Feel The Love | Free Love List

Feel The Love | Free Love List

THE FIGHT

pink Fighting-Gloves

My 10-year-old cousin grabbed the paper from my desk and started waving it around. He yelled “Look, Cindy got an F on her paper!” I was already jumping to retrieve the paper. But it was harder than I anticipated. He just  held the paper out of my reach. So, I did the most logical think and tackled him. I was not going to be subjected to the humiliation.

I was not going to have everyone see my failure. My failure to color a picture for my science class. My big fat red F at the top of my paper. So, quiet little Cindy fought for her dignity. Although, the fighting wasn’t really dignifying… The teacher waded into the fray and separated us. I was given my assignment back and we were sent to our corners. You would think that was the end of the story.

CONSEQUENCES

However, fighting in the classroom brought consequences. Roger received a kick in the pants that sent him flying out of the classroom door, 15 feet away. And I had to stay after school. Which would have been fine for most normal kids, but not for me. I was the quiet kid who never got into trouble. The girl whose mother had been an invalid for the past 2 years, the kid who’s hair was a mess. The kid who never got her homework done. I was that kid.

yellow school bus

Being kept after school meant that I missed the bus. Which was a big deal. I lived 5 miles away from home. I had no one to call  and no way to call. So after “doing my time” with the teacher, I wandered around outside the school in the deserted playground without any idea of what to do or where to go. I felt alone and abandoned. And then out of nowhere my grandmother came looking for me. She realized I was missing and came to find me. When she finally found me, I broke down in tears and sobbed all the way home.

FEEL THE LOVE

I have been thinking about how this incident affected me for the past several days. The only part of that memory I have remembered was the fight. I had forgotten all about the rest. I forgot that my grandmother had come looking for me and that I was not all alone that day.  That, someone, did love and care about me and that someone did notice that I was missing. It’s funny how our memories rewrite history, isn’t it? I mean even with my own children, they all have 6 different stories about the same event. And all of the stories are different from the correct interpretation which is mine. (Wink)

 

 

FEEL THE LOVE LIST

So I started thinking of all of the other people that have been in my corner. The people who showed up when I needed them. I made a List. It is a list of anyone that has ever loved me or anyone that I have ever loved. My Papa and grandma were at the top of the list. I knew they loved me and would do anything for me. They were my biggest cheerleaders throughout their lives. It was obnoxious at times. I lived with them right after I was born for a while because my mother had to have surgery. I lived with them after my mother and father’s divorce and I moved in again when I was 17 with no place to go. There were many others on that list.

ANGELS AMONG US

The more I wrote the more I realized how much I am loved. Many of those people on the list are no longer with us anymore. But their love still lives on. I can access that love every day. Just by remembering those people that loved me and that were always there to cheer me on.

Because I want to feel more love, I have been praying for those people to be my ministering angels. They are the people that love me and were always in my corner. To celebrate Mother’s day this year. I encourage you to make your own love list and post it where you can see it and add to it every day. It is amazing what happens when there is a tangible list of people that love you and have always been a part of your life. There are Angels Among Us!  Look for them. record them. The more you look, the more you will see. When we change what we focus on, we change what we see. That’s what Doodle Therapy is. Doodle Therapy changed how interpret my world. 

I have created a free Feel The Love List printable for you here. Use it and start feeling the love.

feel more love heart

Learning to do hard things

Learning to do hard things

Inspiration

While reading notes from my instructor at BYU-Idaho today I came across this little gem of inspiration.

“One of the reasons for being here, in this life, is to learn to do difficult things, and to learn to do them properly.
This quote is attributed to President Spencer W. Kimball, an Elder in my mission shared this during a weekly District Meeting, it resonated with me then and still does. Often times, I find I focus on what is hard for me in the moment and not what I am being asked to learn. I know when I have allowed myself to be teachable the spirit has stepped in to help me see what is needed and what I can and am able to do. More often than not He has helped me grow both spiritually and temporally in a manner I never knew was possible. Never hesitate to ask when spiritual or temporal help is needed.”

The Faith Experiment


I started my Sunday morning this morning differently than most. I began reading the book “The Faith Experiment” by Laurel Christensen. Both the book and the above quote seem to go hand in hand in speaking to my heart. Laurel talks about being afraid to ask God for things because He would probably say no. I guess I understood that to mean that she felt like she had been told no so many times in her life that she no longer trusted God to say yes.

I have felt those same feelings throughout my life. It began as a small child praying to God to make my mother well again. I prayed from when I was 8 years old until I was 12. Then after a blessing from Spencer W. Kimball she was miraculously healed. (Or so everyone around me said.) But I guess that I felt like it was too little too late. Yes she was healed but not without damage. My parents had divorced, (a horrible messy awful kind of divorce) My mother was still impaired. The tumor came back 4 years later. My mother remarried with all of the drama that comes with a step family. And I had lost my childhood.

Although most everyone around me’s faith was strengthened, mine was diminished. And I decided that the only option was to take care of myself. And that is what I have tried to do for the rest of the 40 years that I have been on this earth. Just take care of myself and those around me all by myself. 

It has not worked out so good. I am tired and sometimes bitter. I have rarely turned my problems over to the Lord.

My personal Faith Experiment

doing hard things

So today after reading the Faith Experiment and Sister Funk’s thoughts. I have determined that things are going to change in my spiritual life. It is time for me to pray to know if the thing that I am asking for is right. In Nephi 18:20 it reads “And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.” So step one is pray to know if the thing I am trying to do is right before the Lord. The next step is to understand that I am “here is to learn to do hard things is to learn to do them properly.” That means to me as Sister Funk said “have a teachable spirit.” I need this so much right now in my life. I have lost my teachable spirit as I have struggled to protect myself. Many times I am afraid to pray for things because I am afraid of the consequences of those prayers. There is the old adage “Be careful what you pray for.” In my mind I go through all the bad things that could happen if I really got what I prayed for. The next step is to pray for what the Lord has told me is a good thing and pray for it unceasingly. And the last for right now is to have Faith that God will grant me the thing that I am praying for. So my journey begins today. My journey in once again to learn to trust in God.

Doing hard things

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