Young Women Personal Progress

In the LDS church, there is a program for girls between the ages of 12-17 called the Young Women Personal Progress program.  I completed this program in my younger days, and I have fond memories of the spiritual experiences and enlightenment I received in the process.  Once completed, you also receive a special necklace.  I used to wear mine all of the time, but to my dismay, I can't find it!  This made me think about the Personal Progress program again.  I completed it a long time ago, and after going through anxiety, what I need right now is a program to help me develop my spirituality again.  So I'm going to complete the Personal Progress program again!

The basis of the Personal Progress program is centered around the Young Women Theme:

Image taken from Nicki's Personal Progress (check it out!)

The eight values - faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity, virtue - are what the Personal Progress program is built on.  For each value, I must complete six Value Experiences and one 10-hour Value Project.  These experiences and projects are unique based on each value.  The tasks are easy, but most importantly, they help me develop spiritual habits and invite God back into my life.

I obtained a Personal Progress manual from my church building, but they have the program online, too.  Check it out here!  In order to actually chart progress online, you need an LDS account, but that's easy to create even if you are not LDS.  All of the information, however, is accessible with lots of resources and videos.  It's a cool site!

Even though I am married and hope to become a mother one day, there's no reason why I can't complete the Young Women Personal Progress program again.  It's a great way to jump start your spirituality.  I'm grateful that my church creates programs like these to help make studying the gospel fun.  Now if only they would create a Personal Progress program for married couples...  ;)

The Young Women Values (can you identify them all?) by gerugeon

Meltdown! Part 2

Lately these days, I feel like my anxiety has been pretty stable.  I'm happy, work everyday, and have goals for a better future.  Last night, however, I was reminded how quickly I can go from...

 

To...

Let me tell you what happened.  I received a JCPenney gift card as one of my Christmas gifts, so Ben and I went to the mall with the hopes of buying me some new shoes.  I needed a middle-ranged shoe; not as casual as flip flops, but not as fancy as heels.  I quickly found the most adorable, comfortable black flats ever!  It was love at first sight.  I was ready to buy them and move onto the next thing on my list, but Ben said they were too dressy for what I was wearing, which was a button-down shirt and jeans.  I waved my hand at him and said, "Like you know anything about fashion!"  He challenged me to ask the cashier her opinion, so I marched right up to her with confidence and asked, "Are these shoes too dressy for my outfit?"  The cashier considered me a moment before saying, "Yes."  I was not expecting that, so this was my reaction:

"Oh...thanks."

Walk back to my seat.

Sit down and...

...and...

"WHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

I just started crying!  I don't know why, but I was an emotional wreck.  I felt very silly, crying in the middle of JCPenney.  I'm sure people were wondering what was wrong.  I'm glad no one said anything, because even though I was crying, my main emotion was anger.  Who did that cashier think she was, telling me those shoes were too good for me?!  Why did I live in a world where society dictated that I couldn't wear a pair of shoes?!  Darn it!

My wonderful husband didn't laugh at me, or judge me, or anything like that.  He just let me be emotional.  We found another pair of shoes that matched my casual outfit more, but I just couldn't get over those cute black flats.  Ben promised me that the next time we got paid, he would buy the flats for me.  I have the best husband in the world!

So this has been yet another anxiety-induced meltdown with comical flair.  The moral of the story is: even if I look composed on the outside, a meltdown can happen anywhere at anytime!  Nevertheless, I usually have anxiety-free days and lots of happy moments.  So the next time you break down and cry for whatever reason, don''t feel bad.  It just happens sometimes.  :)

My First Experience with HTML

I don't like math.  I respect it, and I respect those who understand it, but it's not my thing.  Yesterday, however, I was forced to use math to upgrade my blog (*le gasp!*)  My blog was starting to accumulate a lot of stand-alone pages, so I thought it would be nice to sort them into drop-down menus.  My mom uses Wordpress to do this on her website, but come to find out, you can't use Wordpress on Blogger.  So I turned to the ultimate resource: the Internet.  To my delight, I found many posts on how to create your own drop-down menus.  To my horror, all of the posts were about using HTML to do this.  HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is a kind of computer language used to tell websites what to do and how to do it (I think).  In a nutshell, it's math language.  Therefore, my reaction was:

 

Stubbornly, I continued looking for another (much simpler way) to create a drop-down menu on my blog.  But alas, I couldn't find another way.  It took a whole day to process and accept this.  Finally, I took a deep breath and sat down to try and figure it out.  At first, I was completely overwhelmed.  Seeing all the numbers, symbols, and pointless words made my head go blank.  Thankfully, the tutorial I used was simple and easy to understand.  You can find the tutorial at the blog "Home Take 2: How to Create a Drop-Down Menu In Blogger."   Somehow, someway, I began to understand what I was doing.  I could actual change the code to bring about the desired results.  I changed the color of my text, the names of my menus, and added links.  My drop-down menus are not a work of art, but I did it!  I'm so proud of myself!  Granted, I'm in no hurry to try my hand at HTML again, but it feels good knowing I can do a little bit of it (with lots of help).  If you are like me and get overwhelmed by math-y things like computer codes, then there is hope!  If I can figure out HTML, so can you!

I still don't like math...