You're Testing Me

Hello all! This is a regular post again, not me bragging about my blog or anything...because that would be prideful. ;) Anyway, this week has been...eh and I say that as has had some good moments and bad moments. I think I'm so far into the semester that everything is just ugh can I be done now?! This week I've been especially exasperated with boys because they just don't seem to ask me out on dates. Now, I'm not saying they all need to be clamoring for my hand and at my door begging, but I'm just saying a nice date where we go out to get to know each other, to become friends first before anything serious happens, would be ideal. But no. The guys are just too busy doing something else or they're just afraid because everyone seems to think any male-female interaction will lead to marriage within 3 months. Um no. Yes, I would like to get married, but I think it's important to be friends first and if guys would just man up and ask us out, we could all get to know each other.

As you might be able to tell, I have a pretty assertive personality and so this whole "sitting around waiting them to ask me" thing is really driving me nuts. I'm trying to have faith and know that my future spouse is out there, but I think faith also requires action so you'd think I'd be asking the boys out, but they don't seem to like that too much, they think it makes me "aggressive" and "desperate". *head desk*

And again...

What would you like me to do gentlemen? Sit here until I graduate? Um no. But I also don't want to come off as aggressive because guys have huge egos and like to feel like it was all THEIR idea when we all know who REALLY was doing all the behind the scenes work. Am I right ladies? But anyway, there's this guy in one of my classes whom I would like to go on a date with, but I just don't know how to go about doing this. I think he likes me because with all my psychology knowledge I was able to kind of get an idea based off of body language (me over analyzing the situation, maybe I was misreading and it was all in my head. AH I'm doing it again!!)

and so I asked some people what I should do and I got answers ranging from message him on Facebook to just talk to him. (Side note: we have never spoken in person so I thought the random message on Facebook would be a little weird, some of my guy friends agreed.) I feel like the best course of action would be to talk to him, but this is hard for me because I just don't walk up and make idle conversation with random people. So I was planning on doing this this week, so I gathered up my courage, did the whole "I'm going to put my things back in my backpack EXTRA slowly so we can walk out together", and we ended up walking out at the same time, but then our teacher ended up leaving too and they got to talking about something important and ended up leaving me in the dust. I ended up going home and calling my best friend, lamenting that it was never going to work out and this was a sign. Oh the drama. But I ended up going visiting teaching yesterday and I actually was helped by my teachee (shout out to Mckenzie, you're awesome). Anyway, she basically gave me a pep talk about meeting her fiance in one of her classes and I should keep at it. She basically just said we need to become friends and maybe this means I need to put forth effort to talk to him because maybe he's just as petrified as I am. I don't know, what do y'all think? Guys especially, do you have any tips for me?

So you might be wondering, what does this have to do with this class? Well, this week we talked about coping and how trials can be opportunities. Basically, we started off the week with Brother Williams asking why bad things happen to good people. Well, I believe this is because if only good things happened to us, we would get prideful so we get knocked down a few pegs because we need to know what the bad feels like in order to appreciate the good. We could look at trials as opportunities to strengthen relationships, become greater, and become more humble or teachable. I feel like for the most part I have been very blessed and have a good life, but it just seems like things never get any easier. I mean, I have to say after I have overcome something and something new starts, I look back and think "I can't believe I was such a wimp. That was so easy compared to this." But that's just the nature of life, constantly learning and growing. So now we know that trials CAN be looked at as something good, but we still have to go through them. This does not make them any easier to overcome. What we learned about coping is it isn't just simply getting by, it's a reaction, so we can either choose to be happy or irritated during the trial. We compared coping during trials to that of the coping of a pool. The coping of a pool is the ledge and we talked about how it needs to be smooth, strong, and keeps things where they belong.

It needs to be smooth because we don't want to hurt ourselves getting out of the pool, it needs to hold our weight because we wouldn't want to be crumbling into the pool, and it needs to be higher so it can keep the water in. I thought this was interesting because when we are coping in relationships, we need to make sure we aren't damaging ourselves and the relationships we have with people, we need to keep them strong so they can't be knocked down, and we need to keep things from getting in the middle. I don't think in my situation I need to necessarily worry about relationships with others, I need to make sure my relationship with myself is strong so I don't get knocked down during my trials. This might sound a little narcissistic (forgive me if it does), but I think before I even get into a relationship with someone else, I need to have myself figured out and be able to get through my own trials so when I do get into a relationship, I can use my skills to help us. And I'm not going to sit here and say it'll be easy because it won't. This life is meant to be difficult to help us grow.

Life is going to be challenging, but I think it'll all be worth it in the end. And who knows, maybe I need this guy in my life to teach me how to talk to people. Or maybe something could grow from this. I don't have all the answers, but I can at least try and not give up before anything has even begun.

Well, I hope you all have a SUPERB weekend and take some time to relax. I'm going to because I'm getting out of here for the weekend!!! I know, FINALLY!! A wonderful, saintly lady from my old home ward has invited me to stay with her for the weekend and I'm taking this opportunity to decompress. And hopefully next week I'll have some more stories to share with you, especially about what happens with said guy!

Love,

Liz

P.S. Images and gifs are from Google.