Of the Season

So many times throughout my life, & so many times lately I have found myself pondering on how blessed I truly am. I am pretty convinced that Bryce & I are the two most blessed people on the face of the earth. What is even more overwhelming to me than that is the fact that I don't deserve those blessings at all, at least no more than anyone else does. With this admission, comes a burden that I feel every day. A responsibility to help others, to be my best self, to better the world. All three of those things are pretty open-ended. It used to make me stressed that they were, because I knew that I would never feel I had done enough, but now I see that that is the whole point. I never will have done enough. I'm not meant to. I'm meant to keep trying, to forge ahead, to push harder & be better. I'm so grateful for a husband who supports me in anything I want to do, & who feels the same responsibility that I do to give to others. It is so humbling to think that so many of the good people I know are unable to have Christmas this year. & it is also humbling to think of all the people who help others, when they can hardly afford it themselves. Out of the 150 items on the Angel tree our ward is doing, not a single item is a toy or a game. Only clothes & shoes. It is so humbling to think back on my own spoiled Christmases, where one year of our gifts might have given all those families who are in need their biggest Christmasses. The greatest Christmas gift I ever recieved from my parents though, was their ability to keep the focus of Christmas on the Savior. I can remember being excited about presents & having a mountain of them, but I can honestly say that as I look back now my favorite memories & the ones I treasure are of family time & traditions, of the giving & not the recieving, of serving others & feeling gratitude, of my testimony growing as I saw what mattered most to my parents, & realizing what matters most to me. I'm so grateful for this time of year when we have so many opportunities to turn our thoughts outward instead of inward, to be joyful & a grateful for whatever it is that we do have, foremost among those blessings for me, is a knowlege of my Savior, Jesus Christ, & of the sacrifice that he made for us all. I need his gift more than any other, I would be lost without him, & I am so grateful for a month to celebrate what he did for me & re-commit myself to being a better person today than I was yesterday.