Winning The Day

A friend shared with me the journey she is experiencing with her weight loss.  She expressed her frustration that after working hard through one year she gained about half of it back the next year.  Her frustration was clear and while trying to find meaning in her experience she realized that had she not experienced the work and weight loss she would be in a far more difficult situation than she now finds herself.

The message I took from this is the need to see what we have gained from our experiences and not what we have lost. For example, my friend gained endurance, strength and a knowledge that she is capable of loosing the weight.  I've thought about this SO much over the past couple months.  I realized that part of my problem lately is my inability to see beyond what I have lost and what is currently missing from my life to what I have gained.

One of the biggest things I have gained over the past few years is the understanding that I can do things I didn't think I could.  Chanllanges come, emotions are strangling at times but I am still here.

I promised myself I'd take it easy in my first year of grief and not take on anything new (because it would be too difficult).  In that first year I adopted an 80 lb dog and trained it (he's still a work in progress), ran an MLM for six months (learned a ton), taught a two-year old to speak and sing, wrote 8,000 words for a book project that stalled (who knows how that will end), traveled to visit family 1,600 miles round trip five times without a DVD player in my car, taught my second child piano lessons, was the treasurer for my littlest son's preschool group and taught monthly art classes to my son's third grade class. Way to "take it easy."

I spent quite a bit of time learning about the grieving process and even learned to take baths and started hanging out at the tennis club, taking up a sport I thought I had given up for good when I chose to be a mother. I've reconnected with old friends and made some new ones who I sometimes invite into my life during the really hard stuff, the incredible thing is we're still friends after they've been there with me. I've learned the power of forgiveness and inviting people into our lives even when they may hurt us.

The struggles, the challenges, the hard stuff can consume our lives.  It is only when we choose to look for the good that we find ourselves feeling blessed. It's when we feel the good stuff more than the bad that we win the day.

"Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it." -Joseph Smith Jr.



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When Cancer Came

Seasons of Growth

Each Februrary we watch and wait for spring.  There is usually a warm spell sometime during this month that lasts for a week or two and gets everyone excited for Summer.  Then March and April come with their gray clouds and persistant rain and after a while one looses all hope that warm weather will ever return.  (We even had two days when it snowed a bit in the past week.)  Anyway, the flower bulbs planted in my front flowerbeds are eagerly growing despite the gray and I can't explain how much joy I find in watching them poke their first leaves up through the hard, cold ground.  The crocous are always first in bloom and we have purple blossoms right now, they will be followed by the daffodils and early tulips.  Before long the late tulips and irises will be showing their colors and then we move into Summer. 
These flowers steadily growing is one of the things that gets me through the gray months here and got me to thinking about myself a little.  In a way we are all like these bulbs.  They carry a great amount of potential but they are not beautiful when you plant them (usually in Novemeber).  It seems odd to be planting in a time when it's cold and they stay tucked into the ground dormant for several months before the warmth and water cause them to send their first leaves up toward the sun.  Within several more weeks they are blossoming and I'm loving their colorful display.  The flowers pass and the greenery stays for several more weeks before dying off and the bulbs go dormant once again, waiting for the next warm spell.   The next year they begin to divide and create more bulbs and within a couple years there are four or five bulbs from the original one.
In our lives we too have seasons of growth.  I wish I could understand it better but there seem to be times when the Lord looks down and says, I think it's about time for you to do some growing.  These growth times can be filled with frustration and difficulting, questioning and searching for answers but as long as we are reaching for the Son (of God) we will bear beautiful blossoms.  These are the fruits of our labors, the lessons we learn through adversity and can be shared with others.  The newness of the lesson passes (as do the blossoms) and we move on with our lives enjoying the confidence that the new growth has produced.  Eventually the lessons become more internal and maybe we feel they're dormant for a while but that strength has become part of us and though we might not be aware we continue to grow quietly in our hearts and minds until it's once again time to reach for the Son.

Fire of Faith

The following story was shared in a church meeting I attended last Sunday:  We went up for a youth winter camp and our first task in the early morning was to light the fires in the lodge.  There was a fire place at each end with a wood shed.  I chopped up some kindling, threw some logs on top, added a littel diesel fuel and lit the fire.  I headed for the other end and found there was no axe to chop up kidling so I just put the logs in, added a larger amount of diesel and lit the fire.  We went out to bring in all the gear and food for the weekend and before long I noticed the 2nd fire was out.  I applied a generous amount of diesel and lit it again.  The fire burned really hot and after a while we were all set up and the fire was out again.  I finally gave in, got the axe, cut some kindling and started the fire for the third time.  We had some extra time so we set off for a snowmobile ride and were gone for quite a while before coming back.  When we came back the fires had burned up all the wood and were out.  The coals were out so we added logs and fanned the embers until the fires were blazing again.

In my life the analogy of faith being like a fire has always resinated with me.  It seems when we are searching to build our faith that it does burn within our hearts.  We may have some huge, faith pormoting experience that makes our faith burn bright for a while (like the diesel) but unless we are maintaining our faith through prayer, study and service that big experience will not sustain our faith and like the 2nd fire will burn hot for a bit but will not cause a lasting fire.  It is through our small acts each day that we maintain the fire of our faith. 

We may even have times after that fire has burned bright that the fire burns out through neglect but those embers are still burried deep and we can build again.  I know that when we act in faith our faith will grow until it will again burn bright in our lives and it is a wonderful feeling.  When we live with faith fear is deminished.  What will you do today to feed the fire of your faith?

Time Out For Women

What an amazing weekend! I was blessed to attend this Women's weekend with Lindy and Koral and bump into several friends I didn't know were going. It was like being on spiritual steroids for two days and by Sunday evening I was starting to go into withdrawl. :) So I've comitted to try an experiment and see if I can keep on that spiritual high for a while. I'm working out the details but I've already seen some improvement the first of which being that I'm spending more time with my children.

The theme for this year was "Become." The challenge for the conference was to tap into our potential and work at developing a talent. Each guest shared something they are going to do as part of their challenging themselves. I was impressed with how creative they were and how much they relied on inspiration (and gave credit as such) to come up with these idea. It's always amazing to me when we have a desire to do how willing Heavenly Father is to give us some work to do.

The musical guest was the group Mercy River which I got to know through my Hillary Weeks station on Pandora. (Wow that was three endorsements in one sentence.) I was really impressed at the stories behind the music. They showed that the Spirit teaches through music and on Friday night Micheal McLean expressed the same sentiment that the Lord uses music to teach him. This really resinates with me as I am more teachable through music than any other means and my testimony of the Savior has been greatly strengthened through music.
To sum up the experience, I laughed, cried and left feeling very uplifted. One of the speakers challenged us to look for the the things in our lives that uplift and enlighten us and learn to fill our lives with more of those things. Something that also stuck out to me was learning of an experiment that Benjamin Franklin did with the 13 essential virtues. He worked one for a week and moved on to the next, he discovered that as he focussed on one thing that problems he'd had with one he'd worked on in past weeks would pop back into his life. The speaker compared it to spiritual wack-a-mole. He commented that it is really the Savior who helps us change. I'm workign to become more aware of my need for the Savior as I do desire to make steady improvement in my life.

Good Timber Poem

This poem was from a Sunday School 12-13 manual. I really like it and wanted to share.

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
By Douglas Malloch