Enticements VS. Adversities

           Photos above: Bottom left corner, Asher rammed into a girl at a restaurant and got a HUGE goose egg. Bottom middle: Chloe ties knots in her hair EVERYDAY, multiple times a day! Top right: Asher and a friend DESTROYED the nursery while a couple of us moms were having a fun time chatting in the gym. Other pics....hehe. 
        Recently I had the opportunity to attend a 12-week course to learn how to become more spiritually centered. It was COMPLETELY life changing. The course is just based on the principles of the teachings of Christ but put in a way that is more practical to applying to every day life. The biggest thing that I took away from this course is the word ENTICEMENTS.
         Enticements: little things that hook us, or make us angry or frustrated momentarily. For example, an enticement is a kid spilling juice on the floor, a person cutting you off on the freeway, stubbing your toe, anything that might make you want to curse ;) These little enticements, according to this spiritual course, are sent to us to remind us to think of our creator, to remind us to "pray always", so that every time an enticement happens we can remember our Father in Heaven and hopefully overcome these little enticements that consume our every day lives. In the course it says that the average person will have 10-20 enticements per day. In our discussions, we discovered that mothers of young children are the exception to that. Young mothers usually have 200-300 enticements per day. These enticements consume my life...hence the fact that this course was life changing! From the moment a mother of small children wakes up in the morning there is whining, spilling, messes, headaches, tiredness, little things that make being hunky dory kind of hard. But if we use these little things to remind us to say a little prayer, or think of our creator, we can usually handle them a lot better and treat everyone around us with patience. The beauty of it is, if we really take the chance to commune with God each time we have an enticement, we will become "enticed" less and less. We will become more patient. We will become more spiritually centered. 
         Adversities: enticements or trials that last longer and have more emotional pull on our well being. The same tactics can be used, focusing on the spiritual rather than the temporal. Trying to turn toward the light rather than dwelling in the darkness. If you think of an adversity, there is a way to handle it in the light and a way to handle it in the darkness.
            For example, about a year and a half ago I had what I would call an adversity happen to me. My hubby and I decided to go to a movie with my parents on a Tuesday night. We were not in the best financial situation. Hubby was just starting graduate school, we had just had a baby 6 months earlier, and we were trying to get our feet on the ground. We went to the movie, had a great time, then when we walked out of the movie, we couldn't find our car. We both remembered where we had parked and we knew that it was NOT there. It was stolen! Our only car was gone. We called the police and an officer came to help us. He went and looked at the surveillance footage. He said the guy that stole our car had walked RIGHT past us as we were walking into the movie! Creepy. Like an idiot I had left my wallet in the car, and there were a lot of other valuables in there like my glasses, hubby's Oakleys, some giftcards, $300 cash, etc... It seemed like the worst possible scenario to me. I DECIDED to go into darkness over this adversity. I decided to cry and wallow and worry and not turn to the light. My Hubby on the other hand CHOSE to stay in the light. That night, he comforted me and helped me realize that everything would be alright. Even though he was upset and disappointed, he chose to trust in the Lord. The next day we went out and bought a car together :) It would've been a little more fun if we had more than $3,000 in savings. It was scary putting $2,000 of that down on a car when I didn't even know how we were going to make money for the next 2 years. The day after that, we got a call, and THEY FOUND OUR CAR! We went to pick it up, it had been abandoned at a gas station in the west side of SLC. When we got to the car, $900 worth of stuff had been stolen out of the car including our car seats, giftcards, cash, wallet, Oakleys, glasses, etc... It also smelled like pot and there were burn marks on the dash...gross. It was definitely a different car. 
       Conclusion: we have been taken care of the last 2 years! I have had enough students to pay the bills and our online job lasted just long enough for me to build up my studio. We also had some miracles happen. Like an anonymous person left $300 cash on our front door after hearing our story....like what?! Who does that? The Lord took care of us. He always does. There's no reason to turn to darkness when the Savior has suffered EVERYTHING that we will ever go through. We just need to turn to HIM.  Enticements are real and if we can use even some of them to remember to pray, our life will be transformed...and so will our character.