Matthew 7:7-11, 3 Nephi 14:7-11

I feel inspired to sit down and to update this website, though I'm not entirely sure what I will write about. So many things have happened to me since the last time I wrote, and I'm not sure where to begin...

I've begun a new quarter at school, and I'm finally changing my major as I've thought of so many times. Now I'm studying business, and taking 4 classes per quarter instead of 3. I still work and I'm still the Elders' Quorum President in my ward, so it makes for a full schedule. I began with a blessing from my grandfather, however, and I know everything will turn out fine. The blessing even mentioned that I will soon find my eternal companion, something I hadn't talked to my grandfather about but have been thinking about very much.

I have hope.

I've left the same scripture reference at the top of the page that I had last time, because it's begun to take on a special significance to me.

As I said, I've been thinking a lot about an eternal companion. Wondering about this, praying about this, and especially in reference to one particular situation in my life right now, led me to some very tearful prayers and pleadings to my Father in Heaven. Regarding that specific situation, I have often compared myself to a small child lying on the floor, kicking and crying because he cannot have a cookie. I have specifically prayed for Him who does not give His children a stone to bless me, and have pleaded to love and to be loved.

My Institute teacher is inspired. The example of the child crying over the cookie is one I learned from him, and it was not long afterward that he repeated it. At the beginning of that class, he asked us if we were all happy and healthy. One person answered happy, but not healthy. I answered healthy, but working on the happy. He immediately recounted this quote from C.S. Lewis:

...I'm not sure that God wants us to be particularly happy. I think he wants us to love and to be loved. He wants us to grow up. I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering...You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which The Sculptor carves the forms of man. The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what makes us perfect.

He then recounted the example of the child, and I knew I was being spoken to by the Lord.

It was the next class where he taught of our will sometimes being in opposition to the Lord's will, but also of the great blessings that come from submitting our will to the Father's. The example given was of a friend of his who followed promptings to go to a school he hadn't planned on, where he met his wife. He then said that we sometimes go off on a path of our own, not realizing that we are slipping slowly off the course the Lord has laid for us. When we inevitably hit the brick wall at the end and look upward to ask what happened, the Lord answers "I give bread, not stones."

Perhaps I should have mentioned that this was the same week where I received that blessing from my grandfather. Perhaps I should mention that I recently had an opportunity to leave my current job for another, something that I have been wanting to do for over a year, but am now staying because I felt so prompted by the Lord. Perhaps there are many things I could mention, but the end of it all is this: I have hope.

- Update: April 14, 2005 -

A good friend pointed out to me that what I've written, and the C.S. Lewis quote I included, seem to teach the false doctrine that happiness is unachievable in this life. I don't mean to say that, although I am beginning to realize that I tend to think that about my own life (especially when concerning finding an eternal mate).

True happiness and joy come from the Lord, but I don't think it comes from feeling good all the time. It comes from being content with what the Lord gives us, having faith in Him, and doing His will. Job was a faithful man, and upright before the Lord, but he suffered horribly, until he wished he had never been born. Joseph Smith was the Prophet who ushered in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, but many of his greatest moments were tempered by horrible brutality against him. I don't think he was happy in those moments.

What made these men of God different from how the world deals with such painful feelings as they surely were suffering is that they turned to Lord and patiently waited for deliverance. Their happiness was probably not the good and warm feelings that we generally call happiness, but their patience and their faith that in the end, God would deliver them. I think the joy spoken of in the scriptures probably is just being content with what the Lord gives us. At least, that's a large part of what I'm working on right now.

And yet I wonder... A major part of my difficulties right now revolves around my own inability to allow the Lord to answer my prayers concerning an eternal mate. The problem, I realize, is that I can't seem to accept a "no" answer, but I don't have place in my heart to consider that He might be trying to say "yes." So often, I automatically assume that the things that I want are against the Lord's will. I'm not sure where that comes from, or how to overcome it, but I will try. This particular happiness is something that I think I really want in my life, and maybe it involves a lot more than simply being content. Maybe it does require allowing the possibilty of happiness in a more traditional sense, and allowing for it to be achievable right now, and not sometime in the distant future. "Soon," according to the Lord's time, can be a very long time away, but maybe sometimes when He says soon, he means soon the way we usually mean it.

I'll have to think about that a little more...

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