Watched the movie "Dear John" last night. Leave it to Nicholas Sparks to grab your heart and twist hard. The movie was a real tear jerker. Sparks is the eternal optimist though because he always gives his characters a second chance(I should qualify that, because I was hoping to read the book before I saw the movie but didn't get the chance, so maybe it's Hollywood that gave them the second chance and not Sparks). Anyway.....that's not always true in real life. We make choices and we don't always get a second change or do we. I like to think that it's all up to us.

I believe that one of the greatest gifts that our Father in Heaven gives to us is the right to choose. And in other than extreme cases we have the right to choose over and over again. When we make mistakes we can put them right through another choice, unless of course, we are too proud or stubborn. Sometimes life hands us situations that are hard, and we feel as though, due to someone else's choices ours are limited, but ultimately we have the most important choice, and that is, of how we will handle that situation.

We have the choice to make the best of a bad situation or to turn paradise into a nightmare, it's all in how we choose to handle it. We choose to be offended or let remarks that may or may not have been intended to hurt us roll right off. We choose joy or sadness, happiness or misery, we can choose to repent of our errors or to wallow in them, in short we can punish ourselves or treat ourselves kindly.

I am so grateful for the ability to choose and the knowledge that I have that ability. I try to live my life without regrets and that means you need to weight each choice carefully and once made live them to the fullest. I am grateful for the guidance that I can receive from the Holy Spirit when making those choices and for the patience to listen to that guidance. I am particularly grateful for a Testimony that these things are true and for all of you who help me to stay on track through your Testimonies.

Life isn't easy but it isn't as hard as we make it, sometimes. If we truly will turn our burdens over to the Lord and trust him, I mean really trust him, and not try to take those burdens up again on our own, what joy and freedom we can have. Them we can get on with the business of living.