Seeking Simple Joys!

This whole blog is dedicated to believing in yourself.  To do that brings joy, and having joy is to believe in yourself, and to believe in God and His promises.  I posted last December about "Joy in the Journey" and in November of "Happiness and Joy."  Both posts are filled with great quotes and insight into seeking and finding joy.  One thought I posted was,  "We do not remember days, we remember moments.  Think about that.  And it's those moments that are filled with joy and wonder.  Can we be cheerful for a moment?  I bet we can with a conscious effort to create cheerful moments.  Remember, the creation of it is up to us!"

I've quoted a lot of thoughts from Geraldine Edwards from her book Celebrate!  This book is simply full of ways to seek joy and celebrate life!   She gives some simple ideas for seeking simple joys in our lives.  It's something that we should seek to do every day.  They are:

1 - do something each day that you love to do
2- it should cost little or no money
3- it should be something you can do close by
4- something that can be accomplished in an hour or two
5- something that you can do alone or shared with someone else
(from page 68 of her book)

Time is such a precious commodity these days.  I often wonder and worry if I'm using it appropriately or if my choices are pleasing to the Lord.  I was just pondering yesterday on something President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, which was quoted by Julie B. Beck in "Relief Society: A Sacred Work" from the General RS Meeting in the November 2009 Ensign.

She said, "One of the most precious commodities we all have is time. Most women have many responsibilities and never have sufficient time to do everything their hearts and minds want to do. We show respect for the Lord and the sisters when we use...time in an inspired way. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught: “A wise man once distinguished between ‘the noble art of getting things done’ and ‘a nobler art of leaving things undone.’ True ‘wisdom in life,’ he taught, consists of ‘the elimination of non-essentials.’” President Uchtdorf then asked: “What are the nonessential things that clutter your days and steal your time? What are the habits you may have developed that do not serve a useful purpose? What are the unfinished or unstarted things that could add vigor, meaning, and joy to your life?"

So in seeking out our joys and finding ways to "Celebrate!" life as Jeraldine puts it, and yet eliminating the non-essentials from our life in order to have more time to do the essential things, we just need to organize, prioritize and seek balance in our life.  I really do think that taking time out to seek a simple joy each day is a wise balance of our time.  If we are frantically running around trying to accomplish more than we can humanly do, without taking time for simple joys, we are going to stress out, burn out, and end up accomplishing less.  If bringing joy to ourselves helps us to spread joy to others, what could be better?

At the recent BYU Women's Conference (April 29, 2010) Julie B. Beck talked about how we should try and be at our best in the afternoon part of the day when everyone else is coming home from their day tired and hungry and spent.  If we are tired and spent then, we will not be of much help to them.  [cause when mom is cranky, everyone gets cranky!]  She said, "...part of one's mission on Earth is to choose to serve the Lord, especially through serving one's family.  Taking care of our posterity takes precedence over all other needs....Women today can be a power and influence for good."

She also said that "When our priorities are out of order, we lose power."  We can categorize our priorities into "essential things, necessary things and nice-to-do things."   Essential being to seek personal revelation through scripture study and prayer, temple attendance, etc.  Necessary includes creating an environment where the spirit can dwell, teaching our children, being kind to our husbands, etc.  Nice-to-do are recreation, hobbies, crafts.  These things are nice but cannot save us, she says.  "The ability to seek, receive and act upon personal revelation is the most important skill we can acquire in this life....Education is wonderful, but being able to feel the Lord's power upon us is the ultimate education we can achieve...with that we have power and influence."

So, if we are making time for the essential and necessary, the spirit will be with us, joy will come, we will have the guidance and direction from the Lord in our lives, and there will still be time left over for a reasonable amount of time for the nice-to-do things.  Seeking for the simple joys may very well be part of the essential and necessary.  We will find joy in doing things the way the Lord would have us to do them.

In accordance with President Monson's talk to the BYU Women's Conference in 2008 "Joy in the Journey" he suggests while we sisters often feel inadequate and ineffective because we can't do all that we feel we should, that  "Rather than continually dwelling on what still needs to be done, pause occasionally and reflect on all that you do and have done.  It is most significant.  The good you have done, the kind words you have spoken, the love you have shown to others, can never be fully measured."

I find simple joy in emailing a friend or family member, trying to send out a cheerful word, smiling and saying hello to someone as I pass by them, taking pictures and looking at photographs, reading to a child, finding something that makes me laugh, delighting in nature, thinking of my blessings and expressing gratitude to the Lord, reading a good book, and so on....

"Whatever God has blessed you with, take it with grateful hand, nor postpone your joys from year to year, so that in whatever place you have been, you may say that you have lived happily."  -President Monson (Ensign 11/08)

"He commands us to be grateful because He knows being grateful will make us HAPPY--evidence of His love."  Bonnie Parkins (Ensign 5/07)

Happy joy seeking!