Building Character

This past Sunday, one of my dear friends taught our Relief Society lesson. As usual for me, I can't remember what the lesson was supposed to be about. (This is especially bad when you know that I'm the R.S. bulletin publisher, and I typed the lesson's title. But you don't know that, so I'm safe.) Thankfully, I believe the most important thing about any church lesson/talk is what you take away from it.

Somewhere in her lesson she talked about one's character and the building of it. In our house, I'm frequently telling Rhett that he can do hard things. I tell him it's good for him. And when I started thinking about it for me, I realized I do hard things all the time. I mean, I'm a mom. How much harder can it get? I ran a half-marathon and that was pretty hard for me. I'm trying to cut out most sweets (of the un-natural sort) and that is ridiculously hard for me. I do hard things all the time. So apparently for me, hard things just aren't enough seeing as though my character is about average.

Instead, what I need to be doing to better my character are doing the things that I know I should do, but I don't want to do. The weeding in the front yard? Ugh. I know I should, but I don't want to. Going to the Stake Relief Society conference? Ugh. I know I should, but I don't want to. Scrubbing the grout on my hands and knees with vinegar and baking soda? Ugh. I know I should, but I don't want to. It's these types of things that I think would build my character. I avoid them not because they're hard, but simply because I'd rather be doing other things. But maybe I could raise my C+ character to a B if I pushed myself just a little bit.

And because I should always include pictures of these boys, I do so now. Do you know that Ollie will awake in the middle of the night screaming if he lost Pig? And this is Rhett's first major league baseball game. So fun!