Rise and SHINE!

I am an early morning person. I feel more energy, more alert and attentive so 9 am church is so much better for my attention span than 1 pm church. Today was my first Sunday back in my home ward and we are now meeting at 9. I loved it. Sacrament was great and the talks were awesome. One speaker shared a story about how she was getting really frustrated at the inefficiency of a certain store and the crazy people in line in front of her. As she stewed, she was contemplating how she would handle the manager when she finally got helped. She thought she could be really rude and let him know just what she thought of his service. Then she looked down and saw that she was wearing a BYU sweatshirt. She knew then that she would need to be very kind so that he would associate the church with positivity. I thought about that and even though I may not have a shirt on that lets people know who I represent, my Heavenly Father is always aware of how I handle any situation and I belong to the church that bears his sons name and I have covenanted to always remember that. I am going to make a better effort to treat all around me with the love and kindness that he would have me even if they may seem undeserving at the time (especially those closest to me) I obviously need to work on that because I overheard a conversation between Lexi and the boys. They had been watching an Avatar cartoon series and there are different elements that you could be air, wind, water, and fire. I heard them say mom is definitely fire and dad is water, he just goes with the flow. I could I guess think that they thought of me as providing warmth and a pretty color but to be honest I think they were saying that because I can be fiery sometimes and have a much shorter fuse than their dad. I paused and thought that I don't want my kids to associate me with fire. Fire seems the most associated with bad to me. I am taking Ellie's young womens challenge and looking through it, I realize that it will be a hard thing especially some of the challenges. I want to grow and stretch and I know that by doing hard things that will enable me to become a better example and maybe just maybe my kids will see me as "sunSHINE" one day.