Back in the Habit

Well, this is certainly embarrassing. How easily time flies without a blog post in sight! The most regrettable part is that I read blogs on a daily basis yet I don't manage to create the time to update my own. So silly. This is probably more of a personal journal now since it's been so long and the few that once read my blog have likely given up on me. If I've still managed to stay on your Google Reader, thank you for your confidence (or at least your laziness)! I hope to not let you down. Since the blogging standard seems to be to have one blog entry per update in life, I suppose I will follow the status quo and break all of my updates into a few categorically separated posts; Hopefully you don't mind. We'll start with my reason for coming back into the blogging world

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to watch the General Relief Society Broadcast for my church. This is an annual opportunity for all of the women in the church to listen to the words of our prophet and of the General Relief Society Presidency.

To be entirely honest, I usually attend such broadcasts with a bit of a grumble in the back of my throat (if I even go at all). You see, I have been known to avoid gatherings involving large masses of women. I just don't tend to mesh well with the high pitched squeals, catty conversation, and elaborate centerpieces that are inevitable at such events. Nevertheless, I went. And you know what? I'm SO glad that I did. Not only was the broadcast itself amazing (which I will address later), but the feared pre-broadcast dinner was wonderful too. I was able to get to know some of the sisters in my ward much better and though there were indeed obnoxiously large centerpieces, the women were much more real and less catty than anticipated. Who knew!

On to the broadcast. When watching church addresses, I feel like I ought to take notes because that's just what you do when you listen to leaders of the church! These notes, in the past, have been helpful for me to focus on the talks, but I might as well throw them away when I get home because 1) I never look back at them again and 2) they only include quotes or ideas that I liked. I never included my own commentary or thoughts provoked from such talks. If I did ever choose to look back at my notes, I was essentially just looking at an abridged version of the talk - I might as well just look up the talk itself! So in a nutshell: my notes were useless and not worth keeping.

This experience, this conference, was different. As the leaders spoke, my pen moved across the page as usual but one vital thing changed: the content. Gone were the quotes and regurgitation of the prophet's words. What replaced them were words that will be held sacred to me for the rest of my life. As I wrote, I noticed that not a word that I was recording was being said by the speakers. Very little of what I wrote even had anything to do with the topics addressed in the broadcast. Yet despite all this, my hand was constantly moving and the thoughts flowed continuously. I can testify to each of you that the words I was hearing and recording were not merely the words spoken by the leaders of the church, but were the whisperings of the Holy Ghost speaking to my heart and to my heart alone. These were the things that I needed to learn and this tender mercy from my Heavenly Father allowed me the opportunity to hear them. I know that personal revelation is real and possible. I know that the words I recorded are as sacred and imperative to my spiritual growth as the scriptures. I know that if we live worthily and if we stand in holy places, we each can have the opportunity to have such personal revelation in our lives every single day.

I invite you to watch the broadcast here: http://new.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2010/10?lang=eng&vid=618047726001

P.S. I never quite got around to saying this earlier, but this experience is connected to my return to blogging for one reason: one of the impressions that came to me clearly during this broadcast was the importance of recording my thoughts and experiences not only for me, but for my posterity. I'm terrible with a hand-written journal so I figured that returning to blogging was the next best thing.