Monday, November 26, 2012

Jigsaw Puzzle

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle:
  • Easy to lose sight of the big picture and get caught up in the section you're working on
  • Sometimes it doesn't make sense until all the pieces are in place
  • Sometimes it feels like you have too many of too few pieces, but in the end it always works out
Just some random thoughts I had while putting together a jigsaw puzzle on a Sunday afternoon :)

Sunday, November 25, 2012

What I put in my Grateful box this year

In an effort to raise my low spirits one day a while back, I borrowed an idea from a friend of mine and made a gratitude box. Late on Thanksgiving day, I read the following on the slips of paper I put in the gratitude box:
  • Books
  • That my cousins can join us for the fishing trip on Labor Day
  • Prayer
  • Running into old friends
  • That each day is a new beginning
  • Good food with good friends
  • Brothers
  • Memories attached to songs
  • For cell phones
  • The ability to learn from and through others
  • The temple
  • Patience and love from others
  • Memories and voice mails with the Halloween Ghost
  • For a loving Bishop
  • To have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life
  • Running for the train and making it :)
  • Modern day prophets (Elder Holland CES)
  • Open mindedness 
  • The complexities of life
  • That my parents taught me good money management skills
  •  Jen Martin
  • Finding things you thought were lost
  • TIME
  • Tears. Not that I love crying so much as I love feeling and caring
  • Medication
  • The ability to pay off loans
  • Roommates that are friends
  • Emotions
  • For Airplanes
  • Changes in seasons
  • Running water
  • Choices
  • Sleep
  • A body that functions and provides an opportunity to learn how temporal and spiritual are connected
  • David Zobell
  • Thoughtful roommates
  • Headphones
  • Train rides
  • Awesome adventures with great friends - like hot air ballooning with Mallori
  • The ability to reason
  • To have a good friend in Jen Martin
There are many, many more things I am grateful for, including this time of year that reminds me to focus on all the good in my life and the world around me. There is plenty of good and bad every day - we can choose what to focus on.

Pres. Thomas S. Monson captures this sentiment so well: "I have found that, rather than dwelling on the negative, if we will take a step back and consider the blessings in our lives, including seemingly small, sometimes overlooked blessings, we can find greater happiness...I would recommend this same exercise to you---namely, that you take an inventory of your life and look specifically for the blessings, large and small, you have received." (in Consider the Blessings)

Monday, November 19, 2012

Compliments

People usually mean them. You should accept them.

I'm starting to believe that not doing so is the same thing as calling the person who paid the compliment a liar. What a rude thing for me to do. I'm done throwing away/ deflecting compliments.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Beauty

Is what people repeatedly tell us true?

The answer is certainly, not always. But the reality is that what we repeatedly hear often starts to at least seem true. This week some random man on the street has told me I'm pretty every day this week (okay, so that's only been three days, but still a pattern I noticed today).

Honestly, attention like that mostly just makes me feel very uncomfortable (even when innocently given). It also makes me even less inclined to believe that what they are saying is true. Today the "beautiful lady" comment made me think of a scene from the movie The Kid.

Russ Duritz: Toshiya, let me ask you something. If you get called a jerk four times in a single day, does that make it true?
Amy: What, only four? Did you get up late?
Russ Duritz: Excuse me, I'm asking Toshiya.
Toshia: Four times is a pattern. It have to be five times to be a fact.
Russ Duritz: Thank you. See? There's hope after all.
Amy: Jerk.

Beauty, especially outward beauty is not something I feel I have. For the most part, I feel fine about that. What is inside is more important - and more lasting. I have felt this way for a long time. The other day I found this poem I wrote while in college along these lines:

I may not be gorgeous, but I can be beautiful.
Gorgeous is how you look
Beautiful is who you are.
It's not worth my time,
to try to change outside.
My time is better spent
grooming my insides.
A sincere smile,
A clear conscience,
A compassionate heart,
All things I can perfect.
Who I am inside
will affect others more deeply
than a flawless facade.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Potential

Lately I've been near cripplingly focused on my shortcomings:
  1. Things I'm not doing but should
  2. Things I'm doing but shouldn't
  3. How I don't measure up to others
  4. Things I need to fix in my life
And the list is very long, and very detailed in my head.

This morning as I was pondering it struck me that God's desire for us to repent, to change, to improve is rooted in our potential, not in our shortcomings. He doesn't want us to become better because we are terrible, but because we are capable of so much.

It may seem obvious to some or like an insignificant shift in perspective to others, but I think this change in the way I think about this will help me significantly in many ways.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Seventy Times Seven

I've been thinking about repentance a lot lately. I've been pondering what seems to me to be a paradox - the fact that we must forsake our sins as a condition of repentance paired with the ability to be forgiven multiple times for the same thing. If we have to forsake to be forgiven, than how can we be forgiven again if we do the same thing?

I don't think I fully understand that conundrum still, but as I have studied and pondered on this question, I have gained a few interesting insights.

One of the passages of scriptures that kept coming to my mind was where Jesus commands that we forgive someone 70 times 7 times:

21 ¶Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
 22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

- Matthew 18:21-22

If we have to forgive someone that many times, it means we can be forgiven that many times. And if we can be forgiven that many times, that means we have to (and can) repent that many times if necessary.

As I thought about this command more I realized something fascinating: 70 years is more or less an average life span and there are 7 days in a week. So in essence what Christ is asking is for us to forgive someone every single day of their entire life if they continue to sincerely repent.

I am grateful that the Atonement of Jesus Christ provides a way for me to continue to get up and brush off my seemingly inevitable mortal falls through repentance and start again. I am so grateful that I can partake of the sacrament each week to both renew my covenants (recommit to being perfect) and to once again be clean and pure.