10 Years and 1,569 Posts Later

Today is Memorial Day, and while so many people remember those military service members who have died, I recognize it as something more personal. For Memorial Day weekend 10 years ago, a guy I had hired as a virtual personal trainer who I ended up becoming friends with had issued his clientele a personal challenge. The challenge was something like “what in your life are you not getting enough out of, and what can you do about it?” He was approaching it from a health stand point, but the need I had was spiritual. A couple of weeks before this question came up, I thought to myself that I wasn’t getting enough out of my scripture study. At the time, I was reading when I went to bed and just read until I fell asleep and that was it. I had been studying this way for a couple of years and while I had outgrown it’s usefulness, when I started that method, it was definitely a step forward from not reading at all.

I wanted to find a study guide that went through the Book of Mormon verse by verse and analyzed it, and I looked quite a bit but couldn’t find one. It was during this search that my friend issued his challenge and I decided that I wasn’t getting enough out of my scripture study, and I could find a study guide, so I decided to make one myself, and that’s how this started

When I started this blog 10 years ago, my divorce had only been final for 3 weeks, I had only gone to the temple for the first time 3 months earlier, my kids were 6 and 8, and I was working the night shift while living in California. At the time I thought that within the subsequent 10 years I would get married to an amazing man, maybe have more kids, not have to work as much, and just be living a happy, righteous life with my happy, righteous husband and kids. I’m still single, I don’t even date for a lot of reasons. In a lot of ways my life is much different than I ever expected it to be at this point.

Back in 2018 at the 5 year/1,000 post mile stone I made a post detailing the main lessons that I had learned in the previous 5 years, such as who God is and who I am to Him, and who everyone else is to Him as well. Everyone is on their own path. People accept and reject the gospel for many different reasons and they are all valid. This life is hard, the human experience varies from difficult to horrific because of gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, race, etc. If we truly believe that God is just, then the only truth that we can accept is that each and every one of us will have the opportunity at some point to learn and accept the gospel in the way that we understand it and that makes sense to us. There are so many social issues that people need to reconcile within themselves before the gospel will even be an option for them to accept.

The human psyche is so complex, only God, as the Master psychologist, is able to plan and execute our individual paths toward salvation. When we see someone living or acting or believing in a way that goes against what we live or act or believe, then know that Christ Himself has facilitated that person’s progress up to that point and we can either help that person’s progress, and our own, by being kind and loving, or we can hinder their progress, and ours, by being judgmental and hostile.

We as individual people can not convince people to repent, no matter how much we scold, lecture, or disown them, only the Spirit can create the desire for someone to repent in their heart. If we truly want to be part of someone’s repentance process, it’s important that we ask ourselves why. Why is it so important that we involve ourselves in someone else’s repentance process? Are we sufficiently engaged in our own repentance process? And if we are determined to be, then we can only participate “by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge.” We can only affect change in others when we work by the Spirit and we can only work by the Spirit when we truly are in tune with Him at every point, and that is a very difficult task to maintain. Sure we can feel the Spirit and His influence sometimes, but to have it all the time, that takes a Herculean effort on our part, so we need to work on ourselves and our own worthiness before we start looking to call others to repentance, and when we are worthy enough, the Spirit will let us know.

I’ve spent the last 10 years studying the scriptures and mostly, the biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe that there was a man who lived 2,000 years ago, who came to earth as the Son of God, and he performed miracles, he suffered and died for our sins so that we could spend eternity happy, in resurrected bodies, with God and our families. I believe that we lived as spirits with God before we were born and that we will return to live with Him after we die. I believe that this life is horrific, but there’s a reason for that difficulty, even though we might not understand that reason, and that in the end, we will all agree that it was worth it, like C.S. Lewis says, “(Mortals) say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory… The Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.’”

I believe that Jesus Christ and our Father God, knows each and every person that has ever lived, intimately, and that they have made and are currently carrying out a plan for each and every individual to learn and accept the gospel in their own time and to their own understanding. I believe that we are to all be saved or else none of us, and I believe that when the time comes, we will accept the gospel because we all already accepted it before we came here. I believe that through the atonement, Jesus Christ has given birth to every child and has died every death. He has been both the victim and the perpetrator of every crime ever committed, He’s cried every tear and smiled at every joy. He’s the only thing that has ever mattered, and I’m grateful beyond words that I’ve been allowed to be a part of it.