Patience

This verse is one of the best hidden gems in the Bible.

“Based on His characteristically radical, transformative teachings, I highly doubt Jesus Christ expects us to sit around.”

The following has been republished with permission from charactercure.com.

For more information on this topic read “The Atonement Covers All Pain” by Elder Kent F. Richards, Ensign, May 2011, 15.

The world has its counterfeits for faith. One way to decide what faith is, and why it is becoming so scarce in our world, is to first explore what it is not.

If there’s one dependable sign that it’s Christmas, it’s the sudden appearance of poinsettias in every display window and on every piece of Christmas decor. Our office here at LDS Living recently had some of these festive plants appear in the lobby of each floor of our building. However, after only a week of being placed there, when I came in on Monday after the weekend, I noticed that the poor plant on our floor was looking very . . . limp. I immediately thought, “Oh, they must have forgotten to water it over the weekend.” I immediately poured a bit of water into the dying plant, feeling good that I had helped save our living Christmas symbol.

Our Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ, are both childlike, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things (Mosiah 3:19). However, the natural man is the opposite of these qualities.

When we have a broken heart, we often avoid feeling the pain—whether it is a divorce, a breakup, or even a job loss. We fill our lives with busywork to get through the pain, but there’s no easy way out of those overwhelming empty feelings. We need time to grieve and accept the heartache; otherwise, it will heal very slowly or not at all. Experts recommend we go through the emotional pain, not around it. By learning to deal with these emotions, we become stronger people and more capable of handling our trials.

A recently married couple shared everything they had, even their passwords to their emails. While this was initially a sign of trust, over time they gave into the fear most couples have and began asking themselves “Is my spouse faithful?” Instead of trusting their partner, they began checking each other’s emails and phones when the other was not looking for indications of unfaithfulness. Yes, there are times, when prompted to do this. Yet is this done because of lacking trust in self or in the other. And inevitably you find what you are looking for. When you only dwell on one idea, you become that idea. In this case, one partner cheated and the other found out and cheated too, just to get even. Their trust diminished and replaced with fear.

I never had the goal to marry an Apostle. My goal was to draw close to Heavenly Father and make my life as meaningful and happy as I could. Because I value and believe in the plan of salvation, I wanted all the blessings associated with it. That included someday, in this life or the next, finding a companion that I loved and respected, a man I could trust and depend on, who would be loyal to me and active in the Church. I wanted to marry a man who loved the Lord more than he loved me, whose allegiance was to His eternal covenants. It would simply follow that such a man would be true to me and our future family.

While having a good job, earning a living, and making meaningful connections with others are all incredibly important components of a well-rounded lifestyle, these things should not become the foundation of who we are and how we seek our happiness.

One of my favorite games to play with my friends as a child was “MASH.” We would write out MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) at the top of any scrap of paper we had, then in between giggles we would come up with the names of our future husbands (usually whoever we had crushes on at the time), how many kids we could possibly have (from 1 to 1,000), what careers we might end up with (anything from artist to astronaut), and other “important” facts about our lives that would then be determined by a chance elimination based on a random number.

I think we as humans crave certainty and control. When we encounter complex issues and situations—more general ones like polygamy or priesthood restrictions, or intensely personal ones like having same-sex attraction or dealing with a devastating divorce or death—we want to make sense of them. We want to know why it’s happening and how everything is going to work out. In the absence of a clear explanation, we or others may invent one.

In the 1960s, a study at Stanford’s Bing Nursery School tested the patience and willpower of young children. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf elaborated on this study in his talk, “Continue in Patience.” The children were placed in a room alone with a marshmallow and told they could either eat the marshmallow right away or, if they waited about 15 minutes, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. Only a third were able to wait long enough to receive the second treat.

To one degree or another, every person will face doubt in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This isn’t because the gospel is weak, flawed, or because the Church stands on weak historical ground (spoiler: it doesn’t). Doubt occurs naturally, even with faithful, commandment-keeping members. Just like joy and sorrow or bitter and sweet, doubt and faith are two sides of the same coin.

Daily personal challenges are common enough in our culture— things like negativity, doubt, anger, loneliness, jealousy, and selfishness. Despite their commonality, these trials can be the most dangerous and degrading to the soul. They wear us down physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

“You’re such a perfectionist!”

Imagine for a minute you’re sitting in sacrament meeting and a 12 year old boy decides it would be fun to play angry birds on an iPad with the volume all the way up?

One night when I was 17 years old I knelt beside my bed and sincerely asked Heavenly Father for my own testimony. I prayed, “Heavenly Father, if I’m going to do this I have to feel something.” After I said that I could feel something I never felt before, reassurance. I suddenly knew without a doubt not only that this was the one true church but that I had to start working to be baptized. I began to cry not just because of the answer I had received but because I knew it meant I would lose my dad.

Elder Russell M. Ballard spoke in the October 2014 session of General Conference about staying on the Old Ship Zion. He warned us to stay on the boat, wear our life jackets, and hold on tight. I wrote about that here.

1. Believe

On the surface, it appeared to be a typical Sunday in a typical LDS chapel in Phoenix. There were a couple of items, however, that would make it stand out in my mind forever. It was Leap Day 2004 — the day after my 25th birthday – and it was the day my husband was sustained and set apart as a bishop. It was the day I became a bishop’s wife.

God Needs a Powerful People. But so many of us (myself included) shrink with feelings of insecurity. I know I can do more good when I stop beating myself up, but how?

I was building shelves in my garage when a neighbor girl, one of my 4-year-old daughter’s friends, approached me and said, “I just saw in your house. It’s pretty dirty. Norah’s mommy needs to clean more.”

Several spiritual wildernesses ago, I found myself a new scripture hero. Caleb, from the Old Testament, was one amazing, tough dude: faithful, honest, courageous and determined. In the second year after escaping Egypt, Caleb and Joshua – at the direction of Moses – go exploring into the Promised Land¹. Ten others went with them, all twelve being a representative of each of the tribes of Israel. When they all returned and told of what they’d seen, only Caleb and Joshua reported positively on the land they had explored.

I’ve been working on making my running more efficient, trying to get faster and using my energy in the right ways. One suggestion given to me was to make sure I was getting 180 steps per minute. I realize that there are some differing opinions on this (as there are with everything in the running world), but for me, I thought I would give it a try.

Flannery O’Connor, the Catholic novelist, said it surprised her how many people of her faith “constantly underestimated the cost of salvation.”

A few weeks ago, I found myself craving something seriously yummy and I couldn’t find anything that quite fit the bill in my kitchen. It was a Sunday, so I obviously couldn’t just hop down to the convenience store…so I decided to bake. I pulled out my recipe book collection and started flipping through trying to find the perfect cookie recipe.

Towards the end of 2013, John Bytheway and I flew together to Temecula, CA and both spoke at a Mid Single's Conference. He told me a story that I will never forget, and by 'never forget' I mean, I mostly forgot the story, but not the message, haha (My apologies to John for butchering your story).

By “solitude”, Foster means also to include “silence” and as usual warns against excess and vanity:

Good enough.

We recently found a news article about a Mormon mom who paid her children $10,000 to not kiss before they were 18. Our reaction was mixed, to say the least.

Last week, I had what one would call a well-balanced day: I climbed out of bed at 5:15 a.m. for a 6-mile run, coming home just in time to make my kids a hot breakfast and send them off to school with a home-packed lunch. I tidied the house, attended a PTA meeting, called my sister, caught up with a friend at the local library, squeezed in a reading/piano lesson with my preschooler and spent a few hours on my latest manuscript. I rushed home in time to collect all the kids, usher them through homework/piano practice/violin practice and serve the family yet another homecooked meal with not one, but two vegetable side dishes. After everyone was in bed I tidied the house, prepped lunches for the next day, read my scriptures, and promptly collapsed in bed.