"Don't you bury the good with the bad and the ugly"

There is a fault in humans once they feel hurt, abandoned or insecure. They take everything they've felt and begin to mix it all together. Mix mix mix. In goes the laughter, the tears, the quirks and curves and boiling anger. Toss in the first flutter, the races of heartbeats, the looks, glances, memories and talks. Into the earth it goes like the grave of a sadist. Soon they've buried all the good, the joys, the perfections and scrape by scrape it becomes one with the bad, the pain and the ugly. It's such a tragedy, I don't know how one could do such a thing and feel okay, but that's human nature folks and we all know there's no way of changing that.  

-k.p.b 

April 23, 2015 

Thursday 7:54PM 

i miss being seventeen.
-k/p/b

He is Risen

It is difficult to explain the depth of the emotion I have felt today. I've felt more spiritually elevated and elated than I have in such a long time, it is almost incomprehensible. This week has been compelling and it's one that has influenced my spirit sweetly. My day began with the morning half if General Conference, where I was elated to hear our beloved Prophet, Thomas S. Monson speak about the vitality of temples in our lives. Then, between the sessions, I realized I had neglected to open my final Easter egg from this weekly activity. Quickly I scurried to my room where I gently pried it open and with its yellow hue saw the last slip of paper that read: "Sunday: Day of Triumph. Today I will feel joy in the hope of eternal life with my Heavenly Father because of the gift of Jesus Christ."

How marvelous. 

I then fished around in my nightstand drawer to find the paper I remembered went along with it. This paper urged me to read the scriptures: Matt 28:1-8 and John 20:11-18. I confess these scriptures are the most cherished and comforting, to me, than any other scripture anywhere else. To hear of sweet Mary's story and the holy return of her Son and her Savior, the King, the Shepard of the world. It is music to my humble ears, more sweet than any other when I hear it.

I can tell you, dear reader, that as I read these glorious and resplendent scriptures, with my hands gently clutching their pages, tears stinging my eyes and my voice cracking, there was a denotion that my Redeemer lives more stronger than I've ever felt within my soul before. I felt sweet revelation and deep unearthly nostalgia to somehow remember where I was when my Savior returned and recall how joyous I felt. As I wept over these marvelous scriptures, I was impressed to roll over and kneel upon my bedside (within my little nook where I was reading) and utter unto my Lord and Heavenly Father how loving, light and spiritual I felt. 

I then began to think. 

Can you imagine how it must've looked on that beautiful, bright morning? Can you imagine softly walking through the dewy grass only just covered in morning sunlight as you descend calmly to the tomb, where you think the Son of God still lays wrapped in fine linen and enclosed in darkness from a stone that sealed His borrowed tomb? I'd like to think that Mary Magdalene already knew He would be gone so her sudden flicker of fear and despair was not so unjustly brought. But we know this isn't so. When she looked into the tomb and not only saw it empty, but immediately was overcome with fear that He had been stolen--she must've felt despair beyond comprehension. Then I think of another so deeply distraught with grief and fear--the mother God, the other Mary. We may never relate to how this dear, pure creature felt. I think of when she, the woman who once held her baby close inside a shivering manger, she who carried the spirit of the Savior inside her arms, must've felt when she realized her Son was truly gone. How lonely and challenging that must have been. After all that mother went through--seeing her sweet Son being dragged into the street where He was crowned with thorns pressing in His brow and His weak body whipped after already enduring a night full of the world's sins, and then forced to walk with a load weighing on His red shoulders to the very cross He would be nailed to just moments away. This mother must've worried with a love we may never understand . But we all might feel a bit of what overwhelming joy the Mary of Magdalen was flooded with the very moment she realized the gardener behind her weeping figure was not any gardener--it was her Gardener. 

Her Shepard. 

Her Savior. 

Alive.

It is no mystery that the only word she uttered in reply was, "Raboni" (which is to say, 'Master'), but it is a curious and astounding thing that one of the Savior's first words as a resurrected Being was the name of this sweet, weeping follower, "Mary". Can we not all relate, as followers of Christ as well? It was what He chose to say. I find this more than deeply stirring and even more so intriguing that He did not say, "Here I am", or "It is me, the resurrected Savior of the world". He directed it all to one name--and not His own. This moment, what Jesus of Nazareth did, can teach us more about Himself and His ways than anything else. 

I want to end this post with my testimony of my Savior's resurrection and denote to you that I know, now more than I ever have before, that my Savior lives and died for us. He is the Gift, He is the Author, and He is the King. 

And He most certainly is Risen. 

May the angels of our Father and the Spirit of this true gospel denote that same truths that I felt today on this glorious Easter Day, to you as well. 

I say these things in the name of my Beloved Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

-(k.p.b)

The Day of Silence

April 4, 2015 - Saturday

I'll begin by stating that last night was the same night our Savior suffered beyond comprehension on the cross of Calvary for us all almost two thousand years ago, and today you see is the day after He, the Magnanimous and Unconquerable, wasn't quite risen yet, but also still served on the other side of the veil (as I learned today from my mother). Honestly I've never given any thought to this day at all, usually the first for its sacrifice and the third for its sacredness, but never the second. That is, until today. Why is that? Is not this day as sacred and beautiful as the other two? I'll have you know, it is. This is the Day of Silence and though it is a day quit unlike the first and third, it still holds a gentle sacredness and reverence in its hushed elegance. This day denotes that the Savior of the world and the Man much more than a man indeed was killed and made to suffer more than any mortal being ever should. 

In his grace and humility, Jesus of Nazereth could not even own His own tomb; His tomb was borrowed and given from a good friend, Josephus (I believe) who made sure his Savior and Friend was given a tomb He deserved as his King. Surely the Prince of Peace who suffered with no resignation to our needs, deserved nothing but the greatest this earth could offer, but instead His mortal body that endured so much laid in a borrowed tomb for three days and most certainly did on the Day of Silence. 

There behind a cloudy stone of snow and love the Messiah laid, free from His worldly pain, but still enveloped in His love and ultimate residing sacrifice that none other could do for us. Even in death He continued to serve, and so the second day is important because it reveals to us that His love and most certainly His devotion did not end by the grave that was so cruelly and wickedly forced upon Him. 

I imagine the beloved and virtuous Mary Magdalene coming to the sceplecure to simply stand beside the rock dividing her Savior and she. And perhaps she rests here, too heavily burdened with tears and grief from the cruel, but vital loss of her Savior. Perhaps she waited there all day and through the night, resting in the flowers, maybe looking up at th stars with Him in her heart and tears in her eyes, praying for His return and aching for Him like never before. Then I imagine a different love, the love of a mother, that could not compare to the utter despair and cavernous pain she felt knowing her Son, her precious babe she first wrapped in swaddling clothes and hugged tightly in a small and simple manger, who now was wrapped in clothes of fine linen and shut tightly in a tomb--was gone. How lonely she must've felt, abandoned, waiting for the bright morning of the glorious Resurrection in which she, the mother of the Son of God, finally hears the sweet news that the voice of her Son, saying, "Mary." came to be and Mary of Magdalene in ardent return and deep elation replies, 

"Raboni." 

(Which is to say, "Master".) 

What great reverence the Day of Silence brings to my heart and oh how brave a mother's love and that of a follower of Christ is when she must hear it also.

We should remember the Day of Silence not because He was dead, but because even in His death, He still thought and cared and served for us; even in death He was, is, Unconquerable. That is why we remember the second day, the Day of Silence. 

Interstellar Thought Clouds (Part I)

"People young or old, those trembling with fervor or not, are bound by the universal galactic bands of human love--that cannot escape any one of us. Not at all. Not even a little." -k.p.b 4/4/15 3:09AM 'Interstellar Thought Clouds'

Leo Tolstoy

A discussion which we had had some days before came back clear before me.
Kátya had been saying that is was easier for a man to be in love and declare his love than for a woman.
'A man may say that he is in love, and a woman can't,' she said.
'I disagree,' said he; 'a man has no business to say, and can't say, that he is in love.'
'Why not?' I asked.
'Because it never can be true. What sort of a revelation is that, that a man is in love? A man seems to think that whenever he says the word, something will go pop!--that some miracle will be worked, signs and wonders, with all the big guns firing at once! In my opinion,' he went on, 'whoever solemnly brings out the words "I love you" is either deceiving himself or, which is even worse, deceiving others.'
--Family Happiness by: Leo Tolstoy
Part III; Pg. 22

This is almost too sad to post

April 1, 2015 

Wednesday 1:00PM

"alrighty"

Today (I'm just realizing how often a blog post begins with such a word as that) I disguised a heartbreaking letter to no one in particular as a school assignment. You may be asking yourself why on earth I would do something so silly or perhaps your mind is a bit more outlandish and you instead are asking yourself how I achieved such a deed. To both of those questions I answer: it was easy.
As I sat there hopelessly perplexed by much too many things a young eighteen year old girl should not be perplexed with, my hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it was somehow swiftly and savagely pulling out my notebook and scribbling madly away like a poor little seashell thrown carelessly into the ferocious sea. But you see, I was frightened not of the ocean itself, but what others might think of its colossal waves and gentle currents. What if someone doesn't understand the way they crash or why they must do so now? I thought. But then I thought of a cover more or less like a cozy patch of seclusion on the beach. 
And so I scribbled this: 
"Fantasy - Sci-Fi
Scribble #29
I don't know what to do. 
Here I am sitting next to Leo Tolstoy (who by the way looks very dapper today) at a table in the library and I am completely distraught by the idea that I have an infinite white sea of paper before me, all the ideas in the world to fill it with, and yet the threads of emotion weaving inside me won't let me unleash a thing. I am maddened by rejection. I haven't a thought in the world as to what I might do. My ink is well supplied but I find my fingers solely disinclined and admittedly Leo is next to little help what-so-ever. He just placidly sits there, staring at me with his big, dapper eyes tinged with pathetic sympathy for me. His hand reaches out to mine then falls somewhere beyond, further past me, to the bookshelves behind--but then he realizes nothing in this world can help me more than him just being here with me and so the books are forgotten the moment he drops his hand. 
Is it strange to say that I get lost in the subconsciousness of his love stories, so much so I ache and yearn for them to be my own? Even though I know they only nurture my eyes for a moment and never really help I still like to know it is there. But tell me this: If you neglect to go to the place you are supposed to be and instead end up here in an ever crowding library, where you see people you know and feel as though you were meant to see them right then--is it then you destiny to be here in the library rather than wherever it is you were 'supposed' to be? (Man, am I sounding like Prince Henry from Ever After in his moment of perplexity too? If only the other Leonardo could be here to tell me what to do.) I'm beginning to think everything is just chance or even worse--nothing at all. Heaven and earth, is there no hand gently guiding the paint within this catastrophic picture? I am at a loss as to what to do with myself. There are voices irritably wriggling inside the drums within me I wish I could hear something quite different and the mountains capped with snow have never before looked so delicious to my eyes.
I am alone.
(He calls me 'beautiful' and tells me I look amazing, but it hinders my frail demise more than strokes or flatters it. Perhaps he'll never know my disdaining admiration for him. Even in the bleakest of confessionals on this shore of possibilities, he'll probably never know. If I could be so lucky as to partake of his unknowing obliviousness. The feeling of inadequacy--from neglecting where I'm 'supposed' to be, to him never knowing and lastly to myself for stooping this low--cannot be shaken from me, much like rain from a black umbrella never truly dries until the storm stops no matter how hard you try to shake it off. Shake. Shake. Shake. It never leaves. (Does it?) 
Now even books refuse to soothe me properly. You see, as this feeling I've just described has been upon me for quite some time (coming and going as it pleases) it was not unordinary that is was there on a day such as yesterday. I felt alone, but most of all dejected and so I came to the library and frantically began searching for a book to heal my unjustified wounds. My fingers traced every spine until it netted themselves on two: Tolstoy and Robinson. They seem pleased enough to be here and thus, my return to the library was not in vain on their part, but rather my own."
The day before I wrote this (yesterday, as it turns out) as I was going through my little "book crisis" I came to a realization that both disturbed and defined me: books in all their beauty and demise, are what I run to when I'm alone or crestfallen or betrayed. They may hurt me too, but never in the same way. And most especially never in the same way twice. My books are good books. They are my friends.
I guess they are my only friends today.
That's alright with me.
Until tomorrow.

k.p.b.

By the way, it's April Fool's Day. 

But no, this wasn't a joke. 

Sorry.