Projects

After the General Women’s Meeting last night I was out for Fro Yo with some friends and their daughters. As we were visiting a question was posed to me that I don’t feel I answered adequately. The question was, “How do you and Paul manage to get so many projects done around your house?” Since moving in to our home five years ago we have managed to paint our entire house, landscape 75% of our backyard, and Paul has built a number of furniture pieces for us and to sell to others. I stumbled a bit to have an answer . . . because I felt the question was not asked to know our secret but instead asked out of comparison and a feeling of not measuring up. I stumbled around trying to say that it was just a matter of priority and that it was a means to an end. Where in reality the answer should have been something more like this:

We enjoy working with our hands to create. We enjoy taking something blah and ordinary and turning it into something beautiful. It is time we get to spend together, it is our “date night”. It is how we choose to use the gifts and talents that Heavenly Father has given us.

We do not start, work on or complete the project because we enjoy “projects”. In fact I do not like having a “project” for the sake of having a project because they steal so much of my mental & physical energy away from other responsibilities. In having completed so many projects we have made monetary sacrifices as well . . . not having our children involved in various lessons and activities, of not having the funds or time to travel, we sacrifice having the latest technology in our phones and forego other “creature comforts”, and the list could go on.

What I wish I had told my friend last night was that we just use our time and talents differently. We choose to do “projects” to improve our home, where others choose to teach music lessons, coach a sports team, serve others, paint a masterpiece, cook delicious meals for their family, participate and contribute to community events, train for a half marathon, attend to and care for children, work on cars, go hunting, explore God’s beautiful creations through hiking and camping, work on family history or any number of other worthy causes.

But the beautiful thing I observe is that as we each choose to use our gifts and talents in a way that we enjoy we are nurturing our Spirits and when we come together we each have something very different and unique to offer to make a complete whole.

So, how have we been able to accomplish so many “projects”? The answer is simply because we choose to!