Musicals: a treasure trove of life's lessons

So, I have decided that musicals are a great place to learn good things about life. You learn the importance of vanilla ice cream and optometry in She Loves Me, how you can be cranky as long as your friends are cranky and then together if you work in a garden you can become less cranky together from The Secret Garden, and never to feed any of your plants blood from Little Shop of Horrors. All important lessons. The (more serious one) I have been thinking about recently comes from Aida.

Let me give you a little background. I am on a committee to help plan my stake's Relief Society Conference for which part of it we are helping to furnish an apartment that a refugee family is moving into. It has been fairly stressful and involves a lot of communicating and planning with people that I don't really know. We are down to the last week and a half before this happens and today was crazy with the amount of texting and coordinating that needed to be done.

I don't particularly love this type of planning. I don't like texting people I don't know and I don't like how much energy it takes out of me to do so. I feel lazy when all I have done all day is text people, yet I feel so tired from doing nothing. Needless to say I have been in a mood today and complaining to all the people I do know. (I'm sorry if any of you who I have been whining to read this) Then after a last little bout of whining to my mom I was laying down on her bed listening to the quiet in my parent's room and these words from Aida (with a little bit of a change) came into my head,

"If you don't like [how you are feeling] change it. You are your own master, there are no shackles on you." 

In my Psychology class I took a couple semesters ago we talked about all the things that happen to us before we feel something. First we have to have a sensation, then that sensation goes into our mind and takes into account what is happening to us now, our past experiences with similar sensations, and a myriad of other things, then we make a judgement and perceive things which produces feelings. (Or something along those lines, I mean, it was a while ago when I studied this) The point of this was to explain how we have the wonderful ability to change how we are feeling about things. 

I might hate texting people but that doesn't mean that I have to feel grumpy when I am doing a lot of it. I can choose to use other experiences to change my perception. I can think about how the refugee family my ward is trying to help would probably love to have a phone to text people with. I can remember that I had a wonderful dinner and I didn't even have to worry about it, meals just happen every day for me when I know around the world people worry every day about where their next meal will come from.

I hope that I can remember how wonderful it is that I have the opportunity to help a family in need and that this isn't about me. It is about how I can look outside of myself and see other human suffering and do my part in helping to alleviate that suffering now matter how uncomfortable or hard it feels at the time. That is what Christ did. He saw us and saw our suffering and did His part to make it better for us, even though it was hard and excruciating for Him. That is the biggest filter I can use to help me change my thinking. I am grateful that I can take this opportunity to learn more about my Savior.

In which my car got stuck...

Do you see the grossness that is my icy Rexburg parking lot? I do...I see it every day. So, I haven't had a problem with ice at all this winter until today. I have been very blessed in this as the parking lot above has looked this way since November but my no-problems-with-ice streak ended today, and no, surprisingly it wasn't in this parking lot. I drove to church today and parked on the hill next to the building where I have church not really thinking about getting out again and went to church.

 *side note, church was AWESOME! We had a lesson in Gospel principles on the Atonement where the teacher really focused on us backing up whatever we said with scriptures which brought a lot of power to the lesson. #scripturepower :D )* 

Anyways, I left church and got into my car, turned it on, started backing out when I heard the dreaded sound of my wheels spinning uselessly against the ice. My front wheels were on solid asphalt and so were my back wheels, but right behind my front wheels was a sheet of ice. I was stuck. I was also embarrassed. This quote was running through my head.

I felt so dumb for parking there and not even thinking about how I could get stuck. There were plenty of other spaces where I could have parked just fine, but because I wasn't thinking earlier my car was stuck. I was sitting there for a few minutes deciding what I should do. My pride was voting that I just leave it there for a while and then come back later that night to see if, by some miracle I could move it then, but my rational side realized that I probably wouldn't be able to move it later and there would be even less people around to help me.

So, my rational side winning out, turned off my car and was deciding to go find help when one of my ward members walked by. I got out and told him that my car was stuck. He without any teasing or fanfare asked if I wanted him to push. He tried and when that didn't work, he snagged another boy and together they pushed me out of the ice and I offered him a ride home.

I know this is really silly, but I was so grateful that Heavenly Father sent someone that I know is so kind. He gave a talk in church the other week about how he always keeps a candy in his pocket in case he sees someone that needs a snack/treat. I know that it is true too because I have been the recipient of it once. I was already feeling so embarrassed so it was a tender mercy that he was there right when I needed a push and I knew that he would help and be happy to serve.

I am so grateful for all the Christ-like and loving people that are in my life!

And, since it's Valentines Day, I wanted to share a picture of some of the people that I love the most in the whole world, my family. (This is mostly my sisters as we were preparing to ambush one of my brothers with our Christmas marshmallow shooters, but its the picture I have with the most of us in it)

I love you Mom, Dad, Loralee, Joylyn, Mike, Brookeh, Susan, Karen, Julie, Erik, Jenn, Brad, Rachel, Eric, and my nieces and nephews!

Be Still

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the noise of the world. 

Last Sunday I taught the gospel principles class in my ward and while it went well, it also went WAY faster than I had planned, we were at the end of what I had prepared and we had about 15 minutes left . . . so with no lesson material left I decided to make a list on the board of different commandments that Christ has given to us and that, by following them, will help us draw closer to him. I figured that would take at least 5 minutes and then they would have a visual for my invitation. We had a lot of different things written on the board, i.e. forgive, repent, love and serve one another, keep the Sabbath day holy, be still, etc. My invitation was to pick one to work on that week and see how their relationship with Christ grows as they did so. 

As I was looking at the list, one of them (Be still) really caught my eye. The point of my lesson was to find ways to strengthen our personal relationships with Christ. My goal from the lesson was to take more time to be still. I wanted to disconnect more from the worldly noise and tune more into the spiritual noise so I would be more available to receive promptings from the Holy Ghost. I think it has literally been the hardest week for me to do that. I didn't do very well at all, in fact, I went on a Netflix and YouTube spree. While on my endless YouTube video rabbit hole I found this video. 

*** Warning, there is some swearing*** 

In the video, in case you didn't want to watch it :) He talks about how he is always connected to something from the moment he wakes up until he goes to bed and then he goes on to talk about how rewarding it is when you disconnect from all of the entertainment and noise that can come from everywhere and just think. 

When I watched this I realized that that day I had done almost nothing but be plugged in to the noise of the world. I was very similar to this guy. I got up and was listening to an audio book, Then I walked to class with my headphones tuned into my favorite Pandora station. I went to class and then listened to Pandora some more while I did homework then repeated until my classes were done, then I walked home to the sound of my Pandora station. When I got home I got on Facebook, then watched some episodes on Netflix then got on YouTube... I had just spent my whole day drowning every other voice out with meaningless entertainment. It was a wake-up call to me that I needed to stop and let my brain think. I needed to take time to be still. This small rebuke was a tender mercy to me. It helped me remember the goals I had set earlier in the week and to do better for the rest of the week. 

I think it is amazing how God really is involved in our lives and wants to help us achieve our goals and will send us reminders of those goals when we are not on track to achieve them. This week my goal is to take time, and more than just a couple of minutes, to be still every day during the week so I can enjoy the company of my own mind more. I think I will find it to be rewarding in many ways.

Also, another tender mercy, tonight was, for the first time in almost 2 years, seeing this cute girl again! Sister Richards (now Betsy) stopped in Rexburg for a few hours and I got to hang out with her :) So fun!