The new year

How is it that a song you have never heard before has the ability to bring tears to your eyes the moment it begins? In church today, a sister in our ward sang while her daughter played the flute and they were both accompanied by the piano. This song was so beautiful and as soon as the flute and piano began to play my eyes filled with tears. I don't know the title of the song but the words were of the Savior's birth and my heart was touched. It was a lovely moment for me and more than the words or the music, I remember the way I felt.

Similarly, while in senior primary today my heart was touched and, once again, tears filled my eyes. Our primary chorister passed out hymn books and gave clues to the kids about the Christmas hymns in the hymn book and they had to guess the songs. When they guessed correctly the chorister had them sing the hymn. I love to sing the Christmas hymns and while singing I was looking around and saw that my oldest son had his hymn book open and was singing along. This made me smile and I kept an eye on him. He sang every song. This is the same son, who several weeks ago, hated going to church, hated Primary, hated singing or participating in any way and on two occasions had completely refused to go to church so he stayed home while the rest of us went. The last hymn we sang in primary today was Silent Night. We sang all three verses and so did my son. The spirit I felt as I saw this change in my son overwhelmed me and I couldn't continue to sing. Even now as I think of that moment my heart is tender. The power of music to bring the Spirit into a room and into a heart is a wonderful thing.

The new year is about to begin and this is the time for New Year's Resolutions. I have made them in the past and like many others I have quickly left them behind. Why is this? It's not as if I don't really mean to make the change stated in the resolution. I really do mean to try to better myself by whatever means I resolved to do. But there is always that inevitable time when I realize I have let go of the resolution and have returned to my old habits. That is why this year, while I still have the desire to better myself I won't do it with a resolution. Rather I would like to live by a philosophy or a theme. Something that will help to keep my mind where I want it to be and will really last the whole year. I have some ideas that I have gathered over the past week. One idea is from the December theme for Primary which is "My family is blessed when we remember Jesus Christ." Another idea comes from Elder Henry B. Eyring when he spoke about teaching children. He said, "The words you speak today may be the ones they remember. And today will soon be gone." I want more experiences of feeling the spirit as I did today and I want my children to recognize when the spirit comes upon them. I want to be more service minded. As I write this post I feel that I have still not completely grasped what it is I want. I have a little more thinking to do about what I want to focus on this coming year and how to do it but I'm excited for the new year. Who knows what it will bring? What is it that each of you want from this year? How do you feel about what you could do to better yourself?