Into April...

Life has been simultaneously better than ever, and discouraging as ever - which is sad and speaks volumes about me and where I am at as a person. I feel guilty that I have been discouraged at all. At work - I am as successful as ever, at home - I have wonderful kids and an incredible wife, at church - I have a calling that I can do pretty well and I enjoy those I serve with, I have friends and family living nearby, I live in the most amazing country the world has ever seen that affords me liberty, opportunity, and affluence most of the historic world scarcely dreamed of... and yet... there has been great unrest in my soul. I have allowed myself to fear the future, an invisible future that may or may not be; one fraught with challenges that I fear would be greater than I could bear. I fear the judgments of men - the contentious conversations over temporal things that leave me feeling lacking and personally responsible for the attitudes of others whom I cannot control. In the past few days I was blessed to be able to take my family skiing and snowboarding to Copper Mountain for a few days while we stayed in a condo by a frozen lake and the mountain vista that took ones breath away. Flying down the slopes with friends and family under a bold Colorado sky in 50 degree temperatures is nearly a miracle unto itself. Oh the majesty of God's creations and how fortunate am I to experience them; but I was weighted down. At times I felt as though my chest would implode and tears run down my face. I believe the Holy Spirit of God is working on my soul. Searing my feelings to awaken me to something I have known for years but continually minimize in my life. There is no strength without God - the arm of man is nothing against the weight of the world and in time it gets crushed.

I turned to the scriptures. Proverbs 3:5-6 was the first place I went - my mothers favorite scripture.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct they paths. 

I spent more time in the Psalms, gaining strength from David's words. Then into D&C sections 88 to read about the promises of God, and 121 where the prophet pleads with the Father, and finally I read a few talks from the past conference regarding the worth of souls. These words rescued me and poured healing into my soul. I took my oldest son to the priesthood session of this weekends conference and again was pulled up and fortified by the words of life. I instantly began to hunger for the Word of God, something I had been neglecting. The power of an eternal perspective is returning and my trust in the Lord I am remembering, this is casting out my fear and with it my sorrow. It is time for me to rise up and be a man. The Holy Spirit has been speaking to me, telling me the time has come to be the man that I always knew I should be, he has been telling me that he will wait no longer, the time is now, and that this is the reason he has been working his refining pressure on my soul. There are a great many things he needs me to be and do and I must stop putting it off. There are a great many improvements I must make and I go now to get busy with them...