Good, Better, Best

If you have not heard or read the talk Good, Better, Best by Elder Dallin H. Oaks I highly recommend taking the time to read it.

Recently I had an experience with the principles taught in this talk. Let me first say that Johnny is doing well at his job and after 3 months of technically being unemployed (on the union out of work list) it is nice to have a steady income the last 6 weeks or so. The problem is that we have been slammed with some unexpected expenses. Between Jaxon's recent endoscopy, our computer hard drive crashing, the lower ball joints and alignment for the car; you get the picture. I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Our lovely budget which happens to look very practical on paper does not look so nice anymore. Why do things like this always come in threes?

That being said I was asked to grade the 6th grade writing portion of the Arizona AIMS test for two weeks in May. I immediately thought what a wonderful opportunity this was going to be to earn some side money. After submitting all the required paperwork I started the online training and immediately realized I was crazy. Some of you have known this for a long time, but at that moment I knew it too. I was required to train and qualify in the areas of voice, word choice, and sentence structure over a three day period. The initial training was to take 2 hours, each section after that was to take 4 hours. After the practice exams I was required to score 7/10 & 10/10 in the qualifying rounds for each trait. This added up to a minimum of 15 hours. Johnny was home and taking care of the kids. The baby was upset and the other boys seemed to sense my attention was focused elsewhere which of course sent their mischievousness into overdrive.

Now I am no Einstein but I do have a Masters degree in Education and consider myself an educated person. I just could not focus. The best way to describe what happened was to reference D&C 9:9. I literally had a stupor of thought. My practice scores ranged from 2/10 to 7/10 but there was no consistency whatsoever. My qualification scores went downhill from there. The entire time an ever increasing list was running through my mind of things that needed my attention. My frustration with the boys interruptions was rapidly growing. I felt the same way trying to do this job from home as I did when I worked from home the last six months we lived in Mesa. I felt uncomfortable, depressed, frustrated, and had a killer head ache. I talked to Johnny about how I was feeling. I was worried about feeling like a quitter, but more than that I felt like I couldn't pass up this opportunity due to the extra cash. In the end Johnny told me he supported whatever decision I made, just like he always has in the past.

The amazing part was how I felt after I decided to let go. Complete relief and focus. It was not so much giving up as realizing that I was putting off my other more important obligations as a mother and wife for something that was good, but not best. It would have only been for a few weeks, but those weeks would have been very difficult. The week after making this decision Johnny actually had double time hours 4 out of 5 days equaling more money than I would have made part time in two weeks. He was off work Friday and we went to the Dominigoni Aquatic Center together as a family. If I had been working this past week I would not have been able to go. While we were there I laughed so hard playing Hide & Seek and Shark with Daniel and Jaxon. I have not laughed that hard in a long time. It was such a special feeling to experience that with my boys. To not have any obligations to worry about, just concentrate on having a fun time with my children. It was refreshing and made me understand more fully what Elder Oaks was referring to when he talked about choosing the best instead of just the good.