A decade in review (I'm turning 30 people!!)

It's my birthday this week and I'm saying goodbye to my 20's and hello 30's. I don't dread getting older, I look forward to it (we'll see if I still feel that way when I hit 40's and 50's!!) I've had way to much time to think about my twenties and the adventures they have taken me on, and compiled a list of the last decade and the more significant events that took place at each age, so here we go...

19 years old, I put my life on hold and moved to New Zealand to help my mum.

20 years old, I met and started dating my my (now) husband.

21 years old, I got married and gave birth to our first child.

22 years old, I was sealed for time and all eternity to my husband and daughter in the Sydney Australia Temple and we purchased our first property.

23 years old, I gave birth to our second child.

24 years old, I got pregnant again! much sooner than I had wanted to. Two days before Christmas I ended up in hospital and miscarried.

25 years old, I brought a Thermomix and the kids broke our television.

26 years old, I gave birth to our third child and started my own blog.

27 years old, I discovered cake pops and became obsessed with perfecting them.

28 years old, I slipped into depression and saw a psychologist who helped me work through some tough stuff and is now one of my absolutely favorite people.

29 years old, the kids (Carter) broke our television for the second time. We sold our apartment and moved out of Sydney to the country! I brought my second thermomix.

It doesn't look like much as I read back over that list, but the last ten years has been so much more. There are thousands and thousands more smaller moments that happen everyday and have filled my life taking me to the highest highs and my lowest lows. But I'm still here, still learning and still growing and I wouldn't change a thing.

I'm grateful for the years that have passed and excited for the years to come!
Bring it on!!

Enders Game

Kerry and I watched a movie this week called "Enders Game" which is about a young boy who was being trained to command an army fleat to defeat an alien species who had attacked earth 50 years prior. They had trained thousands of children, looking for one who had the capacity to out smart their enemy. The particular traits they were searching for was a prefect combination of empathy or compassion and violence. They nurtured the violence in this young boy, seeing his compassion as his weakness.

Empathy was necessary to know and understand the enemy and how they think. Then with that knowledge and understanding, one would know how to defeat them. Then the right measure of violence was necessary for the obvious,  to kill them.

Too much Empathy and you wouldn't be able to kill them. Too much violence and you wouldn't be able to outsmart them.

This boy displayed the perfect measure of both so he was trained for the task.

However they underestimated his empathy.

There is a particular moment in the movie when the young boy, Ender, in an act of self defense significantly injured one of his peers. Distraught by the outcome of his actions, He goes to visit his sister. He explains to his sister how he defeats his enemies by learning about them understanding them so much that he knows how to crush them, he goes on to say the problem with this is that when he understands and knows his enemies so well, he can't help but feel compassion and love for them.

I couldn't help but relate this concept to my own life, in particular,  to the gospel. 

For 15 years I held onto painful memories of how one person hurt me. Holding on to them fueled hate.

The process that led me to let go of these feelings was the same concept I saw in this movie.

I studied this person, reviewed their past in order to make some kind of sense of how they became the person they are and what drives them to make the choices they make.

All this leads to a moment to clarity. Realizing I was collateral damage for a path that was being laid long before I was even born.

This leads to empathy,  compassion and even love.

When we truly know someone, empathize with them and have compassion for them it is virtually impossible to hate them. We don't have to like them, but we can love someone without liking them.

If we could apply this to our daily lives, if we could peal back our narrow judgmental shades, we'd see someone we could feel compassion for, someone who is struggling just as we are.

We are all fighting battles. We are all struggling.  But we all struggle different to each other which makes it even more important to be kind to one another.

Cultivating Gratitude

My depression came back.

Which reminded me of what the doctor said when I was in high school that I have "situational" depression as well as chronic. So it shouldn't really have been a surprise, given how much my situation has changed. Only this time I have something tangible and real to fight back with. I have an awareness and knowledge of how I can combat my demon,  and I'm no longer afraid to use it.

Over the last two weeks I've taken up listening to a couple of pod casts by Dr Justin Coulson of Happy Families.  He teaches how we can be better parents and how we can be a happier family.  One of his pod casts emphasized and provided proof of the benefits of cultivating Gratitude in our children. So, this week I've been making an effort to do that.

Each night at the dinner table we have always asked the kids (and they ask us) "what was your least favorite thing about today?" and "what was your most favorite thing about today?" This week after listing to Dr Justin Coulson I decided to try and change it to "what are you grateful for today?"

I love taking with our kids at the dinner table it is such a perfect setting and opportunity to do so. No surprise they came up with some awesome things and I witnessed and felt how simply talking about things we are grateful for was able to completely change the mood in our home to a really "happy" one!

So I've spent so much time this week being much more mind full everyday of things I am grateful for, and the "change" or difference it makes is nothing short of magnificent! 

My battle is a daily one, but this time, I am not going down without a fight!