HOPE!!!!!

Psalms 71:14 - But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.

I was going to post this last week, but I always think on things before putting them in writing, so here is a thought from last week.

Amazing it is still in my head!

I (and a few others) watched a very depressing movie-about a guy, who's wife divorced him. He tried to commit suicide, thinking this was the only alternative to his life's course, but didn't succeed.

A little alcohol became a solace. Then his daughter wandered off and was found in a lake, under the ice, frozen, or drowned to death. This sent him to the edge. He kept praying for strength, but in the end, he took his x-wife to the lake and shot her in the back of the head. Went to his truck and shot himself.

Depressing huh! Sorry to share it with you, But I wanted to share HOPE!

Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they man be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me:

How many times have I been to what I thought was a dead end, that there wasn't any hope, that it didn't matter what I did or said, all was lost. Thank goodness, I can say it has only been a few times. But I remeber the despair and the anguish.

But what I also remember is the angels, the friends who called to say Hi. The family get togethers, the family adventures and I remember to find one positive thing in each day, to be grateful for one thing each day and this leads to a heart full of gratitude, a day full of positive activity.

I went to a fireside the day after this movie about addictions and hope. How when fighting addictions, it feels like you cannot beat the addiction. The speaker was a brain scientist and he did a demonstration of how addictions and pornography take over the brain. But to beat this takeover, you build a new brain, which becomes stronger and bigger than the old one. Thus giving you your free agency back. Allowing the atonement to give you a feeling that you have been forgiven.

It was the ying to the yang, the positive to the negative, a shot in the arm, hope for a confused mixed up world.

So I am grateful for family. The ones that are there everyday and ones that you see once in a while. Family is the rock in the sand. The string to your kite. The ones you hold on to through the thick and the thin. The ones you lift up when no one else will, or be lifted. Thankyou family for being all these things and then some. For your functional and dysfunctional ways. For loving me on my bad days, good days, rightie days, leftie days, dorkie days and wonderful Mom days.

I am grateful for friends. For all the same reasons.

I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father....who loves me for all my ways......

Psalms 31:24 Be of good courage, and he shall stregthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.