Here There Is So Much More Heaven To See

Dear Kids,

My heart and mind has been contemplating a lot about the "Habit of Optimism". All my life I have been an optimist. It is just natural in my blood. But after having kids, and having a lot of hard realities of life hit me everyday, I have to say that the optimistic side of me has been very subdued.

It is hard to be optimistic when someone is constantly crying, needing something, demanding my time and energy. Besides feeling other pressures of business, clients, church, and just life. I must admit that I have gotten out of the habit of being optimistic. I go to bed tired. I wake up very realistic about the demands my day is going to present to me, and I must say I haven't been doing it with optimism all the time.

Thinking about this I had an experience flash into my mind from years ago while I was in Russia serving a mission. I had the priviledge of helping to teach my mission president's wife the Russian language. We would go to her home and I would spend a few hours with her each week. Needless to say, we became very good friends. She reminded me a lot of my own grandmother and it was very reassuring.

I remember one time I went to her house after a day that was very hard. People had cursed me, wished me to leave everywhere I went. Drunk men had tried to touch me and push me around. It was in the wintertime, everything was dark all the time. There is no optimism in Russia! I reached her home and she was ready for her lessons. I was not my usual self, very distracted by thoughts of home and "What did I do this for?" thoughts in my mind. (I get several of those thoughts about parenting by the way! Sometimes I wonder what in the world I got myself into!).

She caught me looking out the window. I was thinking about the beautiful scenery and mountains that I missed so much. She stopped and waited for me. She was from Switzerland originally, and lived right by the Alps. St. Petersburg is very, very flat and dirty. I asked, with homesickness in my voice, "Don't you just ever miss the mountains?"

She stood up, went to the window and thought for a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I miss the mountains at times. But.... look outside with different eyes. Here there is so much more heaven to see."

That statement jolted me to my core. She had decided to look with different eyes. She had decided to also leave everything she loved and come here, and she was welcoming it with a heart of love and optimism. She was choosing to see what was beautiful and lovely, she was choosing to see her lessons, greet them with warmth, and open arms. She was making that choice.

It was a powerful lesson then, and it is a powerful lesson now. It is my choice to create the Habit of Optimism. It is a habit to either be negative or be positive through the small choices of thought we make every single day. Just like a garden, we choose to cultivate our thoughts of optimism, or allow the negative thought weeds to take over. It takes energy and commitment to develop this habit, but necessary and so worth it to really make a difference in our family and in our world!

I love you,

Your Mom