Melanie just created me a blog. I am moving quickly into the 21st century haha!
The purpose of this blog is to share spiritual insights, things I have learned, and aha moments between members of our family. We all have been asked to keep journals, some of us to it better than others :) In an attempt to obey this commandment, I am choosing to begin a weekly blog. I hope that you will all contribute, and we can share with each other as we learn and grow while the learning and growing is happening. I don't want for us to wait until somebody dies and we find their dusty old journals that have been stored away before we take the opportunity to discuss and learn about the things that we all can share or teach one another on our journey through this life... Hence the title ' Journaling Our Family Journey'.
I hope that we can share insights from Sunday School lessons, meaningful experiences, our thoughts on conference talks or reading that we have been doing, even helpful ideas for talks that we or our children are asked to give.
We live far apart. When we get together it is for short periods, and we don't always talk about really meaningful things. We are seldom with one another when great thoughts come into our minds, so they don't get shared and are lost.
Please share your 'joy in the journey' with others in the family.
Love,
Mom
Monday, October 6, 2008
Hey family!
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4 comments:
Basically Mom wants us to be able to talk about spiritual things, and other important events or experiences in our lives. Mom has seen that we get together often for birthday parties, etc but that while there we seldom have the oppurtunity to talk about really meaningful things. She hopes and wants this to be a way that we can connect more with each other on a spiritual level and to gain a better understanding of one another and the experiences and knowledge that we could be sharing as a family. -Melanie
I think that this is a great idea. We will be sure to write often and share our adventures with everyone, because we have a lot of them.
We were really impressed by one general conference theme - staying positive and moving forward in adversity and times of struggle and trial. We noticed this right away, and that may be because we are really feeling a lot of stresses and uncertainty in life as well as unexpected trials and issues. None of these of course are too big to not overcome, but they add up. They all seem to come at once, in packs. Our car broke down last week, Tessa's computer with all the wedding stuff and our homework died, she lost her job at the Creamery because she is not a full time student, school is hard, life here is different and new, we miss home and our families, the wedding stresses and lots of other little things. Obviously we are fixing and working at all these and none will impede our eternal destinies, but they are just annoying. We still have what is most important to us- each other, health, our educationsa re going forward, we have enough money to get by, and so forth. The most important thing to remember is that all these trials are made for us and nothing will ever overcome us unless we give up. Nephi knew this, and so did Paul in the New Testament. I went through two solid years of hardship in Russia already and one thing I really noticed is that in the moment the trial seems unbearable, but give it a little time and some rational thinking with a good dose of faith and pondering and reflecting as to why is this happening? How will it help me? what can we learn? Is this preparation for something? and often the doubts and debilitating fear go away. Don't let these experiences act upon you. Elder Bednar taught us in St Petersburg to act and not to be acted upon. Choose how to respond and be in control. You will feel better than if you are washed to and fro by the winds and waves of uncertainty. Satan wants us to be afraid and crippled. He wants us to be acted upon and discouraged and controlled. At these moments he can bind us when we are down and trick us into not keeping the commandments or being valiant. Heavenly father wants us to be empowered and to act. Yes, take time to experience the situation and feelings associated with it, but don't stay down. Don't wallow or be broken. Don't miss out on the blessings gained and gleaned from trials. They are here to help us
if we so choose.
That's something that we noticed this past conference among other things. I hope you all will share some insights that came to you during conference.
Other than that, life is good. School is tough, but we love it. Provo is crazier and bigger than Rexburg, but that's ok. We still like it. Paul and Kelsey are great and have helped us out a ton. Tessa's aunts are wonderful. And we see Christopher almost weekly, so we are not alone.
-Matthew and Tessa
Wow! How can I follow that Matthew? You put us all to shame (well me at least!) I don't have any great thoughts right now other than to say that I'm really looking forward to coming to WA for Christmas/Matthew's wedding. I know how blessed I am to have married into the Reid family, as Tessa will soon find out, and I can't wait to see you all again. Regardless of anything else that is happening in the world, I know that I always have the Reid family to lean on for love and support.
Hope all is well with everyone.
xoxo
Christen, Doug and Dillon
I think this is a fantastic idea as well. We can all share experiences in our lives that are meaningful and inspirational. A few weeks ago I was talking to Jaxon about his first day at pre-school. I asked him what he liked about being at pre-school. Jaxon said, "I like bothering the other kids and stealing their things." We have all heard the saying that we are to become as little children. That being said we should strive to bother other people and steal their stuff.
-Dave.
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