Sunday, January 18, 2009

Benjamin Franklin

2 Nephi 27:23
"For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith."

Well, today I have made even more commitments to improve my life in numerous ways.  Hopefully, with the help of the Lord, my famiy, and my friends I will be successful in doing so.  The commitments are:

  • In addition to my current reading & blogging, I am going to also read 1 chapter out of the New Testament daily.
  • Watch 1 CES video of a talk with my family each week.
  • Go on splits with the missionaries at least once per month.  Hopefully that will become once per week.
  • Increase the amount of classical music that I listen to in order to bring peace and rest to my mind in more abundance.
  • Go to my lunch with my mother once a month, just the 2 of us.
  • Stretch every morning.
  • Do 25 jumping jacks every morning (I may add stomach crunches and pushups in the near future).
  • Eat fruit with every meal.
  • Continue not drinking any form of soda.
  • Eat one salad per week.
  • Get an adjustment from my brother (Chriopractor) every thursday morning.
  • Go to my parent's church meetings (the whole 3-hour block) every week in addition to my own meetings.
What brought all of this about?  Well, doing the last one is what.  I decided that I was going to go to church with my parents today, and in Sunday School (taught by Sister Reynolds) we discussed ways to increase our spiritual, mental, and physical wellness.  It was a wonderful lesson that brought about ways to set easy goals (relatively anyways) that can better your life.  Really though, if you add up the time commitment that all of that entails on a weekly basis that's roughly 4 hours or so added to the entire week.  That's really not that much extra time thrown in there, especially when the only time commitments I currently have are work, church, institute, and a monthly temple attendance.  This really should be simple, but it will do me no good if I don't follow through with it.

Speaking of attending church with my parents, it was wonderful.  I got to see a lot of faces that I haven't seen in a while, or if I have seen them it was merely in passing and very infrequent.  I really enjoyed being able to interact with an older and more mature crowd than I usually do, and still being able to contribute to discussions and not be lost in the loftier topics that were discussed.  There are a lot of people that I have such a deep love for in my parent's ward, I really do think that I will enjoy going every week with them.  I know how much my parents loved me being there as well, it felt wonderful to be spiritually fed while my beloved mother and father were right next to me.  Walking into priesthood opening exercises with my father, and sitting down together brought back such fond memories.  When I was younger though, I would only be able to sit next to him after first playing the piano for everyone, but that won't be the case any longer in that ward.  :)

If nothing else, it gives me more time to be near my parents in a spiritual setting, and really, there is not much (if anything) that is better and more uplifting than that.  Seeing my parents as strong and faithful and loving as they are after all that my family has been through, is such a source of strength to me.  It proves to me that so long as it's a righteous endeavor, there is nothing I can't accomplish, no struggle too great, no trial too difficult, with the support of those near and dear to me, all things truly are possible.  So really why shouldn't I be able to add such simple yet uplifting things to my daily/weekly/monthly routines?  Why shouldn't I be able to get through my next day simply because I may not have gotten "enough sleep" the night before? What really can be so hard as to actually defeat me in an emotional and spiritual manner?  

Benjamin Franklin once set out to live a "perfect life."  I think he went about it the wrong way.  I have an upper hand on him in my quest, my family.

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