Tonight as a family we are having our annual New Year's Family Home Evening. We gather as a family and go over personal and family goals. The best part is we introduce our families theme for the year!
I love having a family theme. It gives us direction and guidance as we go throughout our year and helps us to focus on what is important. Our yearly theme is usually based off of a verse of scripture. However, this year we are branching out and our family theme was inspired by a talk one of our church leaders gave as well as a familiar children's song in our church.
The theme for 2015 is........(drumroll please!)
Kindness Begins With Me!
I remember hearing the talk, "Remember This- Kindness Begins With Me" by Mary N. Cook, one of the leaders in our church who is over the girls ages 12-18. She spoke of the Christlike attribute of kindness and the effect it has on others as well as yourself. I studied further and found a wonderful talk by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin called "The Virtue of Kindness". In both of these talks it was emphasized that showing kindness gets us out of our own selfishness, increases our awareness and service to others, and draws us closer to Christ by becoming more like Him.
As I have wondered recently how to be more patient myself and how to help my children with their (what seems like constant) sibling rivalry I have circled back again and again to this principle: kindness begins with me. We can't change other people so the best place to begin change is with yourself.
Here is to a wonderful, exciting, and more KIND 2015!!!
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