Cleave

Tomorrow is my last day in my Doctrines of the Gospel institute class.  For a while, I was really sad about this, but then I got a picture stuck in my head right before I went to sleep, so here I am blogging at an insane hour.

I usually dread the last of anything.  The last bite of a cookie is a simple example.  The last night I spent at my apartment last school year with all of my roommates.  The last hug from my mom before we both return to our homes in different states.

But then I remembered the phrase we hear so often at church: "The Last Dispensation."  I don't dread the end of this dispensation.  I try my best to be prepared for it, and sometimes I get worried that I won't be my best by the time the end comes, but I don't dread it because I know it's just a beginning of something magnificent.

Most of the time, things don't end.  Not the good things anyway.  And the end doesn't have to be bad.  It's like climbing stairs.  Getting to the last step means getting on with what you really need to be doing.  And if this institute class is a set of stairs, I'm glad I climbed them, and I can't wait to see what's on this floor.  Hopefully it's as enjoyable as Doctrines of the Gospel.

Choose to Cleave.
*Read my first post, "Preface," for more information about Cleaving

Sorry for another late night or early morning post.  Sometimes that happens.  But here's a strange coincidence: the beginning of my day matched the end of my day, and this is a very simple statement to explain.

In institute today, we learned that we are instruments in the hands of the Lord and we need to be in tune in order to be worthy to receive true revelation.  My instructor related us to pianos with the fact that even if an expert pianist were playing an out of tune piano, it still wouldn't sound great.

Just a few moments ago, I was with my roommate/friend correcting some tabs to "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" so that she could learn it and we could play a guitar duet.  Something was wrong with her lowest string, and it took us a while to get it to sound right.  It was because the tuning was off.

But I think we need more than tuning.  We also need practice, or we won't be ready.  My roommate/friend is excellent at picking, and I am not.  Mostly it's because I'm comfortable with strumming, no matter the strumming pattern, but it takes me longer to understand and play a picking pattern.  I know that if I would just stick with it and practice until I developed my skill level a bit further, I could pick as easily as my roommate/friend.

I related that to the gospel too.  If we only serve the Lord in ways that are comfortable to us, we aren't going to learn all of the skills that would make us better instruments in His hands.  It might be awkward at first, but we are here to learn, so we shouldn't worry about making mistakes or being slow.  We should just worry about doing our best for however long it takes for us to master the skills that have been set before us.

So I made a goal to learn a song by picking.  I need to develop the talent of reading tabs and learning picking patterns without being scared or frustrated (too much).  I don't know what song I'll do yet, but I'll pick it by Sunday night.  I'll post what song I've chosen on this blog, so if I forget, give me a hard time.  I don't want to forget about this goal.

Choose to Cleave.
*Read my first post, "Preface," for more information about Cleaving

I was reading through my notes from institute today, and I found the scratch paper that I used to prepare for visiting teaching last month.  The lesson was about our responsibility to the rising generation, and I remember thinking a lot about how the world is becoming so much more of a difficult place to raise a decent person than it has been in the past (or so I hear/assume).

But I couldn't help thinking that's why God has preserved this generation for this time.  They can handle it.  And I took it a step further.  That also why God preserved us for this time--we can handle raising children in the world today.  We can handle the responsibility to teach them right from wrong, to raise them in the gospel, and to help them maintain the inherent goodness that each of them is born with.  It will be hard, but if God trusts me enough to bring me to Earth now and to give me the children that will be mine someday, I trust myself to know how to be the mother that those children need.

On that scratch paper, I also found an acronym I made to remind us to raise our children inside the gospel to help them develop good traits and characteristics.  The hymn is number 307, "In Our Lovely Deseret," and you can click here to read it.  It give some good, basic guidelines as to what we should strive to teach our children.  The acronym I made was based on the line "They must listen and obey the gospel's sound."  When I read that line, I realized how critical it was.  We can't just teach our children the gospel.  We have to teach them how to hear it, and not only how to hear it, but also how to obey it, even when it is hard.

So my acronym was LOGS: Listen and Obey the Gospel Sound.  I made bookmarks for the girls I visit teach with this acronym and a tagline that read "Build the youth of Zion with LOGS."  It seemed a simple way to remember that if we raise our children with LOGS and Hymn #307  in mind, we'll do alright.

Choose to Cleave.
*Read my first post, "Preface," for more information about Cleaving