Alma 32:21-43

Today has been a very interesting day. I've spent much of the time thinking about the concept of being submissive to the Lord and trying to figure out what that meant and how I could go about best accomplishing it. One of my best friends ever sent me a huge 16x20 inch print of an amazing temple picture that she took, it's not this one but I can't find it, so I'm posting this one instead just to get the message across. Anyway, she sent me this amazing print yesterday and I've been waiting for it forever and was so happy that it came and started to think about getting a frame for it, but while I was thinking about being submissive to God, I thought through all my reasons that I was resisting it, coming up with crazy scenarios, but ultimately it came down to me not trusting God to do what's in my best interest. But I thought about that picture and everything that it represented, and really felt in my heart that no God who provided the beauty and peace of a temple to His people could ever act in a way that deviated from our best interest. I knew in that moment that doing everything that the Lord wants me to do will only result in my happiness, and that I finally could trust God enough to acknowledge that. So I spent the rest of the day trying to feel the Spirit and to make the choices that the Savior wanted me to make so that I could be happy, and some were easier, like paying attention to my kids instead of reading a book, and others I didn't do so well at, like venting to my coworker about something that upset me, but I was/am genuinely trying, and we had Family Home Daytime, like we do every Tuesday and my little family has been going through some rough times the last couple of weeks, so after I fed them their snack, I went into the other room for a few minutes and heard the kids fighting, and I yelled something to them, and then a miracle happened... Both kids started laughing together! I hadn't heard laughter like that is almost 2 months! It was liberating, it was freeing, it was amazing, and my little heart melted because my kids were happy, finally happy, and laughing and having fun and getting to be kids. I came back into the kitchen and they continued to laugh and we all laughed together, and had a great time, and even when we started playing a game and they inevitably started huffing at each other, I was able to restore order quickly and without yelling or hurt feelings, it was truly a miracle, one that my little family needed so desperately, and I knew in that moment that the plans that God has for me are only good ones, I just have to be willing to do what he tells me and to listen. I think one of the conclusions that I came to while thinking about this today was that I was afraid that by trusting God I would be opening myself up for a free for all of enormous trials, and that if I didn't trust God then he wouldn't esteem me worthy of experiencing those trials and I would be allowed to live in peace, and I think that this stems from all those years in childhood that I blamed God for my suffering, it was his fault for allowing it, he could have saved me at any time if he wanted but he just liked to see my suffer. Of course now I know that that's not true, but years of conditioning have made me resistant to trusting God. But the more that I thought about it, I realized that I am going to experience trials, both great and small, throughout my life regardless of my standing before the Lord, the only difference is that if I have spent my peaceful times building a belief system and hope upon the immovable foundation of Christ that I would be able to weather the storms no matter what they were. But if I spend my time resisting spiritual growth then I will be essentially heaping scrap lumber together and binding it with chewed bubble gum and waiting for the storm with my umbrella. The storms are coming, no matter what, but how do I want to weather them? With peace and hope and comfort and love or with bitterness and hate and despair and anger? It was quite the revelation to me, and I'm so grateful that the Lord taught me that today, I know that I have a huge hill to climb and it's difficult to even just keep the idea of doing what Jesus wants me to do in the fore front of my mind, but I'm trying and I'm going to make it happen because it's really important to me.

Alma 32:21-43 - I'm super short on time here and the rest of the chapter is super content heavy. Unfortunately for me, some of the things that the IM talks about is a little bit over my head, so I'm going to try to cover as much as I can, especially since I already covered the whole growing the seed of faith into the tree of life that lives in your heart. It was really interesting how much I had grasped because the rest of this chapter was the reading that I did with my kids today and I was able to explain to them, and actually have them explain it back to me that, they are very smart and seem to be grasping the concepts of the gospel so well, I'm really proud of them. Basically what we took from this chapter are, planting the seed of faith means obeying the commandments, reading the scriptures, praying, and then as we do this we grow our seed until finally it is becomes the tree of life, the love of God that lives in our hearts. I loved this picture from the IM, I thought that it was a great visual: 

I think that I am probably in the second stage, just barely out of the sprouting, but still pretty young in the gospel. I'm out of time and because there are literally pages of IM content on the rest of the chapter, I'm going to just copy and paste it. I wished I had more time to go through all this, but I feel like I have grasped the very basic concepts of the chapter, and am ready to move on. Maybe next time when I come through Alma 32 I will be more spiritually advanced and ready to learn the more refined lessons but until them, I'm grateful that I have learned so much from this chapter, and I feel like it has been very profitable to me. I'm grateful for the chance to keep growing and for the constant encouragement and guidance that the Lord gives me, even when I don't deserve it.