Who we want to be next

Tonight I was all set to talk about self-discipline, setting routines for ourselves and my efforts at setting a 30 day goal to establish a bedtime of 11. Now it has been an interesting experience in my efforts to figure out why I am not going to sleep at night. I realized this week that sleep hasn't been my friend, now I don't mean this in a I wake up a lot in the night sort of a way, but more as in I just put off going to sleep. So this week I ended up writing a letter to sleep and asking why it is that we seem to be on the outs so often. It was rather interesting seeing what I got back.


  I learned that there were many things in store for me to learn and become, but I needed to learn the self-mastery with sleep before I could learn those things. It was pointed out to me that Heavenly Father could have made bodies for us that didn't need sleep, but He needed us to learn what we could learn only through proper stewardship of our bodies.

  So I left that letter bound and determined to master self-discipline and self-mastery. I was going to get my body into submission and value that more than anything else. Enter yesterday and today... Last night I wanted to do some work in a couple different areas of my life, so that meant lots of journaling, then I knew I wanted/needed to do some work on a quilt, and start a new blog addressing some different ideas than just the ones I share each week. I also knew I needed quality time with my spouse and a friend working through some stress. Because of all those things my bedtime goals were a dream in the rear view mirror. At the same time I felt like I had still been doing what I needed to be doing.

Now I don't share these things to say look how much I have accomplished or look how amazing I am. I share these so I myself can see how differently my day turned out from what I thought it would be. And I'm sure we can all relate, we have our best laid plans, we try to set out our routines and establish our righteous desires and it can be discouraging at times to see them not play out as we hoped. We can sometimes feel we are failures when because of the situations of others our situations change. I hope it is in moments like those that instead of feeling a failure or thinking our efforts are for not, that instead we take heart that we like the Savior have succored those in need and have been about our Father's business.

  Our Heavenly Father is seeking for those who want to be about His business, who want to reach out to those whose hands hang down, to share a kind word and to be one with Him in His purpose. This sometimes means our best laid plans go to the way side. This sometimes means our human efforts may feel very puny and not near enough. Yet as a dear friend and I talked about tonight, we need to trust that when He calls He qualifies and magnifies efforts. When we are seeking to help those around us, to reach out to them, He will offer us direction, not only for those we can help, but also so we can magnify our efforts to make the most of the time we have. The Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ can fill the gap from our efforts to His best outcomes.

   I testify that as we work to reach out to those with feeble knees and as we work to establish routines of righteousness in our lives that He can help us do both. As we put in our best efforts to progress and improve and to heed the voice of the Spirit we really can become all we hope to be. We can be a successful whoever it is we want to be and be His servant. Often the adversary preaches that it is one or the other. We either put all our effort into being successful and doing our thing or we submit wholly and completely to God and give ourselves up. I think that as we ask God first what He needs of us, we will then be surprised at how much He does for us to help us reach who we want to be next.

 

Christ will always be kind to us.

I've been struggling the last few months feeling that because of somethings missing in my life that life was unfair and that I deserved to be able to hold onto some things that weren't making me happy. I was informed two or three times that I needed to let it go, that life becomes what I look for. So I started looking for the good and tracking the successes that were coming. But it still wasn't enough, I felt like if I just let everything go and choose only to see the good, that there would be an injustice perpetuated in my life. Because if I just let things go, then there would still be underlying issues and I would just be burying what was really going on and it would come up again and again. I couldn't see how things would change if behavior stayed the same.

Then I realized behavior could change, mine. This week as I was sitting in the temple contemplating on a mistake I had made a year earlier and that still haunted me, wondering how in the world I could fix it, the Lord asked me, why are you still holding onto this? Why are you beating yourself up for something outside of your control? I created the world, I gave you direction, don't you think I can fix it in my way and my time? And I finally realized, though my behavior hasn't changed, I am still inclined to look before I leap and go head long into things, the Lord had forgiven me because I asked. He took care of it, even knowing I will make more mistakes in the future.

I have been wondering for the last few months why the Spirit felt so far away, why I felt so cut off from heaven. This week I finally realized it is because I had been holding onto my anger at perceived injustice and heaven cannot coincide with anger. When I felt how simply my Savior could forgive and make right my mistake, even knowing I would make another mistake and another. Feeling His love reach out to me, realizing that His sacrifice bridged the injustice I perpetrate everyday with my humanness I realized I didn't want to hold on to that anymore. And so I decided that perhaps looking at the good wasn't allowing injustice to go on in perpetuity, in seeking, counting and numbering the good I was allowing myself to become more like my Savior. I chose love, I chose the good, I chose to see with rose colored glasses and in doing so, guess what happened, reality became more rose colored. So much of what we get in this life is what we put into it in the first place. When I finally chose to let my anger go, I let the Spirit back into my life and the grudge I held onto melted away. Once that grudge was gone things began to change. Because I brought the positive, I got the positive. And I feel I should say things feel better now than they have in months. There is nothing to gain in anger.


Our Father in Heaven will never force us, He isn't one for ultimatums or shaming, but He will entice us, invite us, gently lead us to where we are our best selves. This has been a long journey in coming and I have a feeling there are many steps yet to take. But no matter how long the journey, knowing our Savior walks with us hopefully makes the journey a joy, not a terror. His mercy is endless and His hope for us is as bright today as it was in pre-earth life when He offered His life a sacrifice. I do know that His mercy is infinite and He longs to help us through the injustices of mortality. With Him we have an eternal advocate. I know He was the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the New and I know His Atonement for all of us is infinite, eternal, and always extended our way. Please be kind to yourself and to others, because I know Christ will always be kind to us.

Love past the difference

      I'm sitting here tonight feeling just a wee bit sad I had a moment this week when I thought to myself "ooh I should write about that this week..." and now I'm trying to remember. Oh wait, I remember. This week I had the realize that we can be at war with people or we can love people. We may hear around us that being angry is our due, that when we are angry it is being "real" to share that emotion with everyone. Satan will tell us that if we don't share our anger that people won't know to do that again (yes I have actually heard this whispered in my ear this week). We live in a world that teaches us to give vent to our spleen (otherwise known as rage) and not to leave it bottled up inside us. While it is true that keeping that inside isn't healthy and isn't a good idea, I can tell you that venting it at people really doesn't get us anywhere either. Really being angry at other human beings hurts us because not only do we deal with our anger, we also deal with our remorse and sheepishness when we realize how much we have hurt the other person. As a final nail in the coffin of this lie, we've all gotten angry at someone only to be attacked back as the other person becomes defensive. There is a better answer...



    This better answer is love. Now this may seem like a very cliche answer and maybe even a bit empty for some of us. We bandy about the word love quite often and I think sometimes we miss or misunderstand what love is. I would invite you to think about a time in which you felt no judgement, no aggression, no attack. Think about a time when you felt like someone saw you for who you really are and appreciated you for who you are, looking past the imperfections, the impatience, the shortcomings and mistakes and you felt their unconditional love. I want you to reside in that memory for a moment and think about how you felt. I know in that moment I felt like I could change the world, that who I was was enough, I didn't have to try to be anyone else, I didn't have to try to be something I wasn't, I didn't have to fake it because who I was in that moment had made it. Now just think for a minute what could happen if you chose to see others like that all the time, if you could see them as the Savior sees them. The Savior that saw everyone of our lives, who knows how we tick, who has seen all the aspects of our lives that made us who we are. What if we loved that person who we feel like just doesn't get us and never will, the person who it sure feels like won't ever change and doesn't want us to understand them.
   Satan will whisper little lies about that person, little lies that slowly build until another person's character has totally warped and we can't see them for the child of God that they are. I would encourage you to call Satan's bluff, to look really look at the person, when we have those negative thoughts we generally try to push them to the side because we don't want to be rude, what if we really looked at them, wrote them down, saw them for what they were (lies from an outside source) then tore them up and threw them away. Then we could see the person beneath all the lies and get rid of the ultimatum mentality that if they don't change it's not worth it. Because it is worth it, once we get ride of the lies, then we can invite the Spirit to teach us to see with Christ's eyes, I promise that as you ask, He will help you.
    I also promise that as you begin to see others as Christ sees them, He can show you how He feels about you. Once the hate, anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness leave then there is room for greater perspective, there is room for kindness, there is room for love and there is the eyes' of Christ.
   I'm not saying I'm perfect at this, in fact I gained some additional insights as I wrote this, yet I do know that loving brings me and the other person closer to my Savior. Imagine for just a moment a wedge (like one used for cutting wood) at the top of every person's head and for every negative thought we send their way that wedge goes a bit deeper into them. I realize that current thought that it's only bad if it is coming out of our mouth (and that is bad), but think about how you feel when you dwell on those thoughts, eventually it eats away at you and I would posit it eats away at your relationship with that person and hurts that person. If you have ever heard of the rice experiment, then think of what happens when you label a person and have negative thoughts about them. So ask the Savior for His help to change those labels, to recognize the thoughts for where they came from and to ask to love. Imagine what could happen when we choose to love, when we choose to hope for the best for others, even those who seem so different then ourselves.
    As I was reminded of this week we aren't waiting for Zion to magically appear, we must create it in our lives, we must build it in preparation for the Second Coming of our Savior. I wonder if learning to love is the first step in having a people of one heart and one mind. One heart and one mind doesn't mean we'll always agree or there will always be unanimity, but I think it means that we choose to love past the difference, that we see others for who they are and we learn to just let things go. I hope to do better at this this week and I am excited to see how the Lord works in my mind and heart this week.

What we are really doing

As we so excitedly accept the challenges given to us by the Prophet, let us also please remember the purposes of the challenges. Pres Nelson didn't ask us just to give up Facebook, he has also asked us as part of that to "fast from social media and any other media which may produce negative and impure thoughts. Notice and record changes, experiences and impressions during this time. The effect of your 10-day fast may surprise you. We need to act with thoughtfulness." Pres Nelson invited us to pray about and use our intuition and inspiration to know what things to remove during this 10 day fast. Not only are we to leave Facebook behind, but to also increase our ability to discern direction from the Spirit and be agents unto ourselves of what we should have in our lives and what we do not want in our lives. 

Next he asked us to read the Book of Mormon between today and the end of the year. He acknowledged that this might feel impossible, but as we tried with full purpose of heart we would have the help of heaven to accomplish this task and receive increased inspiration, revelation and miracles bringing us closer to the Savior. He asked us to mark each verse which refers to the Savior. This tells me that this isn't about a mad dash through the Book of Mormon, this isn't about a sticker chart showing your rapid progress through the Book. In my mind this is an invitation to deep dive into this "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" this is an invitation to invite him deeply into our lives and help us mold our lives to be more like Him, so that when He comes again we will recognize Him because we will be like Him. Did you notice in this conference the emphasis on preparing for the coming of the Savior, it seems that every challenge offered by Pres Nelson was rapidly followed up with the explanation we must prepare the world for the Savior's coming. I feel an urgency for preparation, it comes in a call to be more aware of our fellow man, it comes from the emphasis on helping others in their tribulation, the last days are a time of tribulation...it would be an interesting exercise to go through conference and count how many times speakers used the term tribulation or trial.

The Savior Jesus Christ through His called prophet is asking us to prepare to meet Him, as we take these challenges from the mouth of a prophet, will we do them just because we were asked (which obedience is fantastic) or are we doing them because this is an invitation to come closer to our Savior? All the changes announced this year are a call to align with the Savior and a call to do more, we can no longer do the bare minimum, what is asked of us is to fulfill the full measure, to be all in, to obey and become with all our heart, might and mind. I'm not saying this is easy, I'm not saying I am all in, I spent a lot of conference struggling just to adjust my attitude so that I could receive what the Lord needed me to learn. It wasn't until I went inward and asked what was wrong, that I realized I was approaching conference from the wrong direction. I felt so overwhelmed by the emphasis on serving and ministering and loving that I felt like I was already stretched thin, I already felt like I was on empty, how could a loving Lord ask me to do more when I already felt like I was on the verge of giving up. It was going inward that the Lord told me I was already doing what was being asked of us, I just need to continue in my efforts, rejoice in the good that I am doing and continue inviting the Spirit into my life to continue my efforts. I have a feeling this is true for most of us. Conference wasn't meant as a list of brand new things to do, but instead to just continue improving and trying and rejoicing in the good we can do.

Dale G Renlund said that Heavenly Father doesn't just want us to do what is right, He wants us to choose what is right. He wants us to choose the family business, to become like He is. I would guess that Heavenly Father isn't just interested in who says good-bye to Facebook for a time or who reads the Book of Mormon, who increases temple attendance, and fully participates in Relief Society. He asked us to do these things because He knows they will bring great blessings into our lives. I also think that He knows we will come even closer to Him as we prayerfully ask who we might serve, when we ask "Lord what might I do to help thee in thy work?" Participating in these challenges will increase the Spirit in our lives, then it is up to us to choose to obey when the challenges are complete and to do all that Heavenly Father has for us. Wee are each unique and have an important role to fulfill, we can only do that when the Spirit is a constant companion in our lives.

As I already mentioned, I'm not saying that this will be easy, I'm not saying that I already know how to do what was asked of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but I know that when the doubts filled my mind about how in the world I was going to add 6.72 pages of the Book of Mormon into each day, or where more temple fit into my life or how a primary teacher was supposed to participate fully in Relief Society or how someone so filled with anger could love as I should, I realized none of those things really mattered. What mattered is that the Prophet of the Lord, His mouth piece in these latter days, asked me to do these things. I chose to believe that because the Lord asked me to do these things I would be all in to do them. Like Nephi, I know that "the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them."

He will provide a way and I can only imagine who I will become and who we will all become as we choose to follow our Prophet, Seer and Revelator in these the latter days.

We each need a little sunshine

As I mentioned the last few weeks I am in a program that is meant to help me gain greater focus in my life and to move forward with goals and desires. Even with a new sleep schedule that involves me getting up an hour earlier than I was I have found myself much more energized in my day and much more joyful. Finding focus and purpose is a very powerful thing.



  So this week as I was feeling rather energized and excited to meet the day I decided to write sticky note notes for my co-workers sort of as a thank you and sort of as an affirmation. I then did my best to deliver them when their cubicles were empty (now don't think that I just gave away to the world my anonymous good deed, they can totally tell my handwriting. It wasn't about being anonymous, it was about being grateful and positive). So I had delivered the notes and was doing my best to focus on some tasks I needed to finish when a co-worker came over to me and told me I was being too happy and denied a bit of what I had written in the note. Now I realized that he was mostly joking when he said that I was being too happy and that him denying what I wrote said way more about his mental space than mine.

   It was then I realized a bit more about the world we live in, I wouldn't have thought there was such a thing as being too happy, but apparently we as a world are focusing in too much about needing to be focused on goals to the exclusion of all else. We need to be grim faced and only see the negative. I can't say that I blame people for feeling that way, it seems where ever we turn we see sad news online, on the news and people only seeing the bad. It can be hard to believe that there is good in the world, but what if we made it a goal to choose everyday to say something good, to share a blessing or tender mercy we received and to say the words " I am so glad" or "I am so grateful". I feel like we count our importance these days by sharing how many things are going wrong or how many deadlines are falling through. Now I'm not saying that we can't share our burdens with others, in fact I think if more people were sharing what was actually going on in their lives we would live in a world where we had more compassion for others because we all realized that we all have things. At the same time in a world of negative expectations think of how much more vulnerable it is to say what we are grateful for or to share something new we have learned.

   This week I had a friend say to me that it sounded like I have been reading self-help books and it made me sad that it was almost said in a negative tone of voice, as if it is bad to want to improve yourself, bad to want to learn how to process heavy emotions in a more effective way or to want to be in a better head space to help others.

   We live in a world that seems to think that being negative is the order of the day, that struggling is just part of the deal and that the more we speak negatively about situations the cooler we are. So what if we started a revolution. What if we got genuinely excited about things, what if we spoke with happiness in our voices and we even smiled a time or two. I know that life can feel heavy, that it isn't all puppies and roses. We can and should share the ouches, but do we share them seeking for support, hope and solutions or do we share them in anger and disgust? I just realized that Satan lies to us, he says that if something is going wrong or isn't going quite the way we had hoped then we need to be in the depths of despair or at least we can't feel two emotions at once. We can be sad or disappointed that things aren't going quite the way we had hoped and we can feel gratitude for good things, be excited for others' successes and generally be cheerful. We are complex human beings we can feel more than one thing at once.

   This life is full of enough struggles and enough clouds, I hope that this week we can each bring a little sunshine, even in the middle of our own storms, we all need a little sunlight and just think what could happen if we all brought a little sunshine to the table, we could light up the whole room. I hope this week even in the midst of all that is happening we can each choose to see a little good, to celebrate a success no matter how small and that the nurture our hope in Christ to grow so that we can each bring sunshine to another who could feel surrounded by clouds.

Really is Progress

It has been what I feel I can only describe as an insane week, a good week, at the same time an insane week. I started a twelve week program called Go Vertical that helps in focusing the mind, goal setting and emotional release techniques to help let go of baggage from the past. After only a week I find myself with an excitement for life and a joy to see what is just around the corner. At the same time I find myself exhausted from short nights and lots of adrenaline dumps and maybe, just maybe feeling a bit jaded.

  Now I invite all of you to chuckle just a bit as I let you in on a little secret, there was a point in the week when I wondered for just a moment what life would be like without struggle. With so many things looking up, with me feeling so hopeful, I just felt sure my struggle was over, or would at least take a bit of a hiatus. Yes in that moment I forgot an eternal mortal truth, mortality was created with struggle as it's goal. I don't mean to say that Heavenly Father wants us to be miserable, He just knows we get a lot higher when we take the stairs instead of always walking on a flat surface. Anyhow in that foolish moment I wondered what life would be like now that I had "the tools I needed" to move past struggle. All I had to do was use tools and repeat and then I would be fine...yeah...no. Yes slaying dragons does wonders and saying my declarations help me face the day in a better frame of mind, but that doesn't mean my struggle is over, that just means that we are leveling up. It's sort of like the game of Super Mario. When I was little the first level was really hard for me, in fact it took a whole lot of lives for me to even get half way through the first level. But as I practiced and put in a whole lot of effort I finally made it to level two. Then it took a whole lot of practice to get to level three...and so on. Sometimes I went back to level one just to remind myself that that which had been so hard once did get easier and that when I put in the effort those harder levels would get easier too. Not because the game took pity on me, but because my skill and tenacity helped me level up to a new level of play.


  I would guess that life is much the same way. The logistics of the video game did not change, no matter what level you were on it was a matter of running, jumping, and sliding at just the right time to get where you needed to be. But just because I learned to jump in level one, didn't mean it wasn't still hard to jump when the scenery and circumstance were different in level three. I think sometimes in life we think (and I am definitely feeling this way today) that if we figure out something once that we have mastered it and we can move on. That once we figure something out we move to the next skill and the next skill after that, but I'm starting to realize that isn't exactly the case. Perhaps it is called enduring to the end because we are meant to do some of the same things over and over again, just in new circumstances so we can use that same basic skill set in a myriad of different ways. I would guess the root of the skills we are to learn in this life is charity, the pure love of Christ. In fact the first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, might and mind. Second only to that is to love your neighbor as yourself. We are here to learn to love those around us, even when we see them in all their human mortalness, instead of the Gods and Goddesses they will one day be. We are here to learn to love other's as our Savior loves us and I think we are also here to learn to have charity towards ourselves to forgive ourselves and to keep forgiving and keep trying.

  Last week I shared how I chose to give my anger to Christ because I valued my relationship with Him more than my own perspective and emotion. This week that was put to the test. I had made plans and those plans were sort of changed without my input and I have been struggling letting that go. It is times like these that I feel a bit like a two year, I want what I want and I want it now. I am sorry to say I haven't handled things as gracefully today as I did last week, but perhaps this is me adjusting to level two. At least right now I know where I want to end up, even if at this moment I'm not completely sure how to get there. Yes I have the tools and some skills, perhaps now it is learning how to apply them in new ways to fit new circumstances.

  Perhaps enduring to the end simply means to keep trying, that when it feels as if we have failed, because our solution just didn't work as well as it did last time that we just keep trying, that we never give up. Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can always try again and we can always learn again. Mortality is a whole lot about a heart willing to try again and a lot less about immediate progression. Perhaps what feels like a step back is really two steps forward, because realizing what is going on inside us and around us and what we are hoping for really is progress.

No Anger ever Could

  I think I'm finally beginning to understand and accept that there are no magical solutions, that most things don't just go away. We cannot learn by having things go away, we learn by working through, learning and overcoming them. There came a point a few months ago when I was in a really low place and Christopher was in a really low place as well and I started praying that it could be over, that we could come to some sort of a conclusion and move on to the next thing. I just wanted it to be over, I was tired, I was done, and I was emotionally empty. At that time I felt my Father in heaven ask me a question, he asked "do you really want it to go away or do you want to learn what it being here can teach you? If I take this away you won't learn what it is you knew you needed when you agreed to come here." At that point I decided that I did want to learn what I needed and not put it off, looking back from today I also realize that I haven't done it as gracefully as I would like. I got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, feeling that too much was expected of me. I felt the burden was too heavy and having heard that I had things to learn, I felt I had to do it on my own, forgetting that I could still learn while involving the Savior.


  Now fast forward through three weekends of trainings, six weeks of therapy appointments, lots of writing and lots of hopes that things would magically get better for both of us...except they didn't.. Really all that I learned was that I am in control of my emotions and that I need to let myself feel my emotions. Those two things really didn't go together in my mind. If I was in control of my emotions, wasn't I just supposed to stop them before they went anywhere, but if I stopped them, then how in the world was I supposed to feel them.

   Then yesterday I realized something, there is a difference between feeling lonely, feeling sad, feeling confused, and allowing that loneliness, sadness and confusion lead to anger, resentment and bitterness. It depends upon the story that I tell myself or if I choose to not tell myself a story at all. I can't control my circumstances, I can't magically cure depression and anxiety, I can't force someone to talk to me or force them to be comfortable in unfamiliar circumstances. But I can respond with grace. I can accept that we all have limitations and we are all trying our best.

   The realization that I finally accepted is that I can feel loneliness, I can feel sad or even frustration and then let the emotion go, I don't have to hold onto it and fan the flames with past hurts and memories from months ago. Instead I accept that I am sad and I ask my Savior to help hold that hurt as I work through it and then it is gone. When I woke up this morning for the first time in months I wondered where the anger and discontent were, I wondered what to feel. Then I realized I didn't have to decide to feel anything, I could accept today for the possibilities it held for good and move on. And you know as I did that I found peace and the Spirit I hadn't felt in months. In choosing to feel and then let go I allowed space for the Spirit to speak to me again. I had missed that, I have missed having the Spirit as my constant companion. Friday night at Time Out for Women Tom Christofferson said something that softened my heart to learn what came yesterday. He said that there comes a time when coming to know Him (Christ) is more important than knowing why.  I saw that happen this weekend. It was more important for me to want to be near Christ than it was to hold onto the anger. We cannot hold onto anger and frustration and expect to be near our Savior, the ultimate example of love and meekness. He always desires to be near us, but the emotions we choose to hold onto can keep us from feeling the love He wants to give us.

  I realize this isn't easy, this has been a process of months of learning, pondering, and praying to finally realize that I can choose to let things go, it is my choice and a choice that brings a love into our lives that brings a comfort and hope that no anger ever could. I also realize that this will be something I learn and relearn and apply and reapply, but for today this is a beginning and one I am excited for.