Succumb to The Pride Cycle

Throughout all of history man has fallen to a pattern known to some as "The Pride Cycle". We go from blessings and abundance to pride and sin to being warned by religious leaders or even in some cases motivational and political leaders or as in cartoons a big

TURN BACK NOW

Sign warning us to repent of those sins and pride to continue to obtain the previous blessings and abundance and most often than not the WARNINGS we receive are then solidified by destruction, suffering, and the natural consequences of our actions until we again become humble and repent again.

I thought the pride cycle often as being painted in hues of black, or brown, or even off shades that disgust and repulse so that you'll never want to go through the pride cycle and stay perfect your whole life.

There has been so much in the past 8 months since I had the Little Lady about myself and more importantly aspects of the Gospel in different ways I've never even thought of before. The pride cycle has been the most recent "Ah-ha" moment for me but it all started from building myself up from the ground.

My confidence, self esteem, faith, testimony, hope, and all else that I felt to make up my whole being had been cracked by the dark cloud of anxiety and tight hold of the adversary. I didn't know it at the time but this was to be my biggest battle yet and during those first moments I felt as though I was sure to crumble under pressure, admit defeat, and crawl under a rock and slowly wither away. Every part of my vision was clouded and I was so full of fear that I could no longer feel anything else but anger.

Part one was healing my identity in super small acts such as writing down goals and listing MY priorities; listen to Pod Casts from women like Jody Moore, Heather MacFadyen, and Jami Balmet; keeping scriptures open and available around the home, walk bare foot outside, ignore "advice pages" and look for uplifting quotes, de-clutter (especially electronically like social media addictions and distractions), etc.

"A Spiritual awakening is when shed off all your old layers to become a real and stronger you; sometimes through feeling like depression, rage, and anxiety. It is your inner voice telling you that you're ready to grow." 

Part Two included a lot of the same things as part one but I slowly added to them like starting a bullet journal to categorize my priorities and put them into themed months so I could focus more on the now instead of "not having enough time to finish it all"; continuing to listen to pod casts based on what I needed that day weather it be teaching or self assurance; continuing to read scriptures as often as possible and to also say a prayer or two; going outside more often and going to church even when I didn't feel like it; approach advice pages or advice from friends and family with caution but rely mostly on "motherly intuition" and let a little hope back in; journal all thoughts to give relief to my over working brain; continue to de-clutter and slowly create a cleaning habit; look for a positive in each day, etc. 

"I will breathe. I will think of solutions. I will not let my worry control me. I will not let my stress level break me. I will simply breathe. And it will be okay, because I don't quit." -Shayne McClendon 

And now I'm currently in part three where I'm still bullet journalist but I'm not relying on it as heavily, I've replaced some pod casts with the recent General Conference talks, I get up at 6-6:30am everyday to read scriptures which transitioned into downloading the personal progress app and having it remind me everyday to read or pray or study, I'm heading in a direction of being more involved with outside and my family, Dax and I have reevaluated our finances and have put budgeting into action, I've written a bucket list, I've started up our blog again and have written in Little Man's journal a few times, we've had friends over (although that's not new to this stage), I'm creating habits and letting faith grow again and hope bloom. 

I'm still in no way perfect and still struggle with anxiety and a testimony but as I'm in this stage and studying more I've had the thought that I'm going through the pride cycle and that, that's okay. I even wondered that maybe-like with all things that are also "not a coincidence" - the pride cycle was intended for man to continually shed off those old layers and to become closer and closer to God in "slow reform into perfectness" as long as we don't get stuck in the middle of the pride cycle. My thought continued that if I let the pride cycle work it's course I will be as it mentions in Hebrews 11:13, 25, Hebrews 5:8, and Joseph Smith History: someone who went through my own "hard times" to become obedient and stronger so that I can say that I was destined to be a destroyer to the adversary.  

-Megan 

The Sunday Jar

So I'm a not-so-very-good-blogger.
I stink at it actually.
However, in the event of deleting Facebook and still wanting to do family updates I'll try my best to be better at it...
even if nobody reads it, because later on I might need to be the one to re-read it.

Also there's the Sunday Jar.

On my night stand sits a little glass jar that used to house some strawberry jam from Smuckers. It has a red and white pinic-blanket looking checkered top and a silvery blue paper wrapped around its middle with the words "90 ways to keep the Sabbath day holy." The Sunday jar is stuffed full of strips of papers with different activities to keep Sundays uplifting, rejuvenating, and family oriented.

The Sunday Jar is nothing new. Many people have different versions of the Sunday Jar to keep their Sundays "fresh". On Pintrest I found the Sunday 'can' jar by Mormon Mom planner . She talks about how on Sunday it's easy to just plop down and sleep all day but how the Lord asks us to keep it Holy by setting it aside as a separate day from the rest of the week to worship, bond as a family,  pray, and serve others. She says, "there is a lot of Thou Shalt Not's on the Sabbath Day, so I like the approach of the Sunday 'cans' to show just how much we Can do on Sunday's." 

So, with that being said, the strip Lil Man happened to pick out of out Sunday Jar this Sunday was to "Write a family newsletter to send out to family members". In the past we've picked out:
1.Plan out ways you can be more productive with your family history work
2. Go visit family members you haven't seen for awhile.
3. Go through old church magazines you don't look through anymore and pick out pictures you like, read the stories that go with them, and then frame those pictures to have in your home. (This one made a good FHE!)
and
4. Come up with a unique way to get together with those you visit or home teach. (My idea for this one was my Mommies Hobbies group I've been trying to get back together in some fashion. More on that later.)

As you can see we've been kept busy by simple tasks that we have a whole week to complete before the next Sunday but it goes right along with planning the week and preparing for new ways to come closer as a family.

This past week we've been moving along the normal everyday projects such as laundry, dishes, cleaning the house, playing with toys, watching Netflix, cooking, eating, etc. But also this week:

Mommy and daddy had a date night talking about and figuring out our finances using this video by Jordan Page from funcheaporfree.com and her husband while big brother went over to Grandma L's house to spend the night and baby sister was asleep. It took us 4 hours but we worked it all out and even though it was all business talk I know I still enjoyed my time with the hubby. :)

Lil Man has been keeping things busy and fun as an almost 3 year old full of imagination. One of my favorite stories this week was from Tuesday the 17th of October 2017. You were playing with your legos and daddy had to come in and out before work since he kept forgetting things he needed. When he left for real Lil Man said "Thank you for coming daddy," and he said "oh your welcome, any time." When he shut the door Lil Man ran over to me and said "daddy's running away mommy! Daddy's running away" and I told him that "daddy's not running away, he's going to work."

Lil Lady has been super mobile as of late since she's gone from Army crawl to full on crawling now. She's starting to follow daddy and mommy around and she LOVES to play with brother, when he's nice. Brother also loves to have her around and asks to play with her often. He's also getting better at sharing with the little lady and calling her "my baby sister". Lil Lady LOVES apples and is more than
happy to stick anything in her mouth given to her or not given to her so we've been trying to keep things a little more clean around here but she still comes up from the ground black most days from all the dirt.

Overall, we've been having some rough and not super eventful weeks lately but as we get closer to Halloween we have some fun events lined up and we can continue to grow closer as a family!

Until next week!
-The Gillilands
:Written by Megan