i'm so thankful that i went

This past saturday we had our Stake RS Women's Conference and I had tried to forget about it and was doing a great job until Cherie called and asked if I was planning on going...... I honestly didn't want to go so I said I would think about, knowing I really should go. I thought and thought and thought and still had no real desire to go and then out of nowhere I had a feeling of responsibility to be there, if only to set an example. We got there a little early (that's what happens when your father-in-law is in the Stake Presidency) and barely anyone was there and as it started filling up I started to feel better about being there. They started with a delicious luncheon and yummy desserts :) We made friends with everyone at the table and had a wonderful, cheerful conversation. After that we headed into the chapel for the meeting. I am not going to lie, I was kind of dreading the speaker. She looked old fashioned and an hour and a half is a long time to listen to one person talk. They had a musical number and someone got up to introduce the speaker and as she did the spirit in the room suddenly got strong and I started to forget about the clock on the wall and how figety I was. Sister Janene Baadsgaard got up and she was hilarious. From the moment she started talking we knew that it was going to be a fun hour. She told heart wrenching stories and stories that made us laugh so hard and stories that made us all cry....she was amazing! One of my favorite stories she told was about one of her sons. She said that she liked to keep her flour, sugar and rice in big plastic containers and one day she found one of her ten kids (a son) in the kitchen playing in the containers. He was mixing the rice into the flour and the flour into the sugar and then the rice in the sugar and so forth. She said all she could see were two big bright blue eyes in the midst of the cloud of flour. She felt herself getting angry but right as she did that he said, "Look Mom, I'm the breadmaker!!!" She said, "He was just trying to be like me. This is how our Heavenly Father must feel when he sees us making mistakes. He looks at us with love in his eyes and says, 'She is just trying to be like me'. I now look at my children through different eyes. I have been trying to be more patient and more loving. I have been trying to look at them through my Heavenly Father's eyes and show that unconditional, no matter what kind of love. I am going to get Janene's book as soon as I can because I loved her message that day so much. She gave me hope and inspiration to be a better me! One the front of her book it says "How to give you family and friends the gift of a more positive and loving YOU!" I love that! I think we can all try to be more positive and more cheerful, to change the way we view our own circumstances, to call on help beyond this world, to become an inverse paranoid, to give ourselves permission to muddle, to develop healthy patterns and to celebrate each day as a gift. We are so blessed to have the gospel in our lives and to know we know.