God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.
Do you ever take your wedding ring off? The only time I take mine off is when I am making bread or cinnamon rolls (or anything doughy where I would have to dig the dough out of the ring). I don’t take it off to shower, and I don’t take it off to wash my hands.
I remember shortly after I got engaged, I overheard my roommate comment to another person about how weird it was that I never took my ring off. I thought, “Well, I’m not concerned that it’s going to turn my finger green, so what’s the problem?” My mom never took hers off and I had never heard of someone taking it off to do simple things around the house. There was one girl in our apartment complex that was engaged for only a couple of days, took her ring off to shower, and lost it. I was appalled that she would treat it so casually, knowing that it cost hundreds of dollars.
I did take it off when I was pregnant because I swelled up so bad that it didn’t fit. But I tried every day after each birth until I was able to squeeze it on. I like showing to everyone that I am taken!
Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.
An experiment was conducted by Wendy Watson Nelson. For two weeks, she asked women to do a simple exercise, and the results were stunning. Here’s what the women who participated in the experiment reported:
- An increased desire to de-junk their physical environments.
- A greatly reduced desire to watch TV.
- An increased desire to reach out to others and follow through on commitments.
- An increased desire to be kinder, gentler, and more patient.
- An increased desire to take care of their bodies by living the Lord’s law of health more fully.
- An increased ability to see how they could have handled situations better.
- An increased mental focus.
- An increased ability and desire to really study and learn.
- Old habits of backbiting, gossiping, and cynicalness falling away.
- A dramatic increase in their physical energy, because energy-draining negative emotions were gone.
- An unbelievable reduction in stress.
- Profound changes in their conversations with others.
What would cause such dramatic results? Something so simple.
“For five days in their morning prayers, they were to pray with concerted effort for the Holy Ghost to be with them that day. Then, throughout the day, as they encountered any difficult, tempting, or trying situation, they were to pray for and really picture the Spirit being right there with them.” --Wendy Watson Nelson
Anyone up to try this with me?
The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. There is no other limitation in either direction and this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish a dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. He who masters himself shall be king.
(From The Miracle Of Forgiveness)
On Saturday, May 21, I woke up at 4:00 in the morning with a stabbing pain in my shoulder blade. It hurt so bad. I tried to walk it off and took some medicine, but at 4:45 I had to go to wake up The Doctor. We ended up going to emergency room.
I was in so much pain. I was crying and sobbing. When we got to the hospital they took me into the room and it ended up taking 4 doses of morphine and other pain medicine for the pain to go away. They did a chest x-ray and 2 e.k.g.'s on me, and everything looked normal. The doctor was stumped. Also my right arm was going numb, my fingers were numb, and out to my elbow was really numb. That was really freaking me out.
They sent me home with prescriptions for Lortab and Ibuprofen and a nerve pain medicine but no answers. When we got home I crawled into my chair and fell asleep from the morphine. The Doctor went to the store and filled the prescriptions. He took care of the house and the kids. I tried sleeping in the bed, but I just couldn't get comfortable, so I slept in my recliner for the next week.
We have since figured out that I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder. I was worried that it might be a slipped disk in my neck and would need surgery, so I am grateful it isn’t that severe. But I have much more compassion for those who have chronic pain. I have been going to physical therapy a couple times a week ($40 copay every time!) and my shoulder is doing much better. It’s still very weak and I have to be careful.
But now the nerves in my elbow are giving me pain, and nothing helps them feel better. I just have to deal with it the best that I can, and I don’t do a very good job of dealing with it! My first two fingers are still tingly numb and it’s really hard to write or even hold a pencil. Which makes doing my work such fun.
I figured out that between the cold/infections/bronchitis and my shoulder, I was sick the entire month of May. I spent the whole month sitting in my chair and watching life go on around me. I lost the whole month. Not fun.
He who cannot learn by others' mistakes is stupid. He who cannot learn by his own errors is a fool.
President Spencer W. Kimball
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