Who am I?????

What do you mean, WHO AM I???

Well, here it is - Sunday... again. And weeks have flown by since I last posted - mostly because I let life get in the way of life, and needed to take a rejuvenation break. But that's another post for another day... look for "When Life Takes Over" coming soon.

Two weeks ago, I was talking to Mr. Snicklebutt on the telephone, and he mentioned that a friend of ours who lives in Florida commented on our personal blog spot. His actual comment wasn't posted, but it was something along the lines of this: "Your wife needs to put more pictures of herself on the blog for people who don't know who she is." I laughed. Seriously. I am forever the photographer, and, as happens, never the photograph-ed. Not that I don't LIKE having my photo taken, I just find that I look extremely dorky if I hold the camera out in front of myself to take the picture. So I don't do it.

His comment, however, has made me think. Who AM I? Really. Do I know who I am? I've been thinking about it for the past week or so. What defines ME? What makes me, the person that I am today? Is it my childhood? Is it the experiences that I had as a missionary in Ukraine? Is it the fact that I am a wife and a mother? What makes me, well, ME? So I've been on a mental quest to define myself.

I was born in Alaska. I am the second oldest of seven children (5 girls, two boys). I play the violin. I love crayons. I considered myself to be a fairly decent student (terrible study habits, but a decent student nonetheless). I served a 19 month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Ukraine. I am a mother. I love KFC chicken. I like my eggs fresh, and fried over easy (unless I'm in a restaurant, then I ask for them to be fried over medium - that way they always turn out right, instead of just the wrong side of sunny side up; although I did go through that phase too...). I like living on a farm. I LOVE canning and preserving food. I am a master fudgeologist. I love making jam. I like hiking. I love making friends - even though it's not always easy for me. My favorite television shows are MONK and PSYCH - they just make me laugh. I collect miniature oil lamps. I love cooking on a wood stove. My ideal house is the one that I live in, and I hope NEVER to move. I love working with the Young Women of the church. I like to read. I enjoy scrapbooking, but more than that I just love getting together with friends for a great gab fest - even if I don't get anything accomplished, it's relaxing enough for me to just hang out with great women. I love learning. I love photography. My favorite food is Russian. I love my kids. My biggest pet peeve ever is people who come for dinner and graze before the rest of us have a chance to get to the table; it makes me feel as if they aren't really going to sit and enjoy the dinner with the rest of us - or as if they feel that they can take over a carefully planned meal and stuff themselves before the rest of us can try it. I love cooking.

And I could go on for hours with what I love and what really bugs me. My question, however, is this: "Do all the things that I like (or love) really define me? Are there other inner things that define to other people who I am?" My answer is a resounding YES! Above and beyond the fact that I am a daughter to two very wonderful people and a loving wife to a magnificient husband, I know beyond anything else who I really am, and it has very little to do with my likes and dislikes, my loves and my hates. More than anything else, I AM A DAUGHTER OF A HEAVENLY FATHER! He loves me. He wants me to succeed. He wants me to develop divine qualities that will help me to be like him. All of my likes and loves and dislikes and hates are qualities that I have that HELP to define me, but they are not me. They are a PART of me, but they are not me.

It's taken the last few years of my life for me to truly understand who I am. I was raised with the song, I Am a Child of God - and by two parents who taught me that I could do anything I set my mind to doing. It took, however, some difficult trials and some extreme heartache and pain before I truly understood what I had known all my life. I am a DAUGHTER; a CHILD of GOD! How wonderful is that??? During the most trying trial of my life, my Mother had the wisdom and the foresight to ask me, "What are you going to do now?" And without missing a beat, or truly understanding what I was saying, I said to her, "I don't know. Before I do ANYTHING, I have to find out who I am again. I have to take some time to just be me." And so I did. But I am just now understanding that what I REALLY did was to define qualities that help me to be happy and to be me.
Who we are is determined by our eternal potential and what we are aspiring to become - Gods and Godesses. I am especially grateful for the difficult times and trials and blessings and, dare I say it without being cheesy - PEOPLE who have helped to shape me into the woman that I am today. It is through all of those experiences that I have come to understand who I am. What I like and what I do is my role. I hope to play it with the same grace that I see other women of stature playing. And, one day, I hope that I can SEE in myself the woman that I know I am.

So, who am I? I am Mdme. Sloopy Snicklebutt. Daughter of a Heavenly King. What else is there???