The Most Disgusting Day

Last Saturday I had spent about 12 hours digging post holes, tearing down a fence, laying cement, turning dirt in the garden, planting flowers, shoveling a few tons of dirt, heading to the county landfill and unloading said dirt and then back again to dump some better dirt where the bad dirt was removed. In short, I was disgusting. I was the least desirable man on the planet by 5 pm that night. 

At about that time I had to make one final trip to Lowes to get replacement dirt, then next door to the new Fabulous Freddy's for some gas. That place deserves a blog post all by itself. If you have been, you know. Some girl runs up to your car to pump your gas for you and the word "fabulous" is thrown out a lot by everyone there. 

Anyway, I wanted to pump my own gas and was going to pay inside so I turned down her offer. Inside and inline, I looked down at myself with a little bit of horror and amazement. I was completely covered in dust and grime and sweat. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. The sweat pouring off my head was making weird marks in the mud on my face. My shoes were wet and muddy and my pants were hardly recognizable in their original color. I had grime on every square inch of my body and I smelled bad enough that I was bothering myself.

A woman came up to me and took my hand and slipped 5 dollars into it and said, "hope this helps". 

I almost didn't know what to say and she slipped out the door before I could try. 

But it still makes me laugh. 

Easter

My dear friends, I wanted to share something about Easter this morning. As I wandered out this morning to check how my garden was growing before I got ready for church I couldn't help but notice, as I am sure you did, that today is so beautiful. The sun is out, the sky is clear, the mountains look beautiful, the temperature is perfect. It is the most lovely of all days.

Fitting, really. Today is all about hope and optimism and peace and happiness. It is the most lovely of all days.

I have had a slow recognition the last few months that Christ is the only way to peace and comfort and love. The feeling is so gentle and loving and yet so powerful. The anger and hate and misfortune and wrong choices and lack of hope and the feeling of smallness and inadequacy can be healed through Christ. And there is this very special moment in our lives when we realized that only through Christ can lasting peace come and He is the only way to true happiness and the only power strong enough to heal us.

I have come to learn for myself that Christ is strong enough to heal me. I had spent so  many hurtful nights resisting the path to healing. We all seem to want to find another way to feel better or to find happiness other than finding healing in Christ. 

When we let go - when I let go, and had faith that Christ would heal me, He did. The feeling of inadequacy and loneliness and the layers of pain started to melt away. I hadn't solved every problem, but I knew I would make it.

Easter is such a special day. As I remembered this Holy Week, I thought of how Christ has blessed me -how I know, and have always known, that Jesus has loved me. I know today more than ever that without Christ I can do nothing. But with Christ, I can do anything.

"Oh sweet, the joy this sentence gives, I know that my Redeemer lives".

Captain Courageous, I Wish I Were You

When I was 6 I was riding my bike down the sidewalk a block from my house when some older girl, about 9, pushed my bike over. I skidded across the sidewalk, slicing my hands and face open. As I lay on the ground bleeding she yelled at me that I was not allowed to ride my bike in front of her house. My orange bike with the banana seat had broken handle bars from the collision and I remember running to my house to plead my case to my dad.

He helped to clean me up and I remember asking him what he was going to do about it. I wanted to go across the street and punch her in the face.

To my surprise, my dad said, "Why don't we find a way to be friends with her and to be nice to her?" That was definitely not the approach I was wanting. I was thinking something along the lines of rocks and a slingshot. My dad, however, told me to go over and pick up my bike and to invite this girl over to ride bikes near my house. I really didn't want to ride with a girl as that wasn't what little 6 year old boys did, of course. And I really didn't want to ride with her. My pride was on the line. I had been attacked and hurt and I was still freshly bloody.

After some prodding I decided to go and ask. I remember picking up my bike and asking the girl, who was there to make sure I walked, not rode, my bike away, if she wanted to come over to my place and ride bikes and have a Popsicle. I told her we had the good blue kind and not the yucky grape ones. She was surprised, then skeptical. I am sure she thought I had some kind of trap for her, but after a little thought, she decided to come.

We never developed into life long friends but I learned to forgive someone pretty quickly, instead of acting out in anger or  revenge or worse, carrying anger with me for weeks and months and years.

It is hard for me to forgive others. I suppose it is hard for all of us. It requires us be humble and loving and put aside our need to get back at those who have hurt us or made us angry.

Naturally, we don't want to love people who hurt us or who hurt our family our friends. We want them to pay. We want them to beg for forgiveness and we feel the need to carry a torch for all the wrongs they have done until they have reached the level where we feel they have appropriately paid for their acts. Then we MIGHT forgive them.

But the Lord asks a much more Christian principle - "of you it is required to forgive all men", before they ask and before they deserve it and, most importantly, before the anger they have caused ruins our own heart.

Some things are so hard to forgive. Sometimes forgiveness, even when we are being earnest, doesn't come immediately. I heard a wise man say once, "Keep a place in your heart for forgiveness, and when it comes, welcome it in.”

My heart is always the lightest when I am courageously forgiving and the heaviest when I cowardly hold on to my pain and want to punish those who hurt me.

When I offend I desperately need forgiveness from God and I am also healed by others forgiving me and allowing a fresh start. 

I know that when I give away my anger and stop trying to punish others that they are removed from that dark cloud which covers their life. I have had many dark clouds removed when others have forgiven me of the injuries I have caused others. I also know that it heals me.

I apologize for all those who I have offended. Thank you for being so forgiving of me and for granting me those fresh starts which makes life bright and wonderful.

Hardest Five Months Of My Life And How It Finally Changed

Without any question, the last 5 months have been the most difficult and painful of my life. I did not understand for some time how to even see the direction I needed to go to calm the waters, to ease the tension. The stress has been crushing and destructive. I have been under constant duress, night and day, for so long that I almost forgot what it was like to wake up calm and relaxed and excited about the day. Each and every day was fraught with so many mountains to climb that it exhausted me. One of the real challenges was that in most cases I did not know how to even proceed, nor anywhere to turn to begin the journey.

I even lost some friends, an experience as painful as anything.

Struggling with so many mountains to climb was crippling to me. I had very little strength and energy to get started on the Himalayan sized tasks that awaited me the moment I awoke in the morning and never really left me in my sleep.

Which leads me here to share, honestly, my interactions with the Lord over the last few months.

For some time I would try to schedule time to talk with the Lord - moments where I would kneel until I could not kneel any more. But when I got on my knees the feeling in my heart which was so tired and lonely and in need of heaven's help suddenly felt hollow and vacant. My prayers, which I wanted so desperately to be heartfelt and open, turned brief and insincere. I was feeling less of a relationship with God than I imagined that I ever could have felt before. I knew He existed and I knew that my heart had been changed by Him in my life. I simply could not understand why I could feel so little of Him.

My life was hollow. I became hopeless and even a little bitter in my life. I began to blame my misfortunes, of any size and variety, on God's seeming lack of interest in my life. I was emotionless. I laughed little, cried never, and smiled rarely.

Perhaps some of you have been there in your lives. Perhaps some devastating emotional things have happened, challenges that seemed so much bigger than you were able to comprehend and your pleadings to the Lord seemed to be unanswered on how to proceed.

I would daily open The Book of Mormon and read, perfunctorily. My old friend, this amazing book, seemed so distant to me.

So let me tell you a story about how I have learned God tenderly watched over me these last few months and how when I knew it, it changed everything. A few days ago as I was going about my business of the day, stressing per usual, I got the impression to turn off my music and listen. I was a little overwhelmed at this communication as it had felt so long since I had that interaction with the Spirit.

I sat there on my chair and the feeling came over me in a wash of warmth and the clear, unequivocal impression came that Jesus Christ was very near to me and that He loved me very much.

Whatever volcano of pain and anger and ugliness that was raging in my heart suddenly disappeared, as if in an instant.  For the first time in months tears flowed freely. It was cathartic to wash away the devastation and loneliness in my life. It is impossible to share how it feels to realize the love of God in your heart. It changes everything.

God had not forgotten me. I know this now. I had much to learn from Him and my journey was necessary to work through challenges and to keep searching for Him. No matter how lonely I was I knew that God had been in my life before, changed my heart, calmed my fears, guided my actions. I knew from past experience that He did love me. I just had to hold on to feel it again. I had to keep working at it.

This past few months will continue to crystallize and I will see it with better eyes as time passes. The mountains still exist but the confidence to overcome them has entered my heart at the right time. He will help me.  

There is no other name nor any other way whereby salvation comes except through Jesus Christ, the Master healer. He is the only one with atoning power to ease our troubles and to wash away our sins and to change our very heart. He is the master of the elements and the tempests that plague us. He can change who we are and give us strength to overcome our challenges. He is mighty to save and to heal. The Prince of Peace. The literal Son of God.

What It Means To Feel Love (to me)

I haven't yet had the experience of watching a child of mine be born like so many of you have enjoyed. I had a friend tell me that in that moment his heart was full of pure love -both for his wife and for his child. He told me that he had no idea that love could feel like that - so effulgent and compassionate and deep and broad. I wrote in my journal that he said, "I never felt closer to God then when I realized how deeply I loved my wife".

Such a different feeling then when we all feel when we are first starting to see someone we like for the first time as kids when love and emotions are such a novel idea. I still have this memory of this girl sending me a note telling me she liked me when I was all of about 12.  I remember not falling asleep until about 4 that night because I was so excited. Three days later she was holding hands with some boy after school and I went home and locked my door and cried a little bit.

Love - gentle and mild, belies its power. It is love that gets us on our knees to pray for those around us who need help and guidance. It's love that helps us notice those who are leading desperate lives and love that drives us to reach out to calm the waters. It's love that keeps parents up at night with a sick child and love that leads children to care for aging parents. It's love that brings a man or woman to correct his or her life and leave sin and look to the light and Love of God. It's love that makes a person different than they could have ever dreamed to be.

I never would have come to God unless He loved me. I never would have come to God if others hadn't loved me as well. I certainly wouldn't be working through life's difficulties without the healing, challenging, calming and softening power of love.

Love is powerful. It is what brought Jesus Christ to earth to suffer and die for us - For God so loved the world. . .


God is in the process of mending me with His love and through the love of others who carry heaven with them. I am a different man today than I was a month or two ago and it is because God, and many others, love. God IS love.

Thank You

I wanted to say thank you to a few people today who knew my heavy heart the past while:

Thank you to my branch president, who saw me a half dozen times in the last few months, given generously of his time when he had so little time. Often I would get a text or a call from him telling me that he was thinking of me and inviting me to come and chat. The counsel and love and consideration he gave me as I gave him so much of my anxiety helped me gain measures of peace.

Thank you to my dad who prayed for me with a father's love.

Thanks to the friend who greets me with so much friendship and kindness. He's a good man - the best of men. I hope to be more like him.

Thanks to the friend who filled my tank with gas when I couldn't get to church otherwise and helped me get some groceries when they were hard to come by.

Thanks to my sisters who listen and love and care as only a sister knows how to do it.

Thanks to my sister-in-law who sent a book to me at Christmas which had to be inspired as it has helped me in dark moments.

Thanks to my brothers-in-law who are without judgment. 

Thanks to you, CJK, for being so much better than even I imagined. And thanks to your family who are so much of what I would like to be in my life.

Thanks for the dozens and dozens of you who worked so thoughtfully to help me get a job.

 Thanks to my mom who sees a son's troubles on his face better than anyone.

Thanks to my brothers for being my keeper.

Thanks to the kind soul who must have realized I was on my last dollar the other day and paid for my diet coke at McDonalds.

Thanks to those who helped to correct me when I was floating and help me realize I could be a better man. 

Thanks to those who sent notes and emails and talks and prayers, who never stopped loving and caring for me.

Thanks to those who forgave me.

God bless you all.

I Know Better

Recently, I talked to my younger sister, wiser and smarter than I am by far. I was telling her how hard things can be, why tears flow from time to time in my life, why I carry anger in places of my heart that used to be softer and kinder and gentler. I talked to her about my fears and the pounding in my chest. I also told her that I was pretty sure that God stopped listening to my prayers some time ago and so I had been half hearted in trying to communicate with Him. I thought I had a right to be angry, almost a martyr's right. Certainly bad decisions in my life have costed me and certainly there are unexplained reasons why things have not fallen into place better than they have.

I have reasons to carry scars, I believed. I went through all the many wrong decisions in my life that have been hard to patch up and correct, and all the many other things that I don't understand that are hard to correct, which weren't caused by any action I could see. And after detailing them all in my mind all that I had left is hurt and pain and some anger.

Crying out to the Lord hadn't brought the peace that I hoped it would, and that I have enjoyed from earlier prayers. I kind of gave up on trying really hard for it and went through emotionless prayer after unfeeling prayer.

Then I talked to my sister, who told me that she knew I knew better, that she didn't understand why the changes and answers hadn't come about or why I had felt alone. But told me that I knew better.

I do know better. To be honest with you, I know that He lives, even if for those moments I didn't feel extremely close to Him, and even if those moments were exceptionally long moments. Being alone is a terrible feeling, penetrating in is solitude. There is nothing quite as empty as feeling like you are reaching for God and feeling like He has not answered for a season.

But I know better than to withdraw from Him by stopping any action that I know leads to Him.

I know better than to be bitter or angry at people or unkind. I know that I need to do a better job of reaching out in love and kindness to my dear friends whom I have sometimes left alone myself. I know that Jesus lives and He has blessed me my whole life, walked with me in dark times before and I believe He has walked with me through this time as well. As I begin to see the dawn I can see some of the hard lessons He was teaching me.

Elder Maxwell said, "Don’t wait too long to find the altar or to begin to place the gift of your wills upon it! No need to wait for a receipt; the Lord has His own special ways of acknowledging."

I promise from here on out to do a better job of giving the Lord my will, letting Him guide my life, giving my heart to Him and trying to be a better man, friend, son and brother to all around me.

I know He will help me.