This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on a link and purchase an item, I will receive a small commission. For more info, please see my disclosure on my Connect page.

If you haven’t been able to tell from my sporadic-ness this past month or so, things have been a little wild. Manly was trucking for all of November, well, minus 6ish days off and on, but just let me be melodramatic and say ALL of November because it makes me feel better.

Deal?

Sweet.

I did a little 30 days of gratitude challenge on Instagram this past month. I’ve never done any of those photo challenges before, but I knew he was going to be gone and that there was a major possibility that life was going to be hard. I needed a daily reminder of my blessings. I know that sounds dumb, to need a reminder of my blessings, but sometimes when times get crazy I tend to miss the forest for the trees. Does that makes sense? From what I observe, it’s seems like a pretty normal human thing. We get all caught up in what is awful that we forget what is wonderful. So, every day of November, I posted a picture of something I was grateful for. It may have possibly annoyed the heck out of my cousin, but man was it cathartic for me! {Don’t worry, he’s a big boy. He lived.} Anyway, it really helped me make it through truck widowhood relatively in one piece… which in itself is pretty dang rad!

As the month was nearing a close, I had to teach a lesson to my Young Women about managing time wisely. {Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball! Me, teaching a lesson on how to manage time. Funny!} How one of my very organized comrades got out of that one is beyond me! Needless to say, I did NOT post a pic of this event on Instagram. Nope. No way. But, I may have tried to avoid said lesson of death by posting pics on Instagram…and possibly playing SongPop… So, Sunday morning  with plenty of time to spare and in a completely orderly fashion, I frantically searched for ideas, talks, thoughts, etc. that would help me with this lesson…Plan ahead? Prepare days in advance? Who does that! What was the lesson on, again? Case in point, people!

After a lot of looking, and a little last minute death-bed repentance and prayer, I remembered this talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks entitled, “Good, Better, Best” and it was exactly what I needed.

I hope it benefitted the girls, too but, let’s get real, this lesson was for me.

In his talk, he says…

“We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives.

As we consider various choices, we should remember that it is not enough that something is good. Other choices are better, and still others are best. Even though a particular choice is more costly, its far greater value may make it the best choice of all.”

I have been thinking a lot since this lesson {and since my experience with gratitude while the dude was gone.} I think I have a strange mental disease. Everythingitis. I want to do EVERYTHING. I want to experience EVERYTHING. I want to learn EVERYTHING. I want to be EVERYTHING. I don’t want to miss out on ANYTHING. There is constantly something new that I want to try, do, become… I guess you could blame it on my inability to focus or sit still. *Squirrel* You could blame it on genetics, because my dad does the same thing. Whatever the reason, I’ve got it and I’ve got it bad.

Basically, I am drowning myself in a sea of “good”.

And, it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

So, I did a big thing. I cancelled my newspaper subscription and gave up trying to coupon. Seriously, I wasn’t really saving all that much anyway due to the fact that I was buying crap we didn’t even need all in the name of cheap. Toaster’s Strudels for 25 cents! Buy all the boxes! How many Toaster’s Strudels does one family even need, anyway? None! They aren’t even good for you! Not only was I buying stuff we didn’t need, but it was taking tons of time and energy. And, it was making me resent it. Even though it kills me to have to actually pay for toothpaste, I feel a whole lot lighter! It’s made me want to look around and see what other “good” things I can do without so that I can have room for the “better” or more importantly, the “best”!

Even though I won’t be a fantastically organized time manager any day in the next 20 years, I learned something about myself. I learned that I need to take my eye off the tree and back up and see the big picture. It’s like a puzzle that wound up on the toy room floor and was hurriedly thrown back in the box before my threat to donate it to “kids without puzzles” actually became a reality. You sit down and try to put together that puzzle and can’t, because there are 17 pieces that belong to 3 other puzzles mixed in. You miss out because there is just too much and you can’t find the important ones.

Would I like to learn digital scrapbooking right now? Yes! My internet friend, Mindy Pitcher, makes me seriously covet her awesome creations! But, at this moment in my craziness, do I need to start digital scrapping? Probably not. Do I need to count my blessings? I guess you could say I’m learning that. Do I need to make sure my kids eat breakfast, wear shoes to school, and know with their whole soul that I love every little bit of them? Definitely.

Do I need to take a moment and just be still?

Don’t push me. Baby steps.

What “good” things have you set aside lately?