Grateful Friday

The things we tried for behavior modification seemed to work.  For now.  It's always for now, but I'll take it.

We get to see the Jorgensens tonight!  Freja is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice at BYU, where she is a theater major.  We're having dinner together before the show!

Reframing things in my mind works. Three things I reframed:

1. Yesterday I woke up with day four of a headache.  I told myself, "It's going to be a good day."  And it was.  

2. I needed to get my car washed which isn't that exciting, but then I remembered Braeden saying he was giving Loki a spa day last summer and I decided I was giving Joan a spa day and it felt kind of exciting.  

3. I reframed paying a hefty amount at the pump.  I was sticking it to Putin.  If it keeps us from buying any Russian oil, I'll pay more.  (I doubt Putin felt the pinch of me filling up Joan, but let me have this one thing, OK?)

Finally, my mom is amazing.  She had a discouraging doctor visit recently about her lung cancer.  Since this blog is my personal family history, I want to preserve here what she wrote us in an email:

I read a little bit of a summary of Elder Gong's talk in which he said, "We can always trust God.  The Lord knows us better and loves us more than we know or love ourselves.  His infinite love and perfect knowledge of past, present and future make His covenants and promises constant and sure."  

Reading that made all the difference for me.  I thought, "I have believed in this religion and in God for almost 73 years.  If I can't trust God, then it is all a sham.  If we can't trust God, then who can we trust."

I know that I am his daughter and that He loves me.  I know that anything He does with my life will be for my best good.  I thought about my children and grandchildren.  I know that I would not do anything for any of them that I didn't know was for their best good.  I would never do anything that would not be good for them.  The problem is I haven't always known what would be good for them, but God does know.  He knows everything.  He knows what is for my best and that is what He will do.  All I need to do is trust Him and let His will prevail in my life.  I need to let him be the author and finisher of my story as Sister Camille Johnson said in conference.  

I can say, like the army of Helaman, that I do not doubt that my mother knew it.

She is a blessing in my life and always has been.