betrayal... trust no more...

I want to talk about betrayal. It's not a happy topic but it's one that has taken precedence in our world today and in my mind. Betrayal... what an extremely painful term... In my mind one of the most painful things we can ever go through. For those who have been betrayed by someone close to them, they understand this pain... The agonizing of wondering what you could have done to have this trust battered. Betrayal is an evil human reaction dictated by Satan to turn us against those we love most. Betrayal comes in multiple ways but In the end betrayal is pure evil and we should do all in our power to avoid committing this pain to those around us.

With betrayal there has to be trust. Now if you are like me, you really really like your walls... It takes a lot to trust, to build that bond and to open up yourself to another. Especially for those who have experienced this pain before. Which is probably all of us. When you start to trust you put yourself out there to potentially hurt yourself again. It's quite barbaric way of life, but our hearts still long for interaction with other humans. Deep down we have that love for one another that causes us to reopen again. Sometimes suddenly there is a stab to the back so we put the walls up again even harder with the thought to never open again....

So why do we wield this painful weapon? Yah I say a weapon because it hurts... Not necessarily in a physical way but a penetrating heart break way! Well we are all human and we let Satan into our minds and into our own walls. When that happens those natural human emotions take hold, like greed, control, anger, pride, victim mentality etc... When those take our hearts we become tools in the hands of Satan and we end up going against the Father and the ones we love most.. alright Matthew 22:37-39:

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt ^alove the Lord thy God with all thy ^bheart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy ^cmind.

 38 This is the first and great ^acommandment.

 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt ^alove thy neighbour as thyself.

To love God and our neighbor are the greatest commandments... Don't you think Satan will do what he can to attack the greatest of all commandments?  He is going to do all in his power to cause us to hurt ourselves and even worse hurt those around us. So when we let these human emotions into our walls we wield the weapon of betrayal... I have seen first hand in my life the pain of when this weapon meets it's contact. I know the pain of betrayal, not only that but I know as a human I have had my own moments of betrayal, we all have....

So I would submit that betrayal comes in different forms. I think that depending on what human emotion is in control that will reflect the severity and the depth of the betrayal. So who has betrayed you? Like I just said betrayal cannot happen without some level of trust, obviously the level of pain will go hand in hand with the level of trust you gave that person. Some of the greatest and most painful betrayals will come from those closest, a best friend, a lover or maybe even a mentor... There is one more that we don't always see and that is the betrayal of ones self. That's right I submit that the worst comes from ourselves. We talked about those walls... When we betray our own souls we place a personal attack from the inside. It's never a betrayal that we expect until the damage is down... 

I know we have all felt the affects of betrayal, It's never a fun game. I know the pains of losing friends, mentors and others that I was supposed to trust. There is no question that it is an evil act that does nothing but harm... Buuuut I must say that even this harm builds to a better tomorrow... Only if we choose for the better. We can either close ourselves completely from the world and from all humanity, and become victims to the painful situation. Or we can take this pain and learn from it. We can take this and apply it to future relationships. The times I have felt betrayal still haunt me, the friends, mentors and family lost will scar my heart for all my life. I try my very hardest everyday to stand from the pain and move forward... True it has caused my walls to close even more over my heart but I have come to a place of forgiveness that I would not trade for anything and I think those experiences have taught me a lot for my future. I may have a ways to for complete forgiveness with everyone that has hurt me but I feel those I have come to terms with in my mind I could pick up with friendship tomorrow...

My greatest prayer is that we all do our best to avoid this painful interaction, but I found very recently that it is something that will continue to become even worse... I hope that I have not done anything to betray any of you, if I have I offer my deepest most heartfelt apology and I pray with all my heart that you will forgive me... I am human just like you and we will always have our moments of betrayal.

It may be rumbly and all over the place, but I hope ya'll enjoy... Have a fantastic day!! 

Where is your agency...

I have been thinking a lot about agency and the many different things we choose to place our agency in. It's been at the forefront of my mind because it has been something that I have struggled with and something that a lot of those around me are struggling with. There are so many in such great darkness right now, maybe because of loss or maybe because of drama with friends or maybe just a schedule that is far out of hand. Life is stressful and when we place our agency in other things it tends to become so much more helpless... So what are some of the things we place agency in... Well there are of course the things that are good and others that are not so good and not leading us to a place of hope.

Lets talk about the bad agencies first. The ones of the world that bring nothing but a moment of pleasure and a lasting pain. These are the agencies of the world. Things like alcohol and drugs and even possessions. Things that are tangible and momentary, they will never bring lasting hope or comfort, only a momentary rush that is nothing more than a simple numbing. I don't care who you are i'm sure you have fallen to these things at least once in your life. I know I have, I have had moments of hopelessness where I place my agency in something momentary and worldly. It's natural but we should develop power over these things and realize they will never bring a lasting joy and they will never bring  forth good fruits. They will never drive up to do good!

Now there are things that we can put our agency in that are better and better use of our time and effort but they still aren't the best. Things like our jobs, our church organizations and people. All good things that are right and true but they will not do us any good to place our agency in. Why must you ask? Because when we place our agency in these better things we still will not win. All these things are good things but none of them are perfect. I personally am a people pleaser, I will try and do everything in my power to make everyone happy and also make everyone love me. The fact of the matter is not everyone loves me and not everyone will be happy. By being a people pleaser I will never truly be happy because I will always burden my mind with ways to make everyone els better and never take care of me. So you see even these good things do not deserve our agency, when our agency is placed in these things we still wont find peace and hope. Maybe a little longer that with the tangible things but it won't last.

So where is the hope where should we put our agency? (Here's where I'm going to get churchy.) We have to put our full agency into God!! We have to work through him and submit completely to him! Part of placing our agency in God is realizing that we have to humble and fix ourselves before we try and save the world. The beautiful part about putting our agency in  God is that everything else will work out in the end. True there will still be moments of trial and pain but there will be longer taste of hope and joy and all the good things will fall into place. All the other things that we think we are supposed to focus on, jobs, people, church all those good things will work in the end when we put our agency in God. So for me this next year I am going to work even harder to put my whole agency in God because I know that if I do so all the rest of life will work out!

Well there is my little ramble for the night! Time to go snuggle my puppy have a fantastic evening!

Never goodbye, just see ya later!....

Now its time to say goodbye
to all our company. 

M-I-C 
see you real soon 
K-E-Y
why? because we like you
M-O-U-S-E............

I will not lie last week was one of the hardest weeks. I have had to say goodbye to so many things and amazing people. I have loved my time in Florida more than I can ever express. Florida is where I needed to come to grow up and find the real me! I have not regretted any of my time here everything I have done here, both good and bad has all been part of an unforgettable adventure and has built me for my ongoing adventure. 

Tomorrow my roommate and I head out on the 35 hour drive to Colorado along with two dogs and cat. Come on we know how to have fun, admit it! It will be an awesome time, but my heart is heavy. I am so excited for what lies ahead but I do not leave the past easily or people. So I want to dedicate this blog to the incredible people here in Florida who have touched my life. 

I love you all so much my Disney family, my SeaWorld family, my church family and my friends who are my family now. All who helped make my Florida life become an adventure I love you all! You have changed my life for good! 

On one of the last nights in Florida we all went to to Epcot and we watched Illuminations (the fireworks show) which happens to be my favorite. I was ok, wasn't crying until the song "We go on" came on and I was tightly hugged by those I love dearly. I listened close to the words and reflected on an amazing two years full of adventure and growth! I reflected on the people I had met, the ones who have hurt me and built me, I reflected on the jobs I've had that have taught me and showed me a real and beautiful world.

More than anything I reflected on my testimony and how it has grown even more. I have lived, I have been tempted, I have felt the influence of Satan, I have felt loneliness and pain. I have come to the brink of giving up, but I have done my best to always stand back up. As I stood there reflecting I felt a humble pride of what I have accomplished in my short life. I know very well that it was not me, it was done through my Heavenly Father. I am nothing except through him, then I am everything! I will never forget the people of my Florida life, I will never forget the lessons learned in the last two years. I will take this Michayla and give her over to the Lord and his service! Just know it was never done alone!!!! 

We go on:

With the stillness of the night
there comes a time to understand
to reach out and touch tomorrow 
take the future in our hand

We can see a new horizon 
built on all that we have done 
and our dreams begin another
thousand circles 'round the sun

We go on 
to the joy and through the tears 
We go on 
to discover new frontiers 
Moving on 
with the current of the years 
We go on 
moving forward, now as one 
Moving on 
with a spirit born to run 
Ever on 
with each rising sun

To a new day
We go on

We go on 

"The soul is healed by being with children."

"The soul is healed by being with children."

This is and English proverb and also something that hit me harder than usual today after another great Sunday with my incredible CTR 4 class! I will not lie the last couple weeks have been very up, down, in and out. I go to church with different weights on my mind and I am always baffled by how much better I feel afterwards. Not only do I feel closer to God but I feel like a real someone again. I am a primary teacher for the CTR 4 class in our ward. I truly love each and everyone of those little ones, they are so angelic. I work with them and I see nothing but light, truth and love.... and the occasional booger... They see things so simply and so clearly and honestly. 

Today we talked about the life of Jesus Christ and how he was born just like they were and that's why we celebrate Christmas time. We talked about his childhood and how he was a little kid just like them. I asked them what he did when he was an adult... Almost all of them raised there hands and told me that he did miracles. They told me that he died for everyone. We talked about his resurrection and how he died, but not really cause he came to life again. To them the stories are so simple and so real without a shadow of any sort of doubt, they don't care what the world thinks, they don't over think the stories and they never second guess. They truly know the Savior as their own best friend. 

I love teaching these angels so very much they truly do heal the soul (even on their rough days). They have that magical innocence that adults can't even achieve. I just wish our world didn't frown so much on the childlike ways of seeing life because those ways will heal the broken, hurting soul. I will never be able to fully thank these children for the gifts and lessons they have given me. They have truly changed my life and have done so much to help me come closer to my Savior and to the real me! I will miss them terribly when it comes time to leave!!

 

 My greatest wish is to become more as these little children!! 

That is my little thought for tonight, have a lovely evening! 

I hope they call me on a mission...

Hello friends! So guess who's moving back to Colorado?!?! This girl!! Guess who's not staying long...?? That's right this girl!! I have decided to serve a mission. It has been a long and very hard decision mostly because if you know me at all you know how much I over think everything. I have come to the conclusion that this is what I need to do, scratch that, this is what God wants me to do.

I am insecure, I don't always like Me I don't always see the beauty within, but I am confident in the Gospel and my unbelievable love for every person I come across. I am not going on a mission because I am not married and I have nothing up next for me. I am going because I do have so much going for me. This is hard I have built a life in Florida with two jobs that I love dearly. Not to mention the people I have fallen in love with but it's God's time.

I have had two incredible years in Florida and I feel like I have come so much closer to finding the real Me. I have found it through incredibly hard and beautiful times. I have had to be a big girl but I have had adventure doing it. I honestly feel like my heavenly Father has given me these two years to find adventure and more importantly find Me! Now it's time for Me to share this precious gift with the world. What is this gift that is so perfect and precious?

This is the true and everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is the single most important thing in my life. My knowledge of the Gospel has literally saved my life more times than I will ever admit to count. It is the very foundation of everything that is Michayla. It is my light in an increasingly horrible and dark world. We are nothing without foundation. Well I am truly nothing without the Gospel! I want nothing more than to share this most foundational part of myself with the world! It will bring true peace, joy, and eternal peace of mind.

I must say this decision has been hard and in the worlds standard extremely lonely. It's amazing how much Satan knows us and knows what and who to use against us. He is dark and evil and will do anything to bring us down to his level of despair... He is getting stronger and we are all being affected by it. It seems to be one thing after another, Bam, Bam BAM!!!! He punches he blows and kicks us when we are down. Luckily we still have the choice to get up and fight or stay down beaten and victim to the world... We have the choice, and part of that choice is opposition, no matter how much Satan beats us down Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ will give us the light and weapons to fight back and in the end we will conquer all evil, we just have to stand true and decide!

I want everyone around me to feel what is in my heart I want everyone to have the tools to defeat the evils of life. I want us all to feel the joy that I know is there is we ask and seek it! I have never wanted anything so much in my life, so no this is not a lonely unmarried, undecided future decision this is a long and hard thought out decision for something I love so much I am willing to give everything for it and give everything for others to have what I have. Well I do plan on covering more in the future but I wanted to tell the world what was going on! I hope and pray for adventure and more growth as I move forward with this decision to give my life to my Heavenly Father and my fellow man with all the love in my heart!

Love you all!!

Satan is real!

Guess what friends, I am incredibly grateful especially after the last couple weeks. I have noticed something, the fall seems to be a low time or maybe we are just nearing the end of days, who knows? I just know that the few weeks have been very difficult and trying the last few weeks. There have been breakups, accidents, police, elections, threats of suicide, death and so much more all over the place. I feel like everywhere I turn there is something new stressing out, or bringing down a friend. It's a time of darkness and dismay. Luckily through the sorrows and the let downs there is always something beautiful, I will explain on but I need to go back to the reality of darkness for a moment.

The other day I went to institute (Bible study for college students for the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day saints.) We were discussing opposition and how we will be tested by the adversary. Then we talked about Joseph Smith and the first vision. He went to humbly ask God what church to join, and before he got an answer he was tested and Satan took him over:

15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was^aseized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick ^bdarkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

 16 But, exerting all my powers to ^acall upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into ^bdespair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of ^clight exactly over my head, above the brightness of the ^dsun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

That is just a small piece of the chapter that tells the first vision but during this experience he learned so much more than what church to join and that God was real but the LDS people often forget is that he also learned the reality of Satan.

I feel like so many around have gone through that same realization, without even knowing it. I know I have!! I always knew, but in the last few months it has truly become a realization that Satan is just as real and present in our lives. I also feel that we all go through these moment similar to Joseph where just when all hope is lost and despair is upon us the light comes to rescue us and bring comfort! Not to mention I think it's those moments of despair that bring us to a submissiveness that allows us to fully learn what we need to from the good and bad moments.

The fact of the matter is Heavenly Father is real, Jesus Christ is real and so is Satan. If we work to put our agency fully to Heavenly Father we will always be rescued from the despair! There is always opposition, not only against us but for us too! There will be an increase in evil but because of opposition there really will always be the same amount of good too, we just might have to look a little harder for it!!

Dear mother, I brought the end of the world...

Sooo.... If you know me at all, you know that I have a small (but totally healthy) interest in the end of the world/Apocalypse. I love nothing more than to snuggle up with a good piece of the book of Revelation after a good segment on History channel about some sort of theory of the future and our doom. Anyway it has been at the front of my mind more than usually in particular the anti Christ, who is supposedly the one to bring the end of times to pass. Then I started to think about who he might be and where he came from, which then brought me to his mother and a rather interesting theory I have.

Everyone has a mother right? So that must mean the anti christ, whoever he is must have one too right? As I talked to a few different people about what she might be like, they looked at me a little weird and then said that she must be evil. To raise such a creation that brings on the end of the world and the return of Christ you have to be evil right? Well that is part of what think. She might be evil as evil can be teaching her son in all the devilish ways he needs to bring this entire chapter of the Plan of Salvation to great and dreadful end. What if she is not evil what if she has the strength equivalent to Mary or even stronger?

So here is my big theory, but first I need to talk about Satan and the Plan of Salvation (the plan in which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints aka Mormons, believe in) in this plan we believe that we all lived with our Heavenly Father in a pre-mortal existence before Adam and Eve and even before the Earth. We believe that there was a war in Heaven over what plan to choose, Heavenly Father's Plan of Salvation (hint, hint we picked that) and Lucifer's plan (a plan with no agency simply just come to Earth do what we are told and go back home, no choice, no experience, no learning. Giving all glory to Lucifer) Anyway Lucifer's Plan was denied he and one third of the host of Heaven were cast down to Hell. Why is this part of my theory? Because the last being to bring forth the end to a precious piece of this plan was Satan, so the anti Christ must be almost, if not equally evil to Satan.

So now here we go my theory on the mother to this evil creature is that maybe she is a strong beautiful God fearing women, someone that is trained in the Gospel and strong to the equivalent of Mary. Very bold I understand but if you think of it for a man/women to be THAT incredibly evil I think they would have to have been raised in goodness and truth. The most unforgivable sin it to deny the Holy Ghost. I think for the anti Christ to be that truly evil they would have had to choose to deny God and truth, just as Lucifer (who had full knowledge) denied the Father.

If my theory is at all correct and this women, this mother is not evil and is good, she would have to be just about one of the most strengthened of all Heavenly Father's children. Perhaps strong enough that in the pre-mortal life she volunteered to take on this task. If this is so and she is not the mother of all evil then my heart aches for her and the pain she will experience as she endures a future that her child will bring to an end, or bring on the beginning?....