The other day I was at lunch with a group of friends and the subject of New Year's goals came up. We each went around the table and talked about what races we were training for (this was a group of runners/triathletes). After lunch I got to thinking about my goals for the year--train for Windermere 1/2 marathon in May and try to improve my time (totally doable), train for and compete in my first Olympic length triathlon (again very doable), eat 3 fruits and 3 vegetables per day (yep, doable). Why are all of these things doable? Because I am totally committed to them.
Then I got thinking about the song "Dig a Little Deeper" from Disney's,
The Princess and the Frog. I realized that when it comes to making spiritual goals, I am woefully lacking. It is definitely not because I am so good that I have trouble identifying areas needed for spiritual growth. Quite to the contrary--there are so many areas that are desparately needing improvement that I don't know where to begin and make the goals "doable". Here is definitely where I need to "dig a little deeper."
Then I remembered a
special blessing I received when I was 18 years old. In this blessing I was told to develop charity--you know, the pure love of Christ. Yeah, that seems a little overwhelming. But if I develop charity, that means I have learned humility. And if I have learned humility, then I have learned how to be temperate in all things. I definitely need temperance. My strong personality, fierce independence, quick rush to judgment and big mouth often get me into trouble. OK, learning temperance seems doable. Here's how I am going to do it:
- refer to this talk often (as in read "daily" until things start to become a habit)
- read from the Book of Mormon daily (should already be doing this, but yeah, I don't)
- practice yoga (seriously. Learning the practice of yoga should help me release some of my Type A personality. Although I have tried yoga before, and let's just say, it hasn't gone very well.
So there you have it...my spiritual resolution for this year is to learn to be temperate in all things. I'll try to give you periodic updates on how it is going. Should be an interesting journey, anyway.
2 comments:
You are brave to be putting those out there...I'm scared to do that. The whole feeling accountable thing makes me squirm.
My knee is still giving me grief from the half last May. I'm seriously getting worried that I may not be able to do it. We'll see...
you know how I feel about the triathalon part, but it makes me proud to know you ARE able to do it. It makes me humble to know how committed you are to your spiritual training.
Love, Dad
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