A World Worth Living For

Have you ever sat back and given yourself time to think? Have you thought about how you treat other people? Have you thought about how other people have treated you?

Have you grown a little bit more wise today?

Today, I was feeding Averi. As I watched her hold the bottle and gulp down her milk in about 5 seconds flat - I thought about how I want to do things differently as a parent, and I became a little be frightened realizing that...this world is way messed up, people.

Way messed up.

I thought about how I would teach her about strangers, about why there is war, about the adversary and how he is real - even though you can't see him.

I thought about making good friends, not being a hypocrite, and I can't control everything she will choose to do or to say...

But I can show her why this world is worth living for.

I can show her the importance of: talking to the guy on the street, making food for a family that needs it, loving people who hurt you, and admitting you're wrong even when all the pride in your body wants to defend the opposite,

and how to be Christ-like.

Will I be perfect? Nope.

Will I make mistakes? Absolutely.

But at least she'll know why life is worth living.

To live the laws of God, serve other people, and being willing to change who you are today....

To be a better person tomorrow.

Being a baby

I'm sitting in a quiet hospital room right now after an eventful couple of days. While mother and baby are sleeping, I sit and reflect. From "Ryan, come home from school now and we're going to the hospital." to me thinking, "What have I done to my wife she's going to die!" to now, "Oh she's such a cute little girl."

I was talking to a great mentor of mine the other day and he said, "the labor room of the hospital and the celestial room of a temple are the two most sacred places I can ever be. It may not feel the same for the mother, but for the father, it can bring you very close to Heaven."

I felt that.

It's true that you can't really know what it feels like to be a father until you are one. But why can't we do other things in our lives to feel that close to Heaven?

God holds you in his arms just like I held Averi Belle in mine. God sees us as if we were babies. He sees how we sometimes look around everywhere, trying to understand what is happening; that life is hard and confusing. He knows the times we are hungry, when we are tired, and most of all...

He knows we need to be clean.

When you're unclean, you feel uncomfortable. Getting older, you tend not to cry out and let everyone know your weaknesses. You and I tend to stop "being a baby" and we instead look to our own ways and think we can handle it. When we have our Father and Brother looking at us and wanting to say as KacyAnn says to Averi:

"Are you having a rough day today? What can I do to help?"

But we forget that.

We don't listen. We don't repent. We just complain that our life sucks and we don't let our Parent take care of it.

Maybe we should be more of a baby. More needy for love, more reliance on our Parent,



More willing to grow into the person we can be.

We talk too much

"There's too much talk and not enough do."

I have few things in life that can really twist my 'annoyed' strings. One of them I realized one day while I was preaching the Gospel in Boston for the LDS church. I was in a brand new area where my preaching companion had been for quite some time. He knew the area better than anyone I had ever met. He was constantly telling me things I needed to do to help this area and he was constantly working with different church members to get them excited about helping us with the work we were doing. One day as we were walking home for lunch I was feeling pretty dejected. I was thinking of how we were constantly talking to people about the importance of doing something, and we talked about it all day long. But on this one afternoon walking home, it hit me -

There's too much talk and not enough do.

Do you realize this? Do I realize this?

I think talking is good. Talking gets us thinking, it gets ideas flowing, but it isn't until we act that we actually see the "fruit of the labor." It's like telling your mother that you want to plant a tree in her yard for her but never going outside to plant it. Just saying, over and over - I should plant a tree for you outside.

A similar process applies with repentance. We can talk ourselves out of repenting, and we can constantly tell ourselves we don't have anything to repent of, but it isn't until we act and truly go through the process to repent, that we discover the power of Christ's Atonement.

Doing righteousness has it's blessings, yes. But doing righteous for the sake of receiving blessings can make us less grateful for those. The Lord knows what blessings we truly need, and we can't do something "expecting a specific blessing for that."

My brother pointed this out to me and gave an example. He has just started school, and was married about a month ago. He was very worried about finances but said he had faith that God would help him. In the past month he said, "I've received a pay raise at work, my school funding came in, and I have enough money to purchase a better car so my wife and I can save money on gas and constant repairs. But these are things I didn't know I needed. God did. I was merely doing what I have been asked to do through God's Prophet and He has blessed me in the way He expected, not what I expected.

We talk about what we should do.

But we need to do what we've been talking about.

This is about you

Now, just so you know, this post is about you.

Yes, you. I am talking about you.

I was thinking about you the other day. I was sitting in church trying to stay attentive and avoid "the tap" from my wife. You know, the one where they're wanting to whack you over the head with the hymn book because they can clearly tell you're merely singing every other word until the chorus of the song comes...then you sing a little bit louder? Yeah, that tap.

My mind was off track that day. Because of you, and myself as well; but I was pondering about you.

I was wondering why you don't listen. Why I don't listen. Why do you think you know how to run your life? Why do you argue? Why don't you change?

I was talking about you the other day to a friend. After asking them how life was, and the normal chit-chat, I asked them about how dating life is going.

"Non-existent" they responded.

In asking why, I began thinking more about you. I began thinking about me.

"I don't think the right one is out there." they said.

You and my friend are very similar. You see - there is a lack of faith.

We are here to be tested. To see how we respond to life. For some, it is sickness and for others it's money. For some it is to see where our priorities lay. It takes faith to get married and venture out on your own. It takes faith to repent. It takes faith to admit that you are wrong. I think a trap you and I fall into is that we begin to feel that we're doing everything right, so we don't need someone to give us advice and to help us. What's ironic about that, is that once we stop trying to listen to others, we lose faith in them. God has brought you and I together to edify and uplift each other. Part of that may mean trying what they suggest. Like when Christ asked his disciple to walk on water. Having faith it will work out.

But for some reason, your reason is different than mine. You are afraid to get out of the boat. Why?

"Because I'm not sure what's going to happen."
"Because I don't have enough money."
"Because I don't want to get hurt again."

Reach out to Christ. Do something that will help you grow your seed of faith. Not hide it under a bushel.