Warning!

At the beginning of this month I shared on the blog that I was feeling a need to work on my attitude of gratitude. (You can click here to read that post) I wrote that I wanted to begin a grateful journey. I did not record much of my experience, mainly because my life is just full of so many activities and finding time to write on the blog isn't always possible. But now that it is the last day of November, I wanted to write just a bit.

My "warning" is that when you embark on a grateful journey, allowing the Savior to be your tour guide, you must be prepared for what is to happen within your heart and your mind. At the beginning of the month I was worried about money. Now it is the end of the month, there have been some miracles here and there and money provided when it was truly needed but financially things are still really tight. The difference is, I'm not worried. I won't lie, I have my moments of fear. But they are just moments, not hours or days.

You know that windows of Heaven thing that is supposed to happen when you pay your tithing? "...prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that [there shall] not [be room] enough [to receive it]." (Malachi 3:10)  Oh man, I don't have room for it all- and it is what I already had! The Lord has proved Himself to me - ONCE AGAIN!. My eyes have been opened to all that I have and I feel like I'm as rich as a Queen! I'm serious! I have SO MANY BLESSINGS!!!!! I can't express that enough. And then, when you are feeling so grateful, He gives you MORE!! It is the same with my children. When they are greedy or ungrateful I give them just what they basically need but when they are grateful, heck, they can have whatever they want!  (within reason of course)

Our Father is the same. Often in the D&C the Savior says that our Father "delights" to bless us. He LOVES to give us presents. Really He does.

When I decided to work on WANTING LESS and being satisfied with what I already have and with what the Lord sees fit to give me, I began to feel that my house is going to burst it is so full of stuff. But it's not just about stuff. It is about the wonderful people in my life and the amazing experiences that have been mine and my health and the health of my children and the GOSPEL! I could write the longest post of my life just recording all of the blessings that have been given to me.

This is where the Lord raises the bar on me. He is asking me now to go further on this journey."But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God. and after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good - to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted." (Jacob 2:18-19)

So what Jacob is saying to me is, "Lisa, now I want you to look around and look at your stuff and your talents and you testimony and your experiences and I want you to view them as a means to serve others. Not just to pay your bills or to make your world comfortable, but as a way to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A way to be His true disciple. I want you to get to a point where you look at all that you have and you sincerely say, 'Oh look! I have stuff to share with others! I have three pair of brown shoes. I don't NEED all of them. Someone, somewhere needs a pair of shoes today, to wear every day.' and then you allow the Lord to guide you to whomever needs those shoes, because they have none and you had excess."

So I just keep learning and growing and stretching and yes, as usual, I am confronted with my mortalness (my made up word). I will forget and I will get greedy and I will need to be reminded of all of this. That is why I write it down. It helps me cement it in my brain, but mostly in my heart. "He's writing HIS NAME on my heart. Working the change from the inside." (Kenneth Cope "His Name Is Love")

This life isn't about stuff. It is so easy for us to think it is. It is so easy for us to be distracted by the props all around us on this stage of "Life". Satan loves that. This life is about LOVE and all of us walking the journey that has been laid out for us to help us make it HOME and all of us helping each other along the way. In some miraculous way, life is about forgetting about ourselves, caring more for the needs of others and then somehow the Lord opens our eyes to who we really are and what is really within us. So many of us have so much, but even more of us, quite literally have nothing - not even one pair of shoes, let alone three brown pair. LOVE. Not judging. LOVE. Not seeing the plight of others and deciding without DIVINE insight that it is their own fault they are in the situation they are in. LOVE. Not thinking "someone else will help them". LOVE. Not making someone else feel less than because they don't have what "society" says we should "have". Society will pass away but LOVE, LOVE, LOVE NEVER WILL.

and so continues the life long journey... 

A Very Overdue Thank You Note

Okay, this post can be long or it can be really long but I'm going to take upon myself the challenge to keep it short because I still have an institute class to prepare for tomorrow morning...

So, as I have noted earlier, I'm working on being more grateful for all the Lord has given me. Not sure if this is appropriate to write but I even fasted at the beginning of this month that my gratitude for everything would increase and my wants and needs would decrease. I have been praying that my eyes would be opened to my blessings and my heart would be filled with gratitude on a more continual basis.

It's getting long...

Anyway, the November issue of the Friend magazine came last week. On the cover is a picture of a family opening the door to a box of Thanksgiving food sitting on their door step while in the back ground you can see someone running away - obviously the one who had anonymously left the food. (you can see a small version of the magazine here)

The picture reminds me of my family when I was growing up. Just picture my family with just a mom and three little kids instead of two - and a cat, not a dog. :) We were often the recipients of such generosity and kindness. I distinctly remember a few times that this happened.  I have no idea who it was but a thank you note from me is long overdue so I'm just going to write a letter to those who may read this blog because you are undoubtedly kind, generous, loving people who want to follow Jesus Christ and you have probably done something anonymously like this before. So, here we go...

Dear Someone,
Thank you for the food you left on our doorstep tonight. It was so much fun for my brother and sister and I to go with my mom to the door and find a surprise waiting for us there. How did you know that we were completely out of money? How did you know there wasn't much food in the house? Most importantly, how did you know that we needed a ray of sunshine on that cold winter's night? I know you took from your own food supplies and your own financial resources to help us out. I pray the Lord will bless you for your sacrifice and generosity. I hope to be able to do the same for someone else one day. You are teaching me how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Thank you.
Love,
Lisa

I Never Thought Of This Before...

I have recently felt strong impressions to work on being more grateful in my life. This comes as we have been struggling to make ends meet since Troy started his own business. We have been making it so far but Troy came home last week and informed me that there will probably not be a pay check for the next couple of months. I don't understand! There aren't enough hours in the day for this man to do all of the work he has. He is booked solid and has a waiting list, yet no paycheck?! It all has to do with insurance companies and people not paying their bills and all of the expenses one has while running one's own business. Gratefully, he teaches a couple of classes at the college which will pay the basic bills, so at least we will have a roof over our heads. He's thinking about taking on another teaching job at the University of Phoenix but I just don't know how he'll do it all and besides we see so little of him as it is.

So, some of you are thinking, "Whoa Lisa Love, too much info! That is private and I would never share that in such a public forum!" Well, let me tell ya...my blog is private now! :) and there aren't a ton of people reading the blog which is very liberating somehow, and, and, AND I know there are a few of you who read this blog who are struggling financially as well. I believe in privacy but I also believe that at some point we need to be willing to share with each other or else we start to think we are the only ones with our problems and that leads to loneliness and isolation and comparing ourselves to unrealistic perceptions and that is dangerous for our spiritual well being.  Reading other people's blogs can be deceiving because, naturally, people are only going to post the good stuff or the noteworthy stuff, but as in my own case, I know I have daily struggles and bad days and life is not always hunky dory around the Love Shack. The thought of someone reading my blog and then feeling badly about their own circumstances, when the reality is that our circumstances have more in common than anyone knows, makes me feel great sadness.

Well, anyway, back to wanting to study gratitude. My desires to be more grateful are what guided my choice of my blog's background (the background was as if one was looking into the universe filled with stars and galaxies). When I think of the vastness of the universe and Who it is who created the universe, my earth life problems seem to shrink back to their realistic size in my perspective. I know this life is but a small moment in my eternal existence and that with God by my side, I can endure and rise above all things.I learned this at a very young age. After my father died when I was 5-years-old, my mother did everything she could to support us but it was hard, very, very hard. Maybe I'll share some of those stories on this blog.

It was during my growing up years, struggling with so many different hard experiences, that I learned to look up at the stars. My mother taught me to love astronomy. We would lie out on the grass in our backyard during the cool summer nights (not in Yuma, obviously, because you can't do that in Yuma it's too HOT!) and we would look up at the stars and somehow I knew that everything would always work out because a feeling of security would wash over me and eternal perspective would fill my heart. It was as if  our Father in Heaven reached down and tenderly wrapped me in a soft quilt made out of the universe and whispered that He, the Master Creator, and Perfect Father, had indeed created all that I could see but that He knew me personally and had a plan for my life and He had everything under control. I believed Him...and I still do.

 I have been praying that our Father would help me with my current levels of eternal perspective because now I'm not a little girl, I'm a mom with two wonderful children who depend on me for everything. As I have been praying about our current issues and pondering how to make it through cheerfully, the Spirit has been whispering that I need to actively work at being more grateful. So, I read the talk given by Pres. Monson in our last General Conference. While reading the talk, my eyes were opened to a wonderful lesson in a story I have read and head so many times, yet I had never made the gratitude connection before.

"In the book of Matthew in the Bible, we have another account of gratitude, this time as an expression from the Savior. As He traveled in the wilderness for three days, more than 4,000 people followed and traveled with Him. He took compassion on them, for they may not have eaten during the entire three days. His disciples, however, questioned, 'Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?' Like many of us, the disciples saw only what was lacking.


'And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And [the disciples] said, Seven, and a few little fishes.


'And [Jesus] commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.

'And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.'

"Notice that the Savior gave thanks for what they had—and a miracle followed: 'And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.'

"We have all experienced times when our focus is on what we lack rather than on our blessings. Said the Greek philosopher Epictetus, 'He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.'


"Gratitude is a divine principle." (President Thomas S. Monson, "The Divine Gift of Gratitude", General Conference, Oct. 2010) Click here to read the whole amazing talk including a great idea for Thanksgiving!

Wowsers! I never thought of that before... the Savior sincerely THANKED our Father for the little bit that they did have BEFORE the miracle took place. There is a great lesson in that and I'm ready to get started on my own grateful journey.

I'm sharing this with you so that some of you can join me on the journey to a more grateful heart. You may have different ideas - share them with me please. What works for my family may not work for your family but we can all help each other on this path. So, to those of you who have actually read this whole long post, I issue the challenge to prayerfully consider how your family can be more grateful. When we are grateful, we are humble and teachable and moldable and, just as in the story of the loaves and fishes, miracles can and will take place. 


Author's note: miracles come in the way the Lord sees fit, which does not always concur with our idea of a miracle. While I was growing up in a very desperate financial situation, there were many miracles but the greatest miracles that took place, took place in my heart and in my mind as I developed a very close relationship with our Father in Heaven and learned to trust  Him and His plan for my life. I will be eternally grateful for the lessons of those years - eternally!

Author's other note: It really doesn't matter what you may be struggling with, be it financial problems, relationship problems, health problems etc...being more grateful seems to be a way of dealing with everything so you are welcome to join the journey even if money is not something you are lacking at this time. :)