Monday, September 05, 2016

Following a prompting

Not sure if anyone is still subscribed to this blog, and I've done a terrible job keeping up with it since I got hooked on Facebook, but recently I've been trying to figure out what I needed to do to see things more clearly. I've wanted to see the good in my life as its too easy to forget. This will probably morph into more of a journal, and I may end up making it private, but for now I will keep it.

A couple of months ago I got the feeling I needed to write down the good things. But I haven't made it a daily habit. I was just using google docs and figured I wanted to post here again. A few weeks ago I was released as the primary secretary. Today I felt blessed that I was able to sit in both Sunday School and Relief Society and take away lesson I needed to hear.

In Sunday school we talked about how quickly we forget God.  Our teacher, Ramdas, is a yoga instructor. He had us go through a short guided meditation where we closed our eye and relaxed our minds and then brought us back to our relationship God. It was very calming and a reminder that I don't do that nearly enough. Self guided meditation that is. Anyway, in the lesson he spoke of what some of the most important messages and "commandments" were according to how frequently they came up in the scriptures.  This was the list he came up with in order according to their frequency spoken of in the scriptures.

  1. Remember
  2. Love
  3. Repent
  4. Pray
  5. Sacrifice
It made me think of food. Often people decide they need to eat healthier. In doing so they then get to a point where they are feeling great and then feel justified in eating treats and junk again, the they often just fall back into old patterns. That is the first step in remembering. Remember how bad it was when we weren't making good choices.  Then as we advance we come to remember how good we feel now. We are grateful and express our gratitude. By loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God, we tend to make better choices. When we make a mistake, we quickly repent. We stay in contact with God daily and we sacrifice those poor choices we would have made previously. Lay our sins on the alter and become a new person through Christ. All of the subsequent items on the list help us remember who we are, remember who God is, and remember our potential.  So what do we do daily to help us remember?

I came home and read a talk by Elder Eyring called O remember, remember. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/o-remember-remember?lang=eng&_r=1  
In it he says that one day he had the impression that the experiences he was having we're not just for him and that he needed to start writing them down. That day he started a journal and wrote something daily, even if he was tired or had an early start the next morning. He always asked himself the question, "have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our families today?"  This talk was a reminder to me that I'd already been prompted to write things down, so I need to just do it. To see the good I need to look for the good. I need to focus on the good. I need to remember the good. We become what we focus our attention on repeatedly. If we focus on the problems, we will never find the solutions. If we focus on blessings we will continue to see blessings, even in tough times and circumstances. So here is to me making this a priority. I am typing on my iPad and tend to have a lot of autocorrects and it doesn't let me scroll up and down easily to proofread, so there may end up being weird sentences or poor grammar, and for that I'm sorry. But I need this to happen more that I need to write perfect posts. 

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