Today, the elders (we have the best elders in our ward) invited me to choose a Mormon Message to watch as our spiritual thought after dinner. I chose "Look Not Behind Thee" because I remembered how funny the guy in the white collared shirt is (watch the video! it's only 3 minutes long).
While watching it, I was hit with a lot of emotion. It was so empowering. Just as on New Year's Day, everyday is the beginning of the rest of your life. I'm going to repeat that... every single day is the start of the rest of your life. Life does not start when you graduate high school, move to college, return from your mission, get married, have kids, start a career, or retire. Your life starts right now.
Now, stating that your life starts now does not mean that you won't have bad days; we all do. However, you have the choice to appreciate the bad days for what they are and more forward. Learn from the sadness. The cause of your emotions will tell you a lot about yourself and what is most important to you.
It is, of course, healthy to look forward to future milestones with hope. It is normal to be scared.
When Jacob and I made the decision to separate, I felt like my life was over. It was devastating. And, to be honest, I expressed that to him. I told him that he had ruined my life.
That may have been a little melodramatic; however, the way that I had my life planned up until that point was ruined. I had planned to move to go to school with him, graduate with him, have a family with him, be with him forever. And that life was over. It was ruined. My life as Kaitlyn Korby was no more. I had to moved back in with my parents (they were wonderfully supportive of me), figure out what to do for school, and even change my name.
But you know what? I had the opportunity (though it felt like a burden) to redefine what my life was going to be like. I got to make the choice.
Just like in the video - I really hope you've watched it by now - we need to not look behind us. The past is in the past; no matter what we do, we cannot change it. We must learn from our past and make the choice to become better because of it. If we continue to look behind us, we will miss so much precious time that we could have been spent being happy. As if that part of our lives was nothing more than a pillar of salt.
Look not behind thee. The past won't change. Learn from it, but there's no reason to dwell on it.
Today is the beginning of the rest of your life: do something about it! Make it great. Make yourself better every day! Or don't... it's your choice.
Listen to a beautiful song here that was an inspiration for this blog post.
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