Now that you feel bad for me, hopefully you can forgive me for completely forgetting to set up Sunday's post.
If that isn't quite good enough for forgiveness, let me tell you that I drove for 16 hours on Sunday.
Not a lot of blogging time.
I am very sorry though. So, without further ado, here is my little sister's post which I am more grateful for than I can tell. Thanks a million, Meg!
This morning I was thinking a lot about reality- and why it's so hard for me to accept it sometimes. I've realized lately that most of the time that I'm not happy it's because something has really literally happened that I didn't want to. You know those moments when you feel a sense of total inability to control the world around you? Well, I need to work on my reaction to those, because currently I have a tendency to just get absolutely and completely angry- and that does NOT bring joy into my life.
For example- probably the angriest I have ever been (and I mean super angry) was when I lost my scholarship because I turned in the application two days late. In spite of 8 months of hard work and two semesters of 4.0's, I was late and that was it. That was reality: thousands of dollars down the drain. And I just couldn't face it, so I got irrationally mad. Seriously, this ate at me for like 6 months, and even now when I think about it I get a pit in my stomach. I would do ANYTHING to go back and make myself remember to turn it in on time. But that's not reality. I turned it in late and late applications do not even get considered. Period.
So this morning I was reflecting on my goal to face reality better. Then suddenly I realized why it's so hard for me to do this: I DON'T LIKE REALITY. Well, at least sometimes. Now, I'm not about to explain to you why I've decided to go clinically insane. :) I found a better way to deal with this. Seriously though, don't we all have times when the real world is just plain horrid? Well, as I was reading my scriptures, out of the blue something popped into my head: "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7).
Okay, I hope that doesn't sound depressing. Really, it makes me so much more excited, because instead of the future seeming grim and gloomy and full of bad things, it's full of experiences that are going to make me a better person, if I face them and accept them. Even more than that, Heavenly Father wants to help me because He LOVES me.
Trials will come, but the Lord knows me, He knows what I'm going through, and He knows what I can handle. He knows my weaknesses, and He wants to help them become strengths. He wants me to succeed. He's giving me the experiences I need. He knows I can make it through life-- and He's allowing me to prove that to myself.
I just need to remember why I'm here: to gain experience and become like God, and who I am: a daughter of God. That's a formula for success. And it's true for all of us. We are all children of God. We can all succeed if we remember that.
So that's where I could use some help- how do we remember more often that we are children of God? What do you do in your life to keep this eternal perspective?
3 comments:
I want to add a bit here- it's okay to forget things like scholarships. I've recently realized that I had been telling myself "Okay, I've learned my lesson- I will never forget anything like that again."
YEAH RIGHT! I'm human. I'm a woman. And I'm going to forget something huge like that again. It's just a fact of life. Now that I've forgiven myself for doing a perfectly NORMAL thing, I've finally been able to move on and accept the reality!
And it's been wonderful. :)
Meg, I loved it!
Very true, I think I have been in that little spot the past month and it just doesn't help. Today after mom and Dad left I decided to see it from another angle and even though life is too crazy right now my approach is different and I am loving every minute of it.
For me, my children are my reminder. I can see my Father in Heaven, trying to help me do things and seeing me fail and knowing that letting me figure it out for my self is the only way to do it.
I loved reading what you wrote - And I will comment again about that after I look up a scripture I found last week on this. But for now I wanted to share that even though your experience with losing the scholarship was extremely painful, you worked really hard to get it back, you helped the administration recognize a flaw in their decision-making process, and as a result other students will not have the same experience. It must have been very hard to keep yourself going, to come up with new approaches to solve the problem, and to keep working with people who weren't very helpful along the way. But you did it! I learned a lot from your example and have used it to buoy me up when things seem discouraging.
love you!
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