Heather's: Testimony

Friday, December 16, 2011

Testimony

If you knew all and had experienced all - pain, sorrow, anguish, and on the other hand peace, comfort, joy, and exaltation; you knew the way to be happy...happier...exalted...wouldn't you want that for everyone? Wouldn't you want to teach them what you knew and say to them, "I know the way! You can be happy. You can be free. You can receive the ultimate blessings and gifts. Come, follow me!"

How would you feel if they didn't listen? If they chose not that which you knew would help and bless them?

Wickedness never was happiness. There is a way, there is a plan. Only one. We need to trust our Father's experience and wisdom and follow His counsel. He sent us His son to lead the way. Let's follow Him!!

1 comment:

Pauly said...: Heather I love you! I miss you so much!; January 1, 2012 at 1:47 PM

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My Favorite Quotes...words to live by. Hard to live by. Yet something to strive for.

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.” ― William W. Purkey _________________________ “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” ― Mark Twain _________________________ “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde _________________________ “Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ― Albert Camus

Sweet Baby Christopher

Sweet baby Christopher
Where did you go
Where've you been
The pieces are lost
Will you find them again

Sweet baby Christopher
Go back to childhood
Find the happy moments
Put together the broken pieces
Make life what you would

Choose only happiness
It will find you
Go deep inside
Pull out the best
Share it with the world
We've been waiting true

Sweet baby Christopher
You've seen heaven
And you've seen hell
Whatever you choose
Only time will tell

Hurry before it's too late
The hour glass isn't full
The sands run out
If only slow

Sweet baby Christopher
Heaven waits for you
Where truth, health,
And love abide
It's up to you to turn the tide

Sweet, sweet baby Christopher
Will I ever see you again?
(Heather Olsen)

Things I love About My Family

All the hugs & kisses
they are proof that God lives and works through others
my purpose in life
their presence
the fun we have together and laughter we share
my kids telling me I'm a good Mom, even when it's not true
the smile they put on my face
they love me. ME.
the will they give me to get up every morning to start another day
looking forward to going home to them every day after work.
Brayden's brown eyes
Beau's blue eyes
Chris' dimples...very cute!
Chris' passion for life
Beau's gentle spirit
Brayden's artistic nature

Journal

6/25/2010 Journal Entry
Men and women are made of different cloth. I suppose one cannot expect man to understand a woman’s needs. Can we expect them to care regardless of comprehension? When you’ve tried everything you can see to try and it doesn’t make a dent, maybe it’s time to concede.

I better understand now the phrase, “Sometimes love just aint enough.” On the contrary, my testimony of God’s plan tells me to look at the bigger picture – eternity.

Mental and physical exhaustion seem to be my fate in this life. So I ask God to help me accept it. Admittedly I do long to see what’s to come in the next.
(Heather Olsen)

6/28/2010 Journal Entry
Words to live by…
“Worshipping the false idol of body image, whether your own or that of others”, is considered “defiling of the body” and is “rebellion and a denial of our true identity as sons and daughters of God.”
(Elder David A. Bednar)

I am guilty of worshipping the false idol of body image for most of my life. I have a bad habit of comparing myself to EVERYONE but me – family members, friends, and even celebrities. I see myself falling very short of the beauty bar set by society. I have not been able to accept myself for the way I am. Ungratefully so…

Reading those words from Elder Bednar’s talk, printed in the June 2010 Ensign, helps me to see things differently. I have been given the gift of this body, created in the image of God. How disheartening it must be for my Father to watch and hear me mock his creation.

Some time ago I asked for a priesthood blessing to help me accept and be happy with myself for who I am. The blinders are just beginning to peel back. My father in law, by whom the blessing was administered, asked me how I saw myself. I could only answer negatively and focused solely on the outward. I hadn’t even looked inside. I was so consumed with the outside that it never occurred to me that anything else mattered.

I have been waiting for my wish to be granted. After receiving the blessing my thoughts were that Heavenly Father was going to bless me that my dermatologist would find the right medicine to cure me of my skin disease (acne/rosacea) and make me beautiful. When it didn’t happen I was sorely disappointed.

Now I’ve realized that Heavenly Father has been trying to tell me that I’m looking in the wrong place for the wrong things. I need to work on finding worth in my inner self. Like usual, things don’t often land in your lap.

More from Elder Bednar’s talk:

“Apostles and prophets consistently have taught the mortal and eternal importance of our bodies.

Paul declared”:

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

Putting the focus on the Spirit that dwells within!

“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17).

This made me think about how I’m treating my body in terms what I put into it and exercising. Maybe if I start taking better care of it, slowly the rest will fall into place.

My father-in-law blessed me that over time I would be freed of this burden. Heavenly Father knows I’m a slow learner.
(Heather Olsen)

7/3/2010 Journal Entry
I’m on a journey…to find the innocence I left behind years ago.
I fear that my past will haunt me for the remainder of my days.
(Heather Olsen)

7/8/2010
I’m learning that having peace and harmony is much more important that being right.

How do you convince a fighter, whether it be yourself or another, that it’s okay to throw in the towel?

Maybe…choose your battles carefully.
(Heather Olsen)

7/28/2010
“The ultimate happiness in life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself – or better still, loved in spite of oneself.”
Les Miserables

“The sacred law of Jesus Chris governs our civilization, but it has not yet managed to permeate it. They say slavery has vanished from European civilization. That is wrong. It sill exists, but now it preys only on women, and it goes by the name of prostitution.

It preys on women, meaning on grace, on weakness, on beauty, on the maternal. It is not the least of man’s shameful secrets.”
Les Miserables

8/3/2010 Journal Entry
Trust is everything to me. It defines all of my relationships. Without it, the relationship is void.
(Heather Olsen)

8/19/2010 Journal Entry
Our vision is clouded by the murky waters of sin. Some dive deep down. Once there, some don’t find their way out. Not can’t – don’t. We choose it. Light and happiness is a choice. The waters of righteousness are crystal clear. A good choice, an avoidance of a temptation is a life line that will pull you out of darkness into light.

Darkness is the unknown, the mysterious. We are curious to see what lies beneath.

Don’t even dip your toes. There is nothing GOOD to see.
(Heather Olsen)

8/26/2010 Journal Entry
“Nothing is as harrowing as symmetry. The reason is that symmetry spells boredom and boredom is the very essence of grief. Despair yawns. It is possible to conceive of something more terrible that a hell where one suffers and that is a hell where one is bored.”
Les Miserables

“Children accept joy and happiness instantly and intimately, being themselves, by nature, all happiness and joy.”
Les Miserables

“Good thoughts have their bottomless pits, just as bad ones do.”
Les Miserables

8/31/2010 Journal Entry
“The just man frowns, but never sneers. We can understand anger, but not malevolence.”
Les Miserables

8/31/2010 Journal Entry
The gospel truth is a light that you don’t necessarily see with your eyes but feel with your soul. If you were to be blind-folded to such a degree that you could not see the light of the sun, you would still be able to feel its warmth and know of its existence.
(Heather Olsen)

9/2/2010 Journal Entry
“A creditor is worse than a boss; for a boss owns your person, but a creditor owns your dignity and can slap it around.”
Les Miserables

“The soul assists the body and at certain moments uplifts it. It is the only bird that can lift up its cage.”
Les Miserables

“Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent effect: It turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul toward aspiration. Poverty immediately pares down material life and makes it hideous; hence those inexpressible yearnings for the ideal life. The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and vulgar distractions, the horse races, hunting dogs, smoking, gambling, wining and dining, and the rest; occupations for the nether regions of the soul at the expense of the higher and more delicate regions. The poor young man has to toil for his daily bread; he eats, and when he has eaten, all he can do is dream. He gets in for nothing to the shows God puts on for him; he looks at the sky space, the stars, the flowers, children, humanity among whom he suffers, creation in which he shines. He looks so hart at humanity, he sees its soul; he looks so hard at creation, he sees God. He dreams and feels grand; he dreams on and he feels full of love. He goes from the self-obsession of the suffering man to the compassion of the meditative man. A wonderful feeling grows inside him, self-forgetfulness and pity for all. In thinking of the numberless pleasures nature offers, gives and lavishes on those with open hearts – and refuses to closed hearts – he ends up feeling sorry for the millionaires of money, for he is a millionaire of the mind. All hatred goes out of his heart as all light enters his mind….

He is strong, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, benevolent; and he praises God for having given him these two riches that are lacking in many of the rich: work, which makes him free, and thought, which makes him worthy.”
Les Miserables

(This made me think of God’s plan for us as and how it opposes Satan’s plan. Work makes us free and thought makes us worthy. Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden to till the ground and the ground was cursed for their sake. They also gained knowledge – knowledge of good and evil, for there cannot be one without the other. This gave them agency – the ability to think and act for themselves. Choosing right will make us worthy. Satan did not want us to have a choice, but this is the only way to gain. We have to do it for ourselves.)
(Heather Olsen)

9/10/2010 Journal Entry
“A certain amount of daydreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It sedates the sometimes high fevers of the overwrought brain at work and produces a soft fresh vapor in the mind that smoothes out the over-sharp points of pure thought, fills up the gaps and holes here and there, binds things together and blunts the jagged corners of ideas. But too much daydreaming drags you under and drowns you. Woe to the person who works with their brain who lets themselves sink completely from thinking to daydreaming! That person thinks they’ll climb out again easily, and tells themselves that it’s the same thing, after all. Wrong!

Thinking is the labor of the intellect, daydreaming is its sensual pleasure. To replace thinking with daydreaming is to confound poison with food…

And as work decreases, need increases. This is a law. Man, in this dreamy state, is naturally extravagant and limp; the slack mind cannot tightly embrace life. There is, in this way of living, some good mingled with the bad, for if enfeeblement is harmful, generosity is healthful and good. But the poor man, generous and noble, who does not work, is lost…

A fatal slope, down which the strongest and most honest are dragged just like the weakest and most vicious. It ends in one of two holes, suicide or crime.”
Les Miserables

9/10/2010 Journal Entry
“The soul that loves and that suffers has attained the sublime.”
Les Miserables

9/14/2010 Journal Entry
“That which leads and pulls the world along is not locomotives, it is ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas, by all means; but don’t mistake the cart for the horse.”
Les Miserables

9/15/2010 Journal Entry
“Civil war? What does that mean? Is there such a thing as foreign war? Isn’t every war between men a war between brothers? War can only be described by its aim. There is neither foreign war nor civil war; there is only unjust war and just war.”
Les Miserables

10/5/2010 Journal Entry
“Choice is the most precious gift that a loving Father in Heaven could provide to His offspring. It is upon choice that the atonement of Jesus Christ is predicated and it is through the exercise of choice that all of the blessings and rewards available to God’s children can be obtained… It is choice above all else that determines the outcome of a person’s life.”
James Ballou

Journal Entry 10/8/2010 – The Character Ethic of Success
“Social comparison motives are out of harmony with our deeper values and can lead to conditional love and eventually to our children’s lessened sense of self-worth. We need to focus our efforts on our deepest motives and our perception of them. Instead of trying to change them, we need to try to stand apart – to separate us from them – and to sense their identity, individuality, separateness, and worth….

Then we can begin to see our children in terms of their own uniqueness. We can see within them layers of potential that will be realized at their own pace and speed. We need to relax and get out of their way and let their own personalities emerge. We need to see our natural role as being to affirm, enjoy, and value them. We need to work on our motives and cultivate internal sources of security so that our worn feelings of worth are not dependent on our children’s “acceptable” behavior….

Don’t compare to judge your children against what society deems “acceptable”. Stop trying to clone them in our own image or measure him against social expectations. Stop manipulating them into an acceptable social mold. See them as fundamentally adequate and able to cope with life….

This way our children can gain confidence and affirmation of themselves.”

“What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them.”

This next quote is one that Chris has been trying to instill in Beau lately. :0)

“To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects or develop an educated mind…

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm – to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.”
Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
(I have changed the wording to make it applicable to my life)

Journal Entry 10/11/2010 – Paradigms; Seeing and Being
“Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. The power of a paradigm shift is the essential power of quantum change, whether that shift is an instantaneous or a slow and deliberate process…

Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are. We can’t go very far to change our seeing without simultaneously changing our being and vice versa…

Principles are like lighthouses. They are natural laws that cannot be broken. As Cecil B. deMille observed of the principles contained in his monumental movie, The Ten Commandments, ‘It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.’ “

Inside-out
“If you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, living parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character…

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.”
Habits

“Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness…or ineffectiveness…
Creating a habit requires work in these three areas:
Knowledge – knowing what to do and why.
Skill – knowing how to do.
Desire – wanting to do.

In order to making something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.

You are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of effectiveness, happiness, and trust-based relationships.”
Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Journal Entry 10/12/2010
“That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods.”
Thomas Paine

Journal Entry 10/13/2010 – The Social Mirror
“If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror – from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms if the people around us – our view of ourselves is like the reflection in the crazy mirror room at the carnival.

“You’re never on time.”

“Why can’t you ever keep things in order?”

“You must be an artist!”

“You eat like a horse!”

“I can’t believe you won!”

“This is so simple. Why can’t you understand?”

These visions are disjointed and out of proportion. They are often more projections than reflections, projecting the concerns and character weakness of people giving the input rather than accurately reflecting what we are.”

10/22/2010 – Journal Entry
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis

10/26/2010 – Journal Entry
“People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.”

Then…”We can flow with changes. We don’t need prejudgments or prejudices. We don’t need to figure out everything else in life, to stereotype and categorize everything and everybody in order to accommodate reality.”
THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

11/1/2010 – Journal Entry
“We are free to choose our actions, based on our knowledge of correct principles, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Remember, “If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.”

“Principles always have natural consequences attached to them. There are positive consequences when we live in harmony with the principles. There are negative consequences when we ignore them. But because these principles apply to everyone, whether or not they are aware, this limitation is universal. And the more we know of correct principles, the greater is our personal freedom to act wisely…

By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.”
THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life…Therein he cannot be replaced, no can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”
Frankl

Journal Entry – 11/4/2010
“Don’t be self-conscious; be self-aware.”
(Heather Olsen)

Journal Entry - 11/4/2010
“Frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities.”
THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

Journal Entry – 11/4/2010
"Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves."
Henre Frederic Amiel

Journal Entry – 11/9/2010
“It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”
Leo Roskin

Journal Entry – 11/9/2010
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently or the salvation of the masses.”
Dag Hammarskjold

Journal Entry – 11/10/2010
“Emotional maturity is the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.”
Hrand Saxenian

Journal Entry – 11/19/2010
“Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things…I am tempted to think…there are no little things.”
Bruce Barton

Journal Entry 11/23/2010
“Like the body, television is a good servant but a poor master.”
7 Habits

“The person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t read.”
7 Habits

“The harder I work the more I live. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become what he can and should be.”
Goethe

“Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce – to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That’s true financial independence. It’s not having wealth; it’s having the power to produce wealth. “
7 Habits

“The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it: but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.”
Madame de Staël

Journal Entry 11/30/2010
“He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore make any progress.”
Anwar Sadat

Journal Entry 11/30/2010
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Teilhard de Chardin

Heather's

Friday, December 16, 2011

Testimony

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About Me

My Favorite Quotes...words to live by. Hard to live by. Yet something to strive for.

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Sweet Baby Christopher

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