Prepared? Tired?

It's been a miraculous, exhausting week, but we're good!!! Thanks to many, most importantly our Heavenly Father!!!

P.S. We ran our first half marathon!!!

Breaking the Cycle of the Natural Man

Maybe it's just me, but saying "I'm sorry" is hard. I hope at least some of you will agree. I think there is a little bit of pride in us all that wants to have the last say. Yes? I've learned a few important lessons over the last few years in my journey towards breaking this cycle of saying sorry and forgiving in turn that I feel that I want to express in hopes that it may benefit someone. Although, I also realize I take the risk that someone may dislike my opinion, which often happens in my case. Holding a grudge. Why is that part of this natural man? Do we all have a grudge that we've held at certain times in our lives? What can we do to let it go for good? I went to school to become a Social Worker and in my studies there was a lot of talk about counseling and sharing feelings and the "exploding bottle effect." I'm sure you've heard about it. It's the idea that if you hold in your emotions for long enough, then they will eventually build up and explode. Just like shaking a soda can and then opening it up. I believed that part of healing was to let others know the way that they are "making" me feel. Of course putting other's down always makes us feel better, right? Wrong. I came to a realization that in multiple and repeated circumstances, the more I shared the way "I felt," the more the other person went on the defense and the problems with relationships seemed to escalate. Many grudges that had been holding me back had been issues I had over a period of years. Long gone issues, that really shouldn't have effected my current relationship with a person. It was in a moment I believe the Spirit of the Lord whispered to me something that went against all of my training and formal education.....My feelings don't matter. Well, you may say "of course they matter" and yes, in a way you are right, but what I mean by that is this: It doesn't matter if my feelings are understood by others. The Lord knows my feelings and He cares. I had been spending a great deal of energy trying to get other people to understand how I felt or how they supposedly made me feel. They didn't want to know how I felt, they wanted me to know how they felt and how I was making them feel. They wanted to tell me what my sins were against them, which then made me feel like they didn't care about me and then I had to tell them how that made me feel, etc. etc. Do you see the cycle here? It never ends unless someone chooses to be humble enough to say sorry and say to themselves, "my feelings no longer matter here. What matters is the relationship." Do I want to have a good relationship or do I want to force people to understand my feelings? This is hard, because it is a very common belief that if we don't share our feelings now, it will only get worse and eventually we'll have a huge blow up!!! But I realized something. That belief is completely contrary to the teachings of the Savior. He taught us to forgive immediately. To never hold a grudge. He doesn't say to us, "look at all the hurt you caused me and you need to understand the way that I feel if you expect me to forgive you." No, He loves us even when we hurt Him and He forgives us immediately when we turn to him with repentant hearts. I also came to another realization about this process of forgiving. Why is it that the natural man when someone has apologized to us automatically thinks that now is the perfect opportunity to then tell that person how they really hurt us? They are coming to us to say sorry and we say "yeah you should be, because... or, you really hurt me when you said... or, you don't really mean sorry, or, I don't believe you, because...." Why can't we be more like the Savior and say, "I forgive you" and leave it at that? All bad feelings forgotten.  Because we all have the natural man and we're all working at breaking this cycle. We want to be right, we want to either hurt someone so they know our pain, or make them understand by criticizing their actions and demonstrating why they made us feel the way we feel. But we also want to have good relationships. Ironic, huh? We may even have the false belief that we don't need to say sorry because we're right and the other person is wrong (they should say sorry first). We waste a lot of energy proving that we are the one who is justified and the other person needs to be brought to their knees and realize the errors of their ways. Saying sorry is hard because we take the risk and the possibility is very high that we will be deeply hurt by the other person (even if we feel more justified in our behavior than they have been in theirs) and we have to let go of that hurt even when the other person won't forgive you (or needs time) or decides to take their final jab at you in that moment.  Holding in our own hurt feelings is not my advice, but my advice is to give those hurt feelings to the Lord and let him dispose of them for us.  It is liberating to realize that the Savior's example is the path to freedom from this cycle and to improving all relationships and it is possible.

Family pics 2012

Here are a few of the pictures from our family session that I love. Thanks Jenn!

Soak in the moments of our lives

So I was watching the movie Soul Surfer one day and it started me thinking about the kind of mom I want to be and family I want to have. What inspires me and motivates me? What are my passions in life? How do I support my kids and teach my kids to support and love each other? After a lot of consideration I came to the conclusion that I needed to change a lot of areas of my life in order to be the kind of mother I want to be. I don't want my kids to remember me as the mom who sits at the computer all day every day. I want to be more productive with my time and spend more of it with my kids. Even if it's just simply talking with them. We don't have T.V. so that wasn't really a problem. My problem ironically enough is e-mail and blogging. I don't really facebook, but I do enjoy pinterest. I would usually wake up and check my blog and e-mail before and during breakfast, sometime between breakfast and lunch, during lunch and a few other times throughout the day. I realized that I was wasting valuable time that I could be spending with my children and becoming the type of homemaker I want to be. It was just a bad habit that I had gotten myself into. I also checked the news online frequently. I didn't realize how much time I was wasting until this last Wednesday when I woke up at 6:30am before the kids did and decided it was the perfect time to check e-mail and stuff. I ended up doing 3 things: checking e-mail (only read about 3-4 messages), downloaded my pictures onto my computer and organized them into files, and checked 4 blogs. Guess how much time I spent. I didn't get done till 7:45am. My kids had been awake for 45 minutes of that time. I decided that in order to change my ways I have to do something differently (obviously) so I decided that because Friday is movie day at our house, then I will use that day to get the things online that I need to get done, done. So this means, I absolutely will NOT be checking blogs, e-mails, facebook or anything else online during the week. Sorry if you can't get a hold of us as easily anymore, but I realized that I need to realign my focus on improving myself and family and then and only then can I begin branching out to the world around me. I might not know what is going on in the news, media, sports, or other things, but I am determined to know what is going on in the lives of my children and those whom I can directly influence. I want to talk with them more, read to them more, play with them more, soak in every moment I can before they grow up and these moments are gone forever.