Try, Try Again

It is parent teacher conference week at school. Yesterday, I worked from seven am until five thirty pm. I love parent teacher conferences but that. was. a. long. day. I left with a giant migraine, came home took four Advil and went to bed. 

Luckily, my sister picked up Ellie and then fed us dinner...pumpkin enchiladas which were pretty tasty. I promised myself that I would get up and run this morning after I dropped Aydan at football practice. I came home saw my comfy bed....set my alarm for 45 minutes later and climbed right back in. Running vs. Sleep. Sleep will always win especially at 5:45 AM. 

I ended up running tonight after we got home and boy it was a great one. It felt cooler, the bugs were buzzing, the sun was setting and I just noticed for the first time these amazing sunflowers that are blooming at the farm! I had to get a closer look. So happy. I was also happy I kept my promise to myself to run today. It feels good to keep commitments even to yourself.

General Conference is coming up in two weeks. In order to prepare for this awesome weekend I have been listening to a different talk several times a week. The talk I listened to today I have listened to many times it is called, Until Seventy Times Seven  by Elder Lynn G. Robbins. In fact, I listened to it three times because I was so interested in the topic. Yesterday, in one of my conferences I learned that one of my students is very hard on herself if she makes a mistake. I also learned that a parent felt that maybe she had been too hard on her child. It is a tricky balance being a parent and a teacher. After listening to this talk and armed with the information I had learned the day before I had a great conversation with my class. Each morning I give them a sentence to copy. It is usually filled with mistakes that they then edit with a red pen. Today's sentence was Ms. Tidwell says, "Mistakes are the stepping stones to success." We used context clues to figure out what success means and also what stepping stones to success means...I told my class a story of when I was a child and we would go camping with all my cousins. Each day we would walk to the creek and see who could cross it using the "stepping stones" I drew a basic picture to show them and soon they understood. I told them that when I was learning to play the violin I made millions of mistakes. Eventually though, I could play the violin very well with practice and the key was to not get discouraged if I made an error but to keep trying. I was trying to teach my class (and this idea I took straight from the talk), "to consider failure as a tutor, not as a tragedy, and not to fear failure but to learn from it. To look at each failure as a stepping stone to the next one. Eventually...you will cross that creek. 

We (I)...can be SO hard on ourselves. Even precious seven year olds can be SO hard on themselves. If we can just tweak our thinking a bit it would help us to see the real point is to learn one step at a time without getting discouraged. 

The talk also focused on second chances and I am really glad for those, because boy I make loads of mistakes on the daily. Elder Lynn G. Robbins talked about how the Lord is long suffering. He said, how long is he long suffering...forever and always for us. Have you ever thought about that and then I thought gosh....I guess all my questions and sufferings compared to his are like NOTHING. They don't FEEL like nothing though. You know? Luckily, there is grace that helps us along. 

Anyway...it is a great talk. If you would like to listen to it you can find it here https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/04/until-seventy-times-seven?lang=eng

Try, try again XOXO- The Sunny D