When you fall off the horse you gotta get back on.
Amen!

My friend and I started reading the scriptures and making sure to say our prayers at least twice a day. We both are goin through a few things together, and it has been a very uplifting experience so far. I am slightly ashamed, but willing to admit that prayer hasn't always been a focal point of my life. It has been something that I've always glossed over I suppose. I am so damn stubborn and prideful that I always have done things on my own. I expect to do things on my own. I don't expect to be helped, nor do I ask for it. To ask for something is to expect for something. It is a faulty concept I understand, but it is the way I feel. I don't want to be the type of person that expects results. That can lead to frustrations, anxiety, and other feelings of being let down.

All that being said, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. I think my 25th year of life has been my biggest year yet. I think 23 was a big year. I think 19 was a big year. But this one is one that I know I will always look back on with great appreciation. It is a year that I decided I had had enough of myself. I had had enough with my weaknesses. For too long I did not try to overcome them. I wasn't ruled by them, but I did not give my weaknesses any sort of discipline nor did I try to overcome them.

Call it what you will, but if you grew up doing one thing, and you realize that it's getting you nowhere fast, I'll just call it my decision to be better. Everything began to be once again competitive in my life. I mean that in the best way possible. I wanted to better myself. If I was a runner, this would have been reaching a Plateau and then finding a way to scrape off seconds my personal best. So now getting my 4.0 GPA is a competition. I want to be (humbly) better than all of my students. I want to be a better worker than all of my coworkers (I'm not always, I really have some very good coworkers). I want to be the best, because I know I can. It's not pride, it's living up to my potential.

It would be prideful of me if I did not account my successes to my family, to my friends, and as of lately, to my God. As Ammon said, "I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God. Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things..." I have been weak before. I'm sure I will be weak once more. I will need to be humbled, but I know that my strength and my strongest times are when my eye is single to the glory of God. When I am doing what's right for my own self, and then when I am sharing my love with them through works of Charity. That's when I am my best.