Don’t survive — thrive!

"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."

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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