Thanksgiving- Giving Thanks!

I wrote this poem my Senior year in High school when our house was going through some remodeling. I feel it still applies.

Thanks be to God

Of all the things I’m thankful for
There’s many that come to mind.
All the ones you think about
When you think of Thanksgiving.

A warm house, a loving family, a bed to sleep in,
A coat, some boots, gloves, and other warm clothes.
But then there are the things everyone takes for granted.
Those are the things I’m most thankful for at this time.

An electrical outlet, how wonderful to plug things in.
A kitchen sink, the ability to do dishes without dragging water from the tub.
An oven, what a fabulous thing to have warm food.
A microwave, it’s nice to be able to warm things up quickly and efficiently.

I’m thankful for the good times I have with my family,
All the snowball fights – the “old men” against the young kids
I love to watch a mother say she’ll regret it, but throwing a snowball at her son anyway.
I love to watch a twenty year old man become a kid again as he gently wrestles his cousin to the ground.

I’m thankful for pain, because without it we could never enjoy not having it.
I’m thankful for illness, because without it we couldn’t enjoy being well.
I’m thankful for my mother, who has helped me through hard times.
She has, at times, been the only one to understand me, and pull me through.

But of all the things I’m thankful for
I think the ones I’m thinking of most
Is love and life and most of all,
The reminder of thing I’m thankful for.

I'm amazed at the small, insignificant things that we tend to over look when thanking, but that enrich our lives greatly. That was most of the point of this poem. I was looking for things that I didn't usually think of when I give thanks. When I think about how richly I've been blessed in my life, it almost overwhelms me. Who can not believe in God when you look at all the beautiful things around us. Yes, there are also horrible things, but when looked at in the right perspective, almost anything can be turned for good. God told Adam that the ground would be cursed for his sake . How often do we just look at the negative side and not recognize that this, perhaps bad, thing happened for our sakes.
While on my mission, one of my companions told me a story about a lady who could not get along with her mother-in-law. She tried, she prayed, she visited the temple, but she still butted heads with her. One day, while in the temple, she had the thought "what if, this lady had loved me so much before this life that she volunteered to help me grow, even if it meant that I might not love her in this life. If I knew that, how could I keep from running to her and sobbing out my thanks?" Heavenly Father loves us more than any of us are capable of loving someone. He could take us out of bad situations, he could give us an ideal life, but he doesn't. Why? Because if he did, we might not be able to make it back to his presence someday. With that in mind, how can we keep from dropping to our knees at night and sobbing out our thanks for all our many trials? It is through them that it is possible to return. God doesn't like to see us hurting, but he allows it so that we can come back to him in the long run.
I'm so thankful.

Calendars and Pennsylvania

I am currently creating, as I do every year, calendars for my extended family. I can't tell you how grateful I am for Calendar Creator, which keeps track of all of the birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries for me. Every year there are more of them. Every year I have to add another one or two. But I am extensively glad that I only have to worry about them for a few seconds as I run back over the past year trying to remember who has been added to our family. This year, I only had to add three people. Now, this makes this task sound fairly easy, and you would expect that after having done this job since my mom bequeathed it around the time I started high school that I would have a handle on it by now and I wouldn't make any mistakes. You would be wrong. Every year, I ruin between ten and fifty sheets of card stock. So far, I've ruined only two, but I'm not even a fourth the way through yet. And so, I figured while these are printing I might as well rant on my blog. I've got nothing else to do. :D
I have been missing Pennsylvania a lot lately. I'm not sure what has brought it on, whether I'm finally getting past my depression enough to be able to look back on my mission and love it, or seeing my old district leader in my friend's ward, or just thinking about how beautiful it probably is right now. I had looked forward to seeing Pennsylvania in the fall and never actually got the chance. I hope to next year though.
I was thinking about my mission while driving home today. If someone were to ask me what the worst time of my life was, I would likely respond with my mission. But I would answer the same if asked what the best time of my life was. A mission is so amazingly encompassing that it's absolutely impossible to describe with words. I cannot tell you of the love I feel for the people and the place. I miss the people more than I truly miss PA, but I do miss the state as well. Oddly enough, I miss the spaghetti-like roads as much as anything. I miss the smell of chocolate in Hershey as you walk out the door, I miss the smell of sewage in Hershey as you walk out the door. I miss wondering which it was going to smell like on any given day. I miss walking down the street on Chocolate Ave, passing all of the interesting churches, restaurants, bars, clubs. All those places I never actually went into, but caught a lot of people as they exited, hoping to get them interested in discovering the truth. I miss walking forty-five minutes to get to a less-active's house in Lititz, never quite knowing what might come out of his mouth while you were there, if you would be teaching, or if he would be. I wonder how he's doing. I love the people I served so much I can almost physically feel the love filling my heart as I think about them. And I miss them so much it's almost painful sometimes. I know I'm where Heavenly Father wants me to be, as odd as that sounds sometimes, but I wish I could go back and visit sooner rather than later. Oh, how I loved and hated my mission!

The random things learned

Sorry, Heather, can't think of anything else. Be more specific. :)
So on Thursday, while at Taekwondo, my master told me I was the fastest learner he'd ever had. That made me feel pretty good. I contribute it to Marching Band and Colorguard. I think of all the times when Nancy expected us to know a move after only seeing it one time, and I cringe. I always resented that, because I never could learn as fast as she wanted me to. But now I can. I watched him do the many things I learned on Thursday only once and I was able to do them. I was amazed. Later that night I was thinking about all the things I learned from Marching Band and was surprised a little at the rather lengthy list. I guess I shouldn't have been, but I was. I learned how to gauge approximately how far away something is. I learned how to respect authority. I learned how to be on time. I learned how to learn quickly. I learn how to work with a group. I learned how to be responsible for myself. I also learned that learning to music helps me learn. I'm sure there are a lot more things I learned from it, but those are the things that really stick out to me right now.
I've been rather bored with my life lately. I really want to do something exciting, but I have no idea what. I just want to do something that I've never done before. But I don't have the money for anything. So what can you do that's exciting and different that costs no money? Something to push past the monotony and onto fun? I'm so sick of monotony. I've been feeling very stagnant lately and it's fairly driving me crazy. Suggestions are appreciated. :D

Indestructible

Well, As Aubrey pointed out, I have been very lax on my blog. Sorry about that. Life has been interesting these last two months since I wrote. I started taking Taekwondo, which for the record is AWESOME! I'm absolutely loving it. I also started a new book which I have decided to call Indestructible (thus the name). I haven't gotten as far as I might like to have, but considering how much I've worked on it, it's going a lot faster than the Jeneal Bauman trilogy. That's still going a grand total of nowhere. And it's still driving me nuts. Why can't I just write when I want to? I think I've written maybe a page in Portals since I wrote here last. It's driving me crazy! But I've written about six pages on Indestructible, so it's kind of making up for it. Kind of.
The other reason for the name of this entry is because of my favorite song, which I actually heard after I named my book, but is also entitled indestructible, by Disturbed. It's just a great song. I finally learned all the words and can almost talk fast enough to sing along with it. Metal songs are generally pretty fast songs. But it makes me happy every time I listen to it.
Right now I'm sitting next to my incredibly cute adopted niece. I call her adopted because while her mother is not actually my sister, she might as well be. I'm glad to have the extra family.
I've also recently become a Mary Kay consultant. Which means that I have a lot to learn and I need a lot of faces to practice on. It will be interesting to see if this all works out. I'm a little nervous, since I've never done anything like this before in my life. Hopefully I learn quickly.
So I guess I've now updated everything. It shouldn't take me two months to write another post next time, I promise. I don't know when the next one will be, but it will happen soon.