Am I Willing to Do the Same?

I have been struck lately by the sweet ability to live in the moment and feel the wonder and beauty of it. I am realizing this comes easy to me when I am sacrificing something for what I know to be true - each time I realize I need to make a change and I set about making it. I guess this is the repentance process that we should constantly be going through.

I have very little discretionary time and I have found lately that what I do with it is very important. I can spend it online, or on mind-numbing things. There is nothing inherently wrong with that (which makes it easy to justify), but it certainly keeps me from doing something better with that limited time. Heavenly Father has blessed me with a curious and active mind. I love to learn and I love to teach. Like I said, I don't have a ton of time for my own studies, but God does magnify my efforts with my limited time. That time is precious. I think of the prophet Joseph Smith and how much he was able to do in his short life. It is incredible. He didn't waste his time on that which is of no worth so his efforts were magnified in the short time he had. I have seen Heavenly Father do this with my efforts when I commit to giving Him "my" free time. I am learning that how I spend each moment counts.

I am not saying that I intend to be fanatical about always doing and running faster than I have strength. Sometimes the best thing to do with my time is to sit and stare and in wonder at my new baby girl. Sometimes it's to do the laundry and sometimes it's to leave it undone and listen to a child.  Sometimes it's to read and study and sometimes it's to sit and ponder. Sometimes it's to just play.

I do know that as I use my limited free time on what is best (and not just good or okay) at that moment - God will help me accomplish great things that will bring me and others great joy.  I have seen it over and over. I just need to stop getting distracted with things of less worth.
(This is a great article for reminding us how easy and damaging it is to get distracted.)

We watched the following video at church today.  I reminded me of the sacrifices others have made for what they knew to be true.  Am I willing to do the same?

 

Priorities

I can't find my journal this morning and I find that I do not get nearly as much out of my morning personal study if I don't write...so I'm going to write a little of what has been on my mind.

 I've been thinking about priorities.  It comes from having a new baby and remembering how newborns tend to take a lot of time. Some newborns sleep a lot, but our sweet Ladybug tends to be awake a lot in the day.  Maybe it's all the noise?  Anyway, I find that I have very limited time when I am not holding a baby.  I keep telling myself to just enjoy it while it lasts.  Experience has taught me that this sweet time flies by so quickly. So I try to remember and not worry about all of the things I am NOT doing.  I tend to be a pretty busy person with many projects going on at once (though not so many actually ever finished) so it's hard for me to slow down and let things go,

For example, half our basement flooded a week and a half ago,  Bill's been busy drying it out and replacing padding. He put everything from the flooded room into the toy room.  I have been dying to go through the stuff to get rid of most of it and organize, but have not had time to clean my room some days, let alone start on all of that.

Thankfully, I have incredible children who clean most of the house.  I will admit, though, that I have not done a good job teaching them to do things as well as I would do them, so things tend to still look a little messy when they are done.  It is sooooooooooo hard for me to tell them that their work isn't good enough.  I can do it once or twice, but after that I just let it go - I really don't like being the annoying, naggy voice all of the time, even though I think I am most of the time.

Anyway, back to priorities.  I made a list yesterday of things I feel are most important to do every day.  This talk was helpful to me.  I ordered them in order of importance so whenever I have a spare moment, I can do the next thing on the list.  This way, first things will get done first and it will be okay if I don't always get to the last things on the list.  It helped me feel better and it will help me be more wise with my limited time.

Unfortunately, I lost my journal this morning so I'm not sure what is next on my list after morning scriptures, prayer, and writing... I don't think it was family devotional yet, but I think that is what I'll do...hopefully I'll find my journal soon :-)

The other thing that is on my mind is our homeschool youth group.  I mentioned a while ago that I felt inspired to start my own Vanguard group last year. It went really well.  The youth are amazing and the mentors are so inspired and inspiring.  Word spread and others wanted to get involved.  We had 18 youth in our group last year.  A friend of someone in our group heard about it and decided to start her own group in the Orem area so I got to meet with her and help her get one started this year.  Another of our families lived pretty far away so she decided to start her own group in Box Elder County.  Mary, the original founder of the first group, moved back to Utah and started another group.  Thankfully, she also did a training to help some of these other groups get started.  So now there are five Vanguard groups.  Our group has 34 youth this year.  We've split the core class (the one everyone attends) by gender into two different groups (18 boys and 16 girls).  If the youth do the extra work they are able to go to the journeyman class and then the master class.  A lot of them are doing the extra work and going to those classes.  It is so great to see. One of our mentors wrote a post recently about some of the things she likes about Vanguard.  She explains it well there. You can also look at our webpage and click on some of the tabs to see some of what we do.  They come to class prepared to teach each other.  A few of them put some of their work on the blog this week. They are such incredible youth!

All of this growth is exciting, but does pose some new challenges.  So I've been trying to figure out how to have such a large group and not neglect any of the youth - that they all feel welcome and loved in class, that they are feeling inspired, that we are doing our best as mentors, etc.  I love it.  Being so busy with my precious new baby girl, I don't want to neglect it, but it's sometimes hard to find the balance.  I know doing Vanguard is something Heavenly Father wants me to do - it's just a matter of figuring out how much of it He wants me to do.  The other mentors are doing great keeping things going without me so I just need to figure out how I am needed and focus on that.

Right now I'm feeling inspired to get my priorities straight - to do first things first with my family and then things will be clear with I need to do with Vanguard.  So I suppose I better go get going with that.  I didn't mean to write so long! 

Some pics from the last 3 weeks:
Taken today - she is growing so fast!

Labor Day Fun in Prove Canyon:

Knights of Freedom Summit:
Bud loved this.  They trained them on the knightly virtues and on fighting for the right.  They had a big battle in the end.  It was raining, but they carried on.  I had baby Ladybug wrapped in a wrap around me and I had an umberella so she stayed warm and dry while we watched.