it's the most wonderful time of the year :)

i love the arbinger institute! it's amazing. everytime i read i learn something i have NEVER thought of before and it is really refreshing.


today i'm reading about forgiveness, which i think is good to think about this time of year. and to share something a little personal, a few years ago i received a blessing from a really wonderful friend, and in that blessing he said something so specific to me. he told me i needed to forgive the people in my life i hadn't forgiven already. really? there are people that i haven't forgiven? who is that? i don't have any grudges or hard feelings against anyone. do i have hard feelings against someone? that's what i was thinking as the words were coming out and sinking into my head. 


and then almost as if in answer to my question came the words, "the people you need to forgive in your life are you parents." 


no way! really? crazy, i didn't even know i was upset with them? i don't feel like i am. 


so that happened several years ago, i think it was 2008, or maybe even 2007. but then a few months ago i was in church and we were reading in the new testament, and i learned this really interesting thing about forgiveness, and what giving our forgiveness may involve.


2 Corinthians 2:7-8
7| so that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, AND comfort him, lest perhaps [or else] such a one [the person you haven't forgiven] should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.
8| wherefore i beseech you [and now this forgiveness involves] that ye would confirm your love toward him.


interesting. and what i personally learned from that is in order to forgive other, my parents, i not only need to forgive them, but part of forgiving is confirming (i love that word confirm) my love for them to them. which honestly i am not always very good it. but it is something to learn and i am grateful for a life to learn it.


anyway, here is what arbinger says about forgiveness that i really liked that adds a few other thoughts/ideas..
when we forgive genuinely, those we formerly accused suddenly become real for us. we sense their insecurity and anxiety; we perceive something of their struggle to show themselves as worthy and acceptable. . . . 


you can see that in an unexpected and odd way we owe to the people we are able to forgive a very large debt. no matter how reprehensibly they may have treated us, they have provided us with a gift. the gift is their humanity. without their humanity to which we are able to open ourselves, we cannot get ourselves emotionally unstuck no matter how we might try. we cannot do it by denying or repressing our feelings or by willing ourselves to feel differently--feelings are subject to our indirect but not our direct control. we are able to do it only by recognizing, respecting, and yes, revering other as they reallya re, in the fullness of their humanity and vulnerability.


SO good. :)

lessons and arbinger

a few days ago while i was exercising i was also reading the bonds that make us free. i actually have never read the entire book before, but i really love arbinger in general and terry warner! there are so many good parts but something that i wanted to share in particular is about the process of progression and selfishness. here's what he says...


some of us who are seeking to maintain ourselves in our new, more open way of being get tripped up by our anxiety to measure our progress [so true! i know i do that:)]. we want to know how we're doing. but worrying too much about such things means we're probably still too self-absorbed to maintain whatever change of heart we may have experienced. . . .


there's nothing wrong with goals so long as we don't pursue them to prove we're something we're not. but turning the maintenance of the change of heart into a project with measurable steps of achievement usually requires a pretty heavy focus on oneself. this produces a counterfeit of change. 


what then do we focus on if not a goal? part of the answer is we do not think of ourselves as a "force on the move" toward some important objective. instead, we feel still, inwardly still.


ask yourself, who is the person i really need to be? is it a being who can come into existence ONLY by determined, gritty effort? No. on reflection it is more likely we will see the person i need to be is who i am already--or MORE accurately, who i will be IF i cease trying to display myself as worthy and acceptable and thus make myself into a grotesque distortion of who i really am. . . . we become most ourselves, without distortion, when we relax our frantic effort to justify ourselves and allow ourselves to simply be still.


i love arbinger. it's so wise and so right on with things. i don't know a better way to describe it and i don't really feel a need to bc i think "the things speaks for itself." :) another law school thing, sorry i can't help it. it just comes into my head.
you should read this! :)

warm soy milk and cinnamon, yum..

things i'm learning ab christmas :)

lately i've been thinking about what christmas really means to me. tonight at institute we talked a lot about the ways we felt about christmas as a little kid. i thought about it and i remember last year thinking maybe christmas was just more fun as a little kid! sad!


but this past week i have realized that i think christmas is just starting to mean more to me.


something i felt really strong tonight--so amazing--and maybe it's not super christmas related, but it definitely is christ related, i just realize i am so grateful for my trials. and i'm not just saying that! or trying to tell myself that when i don't really believe it. the reason i felt that, which i've felt it before, but tonight in particular is because i noticed that i often just feel this new convert feeling. i just feel like i'm glowing inside and out and i feel such a deep love for the savior and his atonement bc i've learned how much i needed it. anyway, i realized it is BECAUSE of my trials that i am constantly turned to the atonement and i love feeling it in my life and seeing it change me little by little. in other words, BUT FOR my trials (haha! i'm a law school nerd ;D) i would not be able to have that new convert feeling with bright eyes and filling full of truth and light.


so i basically wanted to say--i am grateful for my trials. they have turned me to the savior, to love and appreciate and to know him, and to know more fully myself. i know that he knows our most sincere and righteous desires and that he is doing everything he can for us (thanks catie ^^). 


and i just wanted to say i am so grateful for people in my life who are always teaching me things. thanks you! i learn so much from you! and you didn't even know it :)