Week 2: Create a Life of Meaning

I think Randy Pausch was able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams because he didn’t take no for an answer.  He was resilient, dedicated and tenacious.  His passion and desire was bigger than the obstacles he faced.  I also think he was confident in himself.  He believed in his own abilities and in his dreams.  Since going back to school, I am trying to quiet the negative voices in my own head that say "I can't do this.  I'm not smart enough.  I'm not talented enough.  I can't figure this out.  I'm not good enough."  I truly believe Heavenly Father wants me to be confident, believe in myself and trust in Him and His power to help me.

If you would have asked me two years ago if I thought dreaming was important I probably would have said no.  My husband and I had just moved cross country from Missouri to California for Jared’s residency program.  He was gone a lot and I was feeling drained and overwhelmed raising our two children with special needs.  We were walking a fine line between crisis mode and survival mode most weeks.  When his intern year was finally drawing to a close, we began to talk about our future for the first time in a long.  We started talking about whether or not we wanted to adopt more children, where we wanted to live after residency and we began rediscovering some of our old hobbies like reading for me and playing the guitar for my husband.  We were beginning to look beyond the here and now and think seriously about what we wanted for our family.  Over the last year, we’ve had an ongoing conversation (which has gained quite a bit of momentum over the past few months) about our dreams and the vision we have for our future.  We recently started the adoption process through the county's foster system, I decided to go back to school, we began talking about our vision for a recreation center for children with special needs and we’ve talked quite a bit about our dream home and the life we want to create for our children.  It has been so exciting and motivating and has helped us to have the end in sight and start to work towards our future goals.  

I have two childhood dreams that I can remember.  (I’ll have to ask my Mom if there were others…)  The first was to go to BYU one day, which I did and loved my experience there.  I met my husband on our first Sunday in Sunday school and the rest is history.  The second was to get married and have a family which I have now and am so eternally grateful for.  The road to having a family and our family life has looked quite a bit different than I envisioned as a beehive in Young Women’s.  I’m learning to accept and embrace the unconventional, wild adventure we’re on and create a new vision for our family.    

I really enjoyed and appreciated the message from Brother Thompson who spoke about finding your calling in life.  He said we need to discover and develop our spiritual gifts.  Our spiritual gifts and talents can give us insight and direction as we seek to find and live out our calling.  As Jared and I plan for our future life and business, I want to always keep in mind these two quotes from Brother Thompson’s talk:   

“Don’t let even meaningful work distract you from the weightier matters of eternal life.” Jeffrey Thompson, 2010

“We must see our work as but another extension of the Lord’s commandment to serve His children and bring to pass much righteousness.”  Jeffrey Thompson, 2010

I am really grateful to be learning by study and also by faith the practical and spiritual principles that will help us find joy and success in our life and business.