This past weekend I’ve had the best vacation I’ve ever had in my entire life. Most people hearing that declaration will wonder where I went to have such a great time. But my vacation was great not so much for where I went as for what I did. I went to Afton, Wyoming. “Why would you go there?” some of you undoubtedly wonder. “There’s nothing there.” To which I answer, “Precisely.” Recently I’ve felt my life dead end in so many ways. I wanted to search my soul and think deeply about my life. I wanted to re-calibrate myself with a sense of hope that all isn’t lost for me. And I wanted a game plan for taking every part of my life to the next level. For me, that’s all best done surrounded by mountains, fresh air, and as few people as possible. Wyoming’s Star Valley fits that bill to a T. Start with the temple My first order of business was a session in the Star Valley temple. This has to be the absolutely smallest temple I’ve ever seen. There’s only one endowment room, one sealing room, and four sessions per day. I arrived hoping to join the last session. Every seat was already reserved, so the front desk called someone to see what work I might do. I took a seat and waited patiently. Very soon, a temple presidency member came out and greeted me. We shook hands as I expressed my hope in doing a session. Instantly this kind man put his arm around my shoulder. He thanked me for coming in a way that made me feel truly welcome. Then, turning to the attendant at the front desk, he instructed a space be made for me to attend a session. He then offered to show me where to go. I accepted, although the building is so small I couldn’t possibly get lost. Early during my session I began to feel a quiet confidence the blessings I desire are still available and the Lord will walk with me towards their attainment. What a wonderful start to my vacation! Get down to the nitty gritty I spent the next four days writing in a Moleskine notebook. I wanted to take my life to the next level, and I had a plan for how I would proceed. I started by listing every part of my life I wanted to take to the next level — my spiritual life, my relationships (both ones I had and ones I wanted), my career, my own businesses, my residence, my finances — literally everything. Then for each of those individual items, I followed a five step process:
I followed these steps for every individual part of my life, so little wonder I filled 71 pages in my notebook. From those pages I extracted the individual action items (271 in all) that get me started taking my life to the next level. Feel the power Admittedly, 271 action items is a lot, but I need do only one item at a time. And having lots to do is great. It gives hope I’ve got endless opportunity to turn my life around, a realization that brings with it great empowerment. I returned home feeling very powerful and very hopeful I can secure eternal blessings and live the life I want. I now have a new attitude. In that sense, my vacation was truly recreational because I came back re-created. This truly was the best vacation I’ve ever had. If you feel your life has approached a dead end in any or all its aspects, find your own quiet place to search your soul and get back to basics. You’ll find you can do so much to turn your life around. And that feeling of empowerment will bring you more joy in your journey.
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It appears Sno-mageddon is alive and well. Normally when it snows here, it’s gone within a couple of days. Not this winter. Cold and colder temps attend every dumping of snow over previous layers of snow-turned-ice. For a while I thought we might be getting a break. I’ve been taking advantage of it while preparing to start a new semester. But today, Sno-mageddon struck again, furiously dumping inches of snow within minutes. The college soon cancelled classes. I’m somewhat disappointed. I certainly want my students safe. But with Monday being a holiday and now today being cancelled, we’ve just passed our first week of the semester without ever having class! Yet when I learned of the school closure, I didn’t shift into panic mode or even survival mode. I shifted into thrive mode by preparing to take what I’ve been given and shine gloriously with it. Not here to fail My experience today resembles LDS singles life. Just as I didn’t anticipate a freak blizzard eliminating class, many LDS singles have met unintended circumstances. We were preparing for a different experience when events beyond our control forced us in a new direction. Lost opportunities can yield heartache, disappointment, and concern about the future. Yet we can always choose our response. Many of us struggle to choose optimism. We yearn after hope but feel overwhelmed by despair. I’ve felt that many times in my life. How do you go on when everything around you seems to say you’ll never do anything but fail? You must awake to this realization: Not everything around you indicates you’ll fail. God certainly doesn’t believe that about you. He loves you. He believes in you. He sent you here to succeed and that gloriously. And He’s constantly pleading with you to believe in those truths. When you do, “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). More than surviving We can get so busy keeping up with life’s demands that we wonder if we’ll ever succeed in having a good life, let alone our best life. Mere survival appears increasingly like a noble virtue. But do you think God sent you here so you could merely survive? Or did He send you here to thrive? Thriving is more than surviving. Thriving is living life with zest and optimism. It’s living in the moment, extracting every ounce of joy that moment offers. It’s exuding confidence in the future that faith will not go unrewarded. I honestly don’t see how any Latter-day Saint — single or married — can experience that without partnering with the Lord for his or her life. That’s best done by seeking Him first. Yet many of us are seeking first the wrong life partner. We naturally want to belong, so when our culture pairs belonging with marriage, we look for someone who’ll help us belong. Plus we yearn for someone who can take away the loneliness, discouragement, and pain of being single. That someone is Christ. He taught, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 5:40). Instead of looking first for an eternal companion to alleviate our troubles, we should look first for the Lord Who can do that and more. Instead of seeking first that special someone to take to the temple, we should seek first to walk with the Lord in the temple. Weather any storm The Lord’s love provides the strength to weather any storm. Nephi understood this. Bound to his ship’s mast in a violent sea, his wrists and ankles became severely swollen. Yet he didn’t complain nor cease to look to the Lord. Nephi always had trouble, yet he partnered with the Lord. Can anyone honestly think his life was not his best life? The Lord can lift you to heights you could never imagine alone. Why settle for the companion you might have now when He can lead you to the companion you most need to have, the one you need for your best life? With the Lord at your side, you can trust all will eventually resolve for your good. That faith allows you to release everything preventing you from living life joyfully in this and every moment. Hope, optimism, and positive energy naturally result from living with the Lord as your first life partner. Don’t just survive. Thrive! Partner first with the Lord Who will help you to hear the whisperings of His Spirit more fully, see His tender mercies around you every day, and feel His love for you in powerful and undeniable ways. He can make more out of your life than you can without Him. He will bring you to your best life. And that will certainly provide you with more joy in your journey. Last week I discussed how crazy life can get and how Christ can help us turn our life around by starting over. We always have the opportunity to start over. That’s why I love sunrises. They’re a daily reminder that no matter how dark things may appear, light is always just around the corner. The dawn will always come. And when it does, it brings with it a chance for a new day. That new day in life, however, doesn’t just happen. It comes as we make conscious choices to believe in and reach for the light. How do we do that when life seems to sweep us away with the constant drumbeat of the moment? Life can have such a frantic pace sometimes we feel we don’t have time to breathe. And that’s just it. It’s the pace that’s the problem. How many of us have ever wished for just one more hour in our day? I know I’ve often wished for more than that. But we have only 24 hours with each day. Learning how to manage our use of that time can help, but in reality that’s only a stopgap. Installing a better drain can help with a bathtub prone to overflow, but turning off the faucet provides a more effective solution. We need to learn how to stop. Make the space Stopping can be a real challenge. When you’ve got children crying for your attention, the advice to stop can seem quite impractical. And yet if we don’t stop some time, we’ll drive ourselves into the ground. The Preacher said, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). It’s probably not time to stop when your children cry. Sometimes life demands prompt action. Take that prompt action, then find another time to stop. If we don’t take time to care for our needs in life, we won’t have much of a life. And not much of a life isn’t the best life we all deserve to have. If you are, as Feste in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night says, waiting to have “greatness thrust upon [you],” you’ll be waiting a long time. Your best life comes when you make the right conscious choices. One of those right choices is making space to stop long enough to refuel. That space won’t appear on its own. As I said last week, life tends to seep in, devouring time and energy. To have a space in which we can stop, we need to clear that space consciously. Respect the space Clearing that space can seem difficult. And it may require sacrifice. But it’s the only way we’ll really have anything meaningful in our lives. For example, I’ve had and striven to use a temple recommend for many years now. But if I don’t clear the space in my calendar to attend the temple, then chances are it won’t happen. Life will present competing and seemingly more important demands. And before you know it, the week or the month will pass without me inside the house of the Lord. I have to clear space by reserving the time in my calendar to attend the temple. Then I have to respect that space by diverting other demands to either a different spot on my calendar or my circular file. Otherwise, life will crowd in again. I’ve found I have to do likewise for everything else I really want in my life. I have to clear a space for it and then respect that space. Otherwise, life will crowd in with other, less fulfilling ways to use that space. Piecing together our best life Clearing and respecting spaces for the elements of our life is really just a smaller piece of the larger process of designing our best life. Lest we feel overwhelmed with that, let’s remember we can partner with the Lord for anything in life. That includes what next step to take to reach our best life. The Lord stands ready to help. He provides help constantly through His servants. I regard Elder Lawrence’s talk from the October 2015 General Conference as a classic discourse on partnering with the Lord to learn the next step we need to take and then act in faith to take it. General Conference is once more right around the corner, and I’m so thankful for that. Of course, none of us need wait for General Conference. We all have access to the Lord’s voice through prayer, the scriptures, inspired Church members, and the temple. Let’s partner with the Lord today to discover what next step we need to take to clear and then respect the space we need to stop. When we stop long enough to refuel ourselves, we can live our best life.
I can't believe that I spaced this. I was supposed to post yesterday, but that didn't happen. I could tell you about all the things that occupied my attention yesterday, but I won't. I got busy and therein got distracted. I recall hearing a sister speak in sacrament meeting one Sunday. She confessed that she had been busy with so many things that she had allowed her temple attendance to slide. I then reflected on how temple attendance is like anything else in life. If you want to ensure what is most important to you fills your life, you need to make time for it. I also recall attending the temple once when life was more hectic than it is now. I had just moved after losing my job, and my neighbors decided to throw a party that kept me up well past Pumpkin Hour. And then the next day my energetic nephew decided to be consternatingly contrary. I needed the peace found only within the House of the Lord. And I didn't want to wait for it. And I also had some questions about where I was in my life at the time. So I showered off all the grime and sweat from cleaning up my old place, put on my nicest suit, grabbed my hat, and away I went. And I had a rather interesting and unexpected experience. My time in the temple First, in my haste to hie me to the House of the Lord, I forgot some very important articles of clothing. I realized my lapse while in the dressing room. I put my suit back on and went back to the front area, thinking I could rent what I needed. Instead I found myself like one of the five unwise virgins. The temple had been recently renovated; there was now no more laundry and hence no more clothing rental. I was quite befuddled with what to do next when my eye caught sight of the entrance to the initiatory area. I then realized that I could still have a temple experience. I entered the area and asked if help was needed, and of course it was. The attendant gave me a robe and advised me to return when I had changed my clothes. This is the part where it gets really interesting. When I returned, the brother directing the initiatory work that evening asked whether I could stay for a half hour or an hour. I selected an hour, to which he replied, "You are certainly an answer to our prayers this evening." He then signaled a place for me to wait while others prepared for the work to be done. While I waited, I thought about this brother’s comment and the context in which I received it. I had made time for something important to me --- temple attendance --- and in pursuing that I encountered an unexpected experience that answered someone else's prayers. I then realized something that had never before entered my mind. What I had just experienced was an analogy to the singles life unlike any I had ever encountered. A new question I reflected on how my life is nothing like what I expected it to be. I never expected to be as single as the day I came home from my mission for so long. That part is old hat. But what if that unexpected experience is the answer to someone's prayers? I wasn't sure how to answer that question in part because I had never before considered it. Still single today, I find myself entranced by its ramifications. What if I am single because me being single is the answer to someone's prayers? Well, it's certainly not the answer to my prayers. I’ve been praying for the exact opposite for many years now. I like to think that somewhere a spiritual and intelligent single LDS woman is praying that I’ll enter her life, but I don't really know if that is true.
Maybe the one whose prayers are answered is not my future companion. Maybe it’s a couple worried about their child growing older without a spouse. Or maybe a caring leader or even a really good friend with the same concern. Or maybe it’s not connected at all with my companion. Maybe it has to do with me doing something that is easier done while single. I know the Lord has wanted me to be married for many years now. But given that none of my past opportunities have worked out for me, perhaps the Lord is saving me for some other purpose. Perhaps He is saying, “OK, Plans A through X didn’t work out, so while I am assembling the pieces for Plan Y, why don’t you make yourself useful doing this?” That's a comforting thought. When you make time for the important, you arrive where you need to be. I still don’t have all the answers, but I know I am on my way. And walking by faith is not bad at all. |
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Howdy! I'm Lance, host of Joy in the Journey Radio. I've been blogging about LDS singles life since 2012, and since 2018 I've been producing a weekly Internet radio show and podcast to help LDS singles have more joy in their journey and bring all Latter-day Saints together. Let's engage a conversation that will increase the faith of LDS singles and bring singles and marrieds together in a true unity of the faith.
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