This blog is a space for me to document my passion for and journey with personal growth. Here is an explanation of why this blog is called Lo Dawn.
When I was trying to come up with a name for this blog, I thought about light. Personal growth and improvement brings light to my life. It makes dark things lighter and light things brighter.
I was talking to J about this and asking him for name suggestions that had to do with light. I threw out a few and one of them had the word dawn in it. He told me that he thought the name should come from an interesting personal story. I told him that dawn actually has a lot of personal meaning to me. So he suggested Lo Dawn. This name has significance and meaning, but also has a playful and not too serious side. So that’s what I decided on.
A funny thing is that when J and I were first married, we would make up songs to sing to our family members on their birthdays. Our “band” was called the Lodown. (Lo for our last name.) So this blog name reminds me of that. 🙂
But also, after J suggested the name, I looked up the definition of Lo and this is how it is defined: used to draw attention to an interesting or amazing event. I like that. I want to draw attention to dawn. I have had a lot of dawn moments in my life. Moments where I felt dark, confused, alone, afraid, etc. But then something crossed my path (sometimes this took minutes, sometimes years,) and I started to see the light. I am sure that I will continue to have many more of these illuminating experiences throughout my life. I was actually writing a journal entry a few minutes ago and happened to write the phrase “it dawned on me.” It’s interesting that we use that phrase when we are talking about an enlightening moment and how we were able to see something more clearly. Dawn. What an amazing thing dawn is. What a gift.
Here is a very personal and transformative experience that I had with a figurative dawn…
So some people know this about me, and some people don’t. It was something that I was usually not necessarily comfortable broadcasting to everyone because I viewed it as an embarrassing weakness of mine. For several years, I had a lot of fears around driving. I don’t think that I’ve ever loved to drive, but I don’t remember being too stressed about it when I was in high school. I did live in a pretty small town and didn’t do much freeway driving or anything though. Anyway, then I went to college and didn’t have a car so I didn’t drive. I did drive during the summer after my freshmen year when I was back home in Missouri, but it was just small town driving again.
When J and I got married, I had access to a car again (which I hadn’t had when I was single in college.) The thing is, it was a stick shift car and I didn’t know how to drive it. So combine not doing much driving over the past few years (and living in a much bigger city than where I grew up) with a car that I didn’t know how to drive, and you get a recipe for fear and stress for this risk-averse girl. J tried to teach me how to drive the car when we were first married. I practiced here and there but the fear inside of me just kept building more and more over time. I did some minor driving, but for the most part, J did pretty much all of the driving.
Then we moved back to Utah. I continued to drive a little bit here and there but if certain things were involved like the freeway, questionable weather, higher traffic areas, places I hadn’t been to before, etc, I would avoid driving at all costs. If I were just staying home by myself everyday and didn’t have any kids, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But having kids often means having a lot of appointments, and needing to buy groceries, and running errands and such. Over the years of this trial of mine, J had always been super patient with me. Of course, it was frustrating for him at times because he had to take time out of his busy schedule sometimes to help me drive the kids to appointments and such, but he rarely complained because he knew how hard it was for me. I often felt really bad though and I didn’t like that I was adding extra stress to his load.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Yesterday was R’s blessing day. I think that I have always gotten a little bit emotional during each of our kids’ blessings, but this is the first one that I remember having real tears falling down my face. It was a really touching blessing. Especially because some of the things that J mentioned were really close to my heart. J blessed her with the strength of an angel to lift others in need. He also blessed her that her light would break forth as the morning. I’ve mentioned before why the angel part is significant to me. The light of the morning part is significant because R’s name means “Dawn.” A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about how fitting that name meaning is for R since I feel like she was one of my angels that was helping me to overcome my driving fears. It’s like she was the light at the end of the tunnel of darkness. She was the dawn after a dark night. She was the dawn of a brighter day.