Give me this mountain

I'm already behind in my blogging.  All I can do is try again... and again.

I had an experience while skiing at Solitude a few weeks ago. It was one of those "ah-ha" moments  -  a "tender mercy" if you will.   I was feeling pretty confident in my skiing abilities and aparently Mike was too, so he decided I was ready to tackle a harder run...  Well, to make a long (and difficult) story short, I was soon in a situation where I thought I was going to die - or at the very least break both of my legs!  Mike was skiing backwards holding onto my tips in an effort to slowly ease me down the sheer precipice of ice as I became more and more irrational and paralized by fear. I was engulfed by thoughts of, "I can't do this! I'm letting Mike down... I"m pathetic... this is too hard...etc." When we finally made it to the next slope, it seemed alot more managable than the one we had just come down but I once again came to a stop and let fear and discouragement take over.  I looked down at the steep, long face of that mountain and thought, "There is no way that I can ski this!"  Instantly another thought came into my mind that I should not look at the entire overwhelming task that lay ahead of me, but instead focus my thoughts and energy on the small patch of snow directly in front of me.  I knew I could ski.  I knew what to do - so that's what I did.  Focusing only on the snow immediately in front of me, not the whole mountain, I planted my pole and began.  Seemingly, without effort, I was skiing down the mountain and enjoying it!  Behind me I could hear the happy cheers of a darling husband who could not believe his eyes. The words of Joshua - after the Lord called him to succeed Moses - came to mind: 

 "Give me this mountain."

I'll just take it a piece at a time.

(and apply that principle to the rest of my life!)

I dreamed my whole house was clean...

Yeah, right.

A New Year & A Fresh Start...

So here's the deal:  I really want to blog, to sort-of "document" life. The problem is that I'm seriously not very good at staying with something (with the exception of Mr. Incredible) for very long.  For example, I do Facebook in intermittent waves that ebb and flow - sometimes getting on for hours, other times just taking a quick peek from my phone, and sometimes... I don't go there for months. I'm terrible at email, as well, for the same reason.  As of this posting (and I am not making this up)  I have 636 emails in my "in" box with 348 unread messages!  I dread even checking it.  How about exercise?  Umm, never mind - let's not go there.   I consider it nothing short of a miracle that I write to my son every week while he is on his mission and even then I am usually writing at the last minute, late at night.  I'm sure there is a real, diagnosable reason for my behavior - some terrible diagnoses that would validate me, but I figure why label an excuse? I am determined to keep trying.  It's a New Year and I can declare a fresh start and set some new "lofty" goals like:  I will blog at least once a week.  There.  I said it.  I wrote it down and I made it public.  It's realistic, obtainable and it will establish a good habit.  According to Mr. Incredible, those are some of the qualities necessary to make a good goal.  I tried to make a little goal card this year, but I couldn't fit my goals on a business size card.  Mr. Incredible says I have to scale back - way back.  He says that I should pick only five or six short term and the same amount of long term goals for this year and really focus on them.  What? Only five? This is so hard for a person like me who has so many areas that need improvement, and so many "righteous desires of my heart." I guess I've got to start somewhere though, so I'm going to take his advice and really focus on fewer goals - and then when I reach them,  I will write down five more goals and continue the cycle until I'm happy with where they have propelled me.  It's funny, because as I've been writing this, my thoughts have reflected upon the movie Forrest Gump when Forrest said,
"That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, and keep right on going."

See?  It all started, even for Forrest, with the decision to do something.  He started small and when he was successful, he pushed himself to set another attainable goal and just kept going.  


I can do this...  since I've gone this far, I might as well just keep right on going!
Run Forrest, Run!