I'm glad to live in this wonderful world...

There have been a couple of times the primary song "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" has been recalled to my memory. Many of us have sang it and primary and probably remember some of the words. "Whenever I hear the song of a bird, or look at the blue blue sky. Whenever I feel the rain on my face, and the wind as it rushes by..." I never thought much of the song when I was in primary, but sometimes during time of peace when I have seen the beauty of the earth, I have particularly remembered the ending stanza of the song "I'm glad that I live in this wonderful world, Heavenly Father created it for me."

I remember first thinking about this song during a week up at BYU's music Summerfest. I actually had really hated the first couple of days. But as I made friends, things became bearable. Even with my poor attitude, however, I think Heavenly Father had a lesson to teach me up there. I had grown so concerned with being better than people, and whether or not I was first chair, that I was missing out on everything else the Lord had given me. I do this a lot! Thankfully the Lord still teaches me this lesson to this day. On the last day of the trip, Roger, one of the head counselors took a couple of us on a trip up the mountain to hike up to the big Y. I thought that would be kinda cool, just to show off that I'd been up there. I was still a little bitter at the thought of hiking since I was so tired from the week. The hike was a little bit of workout, it had a lot of switchbacks and it was not very short. But boy, was it worth it! It wasn't even the big Y that was so cool. It was look down at Utah from the Y during the night and seeing the lights of the city illuminate the beautiful earth! (Not to mention you couldn't even see the air pollution since the city lights were not that bright.) I can remember that song coming back to me when I was up there and the spirit confirmed it was a lesson from God.

However, I'm not perfect. I eventually got caught up with school, and teacher's expectations, music, and all that good stuff. As everyone knows, that gets pretty frustrating sometimes. In fact, these last two weeks were near boiling point! I was in a bad mood because of things that were going on, and my best friend, Dallin, I knew had been having it rough too. So I invited him along with my family to go to my grandfather's ranch up in Utah for president's day weekend! It was a good place to let most of the stress of school just roll off. We went snowmobiling, single sledding, bobsledding, and built some snow caves. The snow was awesome! By the second day of our vacation, most of the snow was complete powder and was really soft! The inside of the ranch was cozy as well, especially the fire Dallin and I helped build after a couple of failed attempts. After we built the fire, I remember Dallin and I just sitting there getting warm after having been out in the snow. I recall Dallin saying after a while "Fire is such a phenomenon." As I thought about that, the song "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" came back into my head. I thought of the beautiful snow, the peaceful fire, the love of friends and family. Its a wonder, with all these blessings how we could ever get stressed out.

Maybe, we can all do well, when we feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or burdened, to just take a step back, look around and the world and its beauty and say "Im glad to live in this wonderful world..." and then look at your family, and your supporting friends, teachers and mentors, and then say with a surety "...I Know Heavenly Father Loves me."