I choose joy

This morning I woke up crabby. We have not been getting much sleep lately because Anna is cutting six teeth simultaneously, and she has had an ear infection and the flu, and Beth had an abscessed tooth and the flu, etc, etc, etc. I have this gastritis stomach thing, undoubtedly aggravated by the wakeful nights, that forces me to be sure to get extra sleep or suffer from stomach pain. So this morning, I couldn't get up when I wanted and therefore began the day playing catch up. This makes me crabby. The thing is, I love the days when I can get my shower and scriptures read before the little children are up. This was not one of those days, and I was feeling pretty bugged by life. I was dragging myself through the morning routine, wondering how I would make it through a day of what felt like total drudgery ahead. Crab, crab, crab.

I decided to read the scriptures with breakfast. A gentle thought came as I was reading, probably the first chance I had given the Holy Ghost to influence me all morning, that it was unusually quiet. I looked around to see children doing an amazing thing--for the first time since the new year, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Josh was reading; Jacob was doing homework; Adam began practicing the piano. No one was bugging anyone else, and I didn't have to drag someone away from the beloved legos to get started on school work. Suddenly, I viewed the day from the perspective of what was going right instead of was going wrong.

A quote from President Monson's Oct. 2008 talk "Finding Joy in the Journey" came to mind (which my sister shared in a recent blog):

“Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend . . . when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth.”

Here was this principle in action in my life. I could choose to focus on what was missing, having everything the way I wanted, or I could focus on what was going well, like children choosing to follow the routine and a sunny day and a stomach that didn't hurt.

Our Bishop gave a fantastic talk on Sunday. One thing that struck me was his discussion on the need to purify the heart of pride. I can see that the things that make me the most crabby and irritable are directly related to my pride, like not being able to do what I want or have the house look the way I want or have my children behave the way I want. If I follow President Monson's thought, then I humbly and patiently submit to the things that are not the way I want and recognize the things that are the way I want with gratitude and appreciation. So I am working on that.

Today, I chose to be cheerful instead of crabby and to be grateful for the things that were going well instead of the ones that weren't. It turned out to be a pretty great day, and the drudgery ended up being pretty fun.