Oh the joy.

We have been spending some quality time together as a family

 with Mickey Mouse this last month.

We have grown a new fondness for the Toy story ride.

While Tanner is the all time winner 

every time

I find a little joy in sharing that 

I 

me

beat Phillip the first couple of times.

In a kind moment

I did share with him my strategy.

so foolish of me.

Here is a picture of him before our most recent battle ride

He is so full of hope.

So full of joy.

This is after.

My Faith, in His ability, is lacking when I am the subject to be changed.

I wrote this last week but didn't post it.  

It's 7:45 am and here I sit, in my skirt, still with my shoes and coat on, all dressed up, having just come home from teaching seminary.  I can't move.  I am exhausted.  The house is quiet, as Kate and Chad have just left for school.  I am alone with my thoughts.  How glorious, you might think, and yes, most of the time, being alone with my thoughts is.  I'm finding though, that recently... this is not a good thing.

I've been feeling the need to make sense of all these swirling negative thoughts and feelings I have been having about a certain challenge in my life. There is something to writing things down or in this case typing things out.  It forces me to put things into words that, hopefully help me, make much better sense of it all. Things don't always make sense even after I write them down.  Those are the times I know I'm a complete mess as oppose to being just a little bit of a complete mess.

I am realizing that these thoughts and feelings are still pretty raw and, this has the potential to leave me feeling a little vulnerable and exposed.  I guess I will just say here, I apologize for the complaints, but it is who I am underneath all the, trying to be better than i really am, tough exterior.  Perhaps, it will spur me into making more of an effort to change.  hahahhahahhaa oh... wait.  I was serious.  Really.  It's just that if change wasn't so difficult, I like to think, I'd do it way more often.

Here are the thoughts that keep running through my head.

I can't...

get up at 4:30am one more time.

prepare a lesson for e v e r y single day of the week, it can take me hours sometimes.

keep letting go of every personal pursuit for my callings.

teach very well and still take care of all my the other things going on in my household.

stay awake just to finish my daily tasks anymore. 

I can not be this person Heavenly Father wants me to be.  

I am not...

cut out for this.
good at consistency.

humble enough.
patient enough.

able to keep in my brain all the things I read/study e v e r y day of the week. 

able to keep my eyes open.  They burn.  

I am not a seminary teacher.

I will never...

be able to wake up rested.
be able to get better at being consistent.

be able to accomplish any personal pursuits.

be able to retain what I study and be able to teach anything that makes sense with out so many hours of preparation.

get use to being so tired.
make a difference.

I will never be able to overcome my weaknesses.

Wow, seeing this on paper is pretty pathetic.  I am so full of excuses.  I sound like my kids.  I am a child still, in so so many ways!  I can hear myself telling my children "You are capable of more than you realize" or "The longer you spend telling me why you can't do something the less time you have to get it done"  as they complain about having to do some seemingly complicated or difficult task like separate laundry or carry something heavy out to the trash.  How humbling that I am a 39 year old child.

Funny enough, we  I talked about overcoming weaknesses in seminary today.  I stood up there and said we can do hard things and that there are promises given to us that when we follow the commandments and follow the council from our apostles and prophet  "the Lord can make much more out of us that we can on our own."   We may believe that there is no way we could ever be good at and do difficult things however, "with Christ, nothing is impossible."  We just have to be willing, and we have to trust and work hard.  How humbling that I am not practicing what I preach.

I feel lame because I can see some of the blessings in my life that have come from this calling yet I have not been grateful enough for them.  I have learned so many new things about how the spirit works, and how the doctrines of the Gospel can create such a firm foundation for good, help us battle evil, and help us overcome weaknesses, in our lives.  How I have thought these tiny matters! So foolish.  They are the essence of life.  How humbling that one of my biggest pet peeves as a mother is ingratitude and yet I am guilty of it.

How is it that in my head and heart i feel like i am such a failure at life right now yet somehow we are accomplishing some projects that have been on our list of things to do for years?  We are so close to having Tanner ready to leave on his mission. He will be going to the temple in a week.  I don't think I have even stopped to consider how monumental this task has been.  A lifetime of preparation really.  19 years.  Certainly this has been evidence of the Lord making more out of us as parents, than we are on our own.  How humbling that I am so busy complaining I can't even see my blessings.

I need to heed some of my own parental counsel and realize that i am capable of more than i realize (as long as I am worthy of divine help) and stop making excuses and just get to work.  If my parental counsel is true, then eventually I will be more able than i thought i could be.

Okay... but really?

What choice do I have but to trust that somehow, someway,  I will be molded and shaped into who He wants me to be?  I guess I could abandon everything I know and ignore what I have experienced in the past and deny that He will provide a way for me to accomplish the very thing he has asked me to do and just quit... I just can't do that.

Then, I need to face the facts and trust that even I can change if Christ is involved.  Why is that so hard to believe?  I believe He changed the water to wine, that He raised the dead, and that He cured many.  I guess that my faith in His ability is lacking when i am the subject that needs to be changed.  Is it that I just don't believe he can do the things he says he can do? OBVIOUSLY.

  I bet it wouldn't be difficult to convince someone to smack me right now.  Any takers?

This is the temple in Bogota Colombia.  Tanner will be blessed to have the opportunity to be in the temple during his mission.  I am so thankful for that. : )

The looming 40

I can feel turning 40 looming in the air but I can see it already in the mirror everyday.  What can I do except embrace it?  Funny you should ask.  I will embrace it,  just not while lying down and letting go of everything.  I spent the majority of my 30s that way.  Letting go of things, that is.  I definitely didn't spend them lying down.

Those years sped by on a bullet train,  swirling around me, and in many ways, out of control. As chaotic as they were, I did spend them being molded and shaped by my responsibilities at home and at church and in my relationships.  It can be painful being molded and shaped into forms you never thought you could be put in.  Nevertheless, it is done and I can say that I am better for it.  Now though, I could use some recoup time.  I just want to gain a little, not a lot, just a little, control over my life.  And somehow I need to figure out how to do that while being busier than ever.

Phillip always quotes his favorite talk radio host and says that it is a women's trial to learn how not to control everything.  I'll leave the man's trial for another post.  If that is true then I have made great strides.  I have certainly learned the art of letting go. Letting go of my standard of clean, letting go of the house, the laundry, my weight, my health, my idealistic dreams of motherhood and marriage. It even included letting go of friends sometimes,  letting go of personal desires when they weren't in harmony with maintaining my family responsibilities,  and even letting go of my children a little at a time to help them make some decisions on their own.  I don't know if I'll ever master any of these but I certainly have spent a great deal of time practicing.

The last couple of years I have come to realize that I have let go of too much. Its time to grab hold of a few things again.  So that is how I will embrace 40.  I will grab hold of the things I have let go of too hastily.  My health, my weight, some friends, and maybe an idealistic dream or two for kicks.  Notice that I do not plan on grabbing hold of the laundry.  Instead,  I will be training my replacements.  Life is just too short to spend it doing the laundry.

Here's to an idealistic dream or four.

Petty? Perhaps.

I have learned a couple petty things about myself recently and since I am willing to do, just about, anything to avoid preparing my seminary lesson... here you go...

I really really don't care for stores that smell. 
Of anything. 
I just want it to smell like air.  
Plain air. 
Nothing flowery please. 
Nothing perfumey.
Nothing musty.
Especially nothing rank.
Just nothing. 

That would be awesome.

Also, lots of stuff upsets me.

There is a certain store that I visited recently.
It is soo jam packed full of stuff. 
There is stuff all the way up to the ceiling, 
on every square inch of the wall, 
even down the middle of every walk way, 
and covering every horizontal surface.
STUFF as far as the eye can see.
AND it smells.
 
I had exactly 3 minutes of tolerance in there and then I started to self destruct. 
I fell out of the doors like I was crossing a marathon finish line gasping for air. 
Plain air...that smells like nothing.

I didn't think I was petty.
Here's to being honest with myself.
Please tell me that you are petty too.  Occasionally?
I'll feel so much better about myself.

Thanks.