Spiritual Thoughts Journal..

Every year my sister, my mommy and I get to go to Campus Education Week at BYU.  I swear that this is my spiritual highlight of the whole year and it is just wonderful. I love the environment of learning that is there and the time that I get to spend with my best friends, and it is just lovely. I have always "taken notes" and written things down there, but this year I was impressed to do something different. I feel like sometimes my notes are just trying to write down every little thing that I can, and they often lack the beautiful spirit that I feel while I am there, and sometimes trying to write so fast can drown out the spirit and cause me to miss something that would have otherwise been meaningfull.

So I found this beautiful book, and immediately it was mine! I decided to use it to write down only the significant spiritual lessons, thoughts, quotes and experiences that I come across, so that I can have them for future reference, and actually have access to the spirit that I felt while in that moment, without any of the unnecessary fluff.

Well months went by, and I was faithful with recording things in my spiritual thoughts journal (STJ) and then I came to a speedbump.

At this time in my life I was feeling a lot of hatred, and it was all consuming. Hatred is not an emotion that I am very familiar with, and it was really hard to overcome. I prayed and prayed that Heavenly Father would help me with this, and I felt like it wasn't getting any easier. I came to feel helpless, useless, insignificant, and began questioning many things I thought I had known for sure and it was not pleasant. 

At this point I think that Nick was getting sick and tired of hearing me complain, and he finally suggested that I read through my STJ and see how I felt.

So I did, and I could not believe the spirit that I felt. There were things that I could not have known that I would  later need to be reminded of at the time they were written that just totally put me in my place. The sequence of entries written was nothing less than a miracle for me and it changed my life. I really felt the spirit so strongly and knew that my Heavenly Father has been there the whole time, I was just so distracted that I wasn't noticing.

I learned something huge from that, and I hope that it will mean something to anyone reading this. It is possible to forget why we have the testimony that we have, and nobody should ever take theirs for granted or forget to nourish it.  I know the importance of writing down spiritual things, solely so that we may look back on them in times of weakness and be strengthened from our own experiences. I love being able to look back on those things and have my worries dispelled and fear replaced with faith.

I really do have a testimony of my Gospel, and it is truly what brings all the happiness and joys into my life. I am grateful for my Heavenly Father and the careful love that I feel from him. It really is through my Savior that I am the most "me" that I can be, and I am growing every day because of Him.