Hi dear friends!

As many of you already know, I recently decided to lay Lemmony Things to rest and I have started a new blog called These Mountains We Climb.

With lots of changes in my life, I decided it was time for a clean slate and a new chapter.

That being said, I sure have loved blogging on Lemmony Things and more so than that, I have loved meeting all of you, hearing your stories, making new friends, and learning from so many of you through your comments, messages, and blogs that you keep. I’m so so so incredibly blessed to have found that. I love all of you–seriously I do! 🙂

I would love nothing more than for you to continue with me and follow my new blog. We may not agree on everything (that’s what makes life fun) but I think we can all find common ground in our core beliefs of family, God, love, joy in the good times, and faith through the tough times.

These Mountains We Climb will continue the mission of Lemmony Things, just in a different kind of way. But the heart of it–just like Lemmony Things–is to bring us all together, to shift our perspectives toward the good, and to find common ground despite differences.

Thank you again for reading, encouraging me, and teaching me. I hope to see you over at These Mountains We Climb–and I hope to keep hearing from you!

You can follow my new blog here>> https://thesemountainsweclimb.com/

Dear Dad,

I write this from underneath my Christmas tree.

You read that right. Under it. Well, you remember. When I was a kid I’d lay on my back and look up through the Christmas tree, mesmerized by the lights and the way it looked even more beautiful from that upward perspective. I used to fall asleep doing it and you’d carry me to bed. I haven’t done this in a while.

But I am this year.

I thought you might want to know too that Jingle Bell Rock came on the radio a few days ago in the car and instead of crying as I relived the memory of dancing to it in your arms as a kid, I turned it up. I smiled. I even started to laugh. It didn’t really hurt as much.

The food has tasted better this year. The conversations have been easier. The Christmas movies, one after another as I cozy up with hot drinks and soft blankets, have brought Christmas magic instead of Christmas mourning. We decorated the tree and strung the lights and watched a Christmas parade, complete with fake snow and dancing nutcrackers. And my heart was warm.

Each Christmastime, Dad, I find myself writing a blog about how it is without you and how the years are going by since you left us beside a tree and a dozen Christmas globes. I’ve written out my grief, my desire to have you back, my love for you and all you instilled in me at Christmastime. Each time this season I recognize where I’m at in my journey, and it helps. But this year I felt the need to write to YOU, a message scrawled out and hopefully a message that can make it’s way to Heaven. It will be the only and last one I write to you because, frankly, I think it’ll be enough. My heart just needed it. A message to share with you, the first love of my life. Not really a blog meant to be groundbreaking or different or even wise, but a letter to Heaven all the same.

Life has changed since you’ve been gone, Dad.

I find myself clinging to a whole different kind of faith. Praying in a different way. Seeing the world through a new type of lens. Accepting people and beliefs and lifestyles and opinions the way you always did. I find myself more open to truth.

I find myself a little bit more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Because who knows what they might be going through.

I find myself a little braver, a little sturdier, a little wilder at times and willing to just let life happen and to have fun in the process.

I find myself with the second love of my life.

The one you always talked about–the one that comes eventually in life for a girl, right after her Daddy of course.

The one that sticks.

His name is Jeff.

I think that a world without you in it hurt far worse when it was because the greatest love I’d ever had in my life died that December 9th in a bed of a dimly lit room. It hurt far worse before I met my best friend, the love of my life who repaired some of the damage and filled some of the holes and made the choice to love me so much that it stands in direct comparison to the love I got from you.

And I know that makes you smile–when you decide to peek in from time to time. Before you left me you told me your fears that you’d be ruining Christmas. That I’d feel alone. That I wouldn’t have someone there to watch over me the way you could. Don’t worry, Daddy. Not now.

The thing is, Christmas has indeed changed. Of course it has. I miss you still so much that it will hit me ever so often, enough to take my breath away. I miss you because you’re the first man I ever loved with all my heart. From the moment I opened my eyes you were the one to dance with me, to teach me, to guide me through growing up–even during the tough moments. You held the back of my bike and swam with me in the ocean and laughed at all the parts in the movies that I did. You were the one to watch me get ready for prom, to cry in my hair when you said goodbye outside my college dorm, to read all my stories and hang all my artwork and love me through all my mistakes. I miss you because you taught me how I deserve to be loved.

And this Christmas, as I look up through our tree limbs and watch the sparkle of white on silver, and as I hear the faint melody of Bing Crosby from my computer swooning about a white Christmas, I have everything I could possibly need, even without you here.

Even without you here with me physically, Dad, I think I’ve arrived at a Christmas where I found what you’ve always wanted for me. I think I’ve seen the face of God through the real friends who have stuck around through some of the hardest trials I’ve endured this year and through the laughter of the little girl I already love as my own. I think I’ve heard the voice of God through the carols I used to turn off and the sound of the door opening as the second love of my life comes in from a day of work. I think I’ve held God in my arms at least a dozen times and I’ve felt him in my prayers much more than that even. I think I’ve seen life come to fruition in vibrant color in so many different ways, bringing with it new warmth, new adventures, new reasons to be grateful.

Even without you here.

The thing is, Dad, I survived. I lived through three years without you. I went from existing to living to thriving to having my arms so full of blessings that I wanted to throw it up in the air and have you sift through every single one so I could hear you laugh again and tell me how happy you are for me.

I’m beyond blessed to be three years down the road now with a heart strengthened and conditioned and repaired with everything I think you were scared I might never earn back.

I’m beyond blessed to have loved you first, Dad. And I wish you could meet my second. I know you’d love him and even be super proud of his mad light-hanging skills and dedication to your Seahawks and the way he seems to laugh at my dorkiness the way you did. Yes, that man actually does exist outside of you. Go figure.

Someday I know we all will be together when the fates allow. But for now I find complete peace right here under my Christmas tree, loving the present moment I’m in and not wanting to be anywhere else other than right here.

Because right here is a good place to be, even if it means being without you for a while.

It really is a wonderful life, Dad. 

Merry Christmas.

Love,

One of the loves of your life.

Dearest friend,

It’s midnight and I can’t sleep.

That’s because just an hour ago my phone buzzed and I saw it was a message from you. I was excited to hear from you, but after reading it, my smile fell.

You see, it was a really good day. I had a successful day at work, I have a four-day weekend up ahead of me, and I just got done posting some fun pictures of my wonderful boyfriend and I on Facebook and I was excited to show them off because he makes me super happy. It was all around a good day for lots of simple reasons.

But then I read your message. To protect your identity and not give away who you are or what you mean to me, I won’t share it word for word or share any details about you. But in your message you said that in a couple of my pictures I’ve posted recently you’ve noticed that I’m not wearing my temple garments. You said my light has gone out and it makes you “immeasurably sad”.

“I looked up to you,” you said. “I saw you as this strong, spiritual woman who had faith like the iron rod, strong and true. Someone I can look up to and say ‘If she can make it through these crazy hard trials, then I can make it too.’ It breaks my heart to see another dear friend who was so strong in the church to only fall away…”

I’m not sharing your words to bring you shame. In fact, your message isn’t the first I’ve received from other well-meaning or not so well-meaning people within the church. But your message broke the camel’s back because I care about you and thought that I should share my thoughts on this when I usually just don’t respond because of my fear of hurting feelings or creating a deeper problem.

The thing that makes me the most sad about this message and others messages I’ve gotten is you put me in the past tense.

I want to assure you, dear friend, that my worth, my character, my strength, my passion, and my love is not past tense. It is anything but.

You’re correct that in a couple pictures I’ve posted you can tell I’m not wearing garments. Although that’s a personal subject that shouldn’t be speculated upon by anyone other than the person wearing them, I will tell you this. You’re right. I suppose I could go into the reasons why I’m not wearing my garments in those few pictures, what I was doing at that moment, or detail my church attendance to put your mind at ease–but I won’t. Because I’ve learned that proving myself is a waste of time and I don’t believe in fighting back to preserve some fractions of “worth” that I feel might have been stolen from me.

My dear friend who I have loved for many years–I know you’re disappointed in me. You’ve watched my life change drastically, witnessing my divorce within a church that doesn’t often have them. You’ve watched me move states and change jobs and expand my horizons with new friends and experiences and a new love. You’ve seen me go through a lot and it’s probably set you on edge and you believe that now I’m a lost cause, fallen away like some others that you’ve seen before. Suddenly the woman who propped you up, inspired you to be better, loved you through your own hard times, and showcased strength in the past is just a shadow now in a hollow grave of the past. You probably believe that I no longer love my church. You probably feel sadness that the golden image I once portrayed is somehow tainted in your perspective–and part of me empathizes with you simply because I used to have that same mindset.

I used to want to be the golden image and not let anyone in to the corners of myself, where maybe it’s not so pretty. And I used to judge those who showed those dark corners themselves.

But I want to put your heart at ease by reminding you of what I still believe, regardless of the past tense Kayla who suddenly crumbled beneath you.

I believe in being honest. For too long I had to smile my way through pain, all the while saying “I will endure to the end” and not realizing that the Savior intends for me to have joy too. I was a martyr rather than the protagonist of my own amazing story. And all along I didn’t realize that I was being deceptive. Not only to those who saw the smile–but to my heart and a Heavenly Father who had a greater plan for me.

I believe in being brave. Taking chances. Saying the things that need to be said and doing the things that need to be done, regardless of fear or retaliation. Stepping out of your comfort zone to embrace your beautiful life and to find your plan and your joy.

I believe in real love. Not the kind of love that takes and takes and demands and selfishly controls, but the kind of love that gives and shares and fills every fiber of your being until you realize your face might crack with how long you’ve been smiling. I believe in the kind of love that is founded on friendship and loyalty and chemistry and selflessness–not the kind of love that is matched together based on similar religion, obligation, a timeline, or some self-made map.

I believe in simplicity. Simplifying the things we stress over, the things we let ourselves get worked up over. I believe in finding joy in the small things that so many overlook and overlooking the things that too many people bury their noses in while their lives pass them by.

I believe in freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of choice, freedom to discuss opinions and embrace those who are different. Freedom to discover new cultures, new ways of life, and to live according to one’s conscience without fear of judgment. I believe there is so much beauty that we quash and tune out simply because we wish to chain others to our ways of thinking or living rather than to watch them and appreciate them in their own elements.

I believe in friendship. In your letter you mentioned I might never want to talk to you again, and that’s okay but you’ll pray for me. I don’t believe in being that kind of a friend to you. I believe that regardless of our beliefs, regardless if you agree with how I’m living as a church member–we are meant to be friends. I am still the Kayla you used to look up to and gain inspiration from and I’m trying every day to be a better version of that. I love you deeply.

I believe in Christ. Above all, without hesitation. He is the reason I was able to make it through the darkest, most malicious storm of my life. He is the reason I smile a little bigger now and have a little more courage to speak up. He is the source of my blessings, my laughter, my dreams, and the deepest love I’ve ever felt in my life. He has given me hope when it felt desolate and has comforted me when others turned away. I believe in Him above all else.

I want you to know, my friend, that I’m grateful for your prayers. But I want you to be happy for me that I’m so happy.

We all have our own journeys, our own setbacks, and our own triumphs and we can often be mistaken if we misjudge or jump to conclusions on the heart or the goings-on of the lives of those around us when we don’t even have the whole story. We can damage those around us by putting their worth or their character in past tense or by expressing such disparaging disappointment when changes come or their lives become unconventional. You just never know what’s really going on. You never know what kind of tears they had to shed or what kind of thick skin they had to build to get to the point they’re at.

Don’t set them back.

We need each other. Let’s uplift, and cheer, and rise to our feet when we see others rise above the ashes. Let’s be better friends–the kind of friends who don’t step away just because of differences. The kind of friends who seek understanding rather than judgment, and who sit alongside each other rather than striving to stand above.

It’s a good reminder for me, too.

With all my love,

Your friend—still.

When I was in college I went on a date with a boy named Jason.

Jason was mentally disabled and often had a hard time forming words. But he smiled a lot–and he had no problem at all coming into the news station where I worked and asking me out on a date. I had no problem saying yes. He even brought my favorite kind of flower and I didn’t even know his name. He told me it was because they were yellow and the first time he saw me I had yellow earrings on.

Perfect.

The date was fun. We colored in the grass in a coloring book that he brought and he showed me his Star Wars collection that was quite impressive and would make George Lucas proud. After that we went to an ice cream parlor and he let me choose my favorite ice cream flavor. It was there, in that parlor, that three guys walked in and instantly started to watch us, laugh, and mock the way Jason talked amongst themselves.

I was totally distracted and my heart started to hammer.

Jason didn’t notice. He just smiled with chocolatey lips as he handed me my sherbet and counted change in his palm.

“It has to be a pity date.” one of the guys said in a loud whisper as we walked toward the door.

Jason heard that one.

I spun on a heel, spit out that it wasn’t a pity date and it was actually a very fun time, and we left. Jason was quiet until we reached the car and I thanked him for such a good time. He smiled, but he was sad.

I didn’t see Jason after that, and sometimes I wonder if I would have if things were a little different towards the end of that date. Sometimes I wonder if those words, regardless of how I counteracted them, took away his bravery for the future–when he saw another girl he’d want to color with or share some ice cream with. Sometimes I find myself thinking about Jason, hoping that he forgot those boys in the parlor, and that his Star War collection is being shared with someone else.

And it makes me want to be better. It makes me want to choose my words carefully, even when I don’t think someone can hear me. Because when it comes down to it, we’re all a little fragile.

We talk so much about inner strength and finding bravery to move forward confidently and not be affected by words or the action of others. We talk often about not being easily offended or taking what others say with a grain of salt. But something else that should be talked about is working to be the person who doesn’t offend. Who doesn’t say the words that changes someone’s life for the worse. Working to be kind.

For the last four years, prior to completely moving on and changing my life, I have felt the effect of words. I know firsthand how it feels to change, slowly but surely, and to get chipped away at due to sarcasm, attacks, bullying, or small comments that stain you and stick with you. I know how it feels to become someone totally different all because you’re living according to what someone says about you or thinks of you or even doesn’t like about you.

Regardless of strength or a tough exterior, we have the power to completely build up or destroy one another. With one fell swoop we can bring a man to feel empowered or to bring him to his knees without even recognizing it or seeing it in the way his eyes change.

As we move through this life, there are times where all we are made up of is as fragile as paper and all that’s holding us together is glue. Yet we become so quick to anger, so excited to judge, so ready to blast that horn and flip the finger and shake the daylights out of someone who is simply having a bad day. There’s so little mercy left.

No one likes to be called fragile but we indeed are. We walk with insecurities, weaknesses, heartaches, past abuses, and fears, holding them tight to our chest, vulnerable to be stabbed and prodded where it can hurt the most. We know we have them, yet we sometimes forget that others do too.

In one of my favorite hymns it so eloquently says,

“Who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly?

In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eye can’t see…

I would be my brother’s keeper; I would learn the healer’s art.

To the wounded and the weary I would show a gentle heart.”

Our world has enough people who are tough and bold and crass. We have enough people who are narcissistic and high strung and entitled. We need more gentle hearts. We need more healers and protectors. We need more people who go out of their way to be kind and complimentary and loving. We need more selflessness in this world filled with fragile, broken, and ever-growing souls.

Because if we gave each other the time, I can bet you that we’d all be friends and choose our words better. I guarantee those boys in the parlor would laugh at the way Jason beat-boxed to every single song on the radio and appreciate how he smiled all the time. And I guarantee his Star Wars collection would blow them away.

Just like it did for me.

Last night my dad hugged me.

It was in a dream of course.

But I needed it. I woke up, wiped my wet cheeks, and stared out the window to the streetlight that glared into the midnight hour. And I knew, right then and there, why I had been given that hug and that consolation that I’m loved.

My divorce was finalized just a week and a half ago but the journey isn’t over, of course. Far from it.

It’s been a trek of hearing people’s opinions, digesting what matters and what does not, reading messages that either make me sad or make me smile, and figuring out who is meant to stay in my life and who fell away. It’s been an experience unlike any other, an experience that has been refining me, strengthening me, and testing my weaknesses and my boundaries. I’ve felt pure joy for the first time in my life, watching as my heart grows strong and my smile a little more permanent. I’ve also felt what despair is.

I’ve looked in the mirror to see a better version of Kayla–regardless of the downpour of rain that’s hit my world within the past few months. A better Kayla formed from the fire.

And yet–even when you have found the life you love–there will be those who say it’s wrong. There will be brick walls that stand in your way and try to stop you completely.

Through this, most of all, I’ve learned a lot about my Mormon faith.

I’ve had people tell me that I should just leave my church because I’m changing so much. There have been those within the church who look at me sideways when I say I’m still Mormon, because my lifestyle no longer includes a temple marriage or a cute house on the corner of an Idaho street or a perfect life framed by perfect smiles. It’s unconventional now.

I’m not the “perfect” blogger with a “perfect” life and a “perfect” story. I’m not arm in arm with a priesthood holder husband or leading a cute primary class with him. Things have changed drastically and I’m walking a path that nobody expected Kayla to walk. I’ve had people say I’ve let them down, that I’m a disappointment–that the changes in my life weren’t expected from “someone like me”. And the judgments–oh the judgments. They have surely come…let me tell you.

And yet–I have come to love my religion more.

That might not make sense and at times it doesn’t even make sense to me. But it’s something that needs to be said and needs to be talked about. Since joining the Mormon church seven years ago I was on the side of the fence that never got judged or talked about. My life could be measured in visiting teaching visits, cute Sunday dresses, monthly temple trips, and fulfilled callings. I was one of the people looking out at those who struggle, those with addictions, those who are divorced or single parents, those who are homosexual, those who have lost their way in life–and although I felt a level of compassion, I never understood what it’s really like. Part of me, at times, would even judge. Just like those who are now looking in at me.

Never, not until now while I’m standing with those who are set apart from the status quo, have I realized that I haven’t truly understood my religion until now, when everything has been stripped from me and I’m working from the ground up again. Never have I truly understood until now the TRUE meaning of what it means to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It isn’t about fitting in or dressing the part. It isn’t about being the perfect housewife or raising the perfect kids. It isn’t about swallowing your struggles and wearing the smile that everyone expects from you.

It’s about the atonement. It’s about the moment that Jesus Christ cried to his Father in Heaven and carried a splintered cross up a hill just to cover your scars in his blood. It’s about carrying those who cry out for help and not being afraid to cry out yourself. It’s about serving–not because you’re fulfilling some monthly duty–but because you know how it feels to need help. This religion is about the basic truths that lie in the pages you continue to read, even when you’re completely alone and doubt every word. It’s about the prayers you say when no one is listening and the resolve to believe when everything in you wants to give up.

And it has nothing to do with anything else.

One of my favorite stories involving the prophet Joseph Smith is when he was helping an elderly woman in her yard who needed help. She said to him very sternly that he and his people are very kind, but that she’d have nothing to do with his religion. With a smile he simply said, “Well ma’am, you can say kindness IS my religion.”

We need to remember that.

We need to remember each other.

Since writing about my divorce I have been so blessed to have had countless people write to me about their own struggles, reaching out to not only uplift me, but to ask for advice or a word of encouragement. And although I fall short for giving the perfect advice, I know without a doubt that we can never fall so far away that we’re distant from the Lord’s love. Regardless of what people say or how you even feel about yourself, the Savior is real and He loves you all the same–exactly where you’re at.

The people within our churches–not just mine, but of all kinds–need to revamp their perspectives. We need to be better. We need to remember why we’re there and refocus on what it’s all about. We get so caught up in the culture of our congregations and the events and the responsibilities and the people we see every Sunday and although those things are positive and needed as well, we tend to forget the basics. We have a habit of forgetting that churches are hospitals for the sick and not meeting places for the perfect. And each of us are on our individual journeys that require love, attention, refinement, and lots and lots of grace.

I’m grateful for a struggle and a change in pace that opened my eyes to this. I wouldn’t have seen it any other way and I wouldn’t have recognized that I was so disillusioned and not truly getting the point.

Be careful with one another. He has entrusted us to each other. Just like my Dad offered within a dream that will probably always stick with me, we need to embrace one another more and set aside differences. We need to love.

THAT is the reason for your church and that’s what I’ve quickly discovered about my own.

HE is the reason I want to be better every day. HE is the reason I want to love better.

And HE is the reason that I stay.