Hello everyone!

This is my first time blogging. Ever. I have never really been into it. Until now. I have recently been inspired to start blogging. My name is Nicole. I'm 25, live in Utah and I am engaged to the man of my dreams! I moved to Utah last June with my friend Baily. I was born and raised in Idaho.

I wasn't sure how to begin my blog or what exactly to talk about. Then I realized I was inspired to start a blog to help inspire other people and I felt it would be therapeutic for myself :)

I don't want to start writing everything that has happened in my life. That would obviously be a lot of writing. And probably slightly boring. I also don't just want to talk about the struggles in my life. I want to talk about the struggles, the joys, the journey. Which is why my title is "My Journey of Hope, Faith, Love & Life". I hope that throughout my posts, people will feel inspired, loved and hopeful. Each day I am going to post to continue my story.

So here is my story.

Back in 2010-2011 I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. For any of you who know what Lyme disease is, it's very hard to diagnose, has more than 50 symptoms and is supposed to be common only back east. Well I had never traveled and never have been bitten by a tick, that I know of anyways. But somehow, I still got this terrible disease. Lyme disease can be very difficult to treat and of course every person responds to treatments differently so not all of the treatments who worked well for others, didn't work for me. After many treatments and doing things the "natural" way, I started slowly getting better. I was working full time as a Bridal Consultant and I loved it. I would still have some bad days, but not as often as I used to.

In June of 2012, I went through the Temple for the first time in Rexburg, Idaho. It was the greatest day of my life. I was not preparing to serve a mission or getting married. (Which are usually reasons why people receive their endowments.) I received mine, because I knew I needed to. A few months before I went through, I had a strong prompting that I needed to prepare to go to the temple. I felt like this is what I needed in my life and at the time, I didn't realize how much healing it would do. After going through the temple, I was feeling great. No matter if I felt sick or not, I didn't pay attention to it. I looked at everything in a completely different way. I loved going to the temple. I felt so peaceful when I went. I didn't worry about anything going on in the world. I felt so close to my Heavenly Father. I would try to go to the temple at least once a week. I was able to attend my sister's Sealing at the Salt Lake Temple that following October. It was amazing. And I realized that one day, I wanted to be sealed there too. There was something so special that was felt there that day. The following day, I started Foot Zoning school. This is something else that helped changed my life. I was learning how to  help other people by zoning their feet. These classes were once a month for two days. I looked forward to them every month. I became more and more positive about life. I was learning so much and blessings were pouring into my life. It was AMAZING. I was so grateful for everything and each day I woke up, I was so excited for the day and couldn't wait to see what blessings would come into my life.

Life stayed like this for a while. It was great. I knew I was becoming the person I was meant to be. At the time, I had been living with my mom for a while. During all these great changes in my life, Baily and I decided that we needed to move to Utah. I had never moved away from my family before. I had for college, but I still lived with my sister, so I had some family with me at all times. Because of all my health problems I had dealt with in the previous years, I became full of fear. I felt like I couldn't do anything on my own, because most times I couldn't. But I knew I had changed and my fear had been completely replaced with faith. I felt unstoppable at this point. I felt like I could conquer anything in the world. And I was also dating a super cute boy.. Who lived in Utah... Which had absolutely nothing to do with the fact of why I wanted to move to Utah ;) I decided to take this huge leap of faith and move to Utah with my friend. She transferred her nursing job and I got a job at Victoria's Secret as a Category Supervisor. I was so excited for this new journey in life! June 15, we finished packing up our things and headed to Utah!


This is all I'm going to write for today, but I will continue tomorrow! Thanks for following and have a wonderful day!