Challenges

Life is very stressful right now, much more than I had anticipated. When I get very stressed I often do lots of things that I hope will help me de-stress, none of which is the stuff that I'm actually supposed to be doing -- probably not very effective. One of those things was looking at despair.com last night with my roommates. There is a new one: "Challenges: I expected times like this -- but I never thought they'd be so bad, so long, and so frequent." If only it weren't so true.

http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/challenges.jpg

There are some really great things going on in my life, too. i.e. Another thing I do to procrastinate is read. I finished My Antonia by Willa Cather and Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball this weekend. I enjoyed My Antonia for the most part. I thought it was well written and there were some beautiful passages. (I would share what I thought were it's weaknesses, but I don't want to give away the story.) This may be too sappy for some, but it is one of my favorite passages on love from the book.

"Since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister -- anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me."

I love this description of love. It mirrors my own feelings.

Miracle of Forgiveness was very good. President Kimball doesn't sugarcoat anything in the book, and I think that's for the best. If you can make it to the end it's a wonderful book about hope and redemption. I am grateful for the prophets of God in our dispensation. I'm grateful and humbled by Christ's mercy and the healing power of the atonement.