Choices

This last week has been a week a great contemplation and many emotions for me. I have learned some valuable lessons about myself and a few insights that I would like to share here today. One of the key phrases that I want to share came from a talk by James E Faust entitled Choices, (you can look up the complete talk which is fantastic on lds.org). It goes something like this. The future can never change the past. So often I notice that people, myself included dwell on the past, whether it is positive or negative, usually negative, people have a hard time letting bygones be bygones. I know a lovely lady who I love deeply but to be completely honest I have a hard time talking to because she is so stuck in the past that she can't live in the present. So I have been thinking to myself, how stuck in the past trials that I have been through am I? I know specifically one topic that I am sure when people who know me well hear me start bringing it up they just go off to daydream land. Maybe the things that we dwell on are things that we should put into a journal and maybe even seek professional help to overcome. Life can totally be rough, in fact if life were easy we wouldn't need the atonement in our lives to help us return to our loving Heavenly Father. Next thing I have been thinking about is being SAVED. What does this even mean? Seriously? I have considered asking my non-lds friends what their view point is and how it differs from my own, also I am not completely sure if my view point is spot on with lds gospel doctrine. Russell M. Nelson who is in the quorum of the twelve apostles for the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints says, that to be saved we gain salvation. From how I understood his talk the atonement saves us from physical death so everyone is saved and will be resurrected but spiritual death is different and I am not quite sure that I am of sound enough of understanding to make this clear. But to be saved from spiritual death we need to have: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and obey the commandments, laws and ordinances of his gospel. I am so grateful for the renewed knowledge of free agency. It is such a lovely gift from our Heavenly Father. So often I forget that this one aspect was the biggest difference between Christ's plan and Satan's plan. Christ wanted us to have our agency and to be able to learn from making mistakes and experiencing trials, happiness, and success. Satan wanted to force us to only do things his way and to never have learning and growing experiences. As a parent I sometimes want to force my children to do everything my way and I guess really there is nothing that my kids do that is exactly how I would do it but the key that I have to remember is that I am allowing them to grow. Just as Christ offered up his life as an example, as a parent I offer up my life as an example to my children. Good or bad we each learned a lot from our parents and as we develop into adulthood we choose what we want to incorporate and what we want to change. This also applies to how we can each follow in Christ's example to us.