As those of you who follow my blog know, once a week I get an email from my daughter who is serving her mission.  This week she shared that her group set a goal this week to see if they could follow all the mission rules with “exact obedience”.   Now I don’t know about all of you but I find that following any set of rules with exact obedience can be much more difficult than it sounds, mainly because we are human and we are easily sidetracked, and we often make mistakes. As her group kicked off the week my daughter Ashley was asked to say their morning prayer. She shared that “in my prayer I asked to bless us to have fun while still being exactly obedient.”  She said that as soon as she said that everyone started laughing at her request. She went on to say “look… it´s possible to have fun while being exactly obedient!!” She shared that the more she studies the scriptures the more she has discovered that the whole point of Heavenly Father’s plan for us is happiness.  “Look… if we aren´t laughing and having fun everyday…we´re doing it wrong!”  She is learning that the teachings we are asked to obey and follow are there to make us happy, not to make us miserable. So if we follow them and incorporate them into our lives we will have joy. We will be happier than we have ever been before. “So it´s okay to have fun and laugh a little! 🙂 And while being exactly obedient too!!!”

AWWWWW I LOVE her letters because I love the lessons she is sharing with us. They are such a great reminder to me of the attitude I need to have in my own life each day. She’s right!!! 100% right! Following the things God asks us to, like being a nice person, not judging others, being kind, having integrity, serving others, working hard, developing our talents, prayer, meditation, gaining knowledge, going the extra mile, giving our best effort, being honest in all we do, respecting others and respecting ourselves…all these things are things that will make us happier. And the same applies for the things we shouldn’t do, such as not abusing our bodies with harmful substances, and not filling our minds with trash, and not stealing, and not lying, and not coveting…not doing these things will make us happier. And I love that she points out that we should be laughing and having fun while we are being obedient. What a great reminder.

God wants us to be happy, plain and simple. He is the perfect parent and a perfect parent who loves his children perfectly is of course going to want them to be as happy as possible. I’m certainly not a perfect parent but even I want my children to be as happy as possible.  Every loving parent does want that for their kids. So it just makes sense ya know. He set out boundaries for us and told us what rules to obey, not to control us or make us miserable, but to give us the structure that would bring us the greatest happiness possible. And all we have to do is follow it.

And as Ashley said so perfectly, “… if we aren´t laughing and having fun everyday…we´re doing it wrong!”  So go laugh and have fun today!

~Amy