Time to Get Some Rest

The family went home this morning and the house is empty. I’ve been cleaning and straightening and it might soon look like someone besides Oscar the Grouch lives here. Two weeks of chaos, laughter, clutter, cooking for fifteen, noise, game playing, laughter (I know I already said that, but there was enough laughter for two entries!) has come to a close. It has been a busy, but great holiday.

I hope you also had great times. Let me know what you did! I'd love to hear from all of you.

A Lesson From Adam and Eve

Happy New year everyone! I’m eager to see what this year brings. The future is full of hope.

To start the beginning of the year I was reading about the beginning of the world—specifically Adam. I love the story of how Adam and Eve worshipped God by offering sacrifices to the Lord and after awhile an angel appeared to Adam and asked, “Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me” (Moses 5:6).

This verse is a good one for me to start the year off with. I am good at obeying when I can see why I should. But I struggle sometimes when I can’t see why I should do something. But Adam just did what he was told to do—trusting that whatever God told him to do would be for his good. I’m going to work on that more this year!

The angel then told Adam why he should offer sacrifice, “This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.” The angel then went on to tell Adam that because of this amazing sacrifice that would happen to save him and all mankind he should “do all that thou doest in the name of the Son” (Moses 5:7-8).

In my efforts to rejuvenate this year, I’m going to remember this verse. What it tells me is that everything I do and say should be considered a prayer or offering to God and should be done in a way that I can close my words or actions “in the name of the Son.” If I approach life with that attitude, I can’t help but be rejuvenated.

My Wish For You

It’s the last day of the year! This year has gone by so fast it is almost scary. I hope the year was good to you. And if it wasn’t, I hope you made the best of it.

It has been fun blogging and “meeting” new friends through the blog. I appreciate your comments and the insights you have shared with me. (I just hope more of you who drop by will leave comments.) Thank you for the joy you've brought me and a great big thank you for the prayers you've said in my behalf. I know that is why I have healed so well and that Grizelda will soon be gone. I love you all!

My wish is that all of you will have a very happy New Year celebration and that the 365 days following your celebration will be full of peace, love, and joy.

God bless you all!

Who Are You?

When God appears to Moses in Moses 1:3 the first thing he does is introduce Himself. “Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?”

The next thing God does is tell Moses who he is, “Behold, thou art my son.” God then tells Moses that he has a work to do and proceeds to show Moses the history of the world. After this marvelous revelation, God’s glory withdraws and Moses is left overwhelmed and physically weakened from his encounter with God.

While in this weakened state, Satan appears to Moses and tries to tempt him by saying, “Moses, son of man, worship me.”

It is very interesting to me that the first and most important things God wants Moses to know is who He is and that Moses is His son. It is equally as interesting that the first thing Satan tries to do is demean Moses’ understanding of his divine origin. Satan wants Moses to think he is just a mortal, human being.

Later, as the temptation from the adversary becomes more intense Moses resists by saying, “God said unto me: Thou art after the similitude of mine Only Begotten.” In other words, the reason Moses is able to resist is because he is not fooled by Satan. Moses remembers who and what he is and instead of questioning his divine origin, he questions Satan’s lies.

Knowing that we are the spirit children of our Heavenly Father is empowering. When we cling to the fact that we, too, are of divine origin—we are the children of God—we will also be able to resist the temptations of the adversary and live the way our Father wants us to live.

Rejoice in the Process

There are a lot of lessons to learn from the creation account we find in Genesis. But one of the most important to me is how God teaches us the concept of process. Life is meant to be a process-not an incident.

In the beginning God organized the world by doing one thing at a time. When He was finished separating the water from the land, He didn’t sit down and cry about how He didn’t have plants or animals or a finished world yet. He stepped back, enjoyed the work of the day, and said, “It is good.” He rejoiced in what He had accomplished.

There is a lot we have to learn from this. Instead of going to bed each night frustrated over what didn’t get accomplished or upset at ourselves for things we said or did wrong, or feeling like there is still so much growth we need to make that we will never be the person we want to be, we need to make it a practice to each night look at what went right that day, what we accomplished, what we learned and rejoice in the growth. Often the very days when we did or said things wrong are our best learning days. Instead of fretting over what went wrong, we should concentrate on the lessons and rejoice in them.

Like God, we need to see the progress in each day, then step back and rejoice because, “It is good."

Resolutions

A new year and a new decade is approaching. For years I always made new resolutions as part of my celebration. Like most people I didn’t keep all of them, but I find that when striving for a goal even if I don’t keep it all the time I do better than if I have no goal at all. But last year D1 introduced me to something that I really enjoyed doing and so I thought I’d pass the idea along to you.

Instead of goals or resolutions last year I choose one word to define my year: positive. All year long I repeated the word and thought about being positive and finding the positive in any situation or in other people. The surprising thing was to watch how one word made such a difference in my life. I’d start to feel discouraged or sad at something that was happening and then I’d catch myself and simply say, “Positive, Sherrie, positive,” and the feelings would change and I’d start to see things differently; I’d see the good instead of the bad. It never felt oppressive or burdensome like goals sometimes do. I never had that, “I have to do this” feeling.

This year I had trouble deciding between the words simplify and rejuvenate. I finally choose rejuvenate. I want to rejuvenate old friendships, present friendships, my Church calling, my teaching, my prayers, my faith, my health, my life—everything! Whatever I’m doing I’m going to put more enthusiasm and effort into it and see how I can do it a little better. I’ll let you know how it goes.

If any of you want to pick a word and make a "word resolution" leave a comment here about the word you have chosen. That way we can get ideas from each other and besides that committing to something in writing always makes the commitment stronger. We'll help each other keep our commitments!

Happy new word!

One of Life's Lessons

Many years ago when Carl was bishop and I sat through meetings with four children under the age of seven I would come home from Church so disgruntled. I often found myself wondering why I bothered to go to Church because I wasn’t able to listen or ponder or enjoy any of it. All I did was wrestle kids! Some days I even came home mad. I’d think about how sweet the moments of the Sacrament were when I was single and how all I managed to do now was to keep children from pulling each other’s hair or to stop teasing each other.

Then one day it dawned on me that what was ruining Sacrament Meeting wasn’t so much what my children were doing, but how I was reacting to the situation. I had let myself become a victim and I was holding a giant pity party every Sunday. I asked myself what the Savior would do and decided that He would simply love the children during the meeting. That decision to love instead of fret and worry was one of the best things I ever did. I’d hold a child on my lap and instead of resenting the intrusion into my pondering moments, I’d concentrate on how much I loved the child. I’d separate two contending children with feelings of love instead of frustration. No words were spoken, but it wasn’t long before I realized the children were responding to my unspoken thoughts. They had felt the fretting, frustration before and it fueled their own negative actions. Now they felt the love and responded differently—not perfect still, but much more positive.

The strange thing is that as the children grew up and I no longer had anyone sitting on my lap or needing to be “tended to” during meeting, I went back to the sweet moments of meditation during the Sacrament but found myself missing having a child in my arms. The loving, cuddling moments had been as productive of beautiful spiritual moments as the uninterrupted pondering.

Today I got the best Christmas present I received. Some of my children and grandchildren went to Sacrament meeting with me and I got to hold my wiggly eighteen-month-old grandson during the Sacrament. Who would have guessed those many years ago when I was fretting over the situation that I would one day actually cherish having a wiggly child in my arms during meeting? But then I guess that is what life is all about—learning and growing.