Prayer

 Isn't it just a cool thing that not only are we allowed to talk to the Creator of the Universe, but he wants us to? To me, that's such a cool concept to wrap my head around. I mean, the Savior, tue Messiah, wants to listen to ME, little Katie Beth down in south Alabama, talk. And it's so easy, we don't have to go through a priest or set up and appointment or anything, we can just talk. 

 A lot of us, because of the ease, take prayer for granted. We treat prayer as if God is a genie, or if we put coins in we will get blessings out. Prayer is so much more that just telling God all of your problems. Yes, He wants us to tell him our problems, but if that's all you pray about, I mean come on... 

 A prayer exercise that I was taught in Sunday school as a child was to always start a prayer with thanking God, so that out heart would be in a grateful mood for the upcoming prayer. Even now, I still try to use this because I realize so much of the time, that when I pray, I am only asking God for things that I want, when I should be asking for His will. Asking for His will is hard, for it may not be something that we think we want, but this is where we have to remind ourselves that His plan is always greater.

Standards

 As females, there is something that society has created this long list of standards in how to be "perfect." You have to wear this, you can't do this, you have to look like this, etc. But why do we fall for this everlasting trap? Why do we care so much about what human beings think of us based on external things? Why do these things matter to us?

 God says in the bible, multiple times, that he doesn't care what we look like, what we wear, where we live, or any of that. He cares about our heart. It seems as so that is the last thing on society's mind. 

 Believe me, there nothing wrong with dressing up, or dressing down, or whatever you prefer, as long as your heart is in His hand.

Attitude

 Those of you who know me personally might already be aware, but for those of you who are not I would like to share with you that I have a chronic, nasty disease called sass. I know right, it's such a shocker, Katie Beth has an attitude problem. Yes, yes it's true, sass, humility, and attitude are three things I constantly battle. 

 We all know that old saying "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all." As much as we take that as a grain of salt so often, there is a lot of truce to that. I mean seriously, what do we gain from putting someone else down? Why would we discourage others when we could encourage them? For everyone we converse with is a Child of God, we should treat them like one. 

 People have no idea what effect their words may have on people, myself at the front of the line. Yes, you may be "joking" but there's always a little truth and a little pain behind every "just kidding." On top of that, it literally costs $0 to be kind. So why don we do this more often? Do we most wish to be embarrassed or called weird? Hm, that's funny because when Jesus was taking a beating for you telling that girl her shoes were ugly, do you think he was worried about what other humans thought of him?