A Reminder of Life's Pursuits

Valerie J. Steimle
Right about now, you have probably forgotten about all those New Year’s resolutions you made over a month and a half ago. Life gets busy and we forget all about what we thought was so important then. It’s the mid-winter blues and we need a little boost. Although the weather has been beautiful here it’s that time of the year when there is a long stretch of work time with no holiday until Easter. I was sent this poem a while ago through an email. I wish I had written it but I didn't. The author is unknown. This is a great shot in the arm and we all need that once in a while. This poem gives it to us.


Don't Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won if he'd stuck it out.
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out
-The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are
-It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit
-It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

We all need a way to remember what is important to us. We all need that reminder to never give up. So as we go through the last weeks of winter into the hot days of summer, we should remember to fight the "fight when you’re hardest hit—when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit". Don’t ever quit.

2010 Handbook For A Better Year

It is hard to believe the year is 2010. It sounds too much like a futuristic science fiction movie but in reality, it really is 2010. A message sent to me by my mother-in-law gave me seven handy hints for a great new year. One to remember each day of the week.

One: Drink plenty of water. This is a great tip for a healthy body. It is common knowledge now that we should all drink at least eight glasses of water every day to feel healthy.

Two: Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip. I would say most of the time those unkind things you hear from others are not true and if they are you shouldn’t repeat them. Life is too short to waste time in passing on unwanted news. You have no idea what the other person has gone through so don’t pass on any gossip.

Three: Live by the Three E’s: Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy. All that you spend your time doing can either uplift you or drag you down. Calling your family often, doing something good for others and forgiving others of any inconveniences can be of great worth in living by the “E’s” of life. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.

Four: Make time to pray. The world would tell you that praying is a waste of time, but I don’t believe that. No matter what religious sect you belong to, there is always time to pray. You can pray while driving to work or cleaning the house or before eating breakfast. It helps the day go by much better and you will find that enthusiasm and empathy stay with you longer.

Five: Play more games. This reminds us how fun life is or is supposed to be. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy so find time during the month whether weekly or every other week to play games with your friends and family.

Six: Read more books than you did in 2009. Reading is so good for the mind and it can take to far away places which makes it less expensive than taking a trip to Europe . Reading also helps you ponder the challenges you face every day while also giving you an escape.

Seven: Take a ten to thirty minute walk daily, and while you walk smile. I learned something very profound from my own son last week. His secret to a happier life was to smile all the time. I was very surprised to hear him say that as he has not always been a happy kid. No one is in charge of your happiness except you. While the walking is physically good for your heart, the smiling is emotionally good for your soul and everyone else around you.

So there you have it, seven helpful hints for a better 2010. Happy New Year.

Be Grateful For What We Have

Last Thursday, our electricity was out for most of the morning. Apparently, a switch from a substation went down and we were without power for over three hours. Everything I needed to do that day took electricity: checking email, sewing something, and watching a movie. My crock-pot dinner was even put on hold. We are so accustomed to electricity that it was hard to fill the time while I was waiting for it to come back on.

It's amazing how grateful you become when something is taken away from you that you take for granted. In case you haven't been forced into gratitude as I have been, this might help to put your life in perspective. These are statistics from the internet:

If you you have food in the refriderator, clothes on your back, roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than a million people.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the worlds' wealthy.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the panges of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If your parents are still alive and still married, you are very rare, even in the United States.

If you can hold someone's hand, hug them, or even touch them on the shoulder, you are blessed because you can offer a healing touch.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

Thanksgiving is this week and I'm reminded by force what I am truly thankful for in my life. I need to remember this all year round. Besides being grateful for electricity, I live in my own home in a nice neighborhood, drive a "paid-for" car and live a healthy, active life. My children are good citizens and keep active with school, work and church. I have food on the table, money in the bank and extended family I can count on any time. I am truly blessed and grateful for what I have. I hope you are too.

A Lesson Learned In Life

It’s difficult in our modern times to listen to the nightly news without getting totally disgusted. There are so many negative reports of all the crime, corruption and destruction of our great nation, it can really weigh you down.

I received an email from an old friend last week telling me that her father passed away at the age of 78. A rush of memories had filled my head. I loved her father. He was a very giving person. He used to drive us around to church activities, singing songs and telling stories and we all had such a great time together. We were teenagers during the 70’s too. No generation gap there. I googled his name to find the obituary because he had accomplished so much when I knew him, I wanted to see what else he had done after I went off to college and their family moved away.

It was amazing to see. He already had a PhD in nuclear chemistry and helped Bell Labs in New Jersey get a satellite up in orbit. After moving away, he then became the head of the department of physics at the State University of New York in Albany. He did Research in X-ray optics and then eventually did research on the effects of metal in the human brain helping to find how to cure Alzheimer’s disease. Besides all the work he accomplished in his career, he was very active in his church and spent a lot of time with his family making his life very full right up until the end.

Another friend of mine wrote this week about a speech she heard Sunday night at a church fireside of a woman who spent time in a concentration camp as a child in Indonesia during WWII. Her name is Kitty De Ruyer Bon and she wrote all about her experiences in a book called As I Have Loved You. The amazing thing about this woman is that in the face of the most humiliating of circumstances and inhumane physical treatment, she kept faith, courage, strength and dignity. With no hope of any earthly reward or return for the good she gave, she still gave even to her captors.

The lives of these two people have touched my life and gave me such a great example to never give up when life seems so overwhelming. At times life does get overwhelming and discouraging and the temptation to throw it all away is sometimes very great. Even to give up on mankind, but that would accomplish nothing. The wisdom to give to others is much better than always thinking: What’s in it for me?

As time moves on and we are blasted with tribulations or hear what our government is doing to our country, we shouldn’t give up on what we believe to be right in our hearts. We should move forward and think clearly. It is a good lesson learned in life.

Defending True Liberty

As this Saturday is our nation’s independence day, we are reminded of the sacrifices of those who came before us. We are reminded of what our true liberties are and that we are free to take care of our families, live in our own home, work at a place of employment without harm and spend time with friends and our families.

I read The Declaration of Independence this morning and as I did, it reminded me of how those earlier delegates felt about the true liberty of our budding nation at the time. One of the world’s best-known statements declared was that “all men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We need to remember the words of our forefathers.

The news of what our government wants to accomplish in the next few years is devastating because slowly but surely we are being stripped of these Rights. When all is said and done, the privileges we have been enjoying in the past will be gone, true Liberty will no longer exist and our Happiness will be gone forever.

From one of our ecclesiastical leaders in the past, David O. McKay said: “True liberty in individuals consist of the enjoying of every right that will contribute to one’s peace and happiness, so long as the exercise of such a privilege does not interfere with the same privilege in others. It consists not in doing what one likes to do but in doing what one ought to do. It is the right of each individual to be master of his own time and actions consistent with fairness and justice to his fellow men and with harmony with the laws of God. It is freedom of choice, a divine gift, an essential virtue in a peaceful society.”

The fight to keep our liberties is going to be a strong one in the coming months and we have to be vigilant in watching what national leaders’ intend to do with our freedoms. We need to watch what bills are passed. We need to make our voice known to Congress that we will not accept any laws passed which are unconstitutional and take our liberties away. This is what we ought do.

We have so much to fight for living in this free nation. We owe it to those who came before us. Just as Thomas Jefferson wrote in his closing statement of our Declaration, I leave you these words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Remember these words and have a happy, healthy and safe Fourth of July.

Overcoming The Weeds of Life

I had the chance to get outside and do some yard-work last week. After some weeding in the front flower bed and edging with the weed eater on the side of the house, I had to tackle the weeding of a rose bush I had planted a few years ago.

I hadn’t realized the time had gotten away from me and those weeds had grown so fast over my low growing bush that I could barely see the bush itself. With the blossom season upon us, I didn’t want to miss those beautiful pink blooms popping everywhere. Now the weeds had over taken it and I had to save it from the invasion.

After pulling the weeds away, it was amazing to find how well my rose bush did. I was very pleasantly surprised how my struggling rose bush was growing so well even with those quick growing weeds all around and over it. It was just growing like crazy. I thought all those weeds would hinder the growth. The bush looked as if it wouldn’t have grown at all. It looked as if it would have been smothered. But it flourished and grew anyway. New shoots had grown all over and I actually had to cut it back.

I had to reflect on this idea because humans are so very vulnerable to trials and challenges. We meet bumps in the road or rapidly growing weeds and it discourages us from going any farther. How many times have we had the weeds of life come upon us and try to smother us and we just keep growing? How many times do we let those challenges in our life overtake our great attitude and we flounder with the thought of “I can’t get through this” and then realize months down the road that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. Many times we let unimportant setbacks ruin our day of other wonderful accomplishments. I’m guilty as well and need to take a lesson from my own rose bush.

Louis L’Amour said it best: “The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.”

Don’t let the weeds of life pull you down so much you don’t follow through on your goals in life. Don’t let the weeds of life over come your good attitude and worthwhile life of family and friends. You come from a godly heritage and enduring to the end with courage and dignity will in the end come back around to lift you up. Have a great day.

Success is fleeting,... unless.....

This past weekend, I had the honor of attending the LDS Storymakers Writing Conference. It was a wonderful experience being surrounded by so many talented people who made me realize the importance of working hard and never being complacent.

There are a few times in life when I amaze myself. Today is one of those days.

Not because I am so wonderful and creative, but because I simply have the most incredible dumb luck at times! Once again I digress as I get off on one of my ADD tangents. I’ll begin at the beginning….

After getting home and mulling over all that I learned and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the gratitude of being able to help, meet and learn from so many wonderful people, I finally remembered that I needed to do my blog posting .Since I had arranged the tour over a month ago, there was no way that I could have foreshadowed my thoughts and feeling on this particular day. I looked at today’s Life Saver and smiled. It read;

“Unless you’re the lead dog, the view is always the same.”

Publishing is an interesting business. As authors we are always trying to step up one more rung on the ladder. If you are unpublished, you want to get a contract. If you are published, you want an agent, a bigger contract and a national audience. If you have a national audience and an agent, you want to be on the best seller lists. And once, you’re there, you want to stay there and do it better and better and better…..

I’ve been lucky and had an amazing amount of success – success that others merely dream of. I’ve hit the national market, done TV, radio and hit the charts high on Amazon. I’ve seen my name in print in prestigious publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Financial Content and big papers across the nation. I’ve seen my name go as far as England, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. But I look at J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyers and Richard Paul Evans and even some of my closer acquaintances like James Dashner, Josi Kilpack and Janette Rallison and think, “Man, I have a LONG way to go!” Adn i look at even closer friends like Candace Salima, Tristi Pinkston, Annette Lyon and Michele Bell who have more knowledge in their little pinkies than I have in my entire noggin and think, "There is NO way I can ever catch up!"

Discouragement sets in and before I know it, success is out the window and I’m a failure. Thankfully, God knows me well and slaps me up the side of the head every once in a while and places opportunities in front of me that get me outside of myself and focused on others in a positive way. It’s when I have the ability to serve and follow in the footsteps of the only lead dog who matters – the Savior.

And when I do that, the level of success suddenly does not matter but the route in which we get there – flowing in His footsteps following His lead – does.

I came out of Storymakers so incredibly grateful that I have been placed in positions where I could help fulfill the dreams of others, learn from others, teach others and spur the hope of others. But mainly, I am grateful for the opportunity to be used as an instrument in His hands for blessing the lives of others.

It’s true; success is fleeting -- unless you look at it as an eternal proposition. And if you do, not only your success, but that of others, becomes an eternal gift that is satisfying where ever you may be on the success spectrum.