A Christmas Gift to Myself

This year I gave myself a Christmas gift--but, not like a normal store bought gift that you can touch and feel.  I have really been struggling this year with depression and discouragement and loss of hope.  As I thought and pondered and prayed about how to handle all these overwhelming feelings I felt inspired to participate in the 40 day Book of Mormon challenge that my church gave to our youth.  The Book of Mormon is one of the scriptures we use in addition to the Bible--it is just another book of scripture that testifies of people who were on the American continent who also got to see Jesus Christ, but, not until he was resurrected.  This challenge was the last thing I expected as an answer to my struggles.  I have NEVER participated in a 40 day scripture challenge in my life.  In fact, I am the Ebeneezer Scrooge when it comes to these challenges because I believed that they were stupid and that scriptures should be cherished and read and studied and pondered carefully and slowly 1 chapter, 1 verse, at a time, NOT read as fast as you possibly can like eating your favorite candy bar.  And, I still believe that, but, my attitude has now dramatically changed regarding these scripture challenges and I do believe in them.

Not very happily I bought myself a new Book of Mormon, a journal, and red scripture marking pencil so that I could mark up things that inspired me and record the feelings and promptings that came as I read.  I attached the scripture reading chart to the front cover and I started it the week before Thanksgiving.  I quickly found that it was NOT easy to read and ponder 6-7 chapters a day.  I had to wake up an hour earlier each day in order to have time to get all the reading done.  I asked my kids for pointers on what would help me be the most successful and they told me to first have a question/purpose/theme in mind as I was reading.  So my theme/question was "How can I find acceptance, peace, joy, hope, faith, and trust in God's new plan for my life and let go of my original plan? And how can I find joy in this stage of my life?  The next thing they told me was to pray before I read each day and then to record my thoughts into a journal.

I was amazed the first 20 days that I found the time to do this reading and still get accomplished the other things I needed to.  I was amazed at the peace I felt even as the holiday season began and the things I was seeing and learning for the first time even though I was reading at a faster pace than I ever have.  I have read the Book of Mormon consistently over and over for the past 35 years of my life so I have read this book probably thousands of times, but, I was finding things that I have never seen before.  That was amazing to me.  Then I hit the half way mark of the challenge--day 21 and things began to get really hard.  It was the beginning of the Christmas holidays and I was hitting some really hard trigger memory days that brought on my depression strong.  I found myself struggling to get out of bed early and struggling to even stay awake while I was reading.  I even found myself getting angry at all the time this was stealing from me and I just wanted this challenge to just end.  But, I persevered and hung on even if some days it was by the skin of my teeth.  It was then that I began to notice that as I had hard days, the scripture reading scheduled for that day had things in it that were encouragements for me.  I started to really notice the word JOY everywhere in my reading.  I probably didn't learn as much the second half of the challenge as I did the first half, but, the small and little things I did learn helped me so much!

Today, Christmas Day, I finished the last chapter of the Book of Mormon challenge and I am so proud of myself for accomplishing this gift for myself.  It truly was just what I needed to help me through the last 40 days.

This is what I wrote in my Scripture Journal today:

I'm done!!!!!!  How do I Feel????????????

I feel amazed that I was able to read the whole Book of Mormon in 40 days!!!
I feel relieved that it is over because it was a lot of work and stress on my time.
I feel a little sad that it is over because it unified us as a family as we could talk about it and share our favorite scriptures for the week.
I feel grateful for all the things I felt and learned as I read.
I feel astonished at all the little things I was able to pull out and learn that I have never noticed before.
I feel grateful to have the Book of Mormon and the truths that it teaches me.
I liked reading some sections all at once because you got to see the whole story before you instead of broken apart and that helped me pull different things out of it.
I feel grateful for different sections we ended up on reading on some of my hard days that helped me through the day.

This is the first time in my life that I was able to read the Book of Mormon in 40 days.  It has been an amazing experience.  I think there is both good and bad in reading it slowly 1 chapter a day and reading it quickly.  I was amazed at all the people I saw that had their life plans changed and how they were able to adapt to and accept God's plan for their life instead.

I learned that you can't do it alone and rely on your own strength, you have to ask God for help and let him help carry the load and have his strength to help you through.  You need to Trust God and have hope and faith that everything will be okay.  By doing what is right and keeping the commandments--Heavenly Father truly will bless and prosper you.  By constantly remembering the things you and others have gone through and the faith and blessings you received will help you through the tough times now and constantly remind you to stay on the right path.  Joy can be found at all times through little things in your life.

This has truly been the best Christmas present I could have given myself this year.