Jason

And then when you least expect it, someone sweeps you off your feet!

So I met this boy...his name is Jason Millar :) I really really like him!
We met doing this play called Beauty & the Beast. I thought he was cute at our first rehearsal, but it took him a whole month to ask me out, probably b/c I was out of town doing EFY.

So one rehearsal, he asked me for a ride home, (although he already had a ride) and asked me out to see a play. And that's where it started! We talked and played cards and flirted all night long, and decided that we could be friends.

Its really great, and I'm really happy. Ok, details: Jason is from Rigby, Idaho. He's 22, and has been back a year from serving in Florida. He was an RA last year in Heritage Halls, and wants to go into business. He's the youngest of 5 children, and has the cutest nieces & nephews! He has the most beautiful singing voice, and he's the perfect height, and he does the sweetest things for me all the time. I'm pretty much crazy about him. I hope you all get to meet him! You all should probably come see the play, and see how cute we are when he's Gaston and trying to win me over on stage. No, come when he's the Prince, b/c then we get to kiss at the end. Its pretty romantic.

Its incredible to me how quickly it has developed, and how I'm completely content with everything about it! Once in blue moon, you find someone where everything seems so perfect, and so easy, and so natural that you wonder how you were so lucky to come across it. I'm the luckiest girl in the world!

Choose Your Own Adventure

I'm a big fan of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. I could direct you to the wall of them at the local library. Lately, I can't help but make another analogy of how life is our own "Choose Your Own...", where we are the protagonist, making the choices that determine one of so many options in the end. In these books, at the end of every page, you have to make a choice, each option telling you what page to turn to next. You keep making choices, keep jumping to other pages, and eventually end up at one of typically 40 different endings--some rewarding, satisfactory, some death.

So God hands us the book and says, "Here, see what you make of it". Its our book, we're turning the pages, calling the shots. We'll always have our agency, the choice is always ours. We can read it how we like, but realize that its all about the sequence of events. If you skip a page, some critical element of your story dissapears and suddenly you've lost the direction of where to go next! If we read it the way WE think it should go, it doesn't make any sense! If you want to make God laugh, tell him YOUR plans!

I think we're meant to enjoy the book along the way. We've all read and hated classic novels from high school English class, or college physics textbooks, but I think that this is one not meant to be skimmed. There's a lot to learn on every page, to take time and enjoy the story! Its your life. Stop thinking "I'll be happy when I get to page 88", "I'll be happy when I'm out of school". Learn to be happy on the page you're on, Camille!

Choices are stressful, yes? When we get to that part:

If you decide to start back home, turn to page 34.
If you decide to wait, turn to page 95.

...you start to get nervous! Don't we all feel that way at one point or another, that this ONE decision will set us on a plot line we never wanted? "If I don't study, I'll fail this test, I've lost my scholarship, and I'll have to drop out of school", "If I walk away from this relationship now, I'll never know if it couldn't worked in the end". And they usually aren't easy decisions, are they? If it was an obvious choice, there'd be no question, and everyone would end up with the same exact story. It's not always choosing between good and bad. Lots of times its between good and good, and we base our decisions on what we think would make us the happiest. And when a decision doesn't bring us happiness, we think it was the wrong one, but maybe those decisions are the ones that will lead us to a greater joy. One course will bring us the greatest happiness.

We may never know the many options that lie on the number of pages that unfortunately and fortunately will never be read. We think about that all the time, don't we? "I wonder where I would be if I wasn't a member of this Church", "What would I be doing tonight if we had never met?" I bet while you're on page 25, its hard to imagine what the end looks like. Even if we could read the endings first, and see what page we'd like to end on, we still would have no idea how to get there. Its supposed to be that way.

God wrote it, he knows what's on every page. And He wants us to choose the best-case-scenario, don't you? Maybe that one designed plotline was meant to be longer than others, include certain pages that no one else reads, send you in some direction you never thought it would.

In some way, we can't write our own story. It's already written. But we can choose our own adventure!

Here's the Deal:

I'd like to make a proposition. First, the dilemma:

My baby has a little problem with the big metal piece that protects the engine and underside. Its just lost a number of the bolts that hold it up. My dad says its a fairly easy 1-hr fix.

Seeing as I would probably be paying $150-200 for labor at any shop, if any kind soul could help me fix it, I would make you the meal of your lifetime! Honest, it would be a $200 a plate kind of meal :) and ANYTHING you wanted would be on the menu! Let me know!