Flexing Your Muscles

You've heard the saying that practice makes perfect, and you know by experience that lacks of practice leads to a deterioration of talents or skills attained. For example, if you work out for one month, 5 days a week, you'll notice that your endurance will increase. You can run further and faster, life more weights, swim harder, bike faster, the hills aren't as challenging, but you know you could push yourself harder and not want to die mid hill. After one month you stop going to the gym you go back to your old habits of grabbing McDonalds or ordering Pizza instead of that salad and you live a relatively sedentary lifestyle. One month passes and you feel the desire to return to return to the gym sparked by the 5 pounds you put back on. You try to pick up where you left off and mid work out, you actually want to kill yourself for taking off that time. You've lost so much of the progress you made. Your form is shaky, your breathing is harder, you sweat more and your muscles hurt more! That basically describes what I'm up against in the dating world. One of my friends made the comment that she didn't know how to flirt anymore, and I'm right there with her! After taking so much time to define ourselves and to figure out our jobs, our roles in our families and in our wards we seldomly flirted just to flirt. Now that we're at a point in our lives when we really need to have exercised and perfected that skill, we're basically back to where we were when we were 16 and just starting to date. Hopefully this skill is more like riding a bike than like trying to lose those freshmen 15 and we can recover with some time to flirt with Mr. Wonderful before it's too late!

Inheriting Traits

 

I don't cry very often, especially in public, but this weekend of July 4^th I found myself near tears a couple of times as I listened to and participated in singing some of our Patriotic songs. I had the sudden realization Sunday morning that this is a trait I've inherited from my father. You see I've only seen my Father shed tears a handful of times in my life, while my mother on the other hand could and would cry at the drop of a hat! I remember sitting in church singing a hymn and noticing my father wiping away tears. I didn't understand than that he was being moved by the Spirit. Now that I'm older and understand the workings of the Spirit I'm always touched when I notice my Father crying, and it's usually always while a song is being sung or performed. I have a deep love for music and there are a few that move me to tears on a regular basis, but it's through the Spirit that I truly hear and feel the words of a song as a prayer of the heart. My Father is an incredible man (as a man with 5 daughters has to be!) and sharing this trait with him is something that I will always treasure!