What Are The Five Secrets To Life ?

One of the books I've recently read suggests that there are five key secrets everyone should discover before they die.  Here is a link to a short intro to the book on if you want to read about it, but I've also listed the title topics of those five secrets below.

Secret #1:  Be True To Your Self

Secret #2:  Leave No Regrets

Secret #3:  Become Love

Secret #4:  Live The Moment

Secret #5:  Give More Than You Take

I highly suggest buying the book or borrowing it from the library and reading it in its entirety.  The author outlines his experiences conducting interviews of hundreds of wise people in their later stages of life.  The common themes of their success, happiness, wisdom, etc. are contained in these secrets.  They provide insight into living a life you'll be glad you lived when you reach that stage of life and look back on how you've spent your time on this earth.

The first secret has been on my mind a lot lately, but I'm not sure I'm any closer to truly living it.  The author suggests the following questions to help you assess whether you are living true to your self:
- Did this day or week feel like my kind of day / week?  What would make tomorrow or next week feel more true to myself?
- Was I the kind of person I wanted to be today / this week?
- Am I following my heart right now?  What would it mean for me to really do that?

I feel the key with this secret is to really ponder and meditate on who you want to be.  I can think of that in smaller increments (good father, loving husband, caring friend, etc.) but other than an unreachable ideal of perfection (i.e. Jesus Christ) I'm not sure I can define an overall person I want to be.  That leaves me wanting when it comes to knowing if my life's work or personality or even hobbies are truly me or if they are where I happen to be and what I happen to be doing.  At least I theoretically have plenty of years left to figure that out and move toward it right?!


Song Of The Day:
Today's song choice is "I'm Not Who I Was" by Brandon Heath.  My favorite part of it is not the lyrics, although those are great, but rather the background vocals on the chorus.  I'm not sure why they capture my attention each time I hear the song, but I love to sing along.  I'm sharing the song because at least with music I feel like I can be true to myself.  I know what I like and what I don't and more importantly, I know why I like what I like (for the most part).  The title of this track also shares a message about how we can change into whoever we truly are and I love that concept and believe it to be true!
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2 - Art Thou Greater Than He ?

From the Facebook post little known facts about Josh Case Sr:

2 - My favorite scripture is not in the Bible.

My favorite scripture can be found in the Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Section 122, verse 8.  It deserves at least a little bit of set-up.

Joseph Smith had been incarcerated on false charges in Liberty Jail in Missouri for many months.  In response to his multiple prayers, in which Jospeh poured out his soul and frustrations, the Lord provided a reminder of the degree of difficulty others face in their lives, while also comforting Joseph and teaching him that his suffering was necessary for him to gain experience.  This specific scripture comes near the end of the Lord's response to Joseph, but has always stuck in my mind as something we should all remember.

D&C 122:8  "The Son of Man hath descended below them all.  Art thou greater than he?"

I sometimes feel my life is hard and that my challenges are more than one man should have to bear.  But the feeling is always fleeting as I contemplate the experiences that Joseph Smith went through during his abbreviated lifetime on this earth.  My situations certainly pale in comparison to his challenges.  And then there is the whole 'nother level of experiences that our Savior Jesus Christ willingly suffered through.  It never takes me more than a few minutes to put things in perspective and realize that I am ridiculously blessed!


Song Of The Day:
In honor of the great man and Prophet that Joseph Smith was, I think it's time for some Mormon Tabernacle Choir and their rendition of "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" which was sung at a General Conference session of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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What do Cases, Lockards, Shepards, Campanellas and Shaws have in common?

The short answer? They are all our friends and family.

The longer answer? They were all in attendance today for our special Sacrament meeting, during which I had the opportunity to exercise my Priesthood authority and give a name and a blessing to our 6th child, Myra Jasmine Case.

This blog will not make you laugh and hopefully will not make you cry, but it needs to be written. I am not a perfect man, not in the least. I make more mistakes than someone with my testimony of the Gospel should be allowed to make. For some reason my Heavenly Father has seen fit to bless my life with a ridiculous amount of blessings. A few of these just on the subject of relationships:

- A beautiful wife who for some crazy reason adores me. 6 amazing children that still want to give me a hug and a kiss good night after I have yelled at them for stupid things all day long.

- Parents and siblings from my family of origin that are also imperfect, but seem to love me perfectly and provided me with great growing-up experiences and the opportunity to find out who I am (still working on it) and love me all the way through it.

- My married-in family (aka the Lockards) is awesome too. I think they are more like me than they would care to admit, but they are also different enough to keep it interesting (I seriously cannot follow many of the computer-related conversations, though I try just as hard to understand them as they do when I am going on about sports).

- Friends that I've known for what seems like forever. I can miss talking to Craig for years and we can pick right up where we left off. And the Campanellas are just kindred spirits. They are the family that we chose instead of marrying in or being born with. Too much love for them to summarize here, I'll have to blog about it another day.

The bottom line is that all of these wonderful people have testimonies of the truthfulness of Our Heavenly Father's Plan and they have true faith in our Savior Jesus Christ. This means the world to me. I said before (and in my testimony today) that I am a very imperfect man and as such my efforts to live worthy have seen highs and lows. I'm not sure I will ever truly be worthy of the Atonement that my Savior suffered through on my behalf, but being surrounded by family and friends that are "imperfect" too gives me comfort in knowing that we can all get there if we work together and try to love one another.

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I forget who was quoted as saying it but "The little things are the big things." I believe this is true of the Gospel and I am committed to working harder on those little things so that my ENTIRE family (for we are ALL eternal brothers and sisters) can return to live with OUR Heavenly Father someday. And (this is highly unorthodox but) I blog these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.