The past few days I have been searching for my 2009 New Year’s Motto. I gave up on any sort of New Year’s resolutions a few years back and decided instead to come up with a motto that would motivate my family and me for the entire year. I wanted an overall theme for change and one I could remember all year through.
The first year I came up with this idea, I felt like I was always struggling with putting things off, Hence my New Years motto for that year became the slogan “Just Do It.” Yes, ‘Nike’ helped me out. Apparently following the end of that year I still felt a need for help with this habit of putting things off, because the next year my motto for that year became “A thing done when thought of needs no more attention.” My children are still tired of hearing that one after I quoted it to them every time they procrastinated.
Last year my motto was (can anyone remember?) “2008 will be great!” As I thought about Kelson returning from his mission at the end of 2008 I decided preparing for him to return had to make 2008 a great year. About three quarters of the way through 2008 I kept wondering when 2008 was going to be great. This past year I have had some of the most intense personal trials I have ever experienced in this life. Those are not the things I brag about on my blog, but trust me; I have had my share of personal hurdles to cross over and I’m sure I’ll write about them when I get them all worked out.
It wasn’t until Kelson came home that the full realm of my motto landed in me, bringing meaning and wisdom to my mind. I am always amazed at how the Lord leads me along, guiding me, how He gently implants wisdom into me; He is forever teaching me. One day when I was in my negative thinking mode, crabbing to myself about how 2008 had been anything but great, I had another afflatus. (By the way, I get a lot of those.) Well, it was in the middle of this pondering that the spirit sort of thumped me on the head and started speaking to my mind. The voice was sort of goading me, saying, “Hey where are you in your responsibility to make this year great?” It was then that I realized it wasn’t so much that 2008 was going to be easy, you know, a year full of good things, blessings, all of it free of strife, no, no! No instead I realized I had a responsibility to make 2008 great regardless of the strife, or the trials that found their way to my front door. Here I thought God was just going to hand it to me, wow, stupid me!
I really have Kelson to thank for my newfound wisdom. Once he arrived home from his mission, he brought with him all sorts of new perspectives and new ways of thinking about things that I hadn’t been exposed to in a while. Having him home has been a great refresher course in the spiritual things that really count in this life and in new ways of living the gospel. So tonight, I am amazed at how much I have grown to love this new tradition of having a motivational statement to direct me. 2008 by the way was great. It was great because I searched through the muck and found the good. Also I got to see my son who left for a mission a mere boy, step from a plane a man; a spiritual man and this is the joy of every mother’s heart. 2008 really was great!
This year however, I was struggling to find something that fit my needs. Given the trials I had traveled through last year and feeling the weight of those trials, I was really searching for something to motivate me in a positive way. I had given a lot of thought to some of the struggles I’d been through and I just couldn’t come up with the right motivational slogan for 2009. I thought about choosing, “2009 will be fine.” But I’m sorry, where is the creativity in that? I had read a couple of scriptures and I had even thought of using one of the quotes I recently read in a book I was given for Christmas, but nothing seemed to fit my needs. So I made it a matter of prayer and today my 2009 motto came to me so crystal clear and with such force that I knew it was sent from a greater power. This year’s motto came straight from my Father in Heaven! He knows me. He knows what lies ahead!
The way this motto came about is an amazing thing to me. This morning Des, Kate, and I had to drive home from Bear Lake. For the last two days the weather around the lake has been heavy with fog and clouds and one of the worst inversion layers I’ve ever seen. For days now this gunky inversion layer has just rested over this little valley so heavy and thick, steeling every bit of sun and light. The mood of the gray weather has been placid and depressing to say the least. There has been very little light coming through the dim lit haze and the frost has hung heavy on the trees and anything else it can cling to. With the cold air and the sullen weather, my frame of mind had done nothing but reflect the dismal view. Now as I drove heading my car up the mountain road I noticed the higher we climbed things were starting to change.
As my car made its way up the canyon road I suddenly began to see shreds of bright blue sky start to slightly appear. Then in an instance I saw the thick dense fog drag past my car and as I looked out the window it was gone, just like that. Now nothing but the brilliant golden light lay before me. The morning sun was just coming up and the snow glittered with every ray that swept across it, and the sky was once again that sheer and stunning bear lake blue I love. It was a moment I will not forget. The spirit was in that moment testifying principles to my heart I had forgotten. It was as if the moment the clouds drug past my window the light dawned on me literally. Everyone in the car took note of how we had driven right out of the muck. Even Kate was amazed at how we were in it one minute and then out of it the next! It was in that instance that I remembered how dense inversion layers are common in Bear Lake in the winter, I turned to Kate and I said, “Kater, we just drove through a cloud. I went on to tell my little six year old granddaughter how the cloud only hung over Bear Lake, how we were the only ones, who had been living in the cloud. I explained to her that everywhere else the weather was sunny!
The moment was so intense we pulled the car over to look back on the scene. I have seen this phenomenon every winter in Bear Lake and even though my mind knew the inversion layer only hung over the lake, it permeated my mind to the point I felt the dense muck hung everywhere, not just in Bear Lake. As Kate, Des and I stood there on the side of the mountain road looking over the hills and down at the lake there was nothing visible but one large dark gray dense cloud. The lake had totally disappeared, you couldn’t even see there was a lake and it looked like the giant cloud was literally resting right on top of everything; it covered everything thick like a blanket. Everywhere else the sky was blue, the sun was shinning and it was a beautiful day. Only over the lake did the massive dense muck rest. It was such a stark contrast and I was cussing that I didn’t have my camera with me. We laughed about how it looked like you could walk right out on it.
My mind immediately started to frame things. While at the cabin I had supposed that the weather was this way everywhere. My head just couldn’t wrap itself around the thought that only in Bear Lake was the sun not shinning. My environment had over come me to the point where my mind supposed that the entire world was without sun. I pictured my little world now with one single cloud over it. If only I had remembered the inversion layers that sometimes roll into the lake. Here all I needed to do was climb a few feet higher through the dense fog and I would find the brilliant light and warmth from the sun’s rays.
That’s it! That’s when it came to me . . . My motto for the New Year “Rise Above It!” Wow, it was so symbolic to me that I nearly started crying. It was the spirit that whispered it to me, that familiar voice that speaks to me in my mind in desperate moments. That’s when the voice whispered again but this time with and admonishment, “You can rise above it.”
So many times in my life I have been clouded to the point where I have felt frozen, like I was doomed to stay in my same situation for eternity. Then I thought of clinging to my new motto “Rise Above It” I thought of the encouragements of the spirit, “Climb to higher ground!” When I looked over that lake I saw my life and what it looks like under the dense clouds of trials and struggles. Solving problems all looked so simple now from my new vantage point. And with any struggle isn’t it so, that we get to feeling we’re stuck when all we need to do is just rise above it? It takes effort to rise to higher ground. Steven R. Covey said, “You can’t solve any problem at the same level of thinking you created it at.” I love that quote. We have to rise above our own thinking, climb over ourselves, and we have to remember that the fog is only over us!
If you sit and whine about your present situation, if you get stuck in the gloom of it, in the end when time passes you will be found still sitting in the same muck hole, whining. Struggles and trials call forth our courage and demand serious "efforting" to move us above any dense cloudy trial that threatens to hold us down. It never does any good to just sit and cry about our problems. I know there is a time frame where we should express our grief but then, “When the going gets tough – the tough get going!” Each one of us has our own inversion layers that roll in and out of our lives, layers we can get stuck in, from ways of thinking about things to habits of character that bolt us to our trials. God is with us, and He wants us to know we can “Rise above it.” He testified of this principle to me standing there on a mountain. I know He’ll help me if I just work hard and follow His direction. I know He will help me if I am willing to make the climb. I’m so excited. No matter what I face in the coming year, I have my thoughts fixed now don’t I? “Rise Above It!” Wow, that statement is almost scary, like for sure I’m going to have trials, I can plan on them and now I’m committed, I know what I need to do already before they arrive! Dang, I so love whining. Oh well, guess I had better gear up! God has given me my instructions and as always I have Him to thank here once again; He has heard my heart and delivered and more importantly I know He will help me in my quest to "Rise above it!" What a motto --- I love it! Now I pray He will be with me in the climb!
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