MEE books

Just had to give a little plug for some Mary Ellen Edmunds books that I've enjoyed. I got a gift certificate to Deseret Book once and I was on a search for some cheer. I found 'Happiness, finders keepers.' Later I read, "You can never get enough of what you don't need- the quest for contentment." And most recently when in Utah I picked up 'Peculiar in a good way'. MEE has a silly sort of style but she really is just full of good cheer, happy thoughts, inspiring messages, and pure truth. I just can't help but mark her books with colorful crayons and my own notes in the margins. It just seems like something she'd go for and then as I'm flipping through it for a thought, I can easily find it. Here is a smidgen of some thoughts I liked:

- "striving to be better when you're already pretty good."
- "we could all probably use more encouragement and less judging."
- "champion of righteousness" (I love happy phrases like that)
- "happiness is a conscious choice"
- "row, row, row your boat...gently down the stream. At this point in the history of everything, it's not 'gently down the stream'. Now it feels more like we're needing to go UPSTREAM, and the current is getting stronger all the time. Increasingly it seems that we can't just sit in our boat and drift. So the encouragement is to ROW. Don't just float, or you'll go over the falls!" (this was a great chapter on the value of work and self-reliance)
- "Part of our countenance, the light that comes from within, from what and who we really are, is our smiles."
She has a lot of great ideas to light a little fire inside to gain perspective, a better attitude, gratitude, testimony, etc. I know her style is not for everyone, but her thoughts and encouragement have helped me stay afloat on many a day.