Women's Conference

Yesterday was our Stake Women's Conference and Barbara Barrington Jones was the speaker. She's been a motivational speaker for 25 or so years and also was a professional ballerina and trained girls for beauty pageants like Miss America. The conference went from 10 am to 3 pm with lunch included then there was an evening conference where husbands were invited. Sounds like a long day, doesn't it? But Sister Jones is so funny and engaging that those 5 hours during the day went fast and didn't feel like an eternity.

There are some things that I learned that I want to change in my life. She talked about how we as women are under Satan's subtle attacks. We have been given gifts as women, such as multi-tasking. But we start doing too much, and then we might not have time to pray or read scriptures. She talked about how in war, one of the first things to do is to jam the enemy's lines of communications. Satan is trying to do just that, by jamming our lines of communication with heaven. She talked about needing to simplify our lives and used an acronym for the word BUSY:

• Bent
• Under
• Satan's
• Yoke

She also talked about needing to find the humor in our lives and how that can be the gateway to love instead of criticism. Just that kind of thing happened to me the other day. Autumn left the house with hair that looked like she had just woken up and stains on her sweatshirt. You can't tell a 10-year-old what to wear or how to do her hair (at least not MY 10-year-old). So after I saw what she looked like I criticized her. I should NOT have done this and knew it after I said it. Later she told me she had tried to look as nice as she could and had just thrown on the sweatshirt because I told everyone to wear one. I should have just laughed about it (in my head) and chalked it up to pre-teenagehood. I should have just kept my mouth shut!

There are 88 scriptures that tell us to have joy and 73 that tell us to rejoice. Life should not just be endured, but we should find the humor in unpleasant situtations and make the most of it. We should be able to laugh at ourselves.

Okay, I'm not trying to preach, but to share what I learned. And of course I've heard all of this before, but it was good to hear it again, especially now that I have children that need humor and love and not criticism. I find myself being much too negative and critical of myself and my family. I'm going to try to change that. And I'm not going to let Satan win!