen to good people? Well, everything happens for a reason, 

and He needed that spirit back in heaven with him.

No matter the situation, we can't ever doubt that God doesn't love us or care about us if we are doing everything we can, we just have to be patient and have faith that things will happen on his time. 

mistakes becoming miracles.

This might be a little confusing, but I had a lot of thoughts on my mind. And although what I say in this post relates to my past, it is also for everyone who’s ever made a mistake. For everyone who’s been angry with someone over something they’ve done. Or maybe someone who’s angry with themselves for hurting someone else. Whatever it is in your life you are struggling with, I hope this post can help you see the bright side of it.

My mom commented on a previous post of mine, "If we can learn from our [mistakes and] experiences, they aren't mistakes at all." How true this is! Never let a decision from the past ruin your life, but take a lesson from the past to start a new life and make your future the best you can. It doesn’t matter who you are- every person on this earth has made a mistake at some point in their life. And if you think you haven’t- well there’s your mistake right there. Everybody has a past.  But why let your past define you? It’s what you do in your future that counts.

When something bad happens, you have three choices: you can let it destroy you, define you, or strengthen you.

I have found that when some people go through a less than desirable experience, they use it as an excuse. They use it as a crutch to all their other problems, and when something bad happens again, they blame it on the first experience. This is allowing the hurt to destroy and define you. I did NOT want to be remembered just as "the girl who got knocked up" in highschool. I could have let my whole world crash down around me. I could have allowed it to get the best of me, and I could have just given up right there. But after a lot of praying and thinking I realized this- anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart? That’s true strength.

Strength doesn’t come from winning. Strength comes when you lose, and go through struggles.

The strongest people I know aren't physically strong.. The strongest people I know are the ones who were able to pull through seemingly impossible trials in their lives and still manage to smile. They are the women who have buried children, just days old. The women who, against all odds, have overcame cancer. The women who's husbands abandoned them and their families. The women who have been abused, yet are still able to trust. They are the women I admire, and strive every day to be like. I am positive that these women have had multiple times where they felt like throwing their hands up in the air and being done with it all. Everyone goes through their highs and lows, and we all feel useless and upset with our lives at one point or another. We all feel like giving up sometimes.

When you reach the point where you want to give up, look behind and see how far you have already came.

What would be the point of going through hell and back, only to throw it all away when things were looking up? What would be the point of giving up then? Was hiding out in my room going to change the fact that I was pregnant? NO, it wouldn’t! I didn’t want to just give up- I had a new life to take care of, and I wanted to make that baby proud. I had already come so far from where I was- and although it was extremely difficult at times, I decided that no matter what, I was going to keep my head held high. I was going to stay positive.

Our choices rule our destiny. What happened yesterday we cannot change, but what happens now and what will happen tomorrow is always in our hands. Life will happen the way
 we choose it to happen.

People make mistakes, things go wrong, just remember
 life goes on.

We all make mistakes. Everyone on this earth has made mistakes. Recognizing that, and acting on it to make things better is the first step to moving on. I knew I had made a mistake.. I knew I had made many. I directly hurt someone really close to me, and I was hurting my family and everyone else who cared about me. I felt so much shame and hurt for these people I was hurting. It was eating me alive- I felt guilt, sadness, and anger. I felt embarrassed when I was in public, not because I was pregnant, but because of the pain I was causing people I loved. I don't know what did it, but one day I just woke up and realized I had to let that all go. I had to forgive myself for the mistakes I made, so that I could move on. I didn't want to feel this way, because I knew I wouldn't be able to move forward with my life. 

When you dwell on the past, the past dwells on you.

The whole purpose of forgiveness is to allow yourself the permission to move on without the hurt. Often times individuals are more than willing to forgive others- but not so willing to forgive themselves. As human beings, it is our natural tendency to beat ourselves up over things we do wrong, and hardly acknowledge the things we do right. By forgiving yourself of a past transgression or mistake, you are allowing yourself to move forward, and past that negative event in your life. However, forgiving yourself will not cause those feelings to disappear completely. The memory lasts as a reminder not to repeat the mistake, and allow the hurt back in. 

The past can hurt, but you either run from it or learn from it.

“You can’t erase the past, you can’t even change it. 
But that doesn’t mean life doesn’t offer you 
the opportunity to make it right.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t erase the fact that I was pregnant. I couldn’t change the fact that I was pregnant. But life handed me the opportunity to choose a great life for my child and make it right. From day one, I knew I couldn’t support a child, and I didn’t want him to suffer because of my mistake. People may disagree, but to me adoption was the way I could make something good out of something bad. I looked at this trial as a blessing for another family- and never as a burden to my own.

It turns out, sometimes you have to do the wrong thing. Sometimes your have to make a big mistake, to figure out how to make things right. Mistakes are painful, but they’re really the only way to find out who you really are.

Trials are Gods way of showing us that he trusts us enough to know that we can get through whatever life is throwing at us.

I had always looked at Cash as being a “gift” of sorts- My Heavenly Father needed to give me a firm smack to smarten up, and someone else needed a child. I definitely believe that if He didn’t think I could handle it, He wouldn’t have trusted me with that big of a thing. It made me feel better knowing I had His help in all I do too. Cash was my wake-up call, and from that moment on I made a conscious effort to change my life around.

“You’ll never leave where you are without first
 deciding where you’d rather be.”

When you set a goal in life, sometimes you always don't have a plan to get there. You just know its something you want to achieve, and will do what it takes to get it. A year ago, I was on a path I didn’t even think about where it was leading to. But when I thought about that baby boy, I realized where I wanted to end up, and I left that life behind. Today, I am on my way to being the kind of person I wish I had always been. I don’t want to sound all self-righteous or anything, so I wont. But I learnt so much through this experience and cocky or not, I know that I am a better person because of it. I am neither proud of nor happy with the girl I used to be.

No smile is more beautiful than one 
that’s smiled through the tears.

Honestly, before last year I hated myself and everything about me. I was never happy, and I was upset with the things I was doing yet didn’t have the confidence to step up for myself and quit it all. But this trial showed me how to love myself, especially when everyone else didn’t. Its odd- but feeling alone didn’t necessarily bother me.. I learnt to be comfortable with my own skin, even if it was 50 pounds heavier!

Every story has an end, but in life every
 end is just a new beginning.

I have this quote at the bottom of my blog for a reason. At one point, almost everything comes to some sort of an end. People pass away, relationships end, friendships are lost… the list goes on and on. But Life doesn’t end when someone dies, break-ups happen so that you can find the right person, and friendships end to make way for new people to come into your life. The same goes for trials and hardships. You can look at a death or break-up as an ending, or you can look at it as a start to something new. The trials we face may seem horrible at the time, but when all is said and done, it is just the start to the next chapter in our lives. Don’t give up and close the book just because things get bad. 
There is always something brighter on the next page, just waiting to be read.

"Juno"

Going through life as a pregnant teenager was difficult to say the least. Fortunately, I look older than I am so people who didn’t know me didn’t judge. But walking the halls of LCI high school was an interesting experience. I think it was harder for me when people didn’t know. The first day back to school that Monday after I found out was rough. I felt very detached from the world around me, probably because I had so much going through my head. I felt “dirty” for lack of a better word- I was ashamed of what I had done. Curtis didn’t even know yet.. I didn’t want to tell him- at that time, we were at different places in our lives and weren’t exactly on speaking terms. I knew he wasn’t going to react the way I wanted him to. He was your typical 17 year old (and a hockey player at that haha) and he just wasn’t ready or willing to accept the responsibility that I had to. It was extremely difficult to see him in the halls, especially since I had such negative feelings towards him at that point. I felt really alone, and I wish I could’ve turned to him then like I can now. Right now you’re probably thinking wow, that guy needs to shape up! Trust me, he definitely has. It just took him a little while longer to realize what was happening than it did for me. While he was probably really scared too, it was way more in my face than his those first few weeks at school. Luckily I only had two classes, so I would numbly go through the morning and then run home to my mom to cry. I made the mistake of telling people I thought I could trust too soon. I needed to talk to someone other than my parents, and since I couldn’t talk to Curt I looked elsewhere. A secret like mine wont be kept a secret for long and very quickly, word spread and everyone was now giving me attention. No one said anything for a long time- but it was obvious that they knew. People I never talked to started texting me randomly “just to see how I was doing”. I felt like I had more friends just because people wanted to be in on the school gossip. Everyone was nice to me.. Not that they weren’t before, I had lots of friends. But it seemed as though the kids around me were just doing it for their own selfish reasons, not genuinely concerned about me. I knew they would get information from me and then go spread it with the rest of the audience.I kept to myself a lot- but obviously I welcomed the fact that everyone was nice to me. It was way better than getting picked on or anything. And for the most part, everyone treated me with respect and were very kind to me. I never felt like anyone was judging me or being unkind. Once I started showing, that’s when things started to change a little bit, although my friends were still really great around me. At first, I just looked fat. And that was difficult enough for me to accept, because I was normally a tall, slim size 2 haha. Previously, I was a well-known girl in my school, so most people knew me anyways. One time, probably in my 5th month or so, I was standing at my locker and two grade 9s walked by. The one (who I actually knew from awhile ago) said “did you see how fat that girl was?” RIGHT as she walked behind me. They snickered and I turned around and smiled at her. She quickly shut her mouth when she realized who I was. When I walked through the halls, I got stares. But I stared right back, and they would turn away. I didn’t care what anyone thought, there was nothing I could do about it or my situation. I held my head high each and every day I went to that school. The teachers were amazing, I never heard one comment from them and that was really nice. It was almost as though they were pretending I wasn’t pregnant, and in a way I guess I was too. I lived in denial for a very long time, that’s for sure haha. But I embraced it and tried my best not to let it get me down. Of course, I would still go home and cry but I never let on in front of my friends. On the outside, it looked like I had it all together. But on the inside, I was definitely hurting. I went through high school the same as any student would have and graduated with my class, two weeks before I gave birth. It was a really hard thing to accept not being able to have the “perfect dress” I had always dreamed of, but I was still graduating in spite of my situation and that’s what was important to me. I never once considered giving up on my education like previous girls had. 

 At a grad party 

carrying on with my weekend activities!

spending time with friends, meeting new friends


No, it wasn’t the senior year I thought I was going to have but it was memorable that’s for sure! I lived each day preparing myself for the day I would have to say goodbye to the baby I had grown to love so much. I didn’t have a boyfriend to tell me everything was going to be alright, and I didn’t feel like I fit in with my friends anymore because I was thrown into this mature situation where I had bigger things to worry about than what was going on that weekend. As I spent more and more time alone or with my family, I realized that the little things don’t matter. I wish I had placed a greater importance on my family and my inner self during my previous years in high school than I did on friends and my outward appearance. I had always struggled with self-esteem issues up until that point, but feeling like all eyes were on me all the time at school and having to keep my head up throughout everything really gave me the opportunity to become confident. I grew to know myself, and love myself during those 9 pregnant months of grade 12. Many people wondered how I was able to do it, seemingly careless of what was going on around me. And for the most part, that was true. The minute I found out I was pregnant was the minute I stopped living for myself, and started living for my unborn baby. No, I did not care what people thought about me like I used to. All that mattered to me was that I was making a life this baby would be happy to be in and preparing everything for the day I would place him in the arms of a loving family. 


 "No one ever said it would be easy- 
only that it would be worth it."

Me and Curt at my graduation, May 29th, 2010

Me and Curt before his graduation, June 5th, 2010