New webpage, so busy

I have updated my webpage and changed the domain. See www.dailyabundance.net. I am in good company. I wanted .com, but Donald Trump owns it. Haha. Check it out. Life can be good. Really good.

Attachments

I have this forum I go to for uplifting support and today the forum leader posted this excerpt below. So much to ponder in it. If you think about it, most of our ups and downs, fears, disappointments, come from our attachment to things or ideas or people. What would happen if we just chose to let go of our attachments? Wow! Great things would happen. I believe God supplies every need and He does if we let go of our attachments. Enjoy.


Tony de Mello This is from a lovely little book, The Way to Love, by Tony de Mello.


"Now if you look carefully, you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is Attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

"This emotional state of clinging is composed of two elements, one positive and the other negative. The positive element is the flash of pleasure and excitement, the thrill that you experience when you get what you are attached to. The negative element is the sense of threat and tension that always accompanies the attachment.

"Think of someone gobbling up food in a concentration camp; with one hand he brings the food to his mouth, with the other he protects it from neighbors who will grab it from him the moment he lowers his guard. There you have the perfect image of the attached person.

"So an attachment by its very nature makes you vulnerable to emotional turmoil and is always threatening to shatter your peace. So how can you expect an attached person to enter that ocean of happiness called the kingdom of God? As well expect a camel to pass through the eye of a needle!

"Now the tragedy of an attachment is that if it's object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness -- it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness; and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.

"You will say, 'Can't I keep just one attachment?' Of course. You can keep as many as you want. But for each attachment you pay a price in lost happiness.

"Think of this: The nature of attachments is such that even if you satisfy many of them in the course of a single day, the one attachment that was not satisfied will prey upon your mind and make you unhappy. There is no way to win the battle of attachments. As well search for water without wetness as for an attachment without unhappiness. No one has ever lived who has come up with a formula for keeping the objects of one's attachments without struggle, anxiety, fear, and -- sooner or later -- defeat.

"There is only one way to win the battle of attachments: Drop them. Contrary to popular belief, dropping attachments is easy. All you have to do is see, but really see the following truths.

"First truth: You are holding on to a false belief, namely, the belief that without this particular person or thing you will not be happy. Take your attachments one at a time and see the falseness of this belief. You may encounter resistance from your heart, but the moment you do see, there will be an immediate emotional result. At that very instant the attachment loses its force.

"Second truth: If you just enjoy things, refusing to let yourself be attached to them -- that is, refusing to hold the belief that you cannot be happy without them -- you are spared all the struggle and emotional strain of protecting them and guarding them for yourself.

"Has it occurred to you that you can KEEP all the objects of your attachments without giving them up, without renouncing a single one of them and you can enjoy them even more on a non-attachment, a non-clinging basic, because you are peaceful now and relaxed and unthreatened in your enjoyment of them?

"The third and final truth: If you learn to enjoy the scent of a thousand flowers you will not cling to one or suffer when you cannot get it. If you have a thousand favorite dishes, the loss of one will go unnoticed and leave your happiness unimpaired. But it is precisely your attachments that prevent you from developing a wider and more varied taste for things and people.

"In the light of these three truths no attachment can survive. But the light must shine uninterruptedly if it is to be effective. Attachments can only thrive in the darkness of illusion. The rich man cannot enter the kingdom of joy not because he wants to be bad but because he chooses to be blind."

San Fran with the Fam

I need to get going this morning, so I am blogging. ;-)

To be continued...

It's amazing how time can fly when you are living, loving, and having fun. I cannot believe it has been over a month since I have been on my blog. But lots is going on in my life. Soon, a change in my real estate. We've had youth conferences and EFY, girls camps and vacation, calling changes and HOT weather. We just got back from our vacation to San Francisco and I am going to post lots of pictures and stories about that soon. School starts Monday. How in the world did that happen?

The Lord prepares a way

You have probably seen the above video. It came out last year at Easter Time and is the work of photographer Mark Mabry. This week, the Bish and I had the opportunity to hear Mark's story of how he came to produce these beautiful images, at a conference we attended. It happened over a period of several years, but it was only shortly before last year that Mark knew he wanted to do something of this nature.

It started with 9/11 when he abruptly walked out of a political science class and changed his career course. Every so often he would get a prompting. Stop listening to music with bad lyrics. (He called it pornography to the ears) So he went through all his music and trashed everything that was questionable. Then, get rid of your art books. He threw them all in the trash. And so on. I don't have the list with me at the moment. But what I realized while listening to his story, was that the Lord was preparing him to do a work that would go throughout the world. He was told that in a blessing. And had no clue what it meant. He thought when the pictures went to Alberta Canada, that was it. :-)

What I also realized is that the idea of preparation is often lost on us. We receive a prompting and do not fully realize what the magnitude of following that prompting is. We do not realize that a series of promptings may make us an instrument in a great work. Not all of us will have such a noticeable effect on the world. But the preparation for being a great parent, church leader, visiting teacher, friend, prophet, writer, etc can all be the same with a different but just as powerful outcome. We are not all called to do things that are so public. But we are all called to do something important. I have often wondered and pondered just exactly what was I sent here to do that no one else could do. I often come up with no answer. But Brother Mabry helped me to understand that those answers may only come by following the still small voice that is preparing a way for us to do some great thing.

What are you being prompted to do? Change what you listen to or look at? Develop better spiritual skills? Be a better parent? What great thing are you meant to do? Are you preparing to do it? I am going to start preparing right now. How about you?

PS. My favorite picture is the one with the angels. I have it on my phone. Mark just finished his second project called Another Testament, Reflections of Christ. He shared some of those new images with us. And his new one, with the angels, is my new favorite. Many of us wept at the story of how the images in 3Nephi came together. They will be out this fall. Brother Mabry's first priority with his images is missionary work. I think that is pretty cool.

Highlights

The Butterfly is growing up. By the end of the year she will be 12. A few months back, we ran a 5k together. I've always wanted to do that. I finished first in my age category. Don't be too impressed. A woman in her late 50's was a minute behind me. :-) I'm gonna train next year. So, because I won, my funny friend who runs a salon here in town, took Emily's prize right out of her hand and gave it to me. She loves both of us. It was a $10 coupon toward a cut or anything else. So, I told Emily since I got her coupon, I'd give her highlights. I touched up mine and did hers. Hers are hard to see because her hair is so thick.

Highlights. My children are growing up and as they move forward, I find myself looking back a lot. I have decided to start digital scrapbooking. I am going to start that after girl's camp. But, my mind is like a scrapbook and I can turn the pages and go back.

My wedding day with lots of friends but no earthly family. Mixed emotions. The day I became a mom. I was supposed to be giving a deposition for an accident I had been in. And I had my baby in the wrong city. Oops. Deciding on purpose to have two babies 16 months apart so they would be close and not regretting it at all. Three boys in four years. Flying into Albuquerque at sunset on a medical jet and realizing the precious gift of a fourth boy and hoping it all turned out all right at 28 weeks. It did. Four little boys with very bad chicken pox, externally and internally. Looking at the ultrasound screen with a good friend when the tech said, "it's a girl" and not being able to identify "it" because I had never seen a her "it" before. :-) Another boy. The end. Nope. Another girl. Moving from having a family to rearing a family. 1st days of kindergarten. Realizing when Andrew was 9 1/2 that it was half over.

Sports, sports, sports. Jr High. Girls. High School. Driving. Football, basketball, tennis. And finally, ruffles and bows, giggles and dolls, dressup and dance! The first high school graduate. The first college student. The last family vacation for a very long time. Another college student. A college basketball player! A missionary. The last kindergartner. Broken arms. First teen car accident. Surgeries, wisdom teeth, braces. It's a crazy mix when you look back.

And looking forward? Another missionary in a few months. Another graduate and college student. Another high school student. A few more years of elementary and Jr High. Returning missionaries. Marriage eventually? Grandchildren? Wow! Can't even conceive of that right now. Well, I won't be doing the conceiving. Hahaha.

Life is blessed. Most of the time, that's all I can see. I used to think my first 20 yrs were so bad. But, age brings wisdom, hopefully. And my life wasn't so bad. But in any way it might have been less than it should have/could have been, my loving Heavenly Father has done more than made up for it. I wonder why? I wish everyone could have it this good. It hasn't always been perfect and there have been moments so painful, I wondered if I could endure. But those moments are brief thankfully and when we allow it, we can grow in ways that bless us. And in the grand scheme of things, I think it will be fun to look back and see the highlights of a lifetime. At least I hope so.

End of school Beginning of Summer

Life has been a little crazy in our house. But we are making the transition from school to Summer activities. The Jester "graduated" from 8th grade. He was a top ten student, #1 Math student, and we think an all around kid extraordinaire. I am counting down the days until I can work from home again. Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4. Woohoo!

Today we did a lot of deep cleaning (with much more to come) and I found this big fella on our porch. Probably one of the biggest we have seen. His face, not shown, had blood all over it. Not because he was hurt. Do you know they shoot blood from their eyes when they feel threatened? Fortunately I found him that way. I think the cat found him first.

We ended the day by going to see Night at the Museum 2 together. We had fun and ate way too much popcorn. But, you only live once. Bring on the Summer!