Muddy Waters

This morning Jordyn asked me if I would please go on her field trip. I had a lot to do and wasn't sure I could fit it in, but decided that I needed to give my own child the priority I give everyone else. She is going through the phase of hating and loving me simultaneously, so when she is in the mood to love I need to jump on it.

I still held out a little hope of being able to get out of the field trip thinking there might be too many parents going so I wouldn't be needed. After arriving at the the school Jordyn remembered that she didn't wear the mandatory pants for the trip instead of the shorts she was wearing. Major grump alert. It was too far to go home and make it back before the bus would arrive to whisk everyone away. There is major controversy right now with the closest store to the school that carries pants. Should I go in? I was going to have to if I was going to make it back in time. As luck would have it the only pair of pants hanging on the clearance rack were the right size and I was in and out in less than 5 minutes.

Murphy's law states that if you hurry and compromise your principles the bus will be late. And late it was, which was making me anxious because this meant that I would be getting back later as well. I didn't have time for that. I took a deep breath and decided to go with the flow knowing that I was doing the right thing at the right time and all would work out. It's hard being a high strung person who has to have these moments with themselves! 

OK, so it's been a few days since I started writing this. Time got away from me. As I was sitting on a downed tree branch waiting for the kids to get done collecting their samples for the field trip, one of the teachers asked me what I was reading. I looked at it. Thought for a minute how I was going to answer, and then just decided to go for it. "All these things shall give thee experience." She just looked at me. Didn't know what to say and started looking around. I took this as my que to change the subject. "So, how's the water level? Has it gone down? Maybe I should go check it out."

As I was standing there looking at the brown dirty water I thought of Naaman and having to dip himself 7 times in what he considered the far inferior and filthy Jordan river. He also suffered feelings of smallness when the prophet Elisha wouldn't even come out and tell him what he needed to do to be healed from his leprosy, instead sending a servant. It wasn't that dirty water that cleansed him from his leprosy, it was obedience to the council of the prophet. 

    

Before I had gone to the river bank I had been reading in that book that caused the awkwardness something that answered a question for me.

I have been pondering and pondering keeping God's commandments. More specifically how to deal with the choices of others. How much does it matter. What's the line between helping and condoning. Understanding the difference between addiction and the character and worth of a person. A close friend is tearing me up over choices that they are making. I know. Circle of influence. You can't care more about peoples problems than they do...yada yada. But when you love someone it becomes difficult. A question that I finally asked myself was "am I sad that I lost this person or am I sad that they are lost." Tough question and I don't know the answer to that. 

So on this day when I wasn't sure I had time to go on a field trip with my daughter, I gained some much needed clarity by way of Neil A Maxwell. He was talking about how we are not forced to follow the conditions God laid down for us. We are free do as we please. He explained that we have a resistance to feeling owned because it reminds us how dependent we are upon God. He talked about how to overcome those feelings of being owned by transforming those feelings into "a grand sense of belonging, and being purchased into gratitude for being rescued, and dependency into appreciation for being tutored."

He continues:"the myopic pride that fails to acknowledge these overarching realities and says 'I am the captain of my soul' fails to see that 'corporal of my soul' would be, at least somewhat closer to the truth."

He then explained that trust in God is crucial. In fact it is the principle of real religion to know the true nature of God -according to Joseph Smith. It's because of those very feelings of ownership that we need that trust.

I needed to be reminded that "the tests given to us here are given not because God is in doubt as to the outcome, but because we need to grow in order to be able to serve with full effectiveness in the eternity to come...to be untested and unproven is also to be unaware of all that we are. If we are unknowing of our possibilities, with who could we safely be entrusted? Could we in ignorance of our capacities trust ourselves? Could others then be entrusted to us?"

I can't tell you exactly what I understood while I was sitting there on that log with those questions on my heart. That's the beauty of truth being poured out upon you by the power of the Holy Ghost. It's not in a language you can communicate to others. But I knew what it meant and what I needed to do. 

The more I understand, the more I know that being able to answer this one question is crucial: do I believe that Heavenly Father loves ALL of His children? If the answer is yes, then what does it mean to me? How do I go about rescuing those who are lost? Do I ever give up? Most of the time the answer to those questions will be pretty muddy. 

I woke up Sunday morning with a new mantra from a dream that I had. Someone was making excuses for not doing what they were supposed to by saying "I think the Lord would understand." After thinking about it in my dream and wondering at the validity of such a statement these words came into my mind. "Does the Lord expect us not to do things that are difficult?" (the wording of that was so much better when I had just woken up) My husband then reminded me that it sounded an awful lot like what President Monson just said during the recent general conference: "may we always choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong." Words to live by!