My writing is crap.

Also, if another child gets out of bed to tell me something “important,” I may actually start crying. REAL tears.

It’s not that I don’t want to listen to them tell me their importants, but I don’t really want to listen. (Because that makes sense.) (With the italics and all.) But by nine pm, my brain needs to not process anything else relating to a child. I’m serious. Math, friends, book reports, lost flip-flops, guitar lessons, oral hygiene or lack thereof, personal hygiene or lack thereof, pet feeding or lack thereof, and/or anything relating to any episode ever filmed in any season of River Monsters.

I find that my mental capacity these days is perfectly suited for something like Facebook: I open it. I scroll through the ticker tape of declarations. I laugh. I roll my eyes. I like a thing or two. And then, I’m done. It’s night-night time for me. Until my husband reminds me about our 90-day-reading-the-Book-of-Mormon challenge, in which case I roll over the pick my iPad back up off the floor and say, “OK. But NO DISCUSSING.”

And then, “Can you just read to me?”

Him: “Brooke?”

Me: “I’m just resting my eyes.”

There was a time I prided myself on being a fairly respectable mother, I mean, a fairly respectable woman. There was a time I felt smart and with-it and thought the ditzy lady antic would never touch me. But here it is—with cold, true fingers that grasp and won’t let go.

The issue of the moment is not that I stop mid-sentence to try and remember the end of the sentence. Or that I forget to tell my kids’ teachers that they (the kids) will be missing several days of school and need their homework and class work to take with them. It’s not even really all that problematic when the only thing I talk about with the baby when we’re home alone all day is about how much the dog stinks. (Because the baby has learned three words from that, “puppy,” “Sunny,” and “ewwww.”) No! The issue of the moment is that it’s almost my turn to think of a book for my neighborhood’s book club and I CAN’T THINK OF ANY!

So, dear Segullah readers, will you help a mama out? What good books have you read lately? What books make for good discussions? What books could I feasibly get through without having to pawn the reading off to my husband?

And what know you of a hopefully temporary brain-fog? Does it lift? And WHEN?

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1. Marriage Has Many Pains
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A slide show through my December would consist of a mad-fast jumble of contrasts.

Twenty crazed minutes mid-Saturday inside a crowded Walmart in Portland, Oregon, accompanied by overloud, carnival-toned Christmas songs.

A quiet, tearful hour or two curled up next to my frail and ailing–to be honest, dying–95-year-old grandmother.

Faces against windows, pressed closer to better see commercial displays of lights and merchandise. Airports full of strangers. Streets and stores packed with shoppers. Some cross. Some kind. Not a one in any way as invisible or insignificant as they all seem to be to one another.

Primary children and cousins pressed up closely against the glass in front of a pink-tiled baptismal font. A crowded but cosy chapel (or two, or three). A dining and living room full of friends and family. Not just known, but also much loved.

Frantic (and exhausting) busyness.

Precious few quiet moments, desperately stolen from the demands of the day.

Smog. Sun. Grey. Green. Hurt and heartbreak. Love and Joy. Crowds. Quiet. Sickness. Health. Death. Birth.

Even knowing what I know, sometimes I don’t quite know what to make of it all.

Do you?

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2. The Kitchen Towel
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One little hiccup occurred: we decided to move away from the city. So I busted out all the races and my volunteer gig before we moved away in June. Many weekends began with me trekking to Central Park on the train to run for Japan or Lung Cancer fundraising or Scotland. I know, sometimes the races didn’t make sense to me either. But I finished all the requirements, and all I had to do was wait until next year, I was in.

Oh wait, before race day came I did a few other things too: moved my family to Colorado, then got pregnant, did my best to stay fit during pregnancy, had the baby, started training as soon as he turned six weeks old, got up and ran three or four times a week no matter what else was going on in my life or what the weather, flew back to NYC with aforementioned baby on my lap, still breastfeeding, and THEN I ran the 26.2 miles through the streets of a city I absolutely love!

That is what I just did, and it was CRAZY!!! As much as I loved the marathon and going back home I am officially on break from marathons. I have said that in the past after finishing a race, and my sister always comes back with the, “Oh, you’ll feel better in a few weeks and be ready to sign up for something again.” I don’t think so; this time feels different. After my other races the physical fatigue did pass and the exhilaration of such an accomplishment has led me to seek out another race to register and train for. I have habitually talked someone else into joining me as well and away we go.

In each marathon I have run I arrive at a point during the race when tears start to well up and I have to talk to myself about why I will, of course, finish. This has generally taken me a few minutes, a brief walk break to recompose myself with a pep talk and then back on track. My self-talk consists of remembering my many weeks of preparation, appeals to not let myself down, thoughts of all the people who have supported me to get here and are thinking of me or waiting somewhere along the course to offer their love and faith that I can in fact finish what I started. This has generally been enough and I plod along feeling the blisters form or the chaffing under my sports bra get raw and choosing to ignore it. Knowing that the glory of doing it will outweigh the other discomforts and inconveniences.

That moment came during my NYC marathon. But it didn’t go away after a few minutes. At mile 16 my legs started to cramp and it didn’t make sense. I was well rested, hydrated, fueled, and had been exactly on pace with my plan and what I had trained for. I had enjoyed reuniting with running buddies from before we moved. We had taken pictures, wished each other luck, shared bagels. Every moment of the morning pre-race passed in a celebratory fashion. I had even taped my name on the front of my shirt so strangers would know how to cheer me on. I had enjoyed a gorgeous vies of lower Manhattan while listening to someone belt out, “Start Spreading the News!” at the start. As I crossed into Brooklyn natives lined up in front of their brownstone apartment buildings to clap and call out, “Go Heathuh,” in a classic New York accent. This exhilarated me and I was having the perfect race. But for some reason, my legs started to cramp anyway. And I got so discouraged. I cried for a while, stopped to stretch and wondered how in the world I was going to finish 10 more miles, make that 10.2.

Along the east side of Manhattan, running up famous 1st Avenue with some friends who jumped in to help support me there were literally millions of spectators. They had signs, balloons, smiles, cheers, tissues, Vaseline, and anything else you might hope for. And yet I couldn’t get over my self-doubt. What usually takes me a few minutes to mentally work through consumed miles of my race. Due to the cramping I had slowed my pace and started planning in more walk breaks. The time goal I had set for myself and trained so hard for slipped away in those minutes I walked and the seconds here and there when I moved to the side of the course to try and stretch my muscles. My friends did their best to keep a spring in their step as I trudged along. They assured me that just finishing this race would be amazing and something to be proud of. They reminded me that I had a 5-month-old baby waiting for me at the finish and they didn’t have to remind me that I had breasts engorged with milk. One friend started showing me texts from my husband and kids. All of this helped, but not enough to ensure that I would in fact finish. My new goal became to make it to a group of other dear friends who were waiting at a specified corner about a mile away. As we approached and their cheerful faces beamed at me I stopped to hug them and thought, okay I have come far enough; let’s go home now. They had signs that echoed something a friend and I had experienced and loved during our first marathon, they read, “Legs, Mind, Heart.” That first race I saw those and it had spurred me on. My legs were spent, mentally I had stuck in there, and all that remained was heart-100% desire to just do it. But today it just made me want to cry more because I worried that I didn’t actually have the heart to follow through. I thought up all the reasons I could throw in the towel right then and completely justify it. But they were planning on crossing a couple of avenues and meeting me in a few more miles, so I just kept going. And somewhere in those next few miles the moment finally came where I let go of my lost time goal and I knew I would finish.

I started to smile again and look at the faces of the spectators. None of them were there thinking, “Wow, she’s really slow. Why hasn’t she finished this race yet?” They were just there, with nothing but good will and admiration. They smiled and cheered. We approached my cheering friends again. They promised to find me after the finish; the other friends who’d jumped in left me with encouraging words and smiles as I entered Central park for the final three hilly miles. My discouragement faded at last and I admired the beauty of the fall foliage and the diversity of the people watching. I’d given the water belt and pouch I’d been wearing to my friend so I wouldn’t have to carry it any longer, but I hung onto my phone so I could connect with everyone after the finish line. Carrying my phone allowed me to see all the messages people had been sending and each of the final miles my dad sent words of encouragement as I passed the mile markers. He was tracking me online and knew exactly where I was. He wrote things like, “Mile 23 in the rearview,” and, “You’ve almost got this thing licked!” And my one of my favorites, just before the final climb to the finish, “Bring it home.” I actually laughed out loud as I ran those final yards. After the literal years of planning, the hundreds of miles in training, dozens of hours given by others in support, the discouragement, the tears- I finished! It was hard and it was awesome! I’m so glad I did it and I’m also glad that I don’t ever have to do it like that again.

More than a month has passed since the race. I haven’t registered for anything. No mental plans have started to form about what cool place I could travel to in order to run a race, and I haven’t pestered anyone about training for a marathon with me. Initially I wondered if the difficulty of the race broke me, but after some time to think about I’ve come to another conclusion: What I accomplished was enough; it filled me up. Now it’s time for a new beginning.

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The fall took two seconds longer than I expected and it was in those two seconds that I feared and I thrilled. The splash of water was cold, shocking, safe. The plunge was equal to the fall, and deep. I allowed myself to go down, I kicked up. I was fine; I was popping and alive with adrenaline. I was eager to catch her eye, my daughter. She surfaced a beat before I did, and between the bobbing of water and waves, I saw brown freckles and big teeth, black hair slicked along her head and down her back—my beautiful selkie girl.

Baptisms always take me by surprise because one: they are so simple, and two: they are so good. This time, when my son was blessed and dunked and surfaced clean and new, he couldn’t stop chattering on about the moment being fun. And we knew, we remembered too, that sudden rush of the Spirit, and know how sometimes that moment can’t be articulated because for once the lack of words is better than words: and you can see the sky is bluer, or the baby’s cheeks are more perfect, or the glow in the room is brighter, or the pluck of a single guitar string or the impression of a single piano key sounds impossibly full and multiplied. And it is enough to notice these divine mutations and understand why.

I am 35 today and the birthday gift of my morning is just a quiet realization: I am young enough to know that I’ve a lot to learn about life, and old enough to be grateful for the things I am starting to understand. One of those things is simply this: that the Holy Ghost is an amazing thing if we let it be. It is a power and a blessing if we let go enough to let it lead. In everything. Thirty five years has definitely been adequate time to teach me that I have no control over most things in my life, but sometimes I feel the vestigial pulls of that weakness, and it generally has the mark of wanting to make something “perfect”: a holiday, my body, my children, the life that surrounds me. I’ve found that there’s no peace there, though. At least, not for me.

So I plunge into my life. I take a big gulp before I go down to find an utter silencing of myself, of the worries and wants that crowd my mind. And I see through watery, refracted clarity the faces of my family—parents, siblings, children, spouse and God, and I see forever, and so I surface, grateful for air, and find that I can breathe again.

What ideas of perfection will you let go of this holiday season so that you can more appropriately enjoy the spirit of Christ?

Have you found that letting go is more peaceful that hanging on?

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But this year I’m putting a new spin on things: I’m going homemade. For presents, I mean. If I can’t make it, I’m not giving it. (This is for our relatives, not our children. Because I’m not quite clever enough to make ipods.)

Money is tight right now, which is why I thought of doing homemade gifts in the first place. But I also had a lightbulb-over-the-head moment when I was talking to my husband about a really stressful issue we’ve got going on in our lives. As he was slightly freaking out about this problem, I was listening, head bent, knitting madly. I realized that making things, although it can be frustrating and sometimes challenging, really helps relieve my stress. I’m not sure what part of creating something has a pressure-release valve, but when I’m busy with my hands it’s like the anxiety simply slips away.

At first glance making things for Christmas gifts seems like a sure-fire way to overextend myself. But the arty science of making soap, the repetitive moving of the knitting needles, the designing of labels and gift tags is soothing and calms my spirit. I think this might just be the best idea I’ve had in a long time. Of course, I’ll have to pace myself and not procrastinate, but I’m pretty excited about crafting my brains out.

You may not be a creative person, and the thought of making anything at Christmas is enough to induce tears, so how do you deal with the holiday stress? (I tried eating the stress away last year and I don’t recommend it.) How are you planning on not going insane over the next month?

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3. Posts of Christmas Past

This is what I saw:

You have to understand, we are not cat people. I was born and raised to loathe cats. I am genetically programmed to loathe cats. Cats make my skin crawl. They induce me to itch and sneeze and cough in their presence. In fact, not even their presence is required. My eyes will swell and itch and water excessively if I even walk into a room where a cat has been.

I cannot abide cats.

And yet there I was in Costco buying cat food.

Bulk cat food.

It’s a long and somewhat amusing story, yet I am now the proud owner of not one, but two cats. We’ve had them for about four years. They are outside cats; but they do come indoors occasionally. One sneaks in. The other asks for permission and leaves when he ask him. And not only do I provide food for them, I have even dished out my hard-earned cash to the tune of nearly $300 in vet bills in order to care for them properly. I talk to them. I call them by name. I scratch them under their respective chins and along their respective bellies. And sometimes, if I have to wash that shirt anyway, I have been known to pick up my favorite and snuggle him to my chest. Just not too close to the face.

I love my cats.

So what stopped me in my tracks that day at Costco? Simply the realization that never in a million years would I have seen myself walking down the aisles of Costco with a bag of cat food in my cart. If you would have told me 30, 20 or even 5 years ago I would one day spend even one penny on cat food, I would have bet you a million dollars (or maybe even ten) that such a thing would NEVER happen.

In that tiny moment I left Costco and travelled back to my past, back to a much younger me who was looking at the older me standing there in Costco with cat food in her cart. Younger me was shocked. I jumped back to present me and thought about how as little girls, young women, young adults, and even as grown women, we have so many ideas about what our future will–or in this case would never–bring. And oh how drastically–or not–the realities of our lives can differ from our imagined course. In many ways, of course. But sometimes in such a way we come to embrace something we once loathed.

What about you? Has your life turned out exactly–or even remotely–as you planned? If yes, how so? If not, what has been the greatest surprise? Are the differences for better or for worse? Most importantly, how have you made the best of what life has thrown your way?

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Every time he wears his bright shorts I want to tell him to go change. There is no way those are stylish in any crowd at high school. I want him to look cute in public. But I also don’t want to be one of those bratty moms who has too strong an opinion about what her kids should and shouldn’t wear.

I have a friend like that. I love her but she’s always got some issue about what her daughters are wearing, whether its high heels to school, or a belt that’s really jangly, or anything striped (“stripes don’t look good on anyone!” she says.)

I reckon that as long as my kids are being modest then they should be able to wear what they want. But then I think of those stupid basketball shorts. I really would like to “accidentally” spill bleach on them.

When I think back to the dreadful clothes I wore (anything fluorescent, T-shirts with biking shorts, the month where I wore shoelaces in my hair) and my appearance in general (disgusting perms, purple and blue striped eyeshadow and, horrors, white lipstick!), I wish my mother had maybe stopped me once or twice as I was walking out the door and had me rethink my choices.

But it probably would have turned into a giant fight. I’m not sure whether my mother was being wise or simply didn’t care.

Do you think that we have the right to help our kids make fashion choices? It can be futile to insist that a three-year-old change her clothes but what about a thirteen-year-old?

What about husbands? Do you let the man in your life wear whatever he likes? Do you disagree? Do you even care? Does he?

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Where he slips his hand across her knee. Where she puts her head upon his shoulder… First date? Old lovers? They are too quiet with one another to be new, and her hair seems askance and he seems calmed by her easy way. They must be married.

Where a mother fusses over a baby hidden in an expensive carriage, and how suddenly a fleck of a hand blooms above the tuft of swaddling blanket and visions of a redhead baby boy bloom in my head, unbidden… Simply because the hand was pale, and his mother was a ginger.

And my mind wanders with them all day, these people/characters filled out by my mind, apparent only in face. They are reduced to their mannerisms and accessories, taken out of context, in five seconds of one day.

It seems unfair. But in my defense I usually give them an imaginative vignette worthy of their most astonishing feature.

(Good or bad.)

My son just turned eight and on Sunday we met with the bishop for his baptism interview. Perhaps I should have insisted on Saturday [the-day-we-get-ready-for-Sunday] that he have a haircut or stuck to my weak decree of  “No Vans at church.” But I didn’t do any of those things and so he sat there, a thick swatch of hair blanketing his eyes, the toe of his faded shoes skimming the carpet back and forth underneath him.

He’s a quiet boy. So quiet that I think a lot of people assume that he’s a disrespectful kid. I frequently prompt him to answer questions and make eye contact and it feels silly to be reminding such a large child, but his heart is anxiety ridden, and his personality unsure, and when he grabs my hand through the fleece of an oversized sweatshirt, or still expects that I can carry him up the stairs to bed, I know his heart/mind/soul and what it thinks and feels. And I know it is pure and sweet and good.

The bishop talked and we listened. My son answered questions with the most imperceptible nods and suppressed mouth. The bishop paused at one point and smiled at my boy, “Wow, you are one quiet kid!” He said this as his eyes crinkled and welled, “But it’s ok because I was a really quiet kid too, and then they made me bishop and now I can’t stop talking.”

And there was a sudden moment that it was clear—the bishop saw my boy. The real boy. Not the old shoes, not the messy mop of hair, not the unwillingness to engage. He saw the boy inside, and the man he will be.

(And as a mom, I so appreciated that.)

I’ve glimpsed these moments too. One winter, driving downtown, I was one stoplight away from my destination when the traffic stopped. Though a few homeless people milled on the sidewalk outside my car, my heart began to hammer against my ribs as I watched a certain one. He was not different from any of the others, but something pulled me to him. The light changed to green and I quickly turned right and circled back around the block, praying aloud that he would still be there. He was, and I pulled up to him and rolled down the passenger window and called out. He walked towards my car as I reached money in my hand across the seat, and our eyes locked (eyes I will never forget) and what I said was “Merry Christmas,” but what I wanted to say and lacked courage for was, “You are my brother.”

He bowed his head at my offering, quiet gratitude or guilt for the sordid things my generosity would purchase, but I didn’t care, I needed to stop. I needed him to know he mattered, that I saw he was a child of God and part of me in the most basic and ethereal of all senses. And whether that exercise affirmed something in him or just me, I pulled away from the curb and burst into tears.

(And abandoned my errand all together. How could I after that sacred moment lost?)

I feel like my mother best explained it to me in the temple, the last few moments of being just her daughter, while we stood before a crystal sconce lit mirror in the bride’s room, all golden and soft shadow. Her hands fumbled with the edges of my dressing as she attempted the millions of buttons up my back and suddenly put her head in her hands and sobbed. “Mom?” I sought her reflection in the mirror. “I see you,” she said as she looked up. “I see what Heavenly Father sees. And I am honored.”

If we could really see what he sees, would we not be honored to be in the presence of so much nobility in spirit? Because that nobility lies in everyone: the couple, the mother, the quiet boy, the homeless man, the bride, you, them, your enemy, yourself. Perhaps we would love more, and more freely. Perhaps we would be stumbling over ourselves, lining up to serve one another. Perhaps we would just be more patient, kinder.

I wonder how this happens? How do we see God’s children as such every day? How do we see them as He sees them—their whole, real embodiment and true character—and not pick apart their parts?

And, have you ever had any moments like these?

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The shirt isn’t a sporting team shirt. I work for my family’s business, the name of which isn’t even displayed on my pocket. My work clothes certainly aren’t high-end brands. The shirt I was wearing on Friday is heavy drill cotton, bright orange on the top half, navy blue on the bottom half, with several stripes of silver grey reflective tape cutting me horizontally into eights. (Yes, it’s very attractive). The point is, to those people I was recognisable. Long pants, steel-cap boots, grime marks up to the elbow, and the type of shirt meant they knew enough of me to acknowledge a shared experience, all communicated in a casual nod as we passed each other.

The last time I went to that shopping centre, I was in another ‘uniform’ – navy blue slacks, collared shirt, and my nurse’s watch tapped a beat against my chest as I tried to slip through the crowds before school finished. That time, I was smiled at by pensioners, people using crutches and the check-out chick said “You’re a nurse, aren’t you!” as I stepped up to pay.

It’s peculiar what clothes can do. Aside from helping you avoid that nightmare where you find yourself stark blushing naked in public, clothes have power.

The power of what you wear is sometimes impossible to ignore. What we wear has a power that extends to people who see us. Baggy pants with underwear showing must mean something, though so far I think it means “Help, I need a belt!” I always smile at or salute anyone in an Australian Defence Force uniform as a sign of my support and own time in the Navy. I always wave at firemen because… well, because they’re firemen.  There’s magic in what a bride wears, in a flash of a shirt in a particular blue – a power to raise emotion and memories to waft and dance before our eyes. What we wear often has a message sewn deeply in amongst its fibres, whether we recognise it, deliberately flaunt it to the world, or have a very specific, beloved target in mind.

But clothes have a power that arcs back to the wearer as well. My moods can be influenced by what I wear, and what I wear often changes the way I move, think and feel. Last week I was up to my (newly tinted) eyelashes in study and assignments, but I couldn’t focus. Something just felt….off. I got up, checked the front door. Still something bugged me. The boys were asleep (I checked again), I had my favourite study music on, I was working to a looming collision-course deadline, I couldn’t afford to wander off but there was an itch in my head that something wasn’t right. Want to guess what the problem was?

I wasn’t wearing shoes. Somehow, for some baffling reason, my brain equates bare feet with blue screen of death in my head. No shoes = no concentration. Once I popped my ugg boots on, focus returned and I had no problem completing a lecture and reading notes until midnight. At which time I couldn’t fall straight into bed, but had to put on my pj’s first. I guess it’s just one of my own personal rules about how I dress, when and why.

Everyone I know has their own rules about what – or what not – to wear. No white before Labor Day. Redheads don’t wear pink or red. Rock t-shirts are forever. You can/can’t wear slacks to church. You wear shoes when you go shopping. Eye shadow and handbag colour should match. Then there are the secret powers our clothes give us. The shoes that make us taller/shorter/have gorgeous calves. The shirt that hides the wobble/boosts the boobage/show the biceps. I look/feel professional/intelligent/confident/invisible when I wear that. I feel gorgeous wrapped in this. This is my superhero cape.

And these are my ugg boots. They have a secret super-power. They help me study.

Which superpowers do particular clothes give you? Are there things you “have” to wear to do a certain activity? Is there a “special nod” group you belong to, because of what you wear? What rules do you have about how to dress, what to/not wear?

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Every year, my husband and I go on a very long date – two or three days long. It is our annual relationship renewal. We drive for three to four hours talking about all the things we haven’t had a chance to discuss in weeks. We laugh. We look out the window. We play loud rock music and sing. We buy Ho-Hos and eat ALL of them. We get pulled over for a traffic violation and then we arrive at the Shakespeare festival – totally ready for uninterrupted lovemaking, Thai food, and three comedies and three tragedies…not necessarily in that order.

This year “Romeo and Juliet” was playing in the outdoor theater that is timbered like the old Globe in London. The air smelled of rain. We had front row seats in the balcony and so were able to perfectly see as Tybalt killed Mercutio and Romeo killed Tybalt. Romeo looked up at the sky and yelled, “Oh, I am fortune’s fool!” Right on cue, a torrent of rain burst from the full clouds and poured onto Romeo’s upturned face. The bard could not have written it better.

Aren’t we all fortune’s fools? Do we feel like sometimes our destiny is not in our own hands? In Mormon doctrine, using our free agency is one of the most important doctrines we espouse. However, it is a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. I recently had to make one of the hardest choices of my life. My husband received revelation that I completely disagreed with. It affected me. It affected our children. It affected our finances. It affected what I regarded as my future happiness. I was mad. I wrestled with God for a confirmation for more than two months before He finally gave me an answer. The answer was again completely against what I wanted to do (notice the pronoun emphasis please). Now, here comes the hard part. Yes, I had the free agency to go against what the Lord asked me to do…but at what price? I would never want to go against His will. I relented…feeling cornered by the Lord and my husband, but hopeful that someday I would ultimately be blessed for the decision. How do we manage the fine line between obedience and our own choice? I felt like fortune’s fool.

At the end of this rendition of the play something unusual happened. Let me set the stage (ahem) for you. Romeo is dead in the Capulet tombs. He has drunk from the poison vial and fallen to Juliet’s side. She has awakened to find her love dead. She bemoans her fate in a short soliloquy and then reaches for the poison. There is not “one drop” left for her. She tries to kiss the poison off of Romeo’s lips. After she kisses him, Romeo GASPS AND SITS UP! At this point, you should have heard the response from the audience. I lurched to the front of my chair. I thought that perhaps the director had changed the ending! Oh, how everyone in that audience all hoped that Romeo was really alive and Juliet could rush him to the emergency room to get his stomach pumped! For a brief moment, stars jolted and turned and the world spun a different way. Our hopes were short-lived, however, when Romeo slumped back over and his eyes rolled back in his head. We were tricked. The lovers’ fate was sealed all along.

Have you ever had to make a choice you did not want to make because you felt it was the Lord’s will? Did it turn out well for you? Have you ever felt like you were set on a course that could not be altered? Did you ever wish to “defy the stars,” but were unable to change the course you were on?

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