Lessons of gratitude

After some prodding from my dear friend Kristin and an interesting experience today, I decided to update my blog once again:
Every once in a while Heavenly Father decides to step in and humble me in life and make me realize the immense blessings I have. I have had the great opportunity this year to play for the women's soccer team here at BYU Hawaii. Playing college soccer has always been my dream. I never thought I would have the opportunity to do it and yet here I am, out playing soccer with an awesome team and coach. I love it! I've never hard to work as hard in my life as I do now. As with most hard things in life, it gets exhausting. I found myself beginning to dread the daily 2-3 hour practices. I would complain and moan and roll around on the floor just to show my disgust. I knew once I got there I would enjoy it and I always felt so great after the hard workout. Well today was no different. I found myself hesitant to go to practice. I show up to practice and as I began warming up my coach comes up to me and says Dawn (the NCAA regulations lady) called her today and told her I wasn't eligible to play.. WHAT? She was working things out but said I might not be able to play in tomorrow's games. .. I was devastated! I couldn't believe that after all this time I suddenly wasn't eligible. I couldn't help but think that I would suddenly be kicked off the team. Today was my last practice with the girls.. so long dream... goodbye soccer.. I realized just how distraught I became at the thought of no longer being able to play whereas just minutes earlier I was griping because I had to practice. I could picture myself bidding the team farewell..Well throughout practice I wanted to make the most of it. I wanted to have the most fun and work my hardest.. after all this was my last practice with the team! Well as it turns out there was no problem with the eligibility. Dawn called back and said I was fine. Relief swept over me. I was safe. I could still play!! Boy what a lesson I learned though! I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to play college soccer. Playing soccer at this level is a whole new experience and I realize I need to embrace EVERY moment of it! I'm so grateful to have a strong, healthy body so I can play and live my dream. I'm also so so so grateful for the little lessons in life that teach me to be humble and grateful. Heavenly Father gives me so many blessings and He is my everything!

Walden- Henry David Thoreau

I'm currently reading this book and couldn't help but post a few quotes from it.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

"Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on you own track, then."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

The Dash

By: Linda Ellis

There was a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came her date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash stands for all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;
The cars the house the cash
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

We'd be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read
With your lifes actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

Cos that dash stands for all the time
That you spent alive on earth
And only those who loved you
Know what that little line is worth

It matters not how much you own
The cars the house the cash
What matters is how you live and love
And how you spend your dash

What matters is how you live and love
And how you spend your dash.