Blessed

I decided many years ago (and I have to keep reminding myself)....that I can plan plan plan....and sometimes things still just don't go the way I think they should. I can plan out my coupons, I can plan out my budget, I can plan out appts., I can plan out my week....plan plan plan with my planner...and when it doesn't go the way I want I can get very frustrated. I like to plan things ahead of time....I don't like to do anything unless I can guarantee the results almost 100%.
With a baby on the way, Levi's very unpredictable schedule, my job, and just life changing in a million billion different ways.....I can't plan like I used to....and I really have had a hard time with this. My "planning" life completely went downhill.....I spent weeks with literally getting nothing done and nothing was working out....and it was just frustrating.....I just felt like I was wasting all my time and getting nothing accomplished.

Well like 3-4 weeks ago or whenever it was....my wonderful little neighbor April gave a lesson in Sunday School about the story of Jonah. Now we all know the story of Jonah....we've heard it a trillion times. Silly little Jonah thinks he can run away from God, do his own thing...too scared to do what God asked him to do.....he ends up getting swallowed by a whale. He then realizes the mistake he's made...repents....gets out of the whale and does what he was originally asked to do. Seems pretty straight forward and simple. A child would understand this story.
Now I can't remember exactly what April said in her lesson (I do however remember the pictures her family drew)! However somewhere in all of it....she made a point (sorry if your reading this April and and you have to refer to yourself in third person...that could be annoying)....she said something to the effect of ...when we came here we made choices...we made covenants...and we can run all we want but God will always remember and He will always be there. We can't just run away and rely on ourselves. No matter how scary it is or how untrusting we can become. God is always there. ( I really hope this is all making sense...)
I want to say I always knew that...and I did...but it just really "hit me" that week. It made me realize that if I want my life to work out and go "as I planned" I needed to rely more on God and stand by all those promises and covenants I have made. Not run away...and try and do everything on my own.

I can't even begin to tell you how much my life and attitude has changed since I started to try and live more like April's lesson taught me to. I just started doing basic things with a little more intent.....sincerely praying morning and night....I placed a Book of Mormon right by my bedside so that I have no excuse to not have a good read every night....I've started attending the temple weekly.....and I started having a little more faith that God would help me make everything work out.

Now instead of focusing on all the "bad" things that happen in my life.....it has been so much easier to see all the good in my life and see how lucky I am and how blessed I am. Not only spiritually have I've been lifted up....but temporally.....in the last month...my tree fell on my house....could have been so bad but really it was just a messy nuisance...cost me the price of a chainsaw and a lunch for the nice people who helped chop it up, when it could have cost me hundreds ....got in a car accident and totaled my car....could have really hurt me...but instead I'm fine...baby's fine...and we actually made a bunch of money off of the car....the loan is completely paid off and someone bought the car from me....I've been in debt for years and years.....I was able to just pull it all together...budget well...and am now (thanks to totaling my car) completely out of debt...except for the house of course.....I've been able to spend a fraction of the money I used to spend in groceries and whatnot every week. Like seriously...I don't mean to brag....but I just feel like my life couldn't be any better at this point. Once again, God has proven to me that if I do what He has asked me to do.....He will bless me like He promised He would.
I'm trying....again...to always "plan" my life around God.

Reminds me of that ever popular quote by President Ezra Taft Benson,“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives."

Of course my life isn't perfect and it never will be.....but I have once again learned to put God first in my life and I am happy.