I'm thankful for January. No really, I am.

As we all know, Christmas is over and we're back to real life. Not just normal real life-- bitter cold, no more yuletide merriment, we're back in school, work, whatever it is that we normally do, real life. It's weird how I hesitate to enter the craziness that is Christmastime, but when it's over I return to the life I chose before with no less than weeping and wailing. It happens every year.

"I'll keep my normal schedule" I said. "I'll continue to go to bed early and awake early. It's healthier that way, " I said. But then a party lasted to midnight, and then all the parties lasted until midnight, and I opened my eyes at 5:45 am, but it was dark and quiet and I couldn't really think of why I would get up at that time so I didn't.  And it didn't happen again. In fact, my son called me last Saturday morning, confident that I would be awake at a leisurely 9:00.  When my husband handed me the phone, I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine who would need to talk to me in the middle of the night. Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Monday morning came in the form of barely conscious aliveness Walking through darkness and chill, I willed myself to smile with the hope of neutralizing any misery that could be accompanying my seminary students who also painfully pulled their selves from the warm, best part of Christmas vacation-sleeping in. We were tired and a little slow, but it was good to see these wonderful 9th graders again as we started semester 2 of our study of The Doctrine and Covenants.

I was pushing through my attitude problem day by day when the curriculum brought us to this fantastic Scripture Mastery scripture: D & C 78:19 "And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness, shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more." I don't claim to be a math whiz, but this sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  I like one hundred-fold return. One hundred is a big number. Since the Lord's promises are sure, our job is to be thankful in all things and the returns will take care of themselves. I haven't been very good at that previously, but this is a new year and I have hope that I can learn.

I asked the students to think of something they had complained about the day before and see why they could be thankful for it. I clarified that we are expected to get out of bad situations when we can, but consider what good can come from trials and opposition.  I started by using the low temperatures as an example.  I said, "There are no snakes when it's cold outside." An astute boy responded, "I would rather have snakes than cold." Fair enough. Keep trying. Then someone shared, "I'm thankful that even though the smoke alarm that wouldn't stop beeping was annoying, at least there wasn't really a fire." Closer. "My sister says rude things to me, but that gives me a chance to practice getting along with her." Sweet child. They really were quite good at being thankful in all things.

I then decided that I needed to practice the skill for myself. I find it easiest to replace the complaint with an unrelated gratitude and then return to being thankful for my trials. 1.My husband left the toilet seat up 3 times in one day. 2. I'm thankful that I have a husband that loves me and our children. 3. I'm thankful for the opportunity to notice that I need to scrub the toilet. So that's the skill I'm working to develop right now and I'm happier and hardly mad at all that it's January. I'll admit that I'm still living on peppermint M&Ms and Lindor truffles, but I'm confident that by the time my supplies run out and I'm deep into January eating (no sugar), I'll be so grateful that I won't even notice that I'm scraping my windows in the dark and the skin on my fingers is splitting and my face burns. At least my hair stays straight after I blow dry it.