This is the story of how I learned how to embrace life...

Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed. -Doctrine and Covenants 123:17

Well, I haven't posted in a while and can't just let this thing get dusty, so I thought I'd share something a little more upbeat than other things I've posted lately. Like that post from May. You know, the one a few down.

You know those times when life starts bombarding you with all these similar experiences, like it's trying to teach you something. Well, that's been happening to me as of late.

I suppose I could go into grand detail about the ups and downs of this, but fortunately for you I need to be in bed and asleep within the next 30 minutes. So this will be brief. Well, let's just say for the past couple days-ish I had been in a really bad mood. Probably due to a lot of factors. And I was getting migraines every day and I could just tell it wasn't a medical thing, it was from stress and just having a bad attitude in general.

Anyway. It just made me do a lot of reflecting about myself about who I became on my mission, who I am now and who I want to be. And I realized that I'd been hanging on to my mission so badly and not wanting to move on because I loved the person I was becoming on my mission and due to me giving up some of my habits (like not reading the scriptures everyday) I was drifting away from that. So I made a goal to start reading my scriptures every morning before I go to work and it has started to make so much of a difference in my life! So that was the first thing.

And then I go to church on Sunday and we get into Sunday school and I'm expecting the typical lesson from the New Testament, but then we randomly have a lesson about heroes and having a good attitude. And the lesson just hit me so hard and in the middle of the lesson my favorite scripture came to mind, Doctrine and Covenants 123:17 and it just meant so much to me in that moment that I just wanted to hold my scriptures up to my chest and keep them close to my heart so I'd never forget that feeling of just wanting to embrace life.

Later that day I called Danny and found out that his grandma had passed away that morning. It was a huge shock, it definitely wasn't something I saw coming. But it made me think even more about the value of life and what's really important to me. It made me think about how important time is. And how if we want to feel loved and happy in this life we need to make sure those around us feel loved and happy.

And then as I'm writing this my old friend, Alex, randomly starts chatting with me on Facebook about how the gospel is true and how with it we can get through anything. I love it!

Anyway, I realized this has turned into a rant, which was not really what I intended. But my point is, being alive and feeling alive and not being selfish and having a good attitude are really important. And... the end. :)