In The Beginning

I love the beginning of the school year! Life gets a schedule again, I make new goals, and each year the kids are one year older and the year starts off a little easier than the previous one. 

However, as it's turned out every single year, the year only starts easier and then suddenly complications arise and kinks develop in the brand new schedule. By that time we are going full-swing and the only option is to keep swimming. We get tossed around in the waves -- some years it seems like we barely get to come up for breath and others we roll around more gently. 

But always May arrives and the end of school is in sight and then one fine day in June it's that glorious first Sunday of summer where no one is rushed off to bed, the whole night is wide open, the temperature is warm and we talk about all the fun we are going to have that summer.

But that was 3 months ago. And now we are ready for school to begin again.

Today was the first day of my scripture class. We are studying The Old Testament this year. One of our teachers is such a scholar that I take notes like mad, my mind struggles to absorb everything I'm learning, and by the end of class I feel like I've had a true brain workout! 

Today I turned to my friend, Jenny, and said "I feel like I've been in school!" She said, "There's so much I want to understand about what we learned, I feel like I have homework!" Kind of funny since Jenny and I spent Jr. High, High School and our first year of college together. Here we are again!

The last two minutes of class, our teacher, Nancy, explained something about Genesis. Genesis means, "In the Beginning." Perfect since the school year feels like a beginning. And an opportunity to "begin ourselves" -- to try something new, become someone better, improve ourselves or our homes or our lives. Anything we want is possible. We can create, just as our Father who created the world In The Beginning, can create. 

How do we "begin ourselves?" By patterning after God -- he used the elements that existed to create the world -- heaven and earth, light and dark, land and sea, plants, animals, birds, fowl, man and woman. We can Begin by using what is in us because we are Divine. We are his children and thereby have a Divine Nature. 

This reminds me that when we take time to be quiet, to ponder, to pray, to consider what we want to accomplish, who we want to become, the influence we want to leave -- we start to feel it. Our Spirit, that Divine part of us that knows who we are and where we came from, whispers to us and we Begin to feel what great things we are capable of. 

That's why I love Beginnings. Because I take time to think about possibilities. And with that thinking comes the whispering of my soul -- the Divine within me -- guiding me. And then I start to feel an awesome sense of Who I Am. And I love it.

I have lists and goals and while many go unfulfilled, it just leaves more opportunity for next year. And I love it. 

See how my class gave so much to think about? I've got the whole year lying out in front of me...

!!!