Floating

My blog shows the posts that gets the most hits, and my discussion on floating and letting go and letting God has received the most views. I guess in this world of stress and over achievement, it must feel good to know that we can relax and just float. That is what I did after I swam my laps this morning. After doing some stretching, I just spent a few minutes floating.

Interesting analogy that in order to float, I have to spread my arm and legs wide in what seems like a vulnerable position, and I relax and trust that I will stay afloat (it helps to have a higher percent of body fat than muscle--way to go Tanya). Great symbolism that I am also looking Heavenward. I am going to take more time to do that not only after a hard swim but during anything that it is hard. Be still and know that He is God and that he will help ease my burdens and make them light (without having to make me fat).

Church Lady

Speaking of laughing at myself. This character from Saturday Night Live is one of my favorites. My family would say this is me. I know that raising four comedic boys who are brutally sarcastic and have a sort of irreverent take on life has been interesting and sometimes I have been a little too serious and "spiritual" to compensate, even though they really inherited the sarcasm from me. I guess I felt kind of guilty for passing on that trait and so then I turned into Church Lady to redeem myself and show them how a "righteous person" should be when is all I did was give my boys more material.

It is interesting (for me anyway--you might have more excitement in your life) how I have been guilty of going to an opposite extreme to try and create balance, but in doing so I am personally out of balance. This would demonstrate my weakness of trying to fix someone else instead of being the best I can be and find my own personal best self through a healthy balance of fun and spiritual. How about spiritually fun?

Find Funny

I ran across this church parking lot while in St. George and had to capture the humor in thinking that this ward must like to party! I think the best medicine is laughter. I don't mean to be disrespectful to older people that start to have physical limitations, heck I am well on my way; but it feels good to laugh at something so unexpected. I hope I can always be able to laugh at myself and laugh at life. I really do want to spend more time not taking life quite so seriously. Laughter is great exercise and good medicine.

This reminds me of a time in grade school when I was struggling with some difficulties and quite depressed. I remember coming home from school and wanting to read the comics labeled, "laugh it off." I think I was on to something then. I guess I knew how therapeutic a good laugh could be. I am just grateful I didn't know about drugs back then. I might have been tempted to use them to dull the pain. I am glad all I had were those comics and was able to start a good habit of how to deal with painful emotions. I want to get better at noticing what is funny, especially about me. That won't be a difficult search.

Carrying Guilt

I am married to a wise man. This morning we were talking about taking personal responsibility and he very succinctly said, "Calling someone judgmental is a sign of self-judgment." I am impressed with his ability to quickly get to the bottom line. Me, I process to the point of exhaustion and try to figure things out, but he has the ability to say it quickly, succinctly, and then move on. No wonder he gets so much more done in a day than anyone I know.

It is true. I know that when I feel like I am carrying heavy guilt, it is tempting to go try to throw that guilt on someone else, blaming them by calling them judgmental and believing that they are the source of pain instead of my personal choices that have created the guilt. I have certainly felt like I have also been on the receiving end, being accused of being judgmental or responsible when someone feels guilty for something they don't want to take responsibility for.

The only cure for guilt is to take responsibility for what created my self-imposed guilt and to fix that. Blaming others and especially calling someone judgmental is really trying to transfer the self judgment from guilt that is the natural consequence of violating what is truly right for me. It is okay for me to judge myself as being out of line, and then can be so healing as I take responsibility and repent. Judging or blaming others won't lead me to the source of all healing.

Second Chances

I have a unique setup each Tuesday morning. It is our garbage day and sometimes I am a little late getting our garbage out. The good news is that I get a second chance at getting the garbage out because after passing our empty curb, the garbage truck goes on up through the upper neighborhoods and comes down on the other side of the street an hour or so later giving me enough time to haul the cans across and catch it coming back down.

The garbage truck isn't my only gift of a second chance. Thank heavens that people in my life give me a second, third, fourth, five... chances. And especially glad my Heavenly Father does too. I have a lot of garbage.

Creative Thinking

In my quest to be a little more creative, the best I could do is the baby step I took at church a week ago. I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting and realized I didn't have my glasses. That turned out to be a blessing to those in front of me because I couldn't see to sing, but I really wanted to be able to see for Sunday School and Young Women's so that I could look all righteous as I am following along in my scriptures. Mind you, I could have pretended but what if I got called on to read; it would have blown my image.

Anyway, at first I thought I only had two choices. 1. Go home and get my glasses or 2. Just feel my way to class and sit there with a blank stare on my face. Then I had a creative thought. Now this is newsworthy because I usually don't think out of the box very often. So, drum roll please...

I thought, "I bet there are reading glasses in the lost and found." There were and they even matched my outfit! TENDER MERCY! So I wore them for the rest of church and wondered who was looking at me thinking that they had a pair just like the glasses I have on that they had misplaced. Well, if you did then just know they are back in the lost and found; and know that I came home feeling a little more creative at problem solving. The blessings of church attendance.

The Slippery Slope

I fell off the wagon! This is how it works. I was doing so well eating healthy and cutting way back on sugar. I felt great and my weight dropped. Then...I started to eat a little less healthy, and found it really didn't affect how I felt and didn't affect my weight. So I started to push it a little more and more until finally I was on the streets with a cardboard sign begging for sugar, completely back addicted to the sweet stuff and craving it all the time. Now my body hurts and my clothes are constrictive.

Well, like they say in my research methods and statistics classes, tests have to be replicated to be valid. I have managed to repeat my test of going on and off of healthy eating and now I can say conclusively that it just doesn't work for me to eat a lot of sweet stuff (tried to make that sound intelligent even though it really was a no brainer). It affects my body and how I feel emotionally. It also affects my relationships because my family gets a little embarrassed when I am outside the cupcake store begging.

Doing anything that is unhealthy is a slippery slope. At first just a few bites of cake doesn't seem that big of a deal. Okay a slice is still okay. A bigger slice isn't that bad. I'll stop at eating half the cake, and then before I know it I am licking crumbs off of a empty plate. Now you know why I haven't been posting. I've been doing what Marie Antoinette suggested.

Criticizing and Soul Searching

I just watched biggest loser and hated to see them criticize and be so hard on each other. I realize that when we are placed in a competitive situation, that can be a natural consequence. Watching them be so annoyed and criticize, kind of made me want to be critical of them. Kind of like judging people who judge--it is just more of the same. I had to stop myself and do a self-check; realizing that I should just see this as a mirror so I can see what I am guilty of and learn from it. It is like my favorite verse in the Book of Mormon, which says be grateful we see other people's mistakes but use that observation not to condemn them but to learn to be more wise. Criticizing someone else and doing my own soul searching cannot co-exist.

Complaining & Gratitude

There are always emotions and feelings that cannot coexist. Faith and fear, love and hate, and complaining and gratitude. It is impossible to have the wonderful feelings of gratitude when I am busy complaining or even just focusing on complaints in my head. It feels so much better to feel gratitude than it does to focus on what I don't like. In everything, even the bad situations, there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for, and I have discovered that gratitude is a light, fresh feeling, and complaining is dark and sticky. Gratitude energizes, and complaining is depressing. I even notice that when I am prone to feel like complaining that I want to eat sugar. I guess my body recognizes it needs something sweet. Gratitude is sweet and easier on the hips.

Complaining vs Problem Solving

I have noticed that when I complain it kills all the creative juices that could and should go into problem solving. If I can see a problem, the best use of my energy is to figure out what I can do to fix it. Complaining is really giving my power away to someone or something else that I can't control. It is okay to recognize and acknowledge that there is a problem but then instead of just complaining, problem solving, however, gives me a creative outlet that ultimately gives me more satisfaction because I discover, just like He Man said, "I HAVE THE POWER!" If you or your kids didn't watch the He Man cartoons then you have no idea what I am talking about. If you did then you know who Skeletor is.

Less is More

I found this great picture and caption. It goes along so well with what I have been realizing about sometimes having too much or thinking that more is better.