Spoonful of Sugar

As I was cleaning the bathroom today, getting the house ready since tomorrow we will all be busy with Stake Youth Conference, I was letting my mind wander. It found its way to thinking about an experiment a friend and I are doing that involves Disney characters. I had asked my mom which she thought I was, and she said Mary Poppins because I want to be practically perfect in every way. I continued to think about what Mary Poppins is, her characteristics and just the movie in general. Since I was cleaning and thinking about Mary Poppins, I suppose it was somewhat inevitable that I started singing A Spoonful of Sugar. This got the wheels in my head really turning. What does the song actually mean and how can I apply a lesson from it in my life?

Well... I started with the fact that Mary Poppins starts singing it while she and the children are cleaning, something that most children highly dislike. The level of distaste for cleaning is probably about the same level as for taking medicine. What is it in life that is medicine to me? The things that I just really don't like and will only do if forced and even then it is often grudgingly. So I thought of a few. Then I remembered the spoonful of sugar part. Taking something sweet or good, something that we can enjoy, helps the medicine go down. What spoonfuls of sugar have I found to help the medicine go down? Do I focus on the medicine or the sugar? I think often we are able to taste more of the sugar when we change our attitude about the whole situation.

One example for me are the liquid supplements I have to take daily right now. Not many people like the flavor of the children's cough syrup. The best of the three I take is right on that same level. Gross. Absolutely and completely no way around it. The other two are even worse. Just the smell of them makes you cringe away from them. I had a very hard time in the beginning with the idea of taking all three of these horrible substances everyday. It felt like torture. Then I figured out that if I drank the middle level one first, it was like a primer. Take the worst next and its not too much worse than the first so I can deal with it. Then I get to be excited about how much better the last one tastes in comparison. It still would taste awful by itself, like the dreaded cough syrup, but after the first too, its like candy.

I have come to the conclusion that many things in life are hard. They are our medicine. We don't always like them, but in the end they are going to help us. The spoonful of sugar can be multiple different things. Whether it is gratitude, prayer, faith, trust, sugar, acceptance, or a host of other things, we can find the sugar in our own lives. We don't have to focus on how awful the medicine takes. As long as we taste the spoonful of sugar, it will help the medicine go down. And how much happier we will be not letting the medicine get us down every day, but being excited about the spoonful of sugar we are getting!