Of Hearing What You Need to Hear

Every once in a while, church speakers say exactly what I need to hear. I'm sure they do every single week, but trying to keep four kids quiet makes it slightly impossible to truly focus every week.

But today, I NEEDED to hear. Not just listen, but to HEAR what he was saying. We had a returned missionary speak. I'm sure half of my notes are more my thoughts than what he actually said, but he gave an amazing talk. Here are a few of my notes:

- David & Goliath
- this church is true. What am I going to give up for it? (He talked about a couple converts giving things up simply because the Church is true, and they knew that.)
- we need to impress the Lord and no one else
- it's easy to lose focus when people aren't watching
     - do what's hard
     - integrity
- look to the future - make every day the highlight of my life
- we can all move mountains, with the Lord's help and with the faith to do it. But we have to "take our pick and shovel and start moving that mountain."
- family is the most important thing -- family is everything
- love is the essence of the Gospel
     - if we lose that love, WE need to take a step back and make a change

It was the perfect talk for me. Exactly what I needed to hear. :)

Of Self-Reflection

I have a testimony of self-reflection. To me, that means stopping "life" for a short amount of time and really thinking about my life. It means focusing on things that I could improve in my life, just by changing little things.

I noticed a lot of self-evaluation-type questions in Conference this time. I thought it would be interesting to collect them all into one spot. Maybe I can focus on one or two each time I write in my journal.

Wixom:
I am a child of God ... Therefore, what?
What will I do to live my life as a child of God?
How can I develop the divine nature that is within me?

Reeves:
What helps or tools have we been given to help us stay clean and virtuous?
What does Heavenly Father want me to do?
What will it matter what we suffered here if, in the end, those trials are the very things which qualify us for eternal life and exaltation in the kingdom of God with our Father and Savior?

Uchtdorf:
Is the Gospel Working for You?
Does my life have meaning?
Do I believe in God?
Do I believe that God knows and loves me?
Do I believe that God hears and answers my prayers?
Am I truly happy?
Are my efforts leading me to the highest spiritual goals and values in life?
Is my experience in the Church working for me? Is it bringing me closer to Christ? Is it blessing me and my family with peace and joy as promised in the gospel?
Are we making our discipleship too complicated?
How is being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints working for you?

Ballard:
What will you become through the Atonement of Christ?

Marriott:
How do we, a modern, busy, competitive people, become yielded and still?
How do we make the Lord’s ways our ways?
I have found that after I pray for forgiveness of sins, it is instructive for me to ask Heavenly Father, “Father, is there more?”
True worship begins when our hearts are right before the Father and the Son. What is our heart condition today?
Can we love Jesus Christ and His way more than we love ourselves and our own agenda?

Lawrence:
What do I need to change?
How can I improve?
What weakness needs strengthening?
What lack I yet?
What is keeping me from progressing?
What do I need to change?
What can I do to improve my life?

Hales:
If I make this choice, what is the worst thing that could happen?
Will we let ourselves be led? Will we hear His voice and the voice of His servants?
What areas of my life do I want to strengthen so that I can strengthen others?
Where do I want to be a year from now? two years from now? What choices do I need to make to get there?

Foster:
As we look at our children and our grandchildren today, what does the Savior want us to see in them?
Do we recognize that our children are the largest group of investigators of the Church?
What must we do to bring about their lasting conversion?

Stanfill:
Is it wise to place our eternal well-being in the hands of strangers?

Martino:
“Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?"
"What greater witness can you have than from God?"
Am I as close to living like Christ now as I was before?

Andersen:
How does the Savior see my faith?
When was the last time that you read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover?

Uchtdorf:
Are we like Daniel?
Do we stand loyal to God?
Do we practice what we preach, or are we Sunday Christians only?
Do our daily actions reflect clearly what we claim to believe?
Do we help “the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted”?
Do we just talk the talk, or do we enthusiastically walk the walk?

Nelson:
Do you realize the breadth and scope of your influence when you speak those things that come to your heart and mind as directed by the Spirit?

Durrant:
How might your family benefit as you continually strive to fill your mind with God’s words?
Will you ponderize a verse of scripture each week for the rest of this month? this year? longer?
Is there something you need to be doing today to prepare yourself spiritually for future opportunities to teach and bless your family and others?

Of Personal Progress

Tonight I noticed that there's still a steady stream of page views for this blog, so I'm going to try to get it back up and running. :)

Tonight, I'd like to share my testimony of Personal Progress. I was called to Young Women's in February. It's the first time I've ever taught anyone over the age of 11! So I was overwhelmed at first, but now I can't imagine life without these girls in my life!

Part of the neat experience of Young Women is Personal Progress. I earned my medallion as a teenager, but now that I'm working on it again, I have a renewed love for it! As I go through the scriptures and the experiences set forth, I can feel the Spirit more easily in our home. And I can feel a deeper testimony within myself.

If you're not sure what you want to study, I suggest working through some of the Personal Progress goals. The combination of scriptures that they present are amazing. You'll learn lots about yourself and about the Savior!

The Best Laid Plans (by DeAnne Flynn)

If you don't subscribe to the Time Out for Women blog by Deseret Book, I would highly recommend it. They have some great articles on there, written by people like Michael McLean, S. Michael Wilcox, Merrilee Boyack... and many others. (She Doesn't Know by Michael McLean is my absolute favorite!)

A recent article by DeAnne Flynn really made me think about how I react to life's situations. Since I enjoyed it so much, I thought I'd put it on here. I hope you enjoy it, too.

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One holiday season, more than ten years ago, my Sarah asked Santa for a fancy mouse. Since Santa had no place to keep a smelly little rodent until his big delivery night, he asked the owner of a local pet shop to save a certain tiny pink-nosed critter until he could pick it up on Christmas Eve. (This Santa happened to wear skirts and drive a Big Mormon Wagon.)

Getting that animal was all Sarah could talk about. My starry-eyed five-year-old absolutely knew it would be the very best Christmas ever!

The busy festivities of the season rapidly sped by and before Santa was totally prepared for Christmas Eve, it was time to pick up the little mouse for his early-morning deliveries the next day. The pet store closed at 4:00 pm, and he barely squeezed through the doors before quitting time.

Upon asking for the mouse-on-hold, the pet store owner began to sweat. “It’s been a very crazy day,” he explained. “And things got a little bit disorganized.”

“Disorganized?” Santa questioned.

“Yes,” he continued. “Well, uhhh. You see, in all of the confusion, we sold every single mouse, hamster, and guinea pig in the store! But we do have some rats left.”

“RATS?” Santa replied in shock and amazement.

A sudden sinking feeling crept over Santa as he listened to the pet shop guy give a ten minute oration about how rats actually make much better pets than do mice, hamsters, or guinea pigs.

Thoughts of burning ham left in his oven at home began to blur Santa’s mind and he started to envision little Sarah waking up on Christmas morning, only to see a giant RAT staring back at her through the slits of the clean white cage she had chosen in November!

With no other pet store options from which to choose, Santa reluctantly boxed up two baby “female” rats -- a white one with a pink nose, and a light brown one with a grayish nose. (Two-for-the-price-of-one was the very best deal Santa could strike at such a late hour.)

On Christmas morning, Sarah rushed to see the cute little cuddly mouse she had longed for, planned for, and prepared for over the course of several weeks. I held my breath as she peered carefully into the cage.

“Two wats?” she muttered, not yet “R” proficient. She stared at those rats so intently, realizing they were not at all what she had envisioned seeing there that magical morning. I saw her bite her little lip and put a smile on her determined, sweet face.

“Wow! I got TWO wats everybody! Come and see…”

Now, I’m not very pleased about my laid-back planning approach to Christmas that season, nor of the trust I placed in the pet shop owner’s guarantee of raising two female rodents (these rats had several babies - more than once) but I am sort of amazed (and especially pleased) that Sarah was able to just roll with her reality being much less exciting than her expectation had been.

As ambitious, starry-eyed grown women, we might occasionally feel like we’re staring into the cages of our own lives, only to see something MUCH DIFFERENT than we ever planned, hoped, or prepared to see waiting there for us. But like my Sarah, we each have a choice to make when we see the rats staring back. Do we throw a spoiled tantrum? Do we claim we’ve been robbed? After all, didn’t we make our life-expectations ultimately clear to our Father in Heaven through prayer?!

What Sarah had learned so well in Kindergarten that year is also great advice for us when our reality doesn’t precisely measure up to our expectations. And that’s simply, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” After all, Heavenly Father may not be giving us exactly what we want because He knows exactly what we need.

At least, for now.

Remember by Journal Writing

I have been feeling lately like I ought to spend time in regular journal writing, so I gave myself a challenge. Write for 5 minutes a day. I did it today and was surprised how much I could get written in such a short time. What was the inspiration to get me started today? Watch this video.


I love President Eyring's idea on how he went about doing his writing. I am trying to use the same method. Here is his entire talk on the subject.

This is such a great idea because it fosters gratefulness in our hearts and gets us writing in our journals at the same time. I know that whenever I look back over my old journals, I am glad for the things I wrote down. It is good to be reminded of lessons learned, of hard times and times to treasure.

If you would like start journaling for 5 minutes a day and want a little extra motivation to get it done, join me here where I issue a challenge, complete with a method of accountability and a possibility of a prize. For me, I am hoping that after doing this for the entire month of June that I will have a habit established for life, just like President Eyring.

Astonishment!

You know how sometimes we just keep doing the same things over and over and over? And then, oddly enough, we get frustrated/upset/mad when we keep experiencing the same things.

I was reading in Alma 49 this morning. It was rather enlightening. In verses 5 through 9, it mentions three times the incredible astonishment of the Lamanites over finding their grand plans of destruction being thwarted. The scriptures use words like uttermost and exceeding to describe their astonishment. They were truly completely flabbergasted.

Why was this so? It was because the Nephites had prepared for battle "in a manner which never had been known" before.

So, I asked myself..."Self, what is there in your life that you need to change and do in a manner that you have never known before?" I got some good ideas there.

Then I also questioned, "What enemies could I completely blindside by this course of action?" I pictured what the Lamanite's faces may have looked like when they saw what the Nephites had done. I wonder if the Nephites threw up a fisted arm and exclaimed, "Yes!" when they saw them.

In our lives today, Lucifer and his followers would suppose "that they should be privileged to come upon them as they had hitherto done". What if they get thrown for a loop today, this week, this month? Score a point for the good guys, huh?

There's today's take on a story I've read many, many times before. I love how one can always find something new in the scriptures. :)