Reverently and Meekly Now

Have you ever had those moments where you just beat yourself up over things in the past? You just get to thinking and you say to yourself way to go, self... you screwed that one up. I'd been having that with the past few days, more intensely this morning as I was getting ready to go to church. I tried to get out of my funk because I had 4 darling 3 year olds I had to play with for 2 hours in Primary and I needed to be in a good mood. When my family and I got to the chapel, I looked over my mom's shoulder to see what was on the program and saw that for the Sacrament hymn, we were singing Reverently and Meekly Now. That hymn has become my favorite over the past year and a half or so. One of my former roommates had pointed out that a sister missionary in her mission observed that it was the only hymn in the hymnboook written from the Saviors perspective. I immediately fell in love with it and have treasured it as it has helped me through many hard days.

As we sang it today, I tried to pay attention to the words that were in the hymn and I love it more now. I especially love the last 2 verses of the hymn because it really talks about the relationship that the Savior wants to have with each of us and how we need to become like him.

Bid thine heart all strife to cease;

With thy bretheren be at peace.

Oh, forgive as thou wouldst be;

E'en forgiven now by me.

In the solmen faith of prayer

Cast upon me all thy care,

And my Spirits grace shall be

Like a fountain unto thee

At the throne I intercede;

For thee ever do I plead.

I have loved thee as thy friend,

With a love that cannot end.

Be obedient I implore,

Prayerful, watchful evermore,

And be constant unto me,

That thy Savior I may be.

I am so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ and for all that He does for me. I'm grateful for His constant love and continual guidance even when I fumble here and there. I'm grateful for the Atonement and the amazing gift it is in my life. I'm continuing to understand the fulness of the Atonement and how better to become like the greatest Example we all have to follow.

So This Is Love

This is my boy and he is pretty fantastic! As I mentioned before, he is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; more specifically he is in the North Carolina Charlotte Mission, spanish speaking (he's pretty legit!). He has been serving for a very looooong time. Almost 18 months! Yeah long time but he is even more perfect for me than he was before he left, which I thought could NEVER happen. This man of mine has grown so much emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I never thought that a relationship or love could be like this... never knew it was possible or if it was, that I'd never be the lucky one to find it. I honestly thought that I would be single for the rest of my life, be a highly successful chef and restaurant owner and have a dog, and be completely happy! Oh how I was sooo wrong! Anyway... I didn't mean to go off about how much I love this guy, but to show off how much I'm spoiled every week! TJ has been gone for close to 78 weeks and I have close to 100 letters, cards, notes, and packages from him. Letter Day, aka Thursday, is the best day of my week! Every single week and pretty much everyone whow knows me and my situation, knows that you don't detain Marlee for very long on Thursdays... she needs her letters like people need coffee in the morning. Anyways, bless my mother's heart, she has been the one to get my letters every week for the past almost 3 months and ALWAYS places his letters on my pillow for me to read when I get home late from school.

This week, due to my brothers' graduation (congrats dude!), I was the one to get MY letter from my Sweetheart. And this is what I saw:

He makes my heart happy :) I love him mucho! And I've come to LOVE stickers on his envelopes! The best idea I've ever had for his letters!

So since I got out of school earlier than usual, I decided to take the opportunity to go to the temple for this week and I couldn't help but think about him. I absolutely LOVE the peace and calm that can be felt in the temple, it truly is unlike any other place on earth. I am so happy and excited to go to the temple and be sealed to this sweet man of mine for time and eternity. To have him as my one and only through the tests of life will be the sweetest blessing I can imagine. I was worrying a bit earlier in the week about marriage with my crazy occupation I've chosen and if we'll "make it;" in this weeks letter, he wrote concerning these crazy worries I was having this week (which he didn't know about) "the thing is, Babe, that we don't have to be perfect to never get divorced. If we did, we wouldn't stand a chance... I promise I won't let you go, as I'm sure you won't want me to. We're going to be just fine, Darling Love. I promise." That boy. I don't know how he does it. He's my happiness. My battery is fully recharged to take on another week with my Honey so far away. That's it, the mush is over :)

The Secret Ingredient...

Sometimes the only thing that makes sense in life, is food. Food doesn't yell at you to be faster, cleaner, more efficient; doesn't breathe down your neck when the tickets start falling off the crowded board on a Saturday night dinner rush; it doesn't worry about labor or keeping food cost down. All it needs is skillful hands and a passionate heart to love it and create it into a masterpiece. Food is patient and submissive when a knowledgable hand is guiding it into the desired form it needs to take on. Food becomes whatever the creator wants it to become. Today I came to realize that in some aspects, people are similar. I'm similar.

For the last month, I have been struggling at my new job. I've set my standards high for myself and I cannot accept any less. When I fall short, I begin to question myself... my abilities, my talents, my decisions, my everything. I can't seem to be fast enough, clean enough, efficient enough, be able to juggle ten tickets at the same time, mutlitask well enough. I'm not good enough. Today I broke down at work. The first time I ever cried at work. I began to wonder what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? I'm not able to juggle my to-do list, keep a clean station, and look after another station until my relief shows up. I'm not good enough. That last phrase echoed in my mind for the last hour of my shift; add that ontop of intense stress, no sleep and no food and I just cracked. I hurriedly left work to the comfort of my car so that I could release all that I had built up inside... that monster that I had let fester for over a month. After some consolation, I had been reminded that I was good enough. Although I was too hard on myself, that was what was going to separate me as the CHEF from the cooks. I am going to make a great chef someday, at least that's the lie I've been told.

I've come to the stark discovery that everyone... and I mean EVERYone in this industry is insane. I'm not meaning the Webster definition of doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result; I mean, we're out of our minds and we know it. I have literally cut half of my fingernail off; I have burn marks riddling my arms from hot bread pans, hot pig grease, or just plain hot things. My feet have ran away to find a less abusive owner; my knees belong to an 80 year old woman, and my back just hangs out and reminds me of my 10 hours shift in which I just got slaughtered. Because of my schedule, my sleep is shot, I'm lucky if I get 5 hours. I hardly eat ( a starving cook... the irony), in fact my body now freaks out when I feed it. And this is nothing compared to what other cooks and chefs experience. WHO in their right mind would do this??? Nobody! Tis why we're all insane. In the midst of it all, the pain, the discomfort, the frustration, the stress, normal people would ask "why are you doing this to yourself? Are you sure you want to do this the rest of your life?"

And I've thought about it... I've wondered if I could escape the insanity that consumes my life and manifests itself on the plate. And I've come to discover, I could never do anything else with my life. Not that I am incapable of doing another trade or don't have a vast amount of varying skills, but nothing else would answer the call that is inside of me like the banging of pans against the stoves, the rustle of non-skid shoes against stone floors, the constant yelling of "Corner!" "Behind! Knives" "Heard that!" (any and all explicitives I could do without.), the dreaded sound of the tickets being printed and ripped from the machine, the furious tapping of knives against plastic boards, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the stress that comes from putting this

on the plate in order for me to eventually have

my own restaurant. My insanity and my perfectionist-ism. That's the secret ingredient for me to be the best chef out there.

First Ever

So I'm guessing this is my intro. I've never blogged before. Ever. And for the longest time, I never knew why sooo many people got into it... until recently. Now for some reason, I have this... desire, I suppose, to be a lemming and have a blog as well. So here it goes. This is the insight into how my mind works. I'll try to be insightful and profound on occasion, but really, I want to just put my random thoughts and feelings out there on anything that I might feel to be intriguing or has stood out to me during the day, week, month, or any frame of time. WARNING: this blog will have A LOT of pictures of food on it! I really will try not to make this a food journal but cooking is my passion and the reason I am going to school.

Here's a little about me. My name has 3 M's in it... pretty cool huh :D I've always thought so. Well... that is until I get married and a special boy of mine decides to ruin the flow I've got going on. I am the oldest child of my parents marriage and I have a younger brother who is graduating high school this week. I am on the home stretch of culinary school and will be graduating this September (holla)! I am in LOVE with food. I love playing with it, shopping for it, cooking it, eating it... you name it, I love it! I love knowing what food does to the body and I hope to eventually attend Johnson and Wales and get my BA in Culinary Management with a focus in Nutrition! We'll see how that pans out!

The FIRST love of my life's name is TJ Brady and is serving a mission for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and comes home in 6 1/2 months! I couldn't be more excited to have him home. I have a feeling a story time will be needed soon. I will post pictures of him on here whenever I can steal them from the blog his family is keeping for him while he's gone! He is my happiness and the main motivation I have to keep going on day to day. He's wonderful and somehow seems to spoil me on a weekly basis from over 2,000 miles away and has been since the day he left! I still don't know how I managed to live the first 19 years of my life without this amazing man by my side! I'm truly a better person because of him! I love him so very much.

That's about it for now! I must now get some rest for my long day at work tomorrow! I'm excited to keep this blog and have stories to share with all of you that choose to follow!