Sunday Revelations

“Is the benefit temporary, or will it have eternal value and significance?” Truthfully answering these questions may help us avoid excessive debt and other addictive behaviour."

In seeking to overcome debt and addictive behaviours, we should remember that addiction is the craving of the natural man, and it can never be satisfied. It is an insatiable appetite. When we are addicted, we seek those worldly possessions or physical pleasures that seem to entice us. But as children of God, our deepest hunger and what we should be seeking is what the Lord alone can provide—His love, His sense of worth, His security, His confidence, His hope in the future, and assurance of His love, which brings us eternal joy.

I testify that the appetite to possess worldly things can only be overcome by turning to the Lord. The hunger of addiction can only be replaced by our love for Him. He stands ready to help each one of us. “Fear not,” He said, “for you are mine, and I have overcome the world” (D&C 50:41).

Overcoming Fear - Cornelia Grimsmo

CHOOSE LOVE. Not Fear.

Revelation

I have been questioning and praying lately, not as much as I should be, and that is probably why I haven't been receiving answers, or maybe I haven't been able to see them because I am not as connected as I should be to the spirit. I don't know. I really want to know some things, and sometimes I think I already know the answer, but then my feelings tell me otherwise. I am confused in life, I feel as if I have a plan in me, somewhere, but I am just not sure if I am on it, or how to get to it.

Right now, I don't feel that good about myself at all, and yet I long to be with other people. I long for love and friendship and understanding. I am scared about a lot of things, and I just wish I knew what it is I am supposed to be doing with my time. I want to be happier, and to feel confident in my teeth and my face and my body, and I am working on all of these things, but it is such a slow process..

I know that if I want answers, and if I want to be less selfish and empty, then I am going to have to dedicate myself and be obedient, even my brother told me that. I need to read scriptures more, I need to pray more, I need to serve more. I know that if I had a goal, a purpose, a passion, I would be happier, though it is such a struggle most of the time. The other night, actually, at 2am, on the way home from a YSA event, a friend asked me what I am most passionate about in life, and I was taken a back, I couldn't answer it...I didn't know what my passion was, even after all this time. I had the idea to say 'Helping people' but I couldn't say it because it didn't feel like it was authentic.

I've also realised through noticing how I treat the people who care about me the most, that even when I love I don't love enough, or as best as I could. I need help. I don't know what I need help with but I need help, and I feel stupid having to say that. I want to be able to do things on my own without relying on people so much, but it just doesn't seem possible right now, and I know that as a believer, I need to trust and rely on Heavenly Father more than anyone. At least watching this video has brought me some insight, even though I feel lost and alone and confused. I guess that is one thing I am grateful for.

Towards a life of loving (excerpts) by Don Burnard

Love of Someone else is an experience involving a rejoicing in and celebrating the individuality of the other. A marriage is happy when two people want and try to achieve what is best for each other. Their love is not conditional. It is not that they love each other because the other loves them. This is not the love of freedom. It is rather that each loves their partner freely and their joy is complete in the discovery that their partner freely loves them.

    On the other hand, love is creative. It takes a lot of living to be able to love. It requires self-knowledge, self-discipline, a sense of humour, humility, imagination, and so on to love. Love is the highest achievement of the human person. Why? To want what is best for the other is difficult. To know what is best for oneself is a mature achievement. To know what is best for one's engaged or married partner is an even greater challenge.
What then is necessary if two people are to keep discovering through courtship and marriage what is best for each other?

     Commitment, care, openness, responsibility, understanding, humour, fidelity, and above all, communication. These are qualities and achievements which flow from a creative approach to marriage. These qualities don't just happen between people as do the passive experiences of infatuation, emotional involvement and desire. It is the creative aspects of marriage, mentioned before, that help people to live with their spontaneous attractions towards many other people, their physical feelings for other people and to enter into a healthy personal involvements with other people without fear of infidelity. The qualities which must be developed in order to become a lover involve strengths which prevent a marriage relationship from being contaminated by jealousy, possessiveness and exclusiveness.

    Lovers must be creative right through their married relationship. Because people are changing all the time, love requires a continual discovery between two people, a sustained creativity. There are no formulas for experiencing love. There are no biological formulas, no physical techniques, which guarantee love. There are no sensitivity programmes which can make people love each other. People can't be conditioned to love each other. No blueprint of social organisation can guarantee love. Love is an attitude which only people themselves can develop from their own inner resources. Love is an art which other people can inspire us to practise. But like every art, there are no short cuts. Each person has to master his art in their own way, true to their own personality.

     Love faces reality and transforms it. Romance, that mixture of sentiment, feeling, attraction, and passion, isolates itself from the harder realities of life and sets up its own make-believe. Love does not deny the romantic experiences of human relationships. But love transforms these romantic experiences into more enduring and fulfilling realities.

    Love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved. Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Love is only possible between real, not idealised, people. There are no formulas such as, you have to accept people for what they are, no short-cuts such as, getting carried away by another person, no techniques such as how to arouse each other, for discovering the reality of the other. This must be approached in freedom, and encountered not as a stereotype. Love seeks out the mystery of the other through his or her real self and therefore through his or her limitations. love does not measure the worth of the other in terms of conformity to some socially conditioned and stereotyped ideal.

   Marriage is only for real lovers. The real point is not where two people are at, now, at this point in time. The important point is whether lovers are open to the possibility that the intensity of these romantic, emotional, passionate experiences, is no guarantee that they love each other. If they can live with this reality, and accept the fact that although what they have is fulfilling, it will not remain forever that way unless there is growth in the relationship, then they are open to the experience of love.
   In every good love affair there are always unique expressions of love which will sound silly to everyone else. Love is the most personal experience in the world. So are many of it's expressions.What characterises a love affair which is reaching into the total human reality of both partners, is that there is a broad variety of expressions of love. There is no fixation on physical expressions, no dependency on physical expressions.

LOVE IS AN ART. Not an overwhelming, irresistible impulse.
Truth is an expression of love. The best expression of love may be to share the truth. It is good for both to know the nature and extent of their desire with each other. Truth and humour combine in a marvellous expression of love. They can ease tensions and deepen a relationship. Humour and truth, as expressions of love, must not do violence to patience.

Morality in courtship, as in all life, is creative loving in a manner which is consistent with the nature of the relationship. Courtship is a time of assessing the integrity of making a lifetime commitment.
Courtship can be one of the most exciting periods of life. Certainly it is a time of frustration, but the main frustration should be due to the fact that you can never find enough time to be together; that every meeting is marred by the certain knowledge that you only have so long together.

To give oneself trustingly, sharing oneself in complete openness, there must be a knowledge that the other is also giving himself or herself to you in total trust and openness. Marriage vows mean that two people recognise each other's desire to totally commit themselves to each other. The need for security is fulfilled when two people accept responsibility for each other and their relationship. If there is not total commitment in a relationship, then there cannot be total trust and openness and there cannot be responsibility. Any temporary relationship, no matter how ecstatic and passionate, leaves one or both partners vulnerable and frustrated.

Coffs Harbour Holiday Weekend Memories

Last weekend I had the chance to go on a holiday to Coffs Harbour, a beautiful coastal town that is made up of hills and mountains and ocean. Not many people know this, but my parents lived there for a about a year, and my father grew up in a town 40 minutes out of Coffs called Bellingen, so my incentive to see and experience this place, even if only for four days, was strong. It was strange how familiar it all felt being there, I had stopped through Coffs Harbour before with my family, as we were driving up to the Gold Coast, but had never stayed there any longer than that. I have always admired it though. I have realised now, that I tend to admire and fall in love with any seaside town I visit, because I just love them so much, and they always feel like home.

I took a lot of photos and videos, but some of the videos got deleted, so I used whatever I had left and put it together into a cheesy little video full of memories. As I've said before, I want my life to be full of passion and simplicity, full of wholeness, and humility. I want to feel connected, and alive, and present. Not distant, not disconnected, not dead inside. Ever since I decided to take a break from University things have been good, I haven't found a job yet, but the time I've been spending with my family and working on personal ambitions has helped me feel much closer and reconnected to the things I used to strive to be close to.

I spent this holiday with my cousin and her family, and it brought us all much closer. When we first arrived, it was late at night, during a thunderstorm, and the tent we were attempting to put up had missing pieces, and was not compromising. We were getting soaked, our tent was getting soaked, and I suggested during all of this strife that we simply sleep in the car, but my family persisted and carried on through it. At one point when the rain was so heavy and my hands so numb I could almost not feel them, I said a prayer asking for the rain to settle or stop, but instead of the rain stopping, the wind picked up and our tent almost flew away. I couldn't help but laugh, and figured that this experience must be happening for a reason, either to bond us together or see us fall apart, a test of our unity, our service to one another. Eventually, we got the tent up, and we got the other tent up too, the massive one that had no missing pieces or gaps in the roof where the water would come through. Falling asleep to the sound of the rain on the tent roof, all warm in my sleeping bag, felt like a reward that night.

The rest of the trip consisted of several trips to the shops, buying groceries...which soon turned into dancing in the aisles, pulling young Max and Lara away from the toys, but also ending up taking some toys with us. The drives were full of blasting music, dancing in the seats, trying to fall asleep but failing, taking more videos, taking more photos, gazing at everything I could before we had to leave, also talking on walkie talkie between my cousins car and her parents car, because they're just cool like that. The weekend was supposed to be for Coffs Soul Surfest, an annual surf competition held by the Coffs Harbour members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but it ended up being more of a family bonding holiday. We stroked kangaroos, we saw lorikeets, green tree frogs, woke up to the sound of kookaburras and the sound of trees in the wind and rain on the tent. It was beautiful, and I miss moments like that sometimes when I am in my small cluttered room in suburbia.

When we did go to the Surfest events, meeting up with old and new friends put a big smile on my face. We bumped into a few of them at the shops and it felt so good to have a little reunion moment when we spotted each other and I gave some of them hugs. It reminded me of the feelings I had at my first YSA Convention Sydney. Unified in beliefs, unified in friendship. We danced like crazy at the dance held at the Coffs Harbour LDS chapel, and had jam sessions with each other on the piano, then met for church the next day at 10am, which was where I said goodbye and see you soon to a lot of them. The views behind the chapel were amazing to me, a mountain covered in mist and cloud from the rainstorm that was looming. It never really feels right to say goodbye to places like these, that make me feel a certain way. One day I'll live in one, and I will feel all of this once again.

But for now, Sydney, I'll continue to call you home.

How to Use The Law of Attraction

I just watched this video by one of the beautiful inspiring girls I follow, and it really motivated me to actively think and imagine good things about the future, and to keep visualising what I want in life, to believe that it is already waiting for me.

Change

I feel like things are changing, slowly, but changing nonetheless, and that makes me happy. Despite all of the problems, all of the trails going on in my family right now, I feel positive about the future, and I think in the end everything is going to be okay. I  think that when you actively choose to improve your life, changes start happening, and you see it slowly unfolding in front of you. Everything you've ever wanted could be right there in front of you and you wouldn't be able to see it because you weren't focusing on the right things. As if you were on a different wavelength to your dreams, and all you needed to do was think differently, and act differently, and believe that you'd be on that path someday.
It is almost 10am here, and the sun is up, shining and casting shadows. Ben Howard is singing through my speakers. My family is sleeping in their rooms. And here I am, 21 and hopeful, for a better future, for a happier, more passionate life, for a caring, nature loving, god fearing husband I wish to find and raise a family with. I know I'll have that one day. I will be forever grateful, eternally grateful, if I am blessed with a healthy happy family and a house close to the sea.
A simple, passionate, humble, loving, life. That is what I want.