Human Becomings

"Moments are the molecules that make up eternity" - Neal A. Maxwell

Consider if you will the plans that you have set forth for your future. You want a good home, a stable job, a loving spouse, to be able to provide and support a family temporally and spiritually. All of these things come and are set, based on the decisions and actions you make in the here and now. Alma 34:32 says "For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors." So as we are preparing now to get a good education, a good job, and life stability, we are also preparing for something greater. We are preparing to attain that spiritual stability that we all so desperately need.

In a general conference talk Elder Boyd K. Packer, an apostle of the Lord in these the latter-days, spoke very eloquently on the fact that we are here to prepare to meet God. Our time here, is to gain knowledge

and to act upon that knowledge in order to attain those things that the Lord has for us. Consider if you will the degree of a Surgeon. He must go through years of schooling, and put forth much effort in order to gain the degree that will give him the right to aid those who are in need of him. However he cannot go to just any trade school, he cannot just be admitted to any university and expect this diploma. He must go to the right school, and he must put forth time and energy in order to assimilate the knowledge necessary to move forward in the field of his choosing. Effort and action must be taken. As it is in life, we must take the proper steps, follow Gods path as laid forth for us, and we must be prepared to make a concerted effort to enter into his kingdom.

This next story is that of a girl I met only for a second, but she is truly someone I respect and admire, our meeting was short, but the mark she left on my life will last forever. She is an example of becoming, of learning the will of God, doing the will of God, and becoming the disciple he asks us to be. Taking these steps changed her life for the better, and now she is full of a light that shines through her, you can truly see our Heavenly Fathers image in her countenance, and the light of Christ most assuredly shines in her eyes.  

This is her story:

One summer I was given the opportunity to work at the Rockin R Ranch. I had no idea that my life would be changed forever. While working there I was invited to attend church, and not soon after I started asking questions and learning more about the church. 

At first I felt like the church just wasn’t for me. I was raised a Methodist and went to church regularly growing up but never really learned anything there. Church was just something you did for an hour on Sunday then you went on with your life. As soon as I was old enough to choose for myself I stopped going to church. I was always a trouble maker growing up but as soon as I hit my teenage years things got out of control. I was misunderstood and struggled with school from a young age. By the time high school came around I had started to give up all together: family, school, morals values. I thought life's too hard to be doing all this work and trying to be a good person. I wanted to make friends and have fun and that’s all I cared about.

The end of my sophomore year I was at the end of my rope. Things were worse than they had ever been. My relationship with my family was unbearable. School meant nothing to me. I hadn’t turned in an assignment for years and I never went to class. All I cared about was getting messed up and partying with friends. At this point none of the schools in Nashville wanted me and I was in trouble with the law. I had no respect for anyone not even myself. I didn’t care about anything. Life was about the party and I was going to live it up while I could.

 Monday, April 28, I was sent to a wilderness program in Clayton Georgia. Words cannot describe the three month experience I had there. The Blue Ridge Mountains were my home. I was only given the things I would need to survive. Towards the end of my stay in wilderness I thought I was pretty spiritual and happy but I had no idea how good it could really get. After wilderness I was sent to a Residential Treatment Center in Mapleton Utah for 11 months. I had been mentally and physically broken down in wilderness and this was my chance to start fresh and learn how to live right. I was still angry but with time I learned to love care and respect others and myself. I fixed my relationship with my family and learned how to deal with life without drugs. While I was there I met a man named Brandon. I absolutely hated the man at first but when the day came for me to leave I was crying in his arms. I didn’t want to leave treatment. It was the first time I was truly happy with life and I felt so safe! I had committed to living sober and was afraid I couldn’t stay clean in the real world. I had used drugs since I was thirteen and they had become a part of my everyday life. But I had been given the skills I needed to be successful and it was time for me to move on. I was home for my senior year and it was the happiest I had ever been. But even then I still left like something was missing. I still struggled with my identity; WHO AM I? I had no idea. The thought gave me chills. I would look in the mirror and know something was missing. Around Christmas time Brandi and Brandon contacted me and I agreed to come work for them for the summer. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. I really don’t even know why I said yes. 

As my senior year came to an end and the time drew closer and closer for me to go out west, I didn’t want to leave! All my friends told me to stay in Nashville and I agreed. I wanted to stay home for my senior year summer. Everything inside me told me don’t go. I cried for days but I had given Brandon my word so I went. I met the Snyders, Jacob Smith, and Shiloh White. Immediately I had respect for the LDS church. There was something about them that pulled me in. I had never met people who worked and lived so humble and happily together. They had so much love for everyone around them and it was easy to see. 

Mormons weren’t the people I thought they were. I could have fun with Hatti, Kord, Anndi, Hannah, Shiloh and Jake just like I did with my own family and friends back home. All the horror stories I had heard about Mormons weren’t true. Even with everything they knew about me and my past they all took me in as a friend without judgments. I was going to church with them every weekend. I hungered for more knowledge of the Gospel. I was so curious. The more I learned the more I loved and respected it but I still had my doubts. Eventually Shiloh and Hannah asked me if I would meet with the missionaries and I agreed. 

The first time I met with the missionaries felt pointless. I didn’t learn much or feel anything. The next time I met with them they asked me to pray to God and ask for truth. For the next month I prayed constantly throughout the day! Asking every question I could think of. I wanted to know anything and everything I could about the church. I was meeting with the missionaries three times a week and soaking up all the information I could. I prayed and prayed and felt nothing! But I wasn’t going to give up. Something inside me told me to keep trying. I started to read the scriptures and kept asking questions, going to church, and praying like crazy! I would stay up all night with Anndi Hannah and Shiloh talking about the Gospel. The scriptures were so hard for me to understand. I have always had a hard time reading cause I never learned in school and probably only read one book all the way through in my whole life. So Brandi and Brandon read with me every night. They broke everything down so I could understand it. The more I read the easier it was for me to understand. Two months after I started to investigate the church my prayers were answered! The missionaries and Jacob Smith were teaching me about the Kingdoms and how we get our bodies back after the second coming and I just broke down. I could feel the spirit the whole time they were teaching me and it was the most amazing feeling. Later Brandi had me read 3 Nephi 11: 7-15. I knew it was true! Everything! I could feel it. The prophet, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith. I knew it was all true. I knew it was God answering my prayers and I was so grateful! Then the missionaries had me read Mosiah 18: 9-10. After lots of prayer I wanted to be baptized. I wanted to live righteously and have the life style that came with being LDS and had never been so sure about anything in my entire life. My baptism was the most amazing day of my life. I didn’t have some huge revelation. I just felt so calm and at peace with my decision. I am so grateful for the gospel in my life! I will never understand why I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to find the church and get baptized! Even my worst day is a good day. I realize now how beautiful and precious my life is. I want to praise God for my struggles and my past because it’s made me who I am today and brought me to the Gospel! I don’t know how I made it through my trial without the gospel but now that I have it I know I couldn’t live without it. I no longer wonder who I am. I can look in the mirror and tell myself I am a DAUGHTER OF GOD. I want to share this happiness and the gospel with everyone! And we all can by living the gospel and having Gods image in our countenance.

We are not human beings, God never intended for us to just remain the same throughout eternity. We are HUMAN BECOMINGS, we are made of the stuff of eternity as President Uchtdorf once said, and staying the same just means that we are going backwards. Someone once told me that life is like riding uphill on roller blades, if you aren't continually working your way up you will most assuredly fall backwards.

God asks us to act on the message of the restored gospel because he knows that is the only way we can ever grow towards him, and our eternal goal should be to live with our Father in Heaven again, surrounded by our family and those we have come to know and love on this earth.  

Children of a King: Our Eternal Potential

 As children we see the world as a place of magic, anything and everything is possible! I believed that I could be anything, I believed that I could do anything, and I believed that I could accomplish anything. Dragons and far off kingdoms were only an imagination away. However as we grow we become jaded by disappointments that come, and our eye for magic begins to diminish and a heart of skepticism replaces it. Why can't the joy from the simple things remain in our hearts? I would say that with that joy of pure simplicity coupled with imagination great expectations would follow, and as those expectations aren't met, our heart becomes closed off and we expect less and less from life.

What would it be like if God was like that with us? If every mistake we made God just thought "well, you messed up, I guess you can't meet the expectations that I had for you, let's lower those expectations just a bit" We would never reach our eternal potential because we would never have someone there to help us make it! But God doesn't react that way, he knows the potential we can reach, and every time we disappoint him he reaches out with an outpouring of love and comfort and a request for us to repent and make a concerted effort to keep the commandments. He knows that therein lies the key to success and the fulfillment of our dreams. So why would we react that way? if God keeps his expectations for us set high, why ever would we lower them for ourselves?

The Lion King: A story of Great Expectations

Simba, as we all know, is a lion, born of a king, who learns from his father that he has a royal inheritance. Anything that the light touches is the land that he will inherit. Woah... that's a pretty big inheritance. In the bible the apostle Paul writes to the Romans of the heirship we, as children of our Father in heaven, hold.  "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." (Romans 8:17) Even Christ has said  "2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." (John 14:2) So if we are joint-heirs with Christ, and our Father in Heaven has many mansions, we have a large inheritance, but we must first answer the call to "be ye therefore perfect as my Father in heaven who is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)

 Simba has a large shoes to fill as well, and he begins to learn how to fill them, but unbeknownst to Simba, his uncle is forming a nefarious plot to overthrow the throne. Simba is trying to only please his father, but a mistake is made and tragedy is the result. Then happens one of the most tear jerking scenes in all of Disney movie history and Simba is left on his own, he runs away, and he desires to never look back.

Think if you will of a time in your life where you were disappointed, hurt, and let down and you wished to never look back, but the pain of loss or regret still dwindled in your heart? With this, were your expectations lowered for yourself, for your future, for who you desired to be? I'm sure they were for Simba as well, (I understand he is a fictional character but bear with me here) he felt that it was his fault his Father had died, and he had no desire to reach the expectations that his Father held for him because he felt as if he couldn't reach them, therefore he forsook his royal inheritance for the wilderness.

But further on in life, Simba is told "remember who you are" reminding him that he does have a royal inheritance, and that so many are looking to him to make a difference. Simba had Great Expectations! 

"Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it" - Rafiki

In the end Simba changes, he again seeks the path that will lead to happiness, he is reunited with his mother and family, and he reaches his potential and brings about peace in the land.  

Our Royal Inheritance: 

"As we journey through mortality, let us remember from whence we came; let us be true to the trust vested in us. Let us remember who we are and what God expects us to become." - Thomas S. Monson

We must understand that we are, like I said previously, Joint-Heirs with Christ. We once lived with our Heavenly Father in the premortal existance, and while we cannot remember all of our life before this one, but one thing we cannot forget is who we are and who we can become. The commandment to become perfect is not an easy one, but with the help of our savior and the atonement we can loose the pain of the past and look forward to the future with hope, always focusing on who our father in heaven sees we can become!

Faith

Repentance

Baptism

Recieving the Gift of the Holy Ghost

Enduring to the End

These are the steps that MUST be taken, to again live with our Father in Heaven. 

Never loose hope, God knows who you can become, it is in your hands to become it!