"Learning, Acting and Becoming"

I always get excited to start a new year. I have great hopes that things will be different and better. I tell myself that "this is the year I will overcome my flaws." After a stressful weekend I hit the wall yesterday. I realized that I'm in the same place I was at the end of 2012. Kamber is still gone, my Dad is still sick with cancer and the affects of chemotherapy. I'm still fighting the "battle of the bulge" and losing, and I still live with the same people in the same house. I even go to church with the same people only at a different time. As I was contemplating my life, I came back to a place a few years ago when things were really hard. I remember telling a friend that it would be better if I could just go to the other side, thinking that was my answer. I remember him telling me, "what do you think is going to happen when you leave this earth? You will still be the same person with the same feelings, with the same problems, just in a different place without a body." So onward I go trying each day to do something productive and meaningful. I started reading a book that was given to us by one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency for Christmas. The title is "Act in Doctrine," by David A. Bednar. I am not a scriptorian and lots of things are way over my head, this looks like it may fit into that category. As I read the Preface he says, "As disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, our individual responsibility is to learn what we should learn, to live as we know we should live, and to become what the Master would have us become. These three fundamental and interrelated gospel imperatives-learning, acting, and becoming-are central to our spiritual development and happiness in mortality and our progress throughout eternity." So maybe my goal for the new year I need to worry more about learning, acting and becoming and see if this year will a stepping stone for the future.