Momma's grin

I look like my mom...This picture is actually taken from the webcam on my work computer. I have a picture somewhere of my mom taken when I was in high school and she has this EXACT same expression on her face. The cheesy grin with the raised eyebrows is so HER! Ha ha...I miss her face!! I am glad the holidays are getting close. I feel myself getting more sentimental every day. I never thought I would be so sappy. Sheesh. Is it just me? I used to worry that I would turn into my mom...now I worry that I won't turn out that well. What are your thoughts? How has your relationship with your parents changed as you've gotten older?

The Fallacy of Self-esteem

When I was in middle school, we had assemblies on "creating good self-esteem". We would get worksheets where we listed what we liked about ourselves. They would send us home with handouts for the parents that listed things to say to your children like "You're terrific!" and "Great job!". It was all an effort to make us feel good about ourselves. Despite these assemblies and handouts, I had peers committing suicide, getting pregnant in high school, and abusing drugs. I remember talking to my mom about having low self-esteem and she SHOCKED me by basically saying that self-esteem wasn't important...She said that as far as she could tell, it was CONTRARY to God's plan that we have good self-esteem.

She didn't mean we shouldn't love ourselves or anything like that. I have thought about this a lot and she was SO RIGHT! Christ teaches us that the first commandment is to love God and the second is to love our fellow man. Never does he mention self-esteem except to say that we should love others as ourselves. Oh how tricky is Satan and his philosophies of men. While we were all trying to develop good self-esteem, we were neglecting higher priorities like service to others and obedience to God's commandments. Things that naturally lead to good self-esteem...because we then understand that we are God's children and that we can do all things in Christ. We were being taught that self-esteem can be created through pretty words and that EVERYONE was "thumb-body". Everyone is valued, but we need to live our lives with PURPOSE. We have work to do. And that work will bring value and confidence to ourselves and our children.

Now that my daughter is in middle school, I find myself worrying about her self-esteem...but I shouldn't. I should worry about how she esteems God and others. If she esteems them as high or higher than herself, she will NATURALLY have good self-esteem. She will know that she is a daughter of God and she will work hard because of the love she feels for Him and her fellow man. And it won't matter that someone in class teased her or she doesn't have the right shoes or the designer blue jeans.

What do you think? Does self-esteem seem contrary to happiness?

I just found this very interesting post on a similar train of thought here. Interestingly, it was written about a week after I first penned my post...Great minds think alike. Ha ha. J/K. That was just my narcissism talking from all those years of self-esteem training.

Genealogy? Me??

I have caught the bug. Seriously. I never thought I would be interested in family history. It isn't because I don't know how important it is. I have always known, but my parents were always doing it and I was a little jealous that all that time was being poured into (gasp) "dead people" instead of ME (their very dramatic and overly-sensitive little angel-girl!). Seriously. I was jealous of the time they spent doing family-history work! As I got old enough to get over that (~17 or so), I felt like they had already done all there was to do. Or that was the excuse I made. I have kept that excuse like a security blanket in the back of my mind.

Recently, however, there has been a change in my heart. I don't know where it stems from, but I cannot stop thinking about my ancestors! I spend hours poring over my genealogical lines and have been doodling family groups all over my scratch paper at work! It's soooooo cool! I love to read the biographies of my ancestors...particularly those who converted to the church. Their testimonies and strength give me such incentive to stay faithful. Their hardships make my life look like a complete cake-walk! Their accomplishments motivate me to do more. I don't really know if I will ever contribute to my own family history work...I hope I can figure out that part, but I have already been blessed by reading their stories!