I loved his reminder that we are here to have joy! (2 Nephi 2:25) It's an important part of our purpose on this earth! He also stated that "saints can be happy under ANY circumstance!" I thought about that a lot. I thought about how in the past few months I had, at times, let worries "consume me". I have a tendency to dwell on terrible things that are happening in the world-I think far too often about all of the sin and pain and evil in the world. In fact, it had become such a problem for me in the past few months that I eventually "unfollowed" all of my news stations on social media. It's also easy to slip into a pattern where I focus too much on my own hardships, small as they may seem to some. Elder Nelson's talk gave me a new way to look at things, he counseled us to focus on joy even through our hardships and promised that we would feel more joyful if we did.
Well, let me tell you about my day today. I woke up feeling so much joy! I was so excited to start applying some of the things I had learned or been prompted with at conference. I woke up early to get started on a work project and was excited to get a list of things accomplished. I had several things that needed to be done so, I knew it would be a busy day but I was on such a high from conference weekend and I just knew it was going to be a good day. Here's how it went:
9:30- Get a very grumpy and tired Emma out of bed, dressed, fed, and in the car. Load several large, heavy boxes into the car, look around the house for my keys, head to the post office.
9:45- Go into the post office (feeling joyful) and I'm greeted by an ornery employee. I cheerfully ask for a dolly to bring in my 6 large boxes filled with envelopes to be mailed out for work. I start the process of bringing in the boxes (1 at a time) with Emma as my "helper". Emma attempts to wander into the road several times when she sees a dog, then begins to do it more just because she thinks it's funny that I have to drop the box and chase after her every time she does.
10:15- Head back to the counter and tell the ornery employee that I'd like to ship all of the envelopes in the boxes. He proceeds to tell me that I'm going to need to put six stamps on each of the 250 envelopes by myself. He tells me "you can do it over in that corner". I start to feel a little less joyful as I picture what Emma will do for the 1-2 hours that it will take me to complete this task.
10:30- the man is finally finished counting out stamps (he had to recount 4 or 5 times) and ringing me up, I try to pay him-there's a problem with the card. Emma is screaming at this point-I tried to give her a food pouch to keep her quiet and she squeezed it all over the front of my shirt. I proceed to try to get a hold of some people at work to figure out what the problem with the card is-everyone is on lunch break.
11:00- I finally decide to go back to work to get a check instead. I begin the process of hauling the 6 boxes back out to the car.
11:30- I head back to work and grab a check, Emma is intrigued by the rocks on the ground and doesn't want to get back in the car-complete meltdown. We finally get home (I decided I couldn't stand to go back to the post office right away). I start to try to get Emma to sleep which takes nearly an hour.
1:30- Emma falls asleep so I get started on decorating a cake for a cake smash photo shoot I've been asked to do. I don't have much time because I'm trying to get it delivered by 3 so that I can stop by the post office on the way to my eye appointment at 4.
3:30- I wake Emma up from her nap, hurriedly get her and the cake out to the car and head to go drop off the cake.
3:55- I call the eye doctor on the way to the post office and tell them I'm going to be late.
4:00- I walk back into the post office, wait in line for a half hour, get to the front (the ornery employee had lost faith that I was going to return so he'd put my stamp order back and had to recount-I think he was just about as happy to see me as I was to see him.)
4:50- Walk of shame into the eye doctor. They manage to squeeze me in. Emma keeps running out of the exam room during the appointment which means I have to keep running out in the middle of the exam to grab her. The appointment ends up costing so much that I decide not to even buy the new glasses that I set the appointment for.
5:30- I drive home on the verge of tears when all of the sudden, President Nelson's words come to my mind. I start to think I've failed at the whole "focus on the joy" thing today.
Later this evening, Emma insisted on a bath. Literally, she stood by the tub and impatiently cried "tub tub tub!" over and over again while pointing to it and dancing up and down on her toes. I put her in the bath and tiredly watched her play in the bubbles while I grumpily think about how I hardly got anything accomplished today (I didn't even get the stamps on the envelopes that were supposed to be shipped out). She was grinning from ear to ear, pouring water over her head, and playing with the random Easter eggs that I'd tossed in. She grabbed a bucket and stuck it on her head. "at! at! at!" she cried (that's how she says "hat") She was flashing the goofiest faces at me and soon I was laughing hysterically at her silliness. I quickly forgot about the crummy day that had seemed so miserable and started to feel joy. I thought some more about President Nelson's words and started to count my blessings. (I have a lot of them--too many to count)
I realized today that the great thing about conference is that it comes around twice every single year. We are reminded of wonderful truths and given direction and because we aren't perfect and we mess up (sometimes even the day after conference.) we have six months to work on ourselves and do the best we can before we are reminded again!
Also--if any of you have had a day like mine, you should really listen to this song. It helped me today. (sort of goes a long with this whole message, don't you think?)
