Insta-January

Only one Instagram post for the entire month of January. Sometimes I love posting on Instagram, and sometimes it's weird to know that so many people are reading my innermost thoughts. I did go through this month and removed followers who I don't know well or see on a regular basis. I'm fine if all the people I've ever known follow me on Facebook, but Instagram is more intimate and I want to keep it that way. Even after doing that (which there weren't many people I had to remove because I try to keep it like that anyway) I still have 97 people following. I'm thinking about going through and cutting out that next layer of people (friends and family that I like, and communicate with occasionally, but still is a tiny bit weird to have them know such intimate details of my life).

As I'm talking about Instagram, this year I want to start using the platform, my own little corner, as a way to share and strengthen my testimony. I'm not exactly sure how to do that, but it's something that I'm looking forward to figuring out this year.

Enough of my random Instagram thoughts. Here's January's Instagram post:
{1.7.18}
-☀️☀️☀️A Sunbeam!!!☀️☀️☀️Austin did great, Lydia did, too. (She's so excited to have him in primary with her.) ... For me, today was humbling and exhausting and a "I'm doing the best I can, but it's not quite enough" kind of first day of Primary. But together with our 19 primary/nursery classes, 38+ teachers, and almost 190 primary kids, we did it. I've never been more grateful for people who show up, magnify their calling, and have patience with shortcomings than I have been while working in the Primary. I sometimes joke that we're in charge of a small army, but truly, it's God's Army, and I am grateful to serve. Today in Sharing Time we learned that God knows us, He loves us, and we are His Children. I know that when we know those things, truly know them, our lives change. We feel different, we act different, we treat others with more kindness and love. President Monson was an incredible example of this. He knew the Divine Nature of those he served and it changed and blessed his life. I'm grateful for his example, and for the spirit that testifies of this truth to me. #primary #sunbeam #hisday-

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(I had a rough first Sunday of the year. Among other things, a parent was upset about her daughter's primary teachers -who were actually Austin's teachers, too, and in my opinion some of the best teachers in our primary- and after asking her to be patient because we weren't prepared to make changes 2 minutes in, I overheard her and several other sisters standing in the hallway talking about me. They were being incredibly mean, and I couldn't believe that they were there in the hall saying such rude things where anyone could hear, where I could hear! After David found me sobbing in the hall, he calmed me down and I was still able to teach the sharing time lesson about being a Child of God. I felt the Holy Ghost whisper to me that the things I was teaching were true. Knowing that Heavenly Father knows us, loves us, and that we are his children changes everything. It changes the way we see ourselves and the way we treat each other. It gave me the courage to address the issue with kindness, forgiveness and love. In the end, we were able to work out a solution and hopefully everything has blown over now. I learned a valuable lesson about responding in love from the very beginning, because I didn't know that it was going to explode so huge and if I'd just responded a tiny bit differently instead of letting my stress of the day color my initial reaction things would have gone much differently.