My boys (and I) loved this video. We didn’t do more candy or eggs today, just went to church and talked about Jesus. With both my primary class and my own children, I was able to answer a lot of questions about the resurrection, and it helped me appreciate more Christ’s sacrifice for us.
My parents and sister came up to share Easter dinner with us. I love sharing Sunday’s with my family. 
And I felt awful all of today because I ate so crummy yesterday. Don’t eat just because there is food.
I’ve thought that maybe life is a trial run, to see what we desire in Eternity. Do I desire family, God? If I truly desire it, I must put the work in to obtain it.
It is fun to see Henry picking all the crocus when I tried to take pictures.
We were able to go to the Provo City Center Temple dedication. I love to go to the temple and feel peace so strongly. It is glorious and beautiful. 
We can take four things with us:
Are these also my priorities?
What follows are pictures from the Bird Refuge and some thoughts that have been bumping around in my head for the past little while.
Make conscious choices. Live with intention. Pick the most important thing to do right now, and focus entirely on what you are doing. And make it enjoyable.
Honor yourself. Stop comparing to others, or trying to be like others. Be you. Respect where you are at.
We are all just learners in this life. Everything we do is a form of learning. And when we find we are stuck and not growing, we can find teachers that will help us.
See what annoys you and fix it. Don’t try to make everything perfect all at once, just one thing at a time.
Do what makes you happy.
When God is with me, I am happy. Life is wonderful. When I leave God, in my thoughts or actions, life is crummy. But there is always a way back to God through the atonement of Christ. It’s simple, but powerful.
I like to give myself advice. I journal everyday, and write down what I learned from the day. Here are some recent ones:
When the kids make a mistake or make a mess or are doing something you don’t like, the worst thing you can do is get mad. Sometimes the kid needs to think, and mostly the kid needs to learn. Confrontation puts them into survival mode, and they can’t learn, they are just surviving. When the kids made a mess and need to clean it up, threatening them didn’t work. Giving them a new idea of how to look at the mess and approach cleaning it up so it didn’t seem so daunting worked a lot better. I told them to find the biggest thing and pick it up. Then the next biggest, etc. Finally at the end, they didn’t quite finish, but I only had a few toys to go back and put away. Curtis even helped quite a bit. They learned how to approach big messes better, and I got them to clean up without threatening.
Throw off my schedule and I’m less task oriented and have more time to stop what I’m doing and play with the boys. More time to say yes, time to notice cute smiles, time to sing songs. More time to not feel so busy and work on things I want to do, not feel like I have to. More time to be creative, time to remember all the good ideas I have and actually implement them. Less time to be overwhelmed and just push things aside. More calm, more peace.
Be more diligent and concerned at home. Remember my priorities.
I should look to do the things that
1) God wants me to do
2) That match and support my priorities
3) I am passionate about
4) Will provide a genuine service to others
5) What I have committed to do
I don’t need to do
1) What I think will make myself look good to others
2) Serve other people’s interests
3) Unimportant projects that put my own on the back burner
My thoughts were:
I’m so frustrated… This is annoying. Can he just stop?
And then I thought….
I pick my thoughts, and if I believe these ones I make then true.
What was actually true?
My child was crying, I felt a little frustrated. But I was also able to handle the situation just fine, and my frustration faded quickly.
I had a question in my mind this week, and after some prayer, this parable came into my mind. Hope you enjoy
All of us get to go to work at the bakery. We have various cakes to make. Each of us is given a bit of instruction, more is available if we look. So we start off, trying to make cakes. At first they are abysmal, but gradually they get better. After we make a cake, we send it to the Head Baker, who trims it, frosts it and makes it beautiful.
Whatever we do, no matter how hard we try though, our cakes are never perfect. They always come out a little uneven. But that’s okay, because the fixes it when He finishes the cake. He can take away the imperfections, fill in gaps, trim away excess, and give it a sweeter flavor with the frosting. Sometimes he even takes a very poorly made cake, throws it out and replaces it with something much better, or asks us to try again.
While making cakes, its easy to look over at a fellow cook and say, “My cake is better than yours,” or “Her cake is better than mine.” Maybe it is. But our own cake is still imperfect. And no matter the state of the cake, the Head Baker takes all of them, fixes it up and makes it beautiful and delicious. We soon realize that comparison is mostly pointless because all our cakes aren’t perfect, but the Head Baker takes our efforts and makes far more out of them than we can.
We share ideas about how to get our cakes better. Sometimes the ideas work well. Sometimes the ideas we share don’t work, because every cake and the way we bake it is a bit different. The Head Baker gives us lots of advice, and that advice is always the best and always works.
This is my family’s nativity video we made this year.
This one is a little bit better quality.
My best advice to giving up depression, distraction or stress it would be to go outside more. I’ve never regretted being outside and noticing rainbows, animals, plants, and the beautiful sky. It gets me out of many a bad mood and enlivens me.
Photos from Ogden Nature Center
My main battle in life has been with myself. Emotional dysregulation has haunted me the last few years. It has scared myself and the rest of my family. I have spent years with an ugly, angry demon that threatens to come out and wreck havoc on a beautiful little life. The more I tried to understand the anger and pain the more I realized that it could not be understood. It was insanity.
I still struggle with my weakness. But it has gotten better. The hardest task I had to do was to learn to forgive myself. I am incapable of forgiving. But God is not. It is He who allows me to forgive myself and let go of the pain and anger and truly change. I cannot. But He can.
Growing up, I was a very good person. Yet my reasons for being good weren’t great. I liked never getting into trouble, or confronting anything scary or dark. I was smug in my perfectness, unbending in righteousness, often prideful because I was better than others.
Sin is very scary and painful. But when I sinned and went though hard times, I realized God was there with more power. He didn’t want my prideful perfection that I was failing to obtain. He wanted me as I was: broken and contrite.
God wanted me broken and sad, so that He could take me and turn into what He wanted me to be. That I could shed all that pride and truly become a new person: perfect and righteous only through His atonement, not of my own merit. God wants sinners. He wants to turn me into something that was much more than I could be by my own efforts, even when I was striving for good things.
I’ve been born and raised Mormon. I’ve lived in Utah for most of my life, a place filled with Mormons. I’ve always enjoyed and never questioned my faith. But as I’ve gotten older, I have wondered what makes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints different than other churches.
I don’t think there are as many differences from mainstream Christianity as I’ve often been led to believe. I believe in the gospel of the Bible, that Christ is my savior and it is only through Him I am redeemed and justified. That is the core of everything, no different than any other Christian church. I’ve been privileged lately to have met many other Christians that are not Mormon, and we believe the same things.
Now there is a lot of things added on to our church that don’t exist in other churches–The Book of Mormon, priesthood, restoration, prophets, and temples. I don’t believe that this makes other Christian churches not true, or not worth belonging to. The main goal is to come unto Christ. Sometimes I think for certain people, other Christian churches might actually do a better job of bringing them to Christ.
I view my church as the University of churches. If I want to learn about something, I can do it a lot of ways. I can read a book, learn directly from someone, attend classes, Google it, or I can enroll in a University. If I enroll in school, than I am most likely seeking out a degree that will be accredited and recognized. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is like God’s University. I can learn about the Bible and Christ anywhere and though a lot of different ways. But only in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can I get an accredited degree. The accreditation is the priesthood, the power of God with lines that can be traced back to Christ. Through the priesthood, I have received ordinances, or my degree. My degrees are covenants of baptism, and marriage for eternity in the Temple.
I think it is important to do the best where God places us. And He doesn’t place everyone in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but He did place me there. I am blessed for this privileged, but I do not think I am better than others for it, or more likely to be saved. God loves all his children, and He will bless us for doing the best we can wherever He has placed us.
I’ve been caught up in a horrible trap of worry and stress. I have more to do than I can do. I do like being busy, but lately I’ve been especially overwhelmed with everything. And because of it I haven’t been enjoying life at all. I’ve known I should just live now and not worry about the past and future, but I had a hard time actually doing that.
I think when I have desires to improve, I have to let them work inside of me for awhile. What starts as a desire is often not met for a while: life stays the same. Even when I try my hardest, change doesn’t happen at the speed I want. My self-control is faulty. But eventually in His timing, the Lord blesses me with change. Change is always gradual, and lasting change only happens through Christ. Lately, the Lord blessed me with a better ability to live in the moment, and by doing so my life is beautiful.
I can enjoy what I’m doing, instead of getting stressed by all the tasks to come. I’m not as distracted because I’m not as stressed. I’ve been better at putting things aside and not worrying how I’m going to get everything done, but just doing my best. I know sometimes that means things won’t get done, but if I’m prioritizing I also know the important ones will. I’m not worrying about micromanaging my whole schedule: instead I do the best I can right in this moment. All we have is right now anyway.
Liz Braithwaite 