Monday's Motivation

Excerpt from one of my all-time favorite General Conference addresses:

Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness. To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a “house of order,” and women should pattern their homes after the Lord’s house (see Doctrine and Covenants 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.

Julie B. Beck, (at the time) Relief Society General President, October 2007

Monday's Motivation

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." (Galatians 5:9)

I'm still learning, thankfully, and one of the things I'm realizing is that being consistent and persistent in pressing forward is about the only way we get to where we want to be. And we only see progress when we look far enough back to see where we once were. That's one of the reasons I like keeping a journal--so I can see where I was and realize how much progress I've made toward my goals.

The law of the harvest is always at work in our lives. Make sure you're planting the right seeds to be able to harvest what you truly desire.

Monday's Motivation

Could it be that Spring is here?

The snow is shrinking!

Almost gone!

Buds on the Lilac

South side of the house is completely free of snow.

After I took these photos I did some clean up and took most of the downed branches to a pile for the county compost.

Monday's Motivation

Timothy, my fifth "son"

"Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell and to enliven the soul."  (Doctrine and Covenants 59:18-19)    

Thank you, God, for all the beauties of the earth! My soul is enlivened at last.

Monday's Motivation

Sometimes when I get tired of the wrangling of political candidates and wish we could just hurry up and get this election over with this quote helps me persevere.

"I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph."                                            Margaret Thatcher

Monday's Motivation

From Vince Lombardi:

Once you have established the goals you want and the price you're willing to pay for success, you can ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure and the temporary failures.

Monday's Motivation

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.                        --Helen Keller            

Monday's Motivation

Wise words from Eliza R. Snow

"Don't you see that our sphere is increasing? Our sphere of action will continually widen, and no woman in Zion need[s] to mourn because her sphere is too narrow.

"God bless you, my sisters, and encourage you, that you may be filled with light, and realize that you have no interests but in the welfare of Zion. Let your first business be to perform your duties at home. But, inasmuch as you are wise stewards, you will find time for social duties, because these are incumbent upon us as daughters and mothers in Zion. By seeking to perform every duty you will find that your capacity will increase, and you will be astonished as what you can accomplish."

          From "An Address by Miss Eliza R. Snow," Millennial Star, Jan. 13, 1874, 18.
          Quoted in Daughters in the Kingdom, 58-59

 

Monday's Motivation

When I'm feeling dispirited because I don't live in my dream home: