ACCORDING TO ZAC

I had some thoughts while I was flying home yesterday from a great trip, so I spent some time typing them out. I want them to live somewhere more solid than my notes app, so here they are. :: I’m on a flight home from Buffalo, NY right now and was just jolted from my daydreaming by the thought “Pay attention to what you just lived.” For six days I traveled through the northeast to perform twice with Millennial Choir and Orchestra. Tanner Weigel, Mitch Gibson and Peter Burgoyne were here with me. We started in Boston, and it was beautiful (and hot). We sang in Symphony Hall, which was pretty neat. But before the performance we had a few days of sightseeing and so much laughter. I appreciate these men for their non-judgement and immense emotional understanding and support. While we each approach our lives in slightly different ways, there is camaraderie and love and care as I share my heart with them, the good and the bad alike. I can be my whole self with them, and that’s a gift. What g...

I grew up in a car loving family. If you need proof, my brother and I would fight over who got to read the new issue of Car & Driver  first when it showed up in the mail, I had a big collection of diecast model cars and Chevron Cars ( so cute! ), my uncle was a semi-professional racecar driver, and I still care a lot about liking what I drive and trying to keep my car clean. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked then that over the last 10-ish years the place where I've been most honest with God, and have subsequently made some big breakthroughs with Him, has been in my car. The breakthroughs haven't often been about a solution, but have often been because I've hit a point where I'm willing to pour it all out. It is certainly helped by the fact that I'm alone there and that I can pray out loud and do an ugly cry without my roommates hearing through our walls. But also, I'm somehow always coming from somewhere that I had been doing a lot of pondering, or a frie...

"You know everyone, don't you?" he said to me as we walked down the hall towards the clerk's office. I had just high fived someone that we passed walking the other way. I hadn't even thought twice about the gesture, it just felt normal. And yeah, I know plenty of people in my ward. I've been here for two-and-a-half years now, which I would hope is long enough to make some connections. But as I thought about his question over the course of the day, what I really think this new friend of mine was saying was this: "You really have a family here, don't you? You are loved here, aren't you?" And the more I thought about it, the more overwhelmed I was at the truth of what he was getting at. My life in Mesa has had some challenges, of course. We've all got them. But my time here has also been everything I never knew I needed, all thanks to the amazing people that I've been able to rub shoulders with. And when I really stop to think abo...

I’ve been reading a Mormon site called By Common Consent . It’s generally a place for honest introspection and spiritual questioning without disparaging anyone on either side of the theological issues facing Mormonism. I just read one article about the legacy of President Thomas S. Monson, who passed away in January. The author suggested that a lot of the big controversies the Church was involved in over the last several years might not have really been spearheaded by President Monson, and that he’s getting a bad rap for being the figurehead of the modern Church at the time that these situations were unfolding. Perusing the comments of articles such as these can prove dangerous. People say terrible things about our beliefs and about each other, depending on the site you might be looking at. The last thing I want is some online troll causing me to question my faith. I can do that all on my own without a stranger’s help. In a shocking twist, however, I was uplifted by one ...

Lately I have been really worried about my life. Like, waaaaaay more than usual. And I've been having some really intense emotional whiplash getting really  caught up in these episodes in which I think about all the negative things that might happen and why does everyone else have something that I don't have but want and blah blah blah . And then God throws me a bone and says, "Hey. I love you. No, really, I do. And it's going to be just fine. Trust me." And then I cry. And then I start the process all over again. Well, in today's installment of "I love you and CALM THE HECK DOWN" from above, I was blessed with this little gem: "[God] made your spirit strong and capable of being resilient to the whirlwinds of life. The whirlwinds in your [life,] like the wind against a young tree, can increase your spiritual strength, preparing you for the years ahead." — Neil L. Andersen It made me think of all of the hardships in my...

"I hate feeling broken," I said, as I sat in my car before work this morning. I had missed my normal morning prayer because I had slept in. I wanted to make sure to get a quick prayer in before I got started on the rest of my day. I didn't say much else, but I felt that God was near and that He gets why I feel this way. And I also felt that it would all be okay. I didn't even have to ask to feel better or anything, God just needed me to tell Him that I was hurting and He sent the good feelings and the calm and the love. This life can be so hard. We feel the need to live up to all these expectations that we set for ourselves, that society sets for us, and that God sets for us. The awesome thing is that He knows we can't do it all at once. We will stumble and fall and get so frustrated trying to be what we feel like we are supposed to be. I've learned that I just want to chase what God and I have worked out together to be my path. I get irritated that I can...

They say that if you've charted a course for a particular destination but you're off by even just one degree, you'll travel the requisite time or distance but end up many miles from your intended location. Human error can account for a lot of those moments in our lives—we make wrong career choices, a relationship goes bad, we ignore sound advice from those who know more than we do—and we learn from that. But what I'm consistently finding out is that sometimes Heavenly Father sets the bearings for our journeys, even though we think we're in control. Putting this into words is only hitting me now, but I see how this all started a number of weeks ago when an acquaintance from high school sent me a message on Facebook. This girl was three years younger than me and quite shy. A number of months ago she sent me a message thanking me for having been kind to her years ago. I was shocked she even remembered that I had spoken to her then. I'm just glad I was helpful...

“Hey, will you buy me a sandwich?” the stranger said as I stepped out of the crosswalk and up onto the sidewalk. I hadn’t seen him there, not because I was intentionally disregarding him for any reason, but because I had just come out of the post office and was deciding which way was best to walk back to work during my lunch break. Several things went through my mind really quickly.   First: "I don’t really feel like I have room in my budget to be buying lunch. I intentionally skipped lunch today, both for money and fitness reasons."  Then: "This reminds me of an experience Jenna had, and the way she handled it was so inspiring.   I should emulate that." And last: "The man at the post office just wished me a Merry Christmas as I left the counter. What kind of Christian do I want to be?" This man wasn’t dirty and disheveled like many homeless people, but he wore mismatched clothes and carried nothing with him. The longing in his voi...

A couple of weeks ago I decided to use my freedom as an unemployed adult to drive to Utah and spend some time with the folks that I really love up there. This is Jenna! She is the reason this blog still gets updated, and was the first person I met up with. A few thoughts about the trip: Driving about 25 hours all by yourself in the matter of just a few days gives you way  too much time for self reflection. Northern Arizona and a lot of Utah are both exceptionally beautiful. There's just something different in the air in Provo. I had a bunch of flashbacks to the MTC, and I couldn't shake the nostalgia while I was there. I couldn't decide if that was good or bad. I have the greatest friends ever. Panguitch, Utah doesn't have McDonald's, but it has  gorgeous sunsets and creepy motels . Anyway, the thing that has been on my mind ever since the trip was a quote I heard on a podcast while I was driving the stretch of I-15 between Provo and Beaver (I lov...

They say that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade, right? Personally, I like sweet more than sour, so maybe lemon bars would be a better analogy for me, but the thought is all the same: my life isn't perfect, but it's coming around based on my own efforts. I've been thinking this a lot  the last few days: (I'm rereading The Fault in Our Stars , where this gem of a quote comes from, and it's perfect. Minus the cancer and tragedy. But seriously, it's so good.) Anyway, the awesome part about me saying "WHAT IS THIS LIFE?" this week is that it has been about good things. As in "how the heck did I get so dang lucky?!" I mean, today is my birthday, and that's pretty cool. I've really felt a lot of love, even through generic Facebook wall posts from people I haven't spoken to in a long time. But even better is the love I have felt through the people closer to me (both emotionally and geographically) who have texted, c...

I felt like I was a pretty sensible teenager and that I kept my angst to a tolerable level. I doubt that anyone that knew me in middle and high school would agree with that, but I felt like I was reasonably well-adjusted. Any leftover angst that I didn't use throughout my teenage years manifested itself today when I got laid off from my job. Yep. You read that right. Laid off. I should say right here that I was very blessed to have that job at all. It enabled me to finish my degree, have really excellent health benefits, etc. Not to mention the fact that I really love a lot of the people in the Lunar and Planetary Lab. They're so great. But things are less great when two people you really like have to break the news to you that you're out. It was never the place I thought I'd settle and stay for the remainder of my working life, but it was a steady paycheck and a generally good place. I should also say that getting laid off is a pretty common thing i...

Cheryl Strayed  is a writer and generally interesting human being from what I've been able to glean from the little I know about her. She wrote a memoir called Wild  that was then adapted into a major motion picture starring everybody's sweetheart, Reese Witherspoon. Though I haven't read her memoir, I have read synopses of her memoir (and accompanying film). She has led an interesting life, full of passion, struggle, despair and joy, among many other things. One thing she has had to deal with is losing her mother. Cheryl was in her 20s, if I remember correctly, and her mother was only 45. It was a crushing blow to her. Now, many years later, she has compiled a series of her most insightful tidbits about life when she was working as an anonymous advice columnist named Sugar. My lovely friend Kristina sent me this book in the weeks after my mother's death in November 2014, hoping that it would help me find ways of coping with my recent tragedy and be able to move for...

(Context: my wonderful mother passed away in early November 2014 from cancer. The diagnosis a year previously had been shocking, but her decline was not. That has been one of many sources of great emotion over the last year. This entry will be about coping with the loss of her, but it could very well be applied to the setbacks we face in life, whether self-inflicted or otherwise.) Life is such a crazy thing. The range of emotions I have felt in the last year or so would take days to explain completely, and the emotions I've felt in the last few days alone have had me up and down. Fortunately enough, I started going through old journal entries this afternoon and I found one that was really encouraging. Last March I had just finished reading a silly book called Allegiant . There were a lot of things I didn't like about the book, but if there was anything redeeming at all about the hundreds of pages I read it was the core message delivered at the very end: "We can be...

I told you all once about how I went to Kentucky . I told you about how my entire life was changed because of those two years that I dedicated to serving others. I can't believe that it has been (almost) 9 months since I returned home from that remarkable adventure. Life has presented me with challenges, but lots and lots of blessings, too. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my friends in Kentucky or something that I experienced there, but today the reality of that time of my life being over was so potent. Today I decided to clean out my closet. I removed tons of white shirts from hangers -- shirts that I wore everyday for two years as I represented Jesus Christ as a missionary. I cried thinking about how I will never have the chance to live that again, and what an intense, life altering time that was for me. My heart was full of thanks for the special blessings God saw fit to grant me -- the blessing of sending me to Kentucky, where he knew I needed those people as m...

A long time ago I wrote a post about the way my life had changed in a short period of time. I talked about how six months previously I had faced a trial that scared me a lot, but that I conquered it. I mentioned how before that trial I faced something else a few months previously and managed to take care of it and learn a lot in the process. It was cool to chart my growth. Well, dear blogging world, I took a two year hiatus. I missed blogging and writing a lot. Seriously, writing is just good for the soul, even if no one reads what you put down on paper. So, here I am, ready for a little recap of life and what I've learned. Unfortunately, there just isn't time (and I don't have the energy) to tell you about all of my adventures in the last two years. I would, however, like to tell you a little about what I've learned. I hope you enjoy it: On September 7, 2011, I entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT. It was a weird day to say the very, very least....