A Transformative Year

I took this picture on a trip to Michigan in August 2024

(This is basically a copy of a Christmas letter for Derek's parents and mine)

This has been a transformative year for me and I feel a freedom that is joyful.  I am grateful that life is so full of opportunities to keep learning!  Here are some of the things that have helped me.

1. I have taken the time most mornings to sit quietly and look out my window and consciously look at God’s creations as a gift for me, and to give thanks, and try to focus on God’s love.  The more I have done this the more I have come to feel my importance to Him.

2. From a few sources I learned more about the power of story.  The stories we somehow picked up about ourselves along the road of life can be crippling.  It is important to look at our stories and see if we picked up something that is not true.  Beliefs that are not true are heavy.  They weigh us down and obscure our vision, which makes the truth hard to see.  We have the power to change those old stories to truth. We can act in a way that gets rid of the ways we allowed ourselves, no matter how unwittingly, to be acted upon.

3. In Proverbs it says:  “Where there is no vision the people perish”.  In my class (My Story Matters) we talked a lot about vision.  How are we to become who we want to be if we don’t have a clear vision of what that looks like?  Because of my class, I worked a lot on coming up with a few “power words”  that I use as a “vision statement” so that in any given situation I have something short and quick that I can think of to remind me of how I want to show up.  Naturally my vision statements evolve like I do!

4. I have learned that feelings are not bad.  They are not always fun, but in and of themselves they are really just messengers.  They are a chance to feel curious.  Why is this feeling coming up?  What am I believing?  Is it true?  Any feeling I have is a chance for me to practice acting according to my vision and not allowing myself to use that feeling as an excuse to show up in a way that I will regret later.  Of course, the key word is practice.  The next transformative thing I have learned is…

5. Compassion!  Sometimes I am not going to show up in alignment with my vision.  I am going to mess up.  (Yay repentance!)  As I learned years ago, I am not being condemned by my Savior, and it is not okay to condemn myself.  Instead I can talk to myself with kindness, and practice grace.  It turns out that acting with compassion towards myself is a faster way to change than telling myself how stupid I am!  There is power in I AM!

6. “I am perfectly human”.  “I am completely loved and fully known”.  “God’s love for me is fierce and unending”.  These are words from songs that I have contemplated in the mornings and they give me a greater confidence in God’s love and in myself.  One of the songs I like talks about how I belong to Heavenly Father and He smiled when He made me.  I like to think of Him smiling at me – not with judgment, or disappointment, but with love and confidence.  That is an encouraging thought!

I will end with my current vision statement.

I am cradled in the arms of my Savior and I radiate His light.

I am a beacon of hope.

I am an enthusiastic teacher of truth.

I am the creator of my story.