Head to the Heart #3

Where was God for you?

           for me it was
                a reflection
                   a conversation
                      a sound

Head to the Heart #2

Everyone starts off
                               generally happy
                               a little on edge
                               curious of the unknown


Somewhere along the weekend
                    a switch is hit
                    walls fall down
                    minds open to what's been there all along


At the end
            I like to think
            we all stand a bit straighter
            our eyes shine a little brighter


When we focus on You
           we remember the real purpose
           we remember our belovedness
           we remember You

Head to the Heart #1

How do you pray?
         are you silently sitting in a church?
         do you curl yourself up in front of the cross?
         did you take a chair and sit at the edge of a pond?

Do you cry?
             laugh?
             sing?
             are you silent?

Does it set your heart on fire?
Does it give you peace?
Or do you yearn to feel anything at all?

Sometimes it feels like a wall.
                                         dry.
                                         boring.
                                         useless.

I'd be lying if I said I've never had that prayer.

But God is still working.
in the silence.
when our feelings can't be put into words.

Living with a Chronic Invisible Illness

I'll be enjoying a good conversation with a friend or family member, and then at some point the conversation will turn; they will get a serious face, and ask how I'm doing with my ulcerative colitis.
I will usually say it's doing well or mention some other food item I have to avoid.

Honestly for the most part it is okay. I'm glad that it is an invisible illness because then I don't have to see the pity stares and people don't see it as a disability that impairs my ability to do stuff. It is my burden to bare.

The problem is that I forget that I do have limitations. Try as hard as I can, my ulcerative colitis reminds me that it is still there.

It's there in my medications and vitamins I take every morning.

It's there in my infusions every two months.

It's in my bi-annual doctor appointments.

It's there in my colonoscopies every five years to check the status of my ulcerative colitis and to see if I have gotten any cancer from my medications.

It was in every day for the first year when I couldn't get the sound of the beeping hospital monitors out of my head.

It's in having to ask if I can still be an organ donor with all of the medications and infusions.

It's in getting tired after taking a long shower and having to sit naked on the floor of the bathroom.

It's in worrying about my ability to have children one day and worry that if I do have kids that they could get it too.

It's in having to stay home from work because my urgency came back and I can hardly leave the bathroom for an entire day.

It's in having a trump card when anyone brings up a diarrhea story. 

It's in having to worry about insurance and paperwork.

It's in not talking to my coworkers about my condition. They probably think that I just have weird menstrual cycles.

It's in seeing my mom start to cry at any mention of my stay at the hospital.

It's in every trip home and night out with my friends because I know how important they are.

It's in every prayer with God asking him to help me cope and see all the good in the world.

Living with a chronic invisible illness means that I keep a lot in my head. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't have any desire to have people treat me differently. I am just as tough as the next girl. The only limitations I have are the ones I place on myself. There is a lot that can go wrong in one's life. Luckily for me, my guts just hate me. Or really-some of my guts hate me.

Why I don’t photograph everything.

With my last post, one might think that I should take pictures of everything at all times.

But that is not true.

I photograph to encapsulate a moment. To keep it in a vivid and ‘correct’ way.

But sometimes I feel selfish.

Not that I don’t want to remember a moment, but that I want to be the only one to remember it.

I alone will know how I felt.
How the lighting was.
Who was there. Or not there.
What was happening.

I alone get to tell this story.
When someone asks.
And I choose to tell it.

I am able to fill in whatever details I chose to tell. You don’t get to know about it unless I choose to let you in and share with you a special moment that hardly anyone else does.

So I am selfish. Or one could say private in that sense.

But I do believe that some moments are better lived and remembered by one’s mind than by a photograph. I think it makes it more special. More private. And all the more important to me.


Because that is the fatal flaw of photography.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but a moment makes you speechless.

What's Your Dream?

Dreams are funny things. No, I’m talking about the ones you have when you fall asleep. I’m talking about those life long aspirations. That one thing you would do if nothing was holding you back. 

I think I lost mine for a while. 

I wanted to be a vet. 

Too much schooling and I found out that needles literally make me faint. 

I wanted to be a baker. 

I kind of grew out of that one. I didn’t like the idea of waking up at 3 in the morning and then also having to bake something other than cookies and brownies. Plus, I still cannot memorize recipes to this day. 

I wanted to be a photographer. 

My mom told me no. It’s not realistic and being an artist in this world is not financially sound. 

Forever, my dream was to go to college. 

Check. 

Then my dream was to study abroad in Ireland. 

Check. 

Then to graduate college. 

Check. I should also double check this for getting my honors degree as well. #nonhumblebrag #thatsucked #onlyforearlyclassenrollment 

Then I got sick. 

I’ve been on survival mode since then. Getting my health balanced. Getting a job that I’m pretty decent at. Volunteering for the young adult ministry. Getting my faith life balanced. Getting family and friends more balanced. 

I having really been dreaming all that much other than I know at some point I want to start a family. 

Though it hit me today. 

It reminds me of  my favorite book, The Alchemist. 

It talks about omens and how they are little nudges from God to help you know that you are going the right way to fulfill your ‘Personal Legend’ or dream. The main character has to learn to recognize omens and is encouraged to follow them. Later in the book, the boy explains omens to a chieftain. 

“Sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you’ve stopped listening to them.” 

I think I haven’t been really thinking about it because so much has been happening over the past couple years. 

Today I worked from home for a couple hours and then I went into the office for a photoshoot and for a meeting. My bosses are gone for a couple days to scoop out potential franchisees, so I was all on my own. I had a weird timeline when I was at the office because I had to make sure to drop off the Christmas cards, do the photoshoot before my 2:30 meeting. 

As I was leaving I reminisced that one of the favorite parts of my job was doing photoshoots. Even though it is literally just me, lights, pizza, and my camera with the store workers buzzing around behind the counter. I really enjoy looking up shots, making a shot list, and seeing everything come into fruition. Then spending a couple days editing and making the most tasty poster for the next month promotion. 

Then I went into a meeting a bit early and kind of blew it off. 

Later in the evening, I was going through the photos and just making a note of the ones that could work for the next month’s promotions. My friend came through the door, who I literally forgot was going to come over to pick up a letter and drop off some money to a roommate. We got to talking about my work and the recent shoot we did with her and her boyfriend for a coupon mailer going out at the end of December. 

I sent her copies off all of the photos because I was so appreciative of them agreeing to do the shoot. She said that she showed the photos to her parents(who are talented artists whom I admire) and she said they really loved them and they like how I capture moments. 

I feel like I keep having these little omens about photography. Even at our annual Christmas party,  new friend mentioned that she loved the photos that I post on Instagram(which is an odd conversation topic to just come out of nowhere). 

I’ve always loved photography. As I mentioned earlier, I was planning to become a photographer until I was turned off by what my mother said. So that’s why I went into marketing. Don’t get me wrong- I absolutely loved all of my marketing classes and the psychology intertwined in it, but I’ve had this weird knack for it. 

I took photojournalism classes in high school and I absolutely loved it. My teacher always tried to recruit me for the yearbook class, but I turned it down because I had other activities that took up my time( basically German club). 

For my senior project for high school, I basically just made a scrapbook of my entire year. Luckily, my family was in different stages in their lives, so I was able to capture a major scope of life. 

I think what did turn me off to photography was when I was selected as the photographer at St. Pauls during my junior year. I had to take photos of every event and everything that went on. It made me feel really disconnected and I honestly lost my passion. I felt like I wasn’t able to fully participate in the moment. I was capturing it, but I could only see the technical side of it. I lost the ability to have fun with the medium. 

I remember a talk I had with a friend who is a professional photographer/videographer. I told him that I was lost in my photography. He told me to just go out and shoot. Just for me. I really haven’t taken his advice until this past summer. 

I went out and did a long hike by myself and took a million photos. Then for my birthday, I took a couple friends out to the middle of nowhere and we just had a blast and took silly little videos that haven’t seen the light of day. 

I’ve started weird little photo series that only I know about or have categorized in my brain. One is cool- about where I bike around in town. One is kind of lame- it’s kind of like a where I’ve been series. I take photos of my legs in different places like when I was in Washington for a conference or an airport or at work or laying in my bed after experiencing some UC symptoms. I think it’s silly and interesting. 

I’m trying to get in the hang of simply going out and doing a photoshoot when I think it’s beautiful outside. We had this massive snowfall last week. It was nasty driving out to church, but I loved how the snow gleamed on the trees, so I decided to do a photoshoot. When I got home, one of my roommates was there, so I invited her out to go with me. It was just so awesome to capture nature’s beauty. And I had a lovely conversation with my roommate. 

I really love going out and taking pictures for my own enjoyment. There’s no pressure from a boss. I mean if I  photograph a person, they could not like how they look or how I captured them. But if they volunteered and there is no moolah on the line, then I don’t feel bad about it. I still think they are beautiful, even if they can’t see it through my photography. 

When I went to Content Marketing. World in September, one of the keynote speakers was National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones. He was so inspiring. I feel like he embodied who I would want to be. (I mean not entirely. His instagram isn’t THAT impressive or at least his captions aren’t. I guess he is just a photographer and not a copywriter.)

I just love photography. I try to capture what I see. I think I see a lot of beautiful things and I want people to see it the way I do. Photography is the way that I am able to get my point across. I can’t draw worth a damn( literally glad that I can sketch pizzas with a simple circle) and my pottery was always subpar. 

It’s art. Yes, I am probably manipulating you to try to feel another way. I’ll change the color and shadows and some blemishes. Because I see such vivid color and contrasts and beauty. 

So that’s my dream.  

I just want to live my life and be able to show the beauty of everything I go through. Through the joys and the heartbreaks. I remember one of my favorite photos I took during my flower phase(if you don’t know what this is, don’t talk to me.) and it was of a rose that was dying. It was turn down to the ground and and about half brown and crinkled. But it still had so much residual beauty from when it was a sunset pink and orange. It’s a bittersweet. It’s the same reason that I find old people beautiful. Every crease and wrinkle has a story behind it. There is so much life that has been lived and a story to tell. It leaves you wanting more. 

I don’t know if I could actually do It  as a job. Right now I think I am content doing my pizza photos, family/friend portraits, and landscapes. I get to do it for me without input from anyone else. Then I am able to share what I want with the world without any expectations. It’s more pure to me that way. 

Maybe I’ll be one of those artists that becomes famous after I die because my grandkids will have me go viral on the hyper drive(it’s the thing that’s coming after the internet. Omg I can’t believe you haven’t heard of it.)

Or maybe an opportunity will come up that will change my mind. And I’ll photograph for Catholic Charities across the world. 

Only God knows. 

I’ll just keep dragging along my friends for impromptu photoshoots and having little adventures by myself. 

But I am the only one who gets to determine success in my dream. I think as long as I am still enjoying it and not getting lost behind the lens, then I am doing it right. Position titles and accolades have never been my goal anyway. I get to share my gift with those who matter to me, and I am happy with that. 

So moral of the story, I don’t know. My train of thought is lost. I’ve been writing this on and off for a couple hours. If you’ve gotten this far, kudos to you man. Or lady. 

HMU if you know someone who would want to pay me for pictures of my life. 

PS. Don’t do that. That’s creepy. And a bit stalkerish. Just settle with checking out my instagram or Pinterest page for photos. 

PS. I hope that you have a dream. If someone tells you it is silly, punch them in the face. Unless that person is your mom. yikes. That would be rude. Don’t be rude. If that is your dream take a note from Rapunzel- that is a stupid dream and you should get a new one.

PPS You’re not stupid. Just your dream is. 

PPPS You can’t fix stupid. So I’m sorry ‘bout that. 

PPPPS At least God still loves you. :* 

What is a Significant Life?

I was thinking about the purpose of life and batting around different options.

Power? Seems pretty dependent on being born into the right circumstances. Also, good and bad people gain power.

Sex? Too biological and simple minded. There is so much more to experience, see, and learn to have the pinnacle of existence just be sex.

Then I remembered a paper I wrote and gave a presentation on for my Honors Last Lecture Seminar during my senior year of college. To be fair it-doesn't really talk about the purpose of life, but more so how does one know if they are leading a significant life. 

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“I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end…Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone,” (Merton). One aspect in Thomas Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude” prayer highlights the importance of belonging and a sense of connection, so we know we aren’t alone in the world. This idea conceptualizes what pushed me to find avenues and places to share my ideas and meet new people. Boise State University has given me the opportunity to learn from and with my peers as the world grew and expanded in front of our eyes through shared experiences and different opinions. I have experienced the beautiful coming together of people and ideas during my time at college. These experiences have helped me see the importance of leading a significant life.

Leading a significant life is a mixture of internally working towards that goal of trying to have a meaningful life and the external impact you have on your community whomever that ends of being. Community is a crucial part because it allows you to be fully known and interact with society. Through that connectivity you are able to formulate your identity and be true to yourself, which leads you to being true and honest to others. I think people get caught up in leading false lives to keep up an image or not to disrupt another’s happiness. However, we all forget that every person has a special gift or passion, ourselves included. You just need to take what you are given and do something with it. So we don’t need to worry about what other people think because they are too caught up in their own world to be focused on yours. Gary Badcock in ‘Choosing’ says that, “We cannot choose well for the future without a sense of identity in the present and without a realistic sense of what we may become,” (Badcock). Badcock explains that we cannot choose without a sense of self-awareness and identity in the present. We need to be real with who we are and share our unique thoughts and ideas with others, and that will be a component to help us reach our full potential.

My friends that I have accumulated over the years have definitively influenced and expanded my world views. They are from a variety of backgrounds and come from all over the world. I am able to learn so much from talking with them and listening to their opinions. Growing up, I assumed people probably had around the same life experiences as I did because it’s all I knew. My friends have opened my eyes to the real issues out there. I had no idea the struggles people go through on a daily basis. I’ve helped my friends through break ups, deaths of friends, and extreme allergic reactions. These have been valuable learning experiences to me, even though they were very difficult at the time. They have also shown me that I am not alone in my way of thinking and that I am normal by being weird. This connection with my friends is part of what can be pulled out of Merton’s prayer. The sense of belonging and craving to not be alone motivated me to find communities of friends that share my point of view and help expose me to new ideas. My experiences in college have allowed me to help people other than myself and give back to the communities that have helped shape me into who I am today.

The clubs I have partaken in have affected how I see myself and how I fit into the world. In Team helped me see how I can have some input into bigger events in the campus, even if we were used mostly as a think tank and event volunteers. Being a site leader for Service Saturday showed me how little parts of service can positively influence something bigger than myself. Once I lead a group of fraternity brothers, and all we did was help paint part of a hallway for the Good Samaritan House. It’s crazy how much joy and relief such a small task can bring. I have found that what makes me feel like I am leading a significant life is giving back to society to make the world a little less of a terrible place.

College has thrown me into uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations that I hated at the time; however, I learned and grew the best in those situations. Now I seek new opportunities and experiences because I know that they will ultimately turn out to be great learning experiences. I forced myself to join the church choir in freshman year, which helped me grow more in my faith and start building my community at St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center. I have done more group projects than I can count, and have learned not to hate them as much as I did back in high school. I took a leadership and management course in my junior year, and my professor changed my perspective of group projects. He made me realize that while having a group of your friends will make you more comfortable, a group full of diverse perspectives and backgrounds will lead to a better end result even though it could take longer to reach that end goal. I use a lot of what I learned in that class in projects since, and it has helped me realize the importance of going outside of your comfort zone and working with other people because they have a vast amount of knowledge and experiences that I simply don’t have.

The College of Business and Economics has shaped how I view the world and analyze what is going on. I always catch myself using supply and demand to rationalize a point, or understand how a certain move was beneficial for a person or business in the long run. Even in a meeting for Bronco Catholic before the semester started, we were going over our goals for our organization and we got on the topic of our target audience. I was so excited! Hardly anyone else could get a word in, or if they did I had a quick rebuttal to why or why not their point was valid. 

I was able to spend a semester abroad and attend the University College of Cork in Ireland. I took amazing marketing courses there that really challenged me to think critically about the current marketing environment and how it is different internationally. My Social Media Marketing and Communications professor there impacted how I think about communicating to consumers and how a lot of companies are doing it wrong. He wanted us to see how marketing is used out in the world now. He challenged us to go out and do it better, but not for the monetary aspect (as several of my previous professors have joked about) but to actually suit consumer needs and get products to consumers that could benefit them. This professor helped reinforce my belief that it is possible to lead a career in marketing with integrity.

I used to think that what I do in my time in Idaho is not going to impact the world at large. That the little decisions I make are not life changing and won’t really influence people. However, you can never know what impact you have. My professor back in Ireland probably won’t know that his impact has reached as far as Idaho, but his teachings will have a ripple effect now through my actions, what I chose to do, and the others I interact with. People are always coming and going out of my communities and it’s impossible to know what they’ll take with them when they go. I hope that what they take forms them into a better person and helps improve society.

College has helped me set the foundation for future generations who come after me, and those continuing to be a part of Bronco Catholic. I have the honor of being the president and events coordinator this year, and have done a variety of tasks over the past four years. I have been a part of a dynamic team that pushes me to grow as a leader and encourages me to improve as a person. In five years from now, all of my friends will have graduated and I’m sure most of the staff I know will move on to greener pastures. I doubt anyone will really know who I am when I visit the campus and my old stomping grounds, but I am content knowing that I have made a positive impact on the campus and community while I have been here. I have helped students find their home in our odd little community and made them feel accepted for who they are.

This little community at St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center has strengthened my faith and helped me realize that I have and will continue to rely on my faith for my entire life. Annie Dillard explains this intense commitment best in ‘Living Like a Weasel’ where she retells a story about how a man once found a weasel skull firmly attached to the neck of an eagle he shot. The weasel made sure he didn’t let go of the bird even if it did mean he would die still attached to the eagle. In my life, my faith has always been a necessity that I hang onto through all of my experiences, and I am deeply committed to it. My community at Bronco Catholic has enabled me to grow in my faith and help others in their journey as well.

I used to think that my faith was a solitary activity, and I adamantly avoided talking about anything religious to anyone. My peers all through middle school and high school, who were mostly Mormon, would be legitimately surprised to find out that I was Catholic. My faith community has shown me the importance of fully accepting my identity and not worrying about the opinions of others. My faith is an integral part of who I am and it has given me strength and peace to be the best version of myself. In Merton’s prayer he says, “I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Merton confides in his prayer that he doesn’t know what the future holds, but he is certain that God will be his stronghold through all of his trials. No matter the hardships I have faced in college or will face in the future, I have peace knowing that it will all be okay.

I finally grasped that I was ready to graduate after my priest and mentor went out of his way to help me network for future job opportunities after I graduate. It made me realize that the time I have spent at Boise State has helped me build up my future. The communities I have been a part of and helped grow have been developing me up to something greater. What exactly, I have no idea. I think that’s okay. Some people know exactly what they want to do from when they are a child; however, the rest of us have to follow our heart and make incremental steps and see where that takes us. I don’t think we are supposed to know what we are going to do with our lives right now. Over time our desires change depending on our life circumstances and experiences, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. These communities that I have been apart of during my time in college have added to my invisible network that connects different parts of my life and enabled me to be more confident in what my future holds. Since I am graduating in the spring, I know that my network is important, and will continue to evolve as I get a new job or move to a new city.

Really my college experience boils down to how I am going to tell my story after I have left. Even now I have romanticized my classes and everything I have been through. I will justify the choices I have made or at least try to rationalize why I tried them in the first place. Robert Frost told it best when he wrote, “ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by,/ and that has made all the difference.” Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” retells a story about how the author was at a crossroads, and had to make a choice of where to go even though the paths were practically identical. This poem exemplifies how you tell your story after you make a decision. Frost makes his choice seem better in the stories he tells about it, and justifies the choice he made by making it seem like it has had a large impact on his life. No matter the experiences I have had; I will always stick by my choices and decisions with all of the justifications I can muster. From his story he is able to craft the identity he wants to present to his audience. I’m sure my story has glossed over some of the harder times, and highlighted the parts I want you to know about who I think I am. My college experience has helped craft my identity, but only a small fraction is able to come across.

College has shifted and expanded my worldview through the education I have received, the clubs I have taken part in, and the friends that have been by my side. These connections have influenced my life, and I don’t know where I would be without the support from my friends and mentors. All I can hope is that I continue to try to live my life full of meaning and purposeful decisions that leave at least a small shadow of a positive impact on other people and society.

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What do you think it means to lead a significant life?

What are your opinions on the purpose of life?

What about when you add in more faith and religion into the equation?

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Works Cited


Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Choosing." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 101-07. Print.

Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Living Like Weasels." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 298-301. Print.

Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "The Road Not Taken." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 458-59. Print.

Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Thoughts in Solitude." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 450. Print.