How to Best Spend Our Time

Life is full of decisions to be made. Where to work? Where to live? Rent or own? Which school to attend? What to eat? Drink or not? Smoke? What to have for dinner? Some decisions are important. Some are not, but they still take up our time.

The trick is to spend an appropriate amount of time pondering the more weighty issues. The clock will tick on, whether you are using time wisely or not.

These days we think about work. Look for different opportunities? Stay with what we have until one or more child(ren) graduate(s)?

It's quite cold here in January. And this year, there is lots of snow. It is beautiful and all, but it's a lot of shoveling and worrying about how it can harm the house, the cars, make ice dams on the roof which leads to leaks. This has been difficult for me! I also just don't like being cold. I don't aspire to be a true New Englander. I'm just visiting. So, do we visit for a few more years? Or try to make a move soon?

I'm trying to be in the right frame of mind, more often. Read scriptures, advice from church leaders, listen for promptings or answers in quiet moments. There are not many of those, of course! But I try to make opportunities for quiet moments.

Pray for Those Who Persecute You

Hello!

I'm trying to figure out what exactly I want this blog to be...since I have not shared the website with anyone, it is really for myself. I can add photos if I want, but mostly it is my own thoughts and insights.

I've been reading about Ruby Bridges; she's the little girl in 1960 who was the first African American to attend an all-white school in Louisiana. The Supreme Court ruled that blacks should get the same educational opportunities as white people, so integration would start in September of 1960. White people protested, most of them taking their own kids out of school when little Ruby walked in. They had 4 members of the National Guard there to protect her, picking her up from her home, driving her to the school and walking her to the school doors. Angry whites lined the sidewalks, shouting obscenities and spitting on her. Absolutely amazing.

Disney made a movie of the story. I read "Through My Eyes," the story written by Ruby herself, as she saw it when she was 6.

One part of her story made me think. She said her mom taught her to pray, and she always thought that prayer would get her through anything. "Jesus said to pray for those who persecute you," she remembers her mother telling her.

People kind of lose their brains when they are in a crowd. Like all of a sudden they are not themselves, and they can say and do things they won't be held accountable for.

There was a group of mothers the press called the "cheerleaders," who would shout obscenities and threaten this little 6-year-old girl, each morning she walked by them, into their school. I couldn't even believe it. And this girl's mother told her to pray for them.