For years, the idea of starting a blog has been spinning around my head. I've attempted a few times, but the sad attempts were quickly deleted after I realized how corny they actually were.
Now, after reading some of my favorite bloggers and receiving inspiration from them (shout out to my two favorites: the Witlogs and Chelannigans), I figured starting somewhere is better than never starting at all.
I made a goal a few years back to run a blog by the time I'm 25... and that deadline is quickly ticking closer and closer.... so here we go.
To say I'm stepping out of my comfort zone is a bit of an understatement, considering the last time I voluntarily wrote something longer than 3 sentences was... a letter to a missionary... a year and a half ago. And I'm proud to say that the last time I was forced to write anything of considerable length was just as long ago as I paid my final dues, took my diploma and ran for it.
The thing that brings me to write is a passion to help others. We all have struggles in our lives, and if in the process of struggling, we can help others along the way, then I think we're doing what God wants us to be doing.
I thought long and hard about what to name this blog. I didn't want anything I'd be embarrassed to have people read, or something I'd want to change in less than a month. Instead, I wanted a name that would depict my life in two words. Those two words are "Life Uphill."
These words were chosen from a quote by President Henry B Eyring, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He shares in a speech to students at Brigham Young University- Idaho in 2005, "My mother used to say to me when I complained that things were hard, 'If you are on the right path, it will always be uphill.'"
Life is hard. But I am a firm believer that there are different types of hard. There is the hard that we cause ourselves, by simply making dumb choices, and then there is the hard that is caused by living a righteous life.
God knows what we can handle. More often than not, he thinks I can handle more than I think I can. But that's the beauty of it. I must be doing something right if my life is not all rainbows and unicorns. God wants to refine me and make me more than I can ever imagine. So who I am to stand in the way of my creator who knows me better than I know myself. If he thinks that life uphill is the way to be living, I will gladly walk uphill.
Why?
Because I know my Savior is walking right next to me, sometimes carrying me, to the top of the hill where when I have done all that is required, God will say 'well done thou good and faithful servant... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' (Matthew 25:21)