time is of the essence

I sometimes wonder if I will be alive and well in four weeks. I’m not going to lie this semester might just do me in. I don’t know what I was thinking when I decided to take 18 credits, including Statistics, Accounting, Finance, Budget, and more. I was in tears at the end of this last week. Exhaustion and FRUSTRATION. Frustration because I don’t feel I have time for anything besides school. I don’t have time to read, create, sew, write, explore, hobbies, exercise, serve, try new things, music, pluck eyebrows, paint toe nails, change oil, run…be a friend, sister, daughter, cousin, aunt… flirt, date, cook, study and learn other things, think... In essence I don’t have TIME TO BE ME. (Losing an hour with the time change didn’t help.) The final straw this last week was every time I planned to go to the temple something came up, and Friday I had had enough. (Yes, there were tears. It’s a good release. I’ll sometimes force myself to cry just for the relief of it.) First thing Saturday morning I went to the temple before anything could stop me. After that life was good again. I felt relief and comfort and perspective was back. I will get through this. I can do this. And even if my grades don’t represent all the time and work I have put into projects and studying, life will be fine. I really do love the challenge and the learning.

Sunday was a good day, too. The stake president spoke in sacrament meeting and said some things that were exactly what I needed to hear. Comfort. Isn’t amazing how things like that happened. No doubt, prayers are answered through other people. Most of what I needed hear came from a talk by Elder Eyring.

Real-Life Education.

“Your life is carefully watched over. The Lord knows both what He will need you to do and what you will need to know to do it. You can with confidence expect that He has prepared opportunities for you to learn. You will not recognize those opportunities perfectly. But when you put the spiritual things first in your life, you will be blessed to feel directed toward certain learning, and you will be motivated to work harder. You will recognize later that your power to serve was increased, and you will be grateful. Your service may not be in what the world would recognize as a lofty calling. But remember that when the real value of service becomes clear in the judgment of God, some people who worked in quiet anonymity will be the real heroes.”

“God Can Multiply the Effectiveness of Our Time. That is a true promise. When we put God’s purposes first, He will give us miracles. If we pray to know what He would have us do next, He will multiply the effects of what we do in such a way that time seems to be expanded. He may do it in different ways for each individual, but I know from long experience that He is faithful to His word.”

“The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. All we can learn that is true while we are in this life will rise with us in the Resurrection. And all that we can learn will enhance our capacity to serve. That is a destiny reserved not alone for the brilliant, those who learn the most quickly, or those who enter the most respected professions. It will be given to those who are humbly good, who love God, and who serve Him with all their capacities, however limited those capacities are—as are all our capacities, compared with the capacities of God.”

Life is good.

Some good finds this weekend:

I took a muchly needed break Saturday afternoon and went to see Leap Year at the “dollar theater.” I liked it. Sure its cheesy and predictable, but it made me laugh and its clean. Which is a rare find and greatly appreciated.

The reusable bags at Macey’s. They are a good size and they conveniently fold up and snap.

This was a good post that summed up some of my feelings on the temple and commitment to God.