We Talk of Christ

I may have referenced my religion here or there in my first few posts—so I think it's about time that I introduced it properly. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; sometimes we're called LDS or Mormons. If you have any questions about what we believe, I would love to chat with you! My friend Celeste has also posted on her blog about some of the common questions she gets, and I love how she responds to them: you can read it here. If there is one thing that I want you to know about us, though, it is this:

"...we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ..."

That's a quote from the Book of Mormon, one of our books of scripture that we believe to testify of the divinity of Christ along with the Bible. It's hard to talk about something so very important to me on a public platform, but here's a five-minute video that shows our basic beliefs about God and Jesus Christ:

I've tried to decide if I'm going to try to target my blog toward those who might want to learn more about our church or write more like a journal, already taking into account a lot of background information. Hopefully I can strike some middle ground by briefly explaining unique terms or providing links for more information. I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of this blog, but I'm going to keep the theme of dealing with perfectionism and stress in useful and Christ-centered ways. Hopefully this is something that applies to Mormons and members of other faiths alike.

On that note, I'm going to introduce a couple posts coming soon: reviews of the books Believing Christ by Stephen E. Robinson and The Continuous Atonement by Brad Wilcox. They're both books about how to deal with everyday life trying to become more like Christ but not feeling discouraged by our inability to be perfect as He is. In my reviews, I'm going to talk about how they helped me to expand my thoughts on being "perfect" and the role of Christ in my life. Spoiler alert: They helped a lot, and I think you should read them!

Blog Fail Part 2

As an addendum to my earlier post "Blog Post FAIL," I wanted to add this awesome clip from one of my favorite movies, Meet the Robinsons:

Meet the Robinsons has an excellent message of not being afraid of failure and mistakes. Let me repeat something mentioned in that clip:

From failing, you learn. From success, mmm, not so much.

My initial reaction to that is "well maybe, but I'd prefer to learn from success!" I mean, success teaches us what works, right? That's definitely worth something. But really, think about it: we already focus so much on things that go wrong. Bad things stick in our minds. How many times have we cursed being sick while forgetting to thank God for our health? How much more do we worry about the assignment that had one or two points docked than the ones that received 100%? Let's face it, as humans, we learn a lot from failure.

Something that helps me face that fact? My other favorite quote from that movie:

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!