Family - It's Worth a Shout Out!

I was thinking today about what I adore most in my life and it has got to be related to my family. First, I absolutely love the tradition that was started by the family on my mother's side for a Halloween Party Reunion with prizes, potluck, a giant fire, a candy sack hunt, and great reuniting with family. It is one of the things my kids have always looked forward to and we all try to dress in a certain theme or group of themes with our costumes. Here are some of our best themes...that I could find today...

Second, from my father's side of the family. I have grown to love serving for Christmas. They always spend time visiting family for Christmas and trying to find ways to serve each other. We used to exchange gifts and I spent a lot of time helping my Grandma get gifts for all the great grand-kids so that she did not have to guess what they all wanted (since half of them were my kids anyway). However, a few years ago, they turned the gift exchange into a project where we would do service or donate to a 3rd world country or some other project like that and just come and visit on Christmas. I thought that was neat, because all of the families already had everything they needed and they thought any funds spent would be best spent on people less fortunate as we tried to remember and show gratitude for our boundless blessings that we have been given through the years.

6 Tips to Get Rid of Excess Weight!

First of all, it has been a struggle to find something to write. My life was seeming to roll by with moments that did not feel noteworthy to write about, but this morning, I found my inspiration.

In 2013, I decided that I did not want to keep storing things in my home that were not blessing my life. I called it the "Great De-Junk of 2013" or something like that. I tried getting rid of things in my kids rooms, but when my kids wanted to get rid of something that had cost a lot of money, or that I thought we might use or need later, or that needed to be fixed before I could donate it...then it stayed.

So 2013 came and went without the results being achieved that I wanted. I was discouraged and felt I had failed because I did not reach my goal. 2014 came and went. 2015 came and went. Each of these years I kept trying to work on getting rid of the clutter that had built up gradually over so many years. I know that I could relate to people who went through the Great Depression to some degree, because I have seen how many of them rinse out their Ziploc bags and continue to use them again and again until they are ruined. 

Regarding this clutter that had built up, I had reached a point when I decided I needed much more help and decided to pray to God for help. I pleaded many times before during the years, but never seemed to reach the goal. But, during 2016, my prayers were answered...and at first, I did not think it had. WE GOT BED BUGS!

YUCK! I don't know how in the world they got here at my house, because, other than the room full of junk, there was not that much stuff...or so I thought. I thought "I clean my house regularly, and clean people don't get bed bugs!"

So I began bagging all of my kids things in large black garbage bags, bagged all of our mattresses, put diatomaceous earth in all the cracks and seams of the couches and beds.

I took the black garbage bags full of the kids toys and things out to the black car to lock them in there so the sun could heat everything up for 2 or 3 hot days. Then, put the bags in the garage and kept going until the only thing the kids had in their rooms was their dresser with clothes and their bed. I also used a room heater to heat the room to very hot temperatures...one room at a time.

After many weeks of detail cleaning, and vacuuming several times a day as well as steaming areas in our home and cracks in beds over and over...finally the bugs were gone!! 

I did not realize that getting bugs had been an answer to my "help me organize my home" pleading, but it was. God had helped me in a way that forced me to do what I had been trying to do before. 

The kids told me they did not want all their things back, so I cleaned everything and donated tons of it. The kids went out to the garage and pulled items they wanted and put them back in their rooms gradually...then they said "Everything that is left can go away, I do not want any of it". We got rid of so much stuff at that time. My room, however had never had more than a few bugs and I never had emptied the entire room, so some clutter remained.

Then, in 2017, we finally saved enough money to get new carpet, so we paid for that in December...then, a few weeks ago in January, the carpet was ready and my friend had a break in his schedule to install it.

So in 2 days everything was pulled from the rooms and put in the one unfinished room we have left so the carpet could be installed.

Then we put things back into bedrooms and we made sure not to bring anything back into the bedroom that we did not really love and want to keep. This left a lot of things to donate or throw away.

We worked a little here and a little there. Small areas of our house got done and finally organized. It was a huge improvement, even though I know there are more boxes to go through.

My Storage Area is back in order

My Room is Clean ...Finally

So, here I am, at the beginning of 2018...5 years after I began. A lot has been accomplished to progress in a positive direction for the "Great De-Junk of 2013" that began so many years ago, but this morning as I was pondering, I realized that I have learned some lessons on the way and thought I would share.

1. Never give up - even if you do not reach the goal when you think you should have.
2. Start again - as many times as it takes, start where you are and move forward. Do not dwell on mistakes of the past.
3. Pray for help - God will help you progress and knows what will bless you (even if it does not seem to be a blessing you recognize right away...like bed bugs).
4. Be thankful - count the blessings you have each day and be thankful. It helps chase away despair on the hard days.
5. Let it go - don't hold onto things that are not blessing your life right now. It is not worth keeping clutter that you feel may bless your life "someday" if it makes you feel terrible "now".
6. Take small steps - don't try to do it all at once. It is OK to make small improvements...eliminate one thing each day that does not make you happy. Small steps are easier than a huge "all or nothing" goal.

Most of all, this morning's musing reminded me of how many times in my life I build up spiritual clutter that is much like the physical clutter that I had built up in my home. It gathers so gradually that I don't recognize it until it is huge. I realized that it important to recognize that I need to clear out spiritual clutter in my life too and get rid of anything that is holding me back.

My husband shared an Ensign article with me that talked of how sins can block our spiritual connection with heaven and how it happens so slowly that we don't realize how far we have moved away, until it is huge...kind of like my huge clutter buildup in my home that was blocking me from feeling peace in my home on a day to day basis. Here is the link to that article, since it is worth sharing: January Ensign 2018

Hopefully soon, I'll be able to write - "Finally Finished the Great De-Junk of 2013" ...as a monument to the long struggle and final defeat of the clutter in my home and in my life, which reminds me of one more quote from a short film (about 22 min long) called "The Butterfly Circus" where the ringmaster (Mendez) mentions... "The greater the struggle, the more glorious the triumph!"

This excess weight, or clutter, that I have carried for so long is finally beginning to go away. I am so grateful for the visible progress and hope to continue using the lessons that I learned to move forward. I'm still taking small steps toward perfection, which now seems a more reachable goal than before.

Some Days are BLESSED!

Things have been very crazy lately, however amidst the whir of things I stopped this last week to ponder.

I thought about how many times in my life things are going poorly and life seems to pile all its weights on my back all at once. Those moments I feel there is so much to despair and so much to be sad about. In those moments all I can think about is the things I hate about myself, others and my life.

More than those thoughts though, were the thoughts I had recently about gratitude and all the blessings I have received recently. Jeff and I were whispering in church and he mentioned that it felt like the windows of heaven had opened wide and there was "not room enough to receive" all the blessings. We both were grateful and it felt good.

It was not really that there was nothing that went wrong during this week that Corina was getting married. In fact, there were so many things that did not go right, but we had decided not to let things get us down. We were going to trust God that things would work out and choose to be happy no matter what happened.

This attitude of gratitude and choice to be happy and see the good in each moment this last week helped us to stay positive and we had a glorious week with our family.

We also pondered on the eternities. When we met Andrue's family it felt like we had known them forever even though we only just met them. It was like a reunion of close family and dear friends. We were so grateful to have them back in our lives for we are sure that we knew them in heaven before we came here.

It is amazing to think about how this all works, that we are all a big family and the links between us are being put back together as we choose to be sealed back together through temple ordinances. I love that!!

So the last while has been good. God is good and watches out for us all the time and things really do work out, just like President Hinckley used to say: