49 ....... and almost 50!

Happy Birthday to me!  Today I am 49 years old or young!  I mean really if you think about it 49 is a very special age.  I'd like to live til I'm 100 so I guess it's almost half my life!  So, I guess I can finally transition into adulthood once and for all because I KNOW there's no turning back now!

I like being this age.  I like it because it turned out to be better than I thought it would be when I was younger and thinking what it would be like to be this old.  I dont feel a whole lot different than I did 20 years ago.  I've learned a lot about myself and about life.  I've been through a few experiences now and I've had my share of ups and downs.  But I still feel like I have so much further to go!  It's almost as if I am starting my second phase of life.  The part where you are now actually the person that you really want to be.  The part where you get to really show your true colors.  The part where you better take a hold of your life and do all the things that you always said you would do someday.  So, here's to being 49!
Ready or not here I come!

Guess What?

Guess what?  I'm not 16, or 17, or 18 anymore!  Yah, I know it was a shock to me too!  I sometimes feel like I am still that young girl I was so many years ago.  I know it is somewhat pathetic...okay, okay, very pathetic!  But, seriously, I think it has finally sunk in!  The fact that I need to do things differnetly in my life at THIS age, is finally becoming a reality! And guess what?  It feels pretty good.  I am motivated and determined to do some things differently than I have been in order to live a more full and enjoyable life at the ripe old age of 48...soon to be 49!  Whew!  That was close huh?  50 is right around the corner now.....literally...just one more year.  So, my plan is that when I am 50 I will wake up the morning of and say to myself...."yes!  I did it!  I finally started acting my age"!

Making sense of my happily ever after.....

Do you ever sit and wonder if you had made this choice different or that choice different what your life would have been like today?  I think I have done this quite a lot since my 40's came around.  Probabaly because of different trials I have had in the last several years.  Wondering if I had done this or that differently would I be having these trials? 

Then this past weekend I attended a women's conference and performance where I heard the gospel taught by word and song.  It was a performance by a group called Mercy River. It was during this performance that was so uplifting that I heard something said that hit me so hard.  I guess when you are ready to hear something that you really need to hear is when you really get it as if it was the first time you heard it.  One of the girls said she had heard a speaker once say that it was important to teach young women that when we get married to the right person in the right place by the right authority, it is not gonna be all "Happily Ever After.  We will continue to have trials in our lives". He then said, "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain, it is resource in the event of pain".  Wow!  So, this quote really got me thinking a lot!
In fact I started thinking to myself..."Duh.  What did you think?  That because you started off your married life on the right foot, that you were not gonna have any more trials in your life"?  I then realized how silly I sounded.  In fact I then realized that trials are trials because they are difficult for us.  My particular trials may not seem difficult or hard to another person, that's what makes them "my trials"....because they are difficult for me.  And we all know that none of us will escape this life without them.  That is the reason we are here. 

Now, we may have traded a certain set of trials for another depending on the particular choices we made and continue to make in this life but, they will still seem hard and difficult, because they are meant to be, how else will we learn to depend and lean on our Savior?  Our need for his atonement and our dependance on him is what we are here to learn.  So, now my "Happily Ever After" makes perfect sense!