Saturday, December 31, 2011

thoughts on New Year's Eve.

2012 is in 2 hours. I am going to bed in 20 minutes. New Year resolutions rarely have a positive start when I'm up all hours of the night...and eating poop food.

The kids have been asleep since 7:30. They have no clue what they're missing. Someday they will. Someday they will or can stay up for the new year. But tonight they sleep like angels.

Chay, on the other hand, is at a New Year's Party. I told him to go. Chay loves people and people love Chay. I love Chay and people. Tonight however, I wanted to stay home and be with me.

I love being by myself right now.

New Year Resolutions kind of get a bad rap. People get discouraged far too often and find failing their goals to be inevitable. So now goals at New Year's seem to be more the brunt of jokes than a time to admire what a person longs to achieve in their life.

 What do I say to that? Who cares. Keep trying. Never give up. Set a freakin goal. Learn to set goals better, learn to meet them better. Just keep stretching yourself.

I have met a few people who have kept and accomplished their New Year Resolutions...and I feel like I am in the same room as a celebrity or something. "WOW, you really did it?"

I carry on the Christmas Tradition of my Mother. "The Gift to The Savior" Each family member reflects on their life and decides on one thing they can work on or improve on the following year that they can give to the Savior. They write down this goal on a piece of paper and it goes into a pretty wrapped box. The present stays on the piano all year. We then write the same goal in our journals. We open the gift the following Christmas and then talk about our gift to Christ that year.

To be honest, I sometimes forget what I wrote down the year before. Each year I learn more more about this tradition and its significance.

I don't want to forget what I wrote this year. I want to take the symbolic gift and make it literal. I don't want it to be just a tradition that we do on Christmas Eve. I want to make it apart of my every day. Not really sure how yet...but I'm going to try anyway. Writing it down on my blog has got to help a little anyway.

Although I have a million gajillion things to improve upon in my life...I have chosen 2-3 things that I have felt through the power of the Holy Ghost that I need to focus on and with that focus other parts of my life will come together as well. Ha Ha. Yeah right. But, you know, at least slightly improve we hope.

You see, personal revelation is apart of the higher law. Because it fortifies the PERSONAL relationship with God and seeking out what He wants April to do...and will make all the difference in this life journey. Listening to the promptings of the Holy Ghost will usually lead us down a tougher road and therefore strengthening our faith even more. The routine of going to church, reading scriptures, attending the temple, paying tithing, serving others and all that- has a bigger impact on me when I'm on a personal mission to follow the Lord's will. "if ye shall knock, ye shall find"

sometimes I feel like I'm kind of just floating around in life without a whole lot of knocking going on- just going through the motions...

He wants us to knock. He wants us to pray. Searching, trying, trying again, going through certain trials, obeying the commandments, setting spiritual goals, listening to the Spirit, seeking out His help- all ways we are knocking to find Christ.

Oh how often I forget. "Not my will but Thine"

Our Savior Jesus Christ, the ultimate example of doing what God the Father wanted before himself.

Isn't that really what the focus should be with our goals? His will? Makes me question my motivations now.

Ok, well this post did not go as planned or did it? I don't know.

I am going to bed.

*Talk more about my gifts to the Savior tomorrow. I will think about them more tomorrow at church.