Prepared

Now I'm usually a slacker when it comes to being prepared for Sunday lessons in Relief Society. I know the teacher will tell me the high points of the lesson and I always get something from them but I always find reasons not to be prepared by reading the lesson myself beforehand. Not this week! This is my new thing I did, I actually read the lesson being taught in Relief Society. Since it was the 4th Sunday the lesson was on a talk from this past General Conference. This month it was The Three Rs of Choice by President Monson (you can click on the title if you care to read it.) I was quite grateful that I read the talk on my own because Olivia had a hard time in class and I ended up in the hall for 90% of the lesson. Two of my favorite things said in this talk are first, President Monson made a reference to Alice in Wonderland. He was talking about the part where Alice comes to a fork in the road and asks the Cheshire cat which path she should take. His response is fantastic, he says, "That depends where you want to go. If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take." President Monson then said, "by choosing our path, we choose our destination." Its so true though isn't it, I think that when we know where we want to be, have an end goal in sight it totally effects the decisions we make because we're working towards something. My other favorite thing said in the talk was also by President Monson, he said "Eternal life in the kingdom of our Father is your goal. Such a goal is not achieved in one glorious attempt but rather is the result of a lifetime of righteousness, an accumulation of wise choices, even a constancy of purpose. As with anything really worthwhile, the reward of eternal life requires effort." I love having a reminder that I can't reach my goal overnight. That its fine if I stumble along the way because its not just one moment that will determine my fate but what I've done over my lifetime. What a comforting thing to know that if we do our best, we always try to better ourselves and those around us we'll be ok. That yes we will make mistakes and not always be kind but we can repent and try to do better the next day, we just need to learn from our mistakes and try not to keep repeating them.