No Donughts

When my oldest child was going through a "scared of everything once bedtimes comes around" phase, I taught him about prayer. I told him that whenever he was scared he needed to pray to Heavenly Father and ask Him to take away his fears. But I told him there was a second part to that as well. Along with asking for help-he needed to let his fear go. He didn't understand me, so I came up with an analogy to help him. Here it is:

Pretend you're trying to eat healthier, so you try to stay away from donughts. But there is this guy who is ALWAYS trying to give you a donught. So you decided to just hold on to the donught-but not eat it. You won't, your trying to eat better right? We'll that same guy follows you around and tells you how good the donught is and how much you want it. So now all you can think about it that donught. You've asked your dad for help to not eat the donught, but you won't let him take the donught away from you. That is the same with prayer.

In Hayden's case-he would ask Heavenly Father to take away his fears, but he wasn't giving them to Him so he could take them away. I'd say, "ask for help." Then he'd say, "but what if I start thinking about it again?" My reply, "then you haven't given your donught to Heavenly Father. Satan is the one who gave you that donught. (The scared donught) because he likes it when you are scared. So he wants you to hold on to that donught so you stay scared. If you push the donught away and give it to Heavenly Father, then you won't have anything to be scared of because you won't have that 'scared donught' anymore."

Why do I share this? Well because I've been thinking a lot about what donught a I've been holding onto lately. And part of becoming "a changed person" means giving up my donughts. It's harder then you'd think. Sometimes our donughts can be comforting, in a strange way. Like the "donught of pride" or the "donught of laziness" or my Texas size donught...the "donught of things past." Lately I've been praying to help me get through things and get over things that I'm working on. Then I remembered the donught analogy and it hit me. In order to be truly helped, I need to get rid of my donughts. So I did-at least one so far.i have a lot of donughts I'm still clinging to, but that's a start. And I, like my scared son, wondered "what if I think about it again and all my feelings come back?" So in my prayer, along with asking for help. Getting over things, I also asked to not think about my donught again. And so far so good. Anytime Satan starts to head toward me with his box of donughts, I just say (in my head), NO THANK YOU! I DO NOT WANT THAT DONUGHT!

So my question for you to PONDER (no need to share them with me.) is, what donughts are you holding onto? Are they holding you back from being truly happy?