I'm at a point in my life where I don't seem to be very good at changing. I recognize myself falling into the same bad habits over and over, despite the "wisdom" I have accumulated that tells me the habits are bad. Sometimes I play the "if I could be 20 again but know what I know now . . ." game, but then I think it wouldn't matter. I'd make all the same mistakes.

That was my thinking. Then I had a little experience that kind of taught me otherwise. I have lived on the same street for going-on-30 years now. Last year, I got a speeding ticket on my street for going 36 mph in a posted 25 mph zone. Grumble, grumble. Then, two weeks later, I got another speeding ticket on my street. Guess how fast I was going? You got it - 36 mph.

Clearly, after nearly 30 years, I had developed a specific habit. And clearly, if I didn't figure out how to break that habit, I was going to lose a lot more money and possibly my driver's license.

Guess how fast I drive on my street now? If you said 25 mph, you would be right. I'm almost obsessive about it - and it has been over a year since I got those tickets. I had a compelling reason to change that habit, and it overrode my years of conditioning.

Maybe I'm just naive, but I take heart from that. It makes me think that I might not be hopelessly consigned to ineffective practices that have plagued me all my life, like eating too much junk food, procrastinating unpleasant tasks, and avoiding exercise.

Springtime is a great time to make a change! What's yours?

I've decided I cry at weird times. When all around me at high school graduation were dissolved in tears, I stood by dry-eyed. I'm not sure I've ever cried at a funeral, or at my kids' graduations. Most notably, when I dropped two children off at the MTC on two consecutive weeks, I shed not a single tear. Either time.

But I remember when I was trying to prepare my children to attend the short opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" one Christmastime. Do you know the story? A young crippled boy and his impoverished mother give the three Wise Men a bed for the night, and when the boy offers to give his crutch as a gift for the Christ child, he miraculously walks. When I got to that part in my explanation, I just started to weep copiously. I think the children were a bit alarmed - but they sure paid attention when we got to the opera.

I had a similar experience when I was asked to read a Christmas story for a Relief Society lesson one year. It was about some children who weren't expecting any gifts, and I just started to bawl inexplicably and could not calm myself. I don't know why - I certainly wasn't remembering some poverty-stricken experience from my own life. I do remember this as being pretty embarrassing.

To go back the MTC experience, though, I have wondered if there is just something in me that doesn't like to cry "on cue." There were sniffles all over the room, sometimes downright sobs. I couldn't summon even a teardrop. But the next day, at the grocery store, when I walked past my son's favorite cereal, I fell apart. I knew I wouldn't be buying those Marshmallow Mateys for him for the next two years. My husband practically had to put me in the cart and haul me out.

So, yes, I'm an emotional person. I just never know when it's going to hit!

I love the new Enrichment program because it lets me enjoy what I LOVE and have it count as participation in the Relief Society program! And, as I'll bet you can guess, one of the things I LOVE is reading. So I am the unofficial hostess of our Relief Society's monthly (mostly) book group, and I thought it would be fun to share with you from time to time the books we're reading.

Our most recent book is one that I begged Deseret Book to publish for many years. It is titled The Uses of Adversity, and the author is Carlfred Broderick. If you've heard me speak in the past year, you've probably heard me quote from it, because I think it is the finest treatment I have ever encountered on the subject of the pains and trials of mortality. Dr. Broderick, a nationally respected psychotherapist, teacher, author, and stake president in California, tackles the most unanswerable kinds of pain imaginable--abuse, a child's death, debilitating illness. And he doesn't take the stance so often adopted in LDS culture: "Oh, it's all for the best." He makes it clear that he hates pain, and that it doesn't always make us better, but that we get to have some choice over the effect it has in our lives.

The line from the book that really reshaped my worldview when I first read it was: "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain." We don't get spared from the consequences of mortality just because we were born in the covenant or got baptized at some point. We all get trials. Where do they come from, and what do we do with them when we encounter them? This book has real answers to those questions.

What I love about Dr. Broderick's writing is that he is a storyteller. He doesn't preach maxims about pain, he shows us several examples of up-close, true suffering and teaches us through those stories what people have learned, what he has learned. It is brilliant writing. The stories hit bone-deep. The magnificence of the Atonement is clearly displayed. I came to realize that one of the things that was restored in the Restoration was our eternal perspective, the knowledge that offers peace in the face of the most perplexing of human problems.

In a time of cyclones and earthquakes and tornadoes and wildfires all hitting the news in one day, The Uses of Adversity is a book the world needs.

I was being virtuous - okay, semi-virtuous. I was on the go, in the fast-food mart looking for a snack to tide me through the afternoon. I had contemplated buying the "sleeve" of Oreos; it wasn't the full-on package, but it probably had 10 or 12 cookies in it. However, I knew that once I started I would eat them all, and I knew that this would probably mean at least 600 calories.

So I talked myself out of them, and opted instead for one "big cookie." You know the kind: a basic chocolate chip number, not quite as good as homemade (or even as good as Oreos), but an acceptable alternative. The operative principle was that there was just one cookie, so you couldn't really inadvertently overeat.

I took my cookie outside and sat down on a bench in the sunshine to enjoy it. I unwrapped it. I took a bite. Then I thought I'd take a peek at the nutritional information to see exactly how virtuous I was being by giving up the Oreos for this alternative. "Calories per serving: 150." Good girl!

Keep reading.

"Servings per container: 4."

Whom are we kidding here? Have you ever met anyone who gathered her three dearest friends around her to divide a big cookie with? If it was supposed to be four servings, why in blazes didn't they make four little cookies out of the same amount of dough? Were they completely oblivious to the distinct possibility that one person might expect to eat one cookie unaided?

Moral of the story: If you're going to eat cookies, throw away the wrapper before you have an urge to read the nutritional information.

I've had some requests to publish my "altered lyrics" to the beloved hymn "Today, While the Sun Shines." I thought hard about this, because I didn't want to seem irreverent in print, but since the original still stands without any statement, and since this is not a protest against that hymn but merely a blatant misappropriation of its rhyme scheme, I thought I'd go ahead. Here they are:

Today, while the kids scream, plaster on a smile!

Today, with the laundry stacking up in a pile.

Today, with the deadlines breathing down your neck,

Bills to be paid, and body gone to heck . . .

Today, today, do the best you can.

Today, today, it's part of the plan,

Today, today, don't forget to pray

That heaven will show you the joys of today.