Thursday, September 3, 2009

Nostalgia

I am feeling very nostalgic right now. And it doesn't help that Peter is in bed sleeping and all is quiet. I attribute this nostalgia to several things-school starting and me not starting with it (which I am not feeling sad about, it's just kinda wierd), going through all the junk I have stored at parent's house, and a sharing time lesson I gave last week on journal writing that ultimately prompted me to find all my old journals and get them together in one place. Of course, I also ended up reading a few entries along the way. My favorites are from when I was a wee kid. My dad would sit down with each of us on Sunday afternoon and we would dictate to him while he wrote. The things I thought were important back then are so funny. And my dad would literally write every word we said, so some entries have a lot of "um, let me think"...this is a tradition that I want to do with my kids someday too. And then my high school years....if my posterity learns anything about me from those entries it will be simply that I was boy crazy!
Part of my newly-sparked enthusiam for getting all my journals together and stuff comes from finishing "The Undaunted". It was a great book, and I am always impressed with the faith and willingness to sacrifice that the early pioneers exhibited. I love reading of their experiences. I think that for me, they are some of the greatest motivators because they help me realize that my trials aren't any harder than anybody else's and they remind me that I have something (the gospel of Jesus Christ and my testimony of it) that is precious beyond measure.