This is the Best Christmas Ever, Because....

About halfway to my parent's house on Christmas day, Audrey started expressing her discomfort.

"I'm hot, and tired, and bored!" she said.

Graton turned this into a game, similar to the old stand-by, "I'm going to Grandma's house and I'm going to bring...."

"I'm hot, tired, bored, and my neck is stiff from driving!"

"I'm hot, tired, bored, my neck is stiff from the car ride, and I have to go potty," I lamented.

The game was amusing at first, as we listed all of our complaints.

Finally, I started to feel so rotten that I said, "We've got to stop. I'm going to cry I feel so depressed!"

So Graton started a new game. "This is the best Christmas ever, because..."

As we focused on our love for each other, excitement at seeing grandparents and cousins, I felt uplifted and energized.

I thought of the insight of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, one of our church leaders who said, "no misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse. "

Our prophet recently quoted a well-known author as saying,

“Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend … when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth.”

I find myself all to often tending the wrong secret garden. I will strive, in 2009, to tend my secret garden of abundance and to always remember to give thanks to its creator.