He Hears Me

Today I had the sweetest experience. I attended the wedding of a good friend and was overcome with emotion when the sealer walked into the room. Years ago, this sealer Elder Dennis E. Simmons gave a talk titled "But If Not..." in general conference and it has become my foundation for life, especially when I'm approaching a difficult decision or being bombarded with adversity.

I've been so busy with work lately. Since my boss left in June, I average 10-12 hour work days. I usually work late on Friday evenings and most Saturdays. I struggle to not work on Sunday because I have a meeting first thing Monday morning, my new boss wants the presentation Sunday evenings (she isn't LDS) to review, and I usually don't get the numbers I need from people until Saturday evening if not Sunday morning. On Wednesday at 5:30, a bunch of assignments were piled on my plate even though I had already scheduled to have Thursday and Friday off. So, I worked until 1am until I was too tired to think, then got up the next day and worked another four hours, barely having enough time to help my parents which is why I took the time off in the first place. I worked everyday of my family's yearly vacation; my brother invited me to California with his family at the end of July and I felt I could only take two days off if I wanted a real vacation; and today I received a notice from my boss telling me I couldn't take any more time off until I had two people trained on our marketing automation system (something I've spent more than 100+ hours learning) because a catastrophe happened today and I wasn't around to fix it. And if I'm honest in this confession, the person who emailed the rant about not having a backup for me could have fixed the problem if he'd have looked at the situation more closely. No worries though. I solved the problem even though I had taken today off to be at my friend's wedding.

So when the sealer started with saying, "It's good to be in the temple today..." I began to cry. It was so good to be in the temple, to feel the peace of the Spirit without being bogged down by worldly cares. He continued reminding us that the world would have us pursue wealth but the Lord reminds we should only seek that which is sufficient for our needs. I realized that so much of my time and decisions center around something that is fourth or fifth on my priority list. I've been praying the past few months to know what to do and how to change my situation. I don't have an answer, but I know the Lord is aware of my need. He sent a tender mercy my way today. One that was very much needed.

Mormon Messages

I love the "Mormon Messages" the LDS Church has posted on YouTube. They are inspiring and are able to lift your spirits in just minutes. How grateful I am for words of living prophets and apostles for they bring hope, peace, and a sustained assurance in the atonement of Jesus Christ.

An Apostle's Easter Thoughts

I love Elder Holland! His words have a sacred spirit to them that are always able to touch my heart. At this Easter season, let us remember the divine gift of our Savior's atonement and His miraculous resurrection. Anything we have is because of Him. Anything we do should be in honor of Him. Anything we are able to become is only through the means and power of Him. I know Jesus Christ is our Savior. I pray we all may repent, come unto Him, and be His disciple.

How Do I Love Thee?

I have many favorite Valentine’s Day memories. Every year since I can remember, my dad has always bought his daughters flowers. Even when I was a little girl, a flower with my name attached would be found waiting for me on our kitchen table. When I was a temple worker, one of my shifts fell on Valentine’s Day. I still remember that session, which included a reunion with a beloved bishop, and I made a promise to attend the temple every Valentine’s Day I could thereafter. One of those times, a poem about my family came to my mind. It was the most incredibly experience to have the words flow into my head. I came home, wrote it (I actually recorded the words on my cell phone on the drive home from the temple), and immediately emailed it to my family. I have an immense amount of love and respect for my family! However, my favorite Valentine’s memory happened while I was an undergrad. Elder Holland came to speak the day after Valentine’s Day and he discussed love and marriage. I have quoted his talk on my blog before, but his words have such an incredible spirit that I wanted to share them again. Many of the quotes will be out of context, which will encourage you to read his talk. For those who want to hear the talk, click here. For those who want to read the talk in its entirety, click here.

I believe that second only to your membership in the Church, your "membership in a marriage" is the most important association you will have in time and eternity--and to the faithful what doesn't come in time will come in eternity.

True charity, the absolutely pure, perfect love of Christ, has really been known only once in this world--in the form of Christ Himself, the living Son of the living God…As in everything, Christ is the only one who got it all right, did it all perfectly, loved the way we are all to try to love. But even though we fall short, that divine standard is there for us. It is a goal toward which we are to keep reaching, keep striving--and, certainly, a goal to keep appreciating.

And as we speak of this, may I remind you, as Mormon explicitly taught, that this love, this ability, capacity, and reciprocation we all so want, is a gift. It is "bestowed"--that is Mormon's word. It doesn't come without effort and it doesn't come without patience, but, like salvation itself, in the end it is a gift, given by God to the "true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ." The solutions to life's problems are always gospel solutions. Not only are answers found in Christ, but so is the power, the gift, the bestowal, the miracle of giving and receiving those answers.

I have taken for a title to my remarks Mrs. Browning's wonderful line "How do I love thee?"… not when do I love thee nor where do I love thee nor why do I love thee nor why don't you love me, but, rather, how. How do I demonstrate it, how do I reveal my true love for you? Real love is best shown in the "how," and it is with the how that Mormon and Paul help us the most.

There are many qualities you will want to look for in a friend or a serious date--to say nothing of a spouse and eternal companion--but surely among the very first and most basic of those qualities will be those of care and sensitivity toward others, a minimum of self-centeredness that allows compassion and courtesy to be evident. There are lots of limitations in all of us that we hope our sweethearts will overlook. I suppose no one is as handsome or as beautiful as he or she wishes, or as brilliant in school or as witty in speech or as wealthy as we would like, but in a world of varied talents and fortunes that we can't always command, I think that makes even more attractive the qualities we can command--such qualities as thoughtfulness, patience, a kind word, and true delight in the accomplishment of another. These cost us nothing, and they can mean everything to the one who receives them.

True love blooms when we care more about another person than we care about ourselves. That is Christ's great atoning example for us, and it ought to be more evident in the kindness we show, the respect we give, and the selflessness and courtesy we employ in our personal relationships.

To give ourselves totally to another person, as we do in marriage, is the most trusting step we take in any human relationship. It is a real act of faith--faith all of us must be willing to exercise. If we do it right, we end up sharing everything--all our hopes, all our fears, all our dreams, all our weaknesses, and all our joys--with another person.

No serious courtship or engagement or marriage is worth the name if we do not fully invest all that we have in it and in so doing trust ourselves totally to the one we love. You cannot succeed in love if you keep one foot out on the bank for safety's sake. The very nature of the endeavor requires that you hold on to each other as tightly as you can and jump in the pool together. In that spirit, and in the spirit of Mormon's plea for pure love, I want to impress upon you the vulnerability and delicacy of your partner's future as it is placed in your hands for safekeeping--male and female, it works both ways.

In the honesty of our love--love that can't truly be Christlike without such total devotion--surely God will hold me accountable for any pain I cause [my wife] by intentionally exploiting or hurting her when she has been so trusting of me, having long since thrown away any self-protection in order that we could be, as the scripture says, "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).

In all that Christ was, He was not ever envious or inflated, never consumed with His own needs. He did not once, not ever, seek His own advantage at the expense of someone else. He delighted in the happiness of others, the happiness He could bring them. He was forever kind.

In a dating and courtship relationship, I would not have you spend five minutes with someone who belittles you, who is constantly critical of you, who is cruel at your expense and may even call it humor. Life is tough enough without having the person who is supposed to love you leading the assault on your self-esteem, your sense of dignity, your confidence, and your joy. In this person's care you deserve to feel physically safe and emotionally secure.

At least one difference between a tolerable marriage and a great one may be that willingness in the latter to allow some things to pass without comment, without response.

Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad.

One of the great purposes of true love is to help each other in these times. No one ought to have to face such trials alone. We can endure almost anything if we have someone at our side who truly loves us, who is easing the burden and lightening the load. Friends, sweethearts, and spouses need to be able to monitor each other's stress and recognize the different tides and seasons of life. We owe it to each other to declare some limits and then help jettison some things if emotional health and the strength of loving relationships are at risk. Remember, pure love "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," and helps loved ones do the same.

Of course such Christlike staying power in romance and marriage requires more than any of us really have. It requires something more, an endowment from heaven. Remember Mormon's promise: that such love--the love we each yearn for and cling to--is "bestowed" upon "true followers of Christ." You want capability, safety, and security in dating and romance, in married life and eternity? Be a true disciple of Jesus. Be a genuine, committed, word-and-deed Latter-day Saint. Believe that your faith has everything to do with your romance, because it does. You separate dating from discipleship at your peril. How should I love thee? As He does, for that way "never faileth."

Challenge to Become

One of my favorite talks is "The Challenge to Become" by Elder Oaks. His words touched my heart and made such an impression that the phrase "Challenge to Become" is the banner heading on my cell phone.

"From such teachings we conclude that the Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become."

The underlying principles that this phrase evokes in me are the importance of obedience and repentance. Studying these two principles has produced significant insights and knowledge over the years, but reading a friend's blog today resulted in greater understanding about the power of repentance. My friend referenced a talk in church and the speaker happened to post the foundation for his talk online. The post is titled A Fresh View of Repentance.

The essence of the speaker's talk was that there are two kinds of repentance: reactive repentance and proactive repentance. He writes:

The "classic" definition of repentance can be summarized in the following way: "feel sorry for your mistakes and stop making them". It is, in a very real way, a process of surgery - attempting to cut out and discard the "bad" from within us, so that we will stop making mistakes. ... Repentance IS a process of change that involves ridding ourselves of those tendencies that keep us from being Christ-like. It DOES include gaining control over those things that cause our transgressions. But ... reconciling to God is a process of acquiring the characteristics listed by Jesus as leading to perfection - adding them to your character - NOT cutting out pieces of yourself and assuming the holes will be filled somehow.

He then gives this example to explain the difference between reactive repentance and proactive repentance:

If you struggle with a temper that manifests itself through yelling at your kids, you can try to "overcome" this tendency in one of two ways. You can take the classic approach and exert tremendous effort to recognize when you are about to lose it and, in that moment, exert even more effort to control that tendency by suppressing it - assuming that if you suppress it often enough you will gain total control over it. The problem is that the temper has not been eliminated; it simply has been suppressed, which means it still is there. When that effort to suppress fails and the temper flares again, you feel like a failure, since your effort couldn't stop the outburst.

On the other hand, with a different VIEW (of repentance), you can look more deeply than just at the manifestation (your temper) and focus on the cure (becoming poor in spirit) in ALL aspects of your life. You can focus on the character trait that Jesus has identified as part of becoming perfect (in this case, poor in spirit) and allow Him to help you rid yourself of the underlying cause of the action. You repent by giving Him your burden (a temper) and agreeing to carry his yoke instead (walking humbly with Him). You repent by giving Him your heart and letting Him change your actions. You repent by forgetting about what you want to do and accepting what He wants you to do. You repent by ceasing to try to lessen who you are (eliminate part of yourself) and allowing Him to increase who you are (adding perfecting characteristics). In short, you repent by "losing (your view of) yourself" and "finding (His view of) yourself".

I now have a different view of repentance which has helped me focus my goals on the things the Savior taught. Hopefully all of us can become more like our Savior by giving our heart to Him and letting His atonement change us.

Hearts Knit in Unity

As I drive back and forth from school I listen to General Conference talks. As I drove home yesterday, Elder Eyring's talk answered some lingering questions I had on my mind which brought peace to my heart.

The children of God have more in common than they have differences. And even the differences can be seen as an opportunity. God will help us see a difference in someone else not as a source of irritation but as a contribution. The Lord can help you see and value what another person brings which you lack. More than once the Lord has helped me see His kindness in giving me association with someone whose difference from me was just the help I needed. That has been the Lord’s way of adding something I lacked to serve Him better.

Tender Mercy

As I travel back and forth between my house and the Tanner Building on BYU campus, I listen to general conference talks. The last time I burned a general conference MP3, I felt I should put on two additional talks both given during BYU devotionals from Elder Hales and Elder Holland. I remember exactly where I was sitting and how I felt when I first heard Elder Holland's talk. It was the day after Valentine's Day and I had some tough questions on my mind. The talk seemed to be directed towards me. Questions were answered, hope was given, and faith renewed. Tonight Elder Holland's talk played as I was driving. I heard the very words that I needed to hear. My heart softened and fears departed. So, my post is dedicated to a talk that once again has given me hope. Though the talk relates to marriage, my focus is on the principles of faith.

To give ourselves totally to another person, as we do in marriage, is the most trusting step we take in any human relationship. It is a real act of faith--faith all of us must be willing to exercise. If we do it right, we end up sharing everything--all our hopes, all our fears, all our dreams, all our weaknesses, and all our joys--with another person.

Nothing In Life Is Accomplished Without Passion

As I reflect on my final two months of teaching in the public schools I wonder what I want my students to learn. I came up with this short list after watching the Randy Pausch Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (Something I highly recommend to all!).

*Try! Don't let fear stop you
*If you want it to happen, make it happen
*Do the right thing, even if its hard
*Be prepared for Option B
*Live life with a positive attitude
*Be kind to others