My bench

This morning I did a five mile loop that I used to do all the time several years ago.  I walked up the hill two and a half miles and then I ran all the way back.  While on my way up the hill I saw a bench and couldn't wait until I would see it again on my way down.  I quickly gained momentum with an urgency to return to the bench.  As I was running down the hill it seemed like forever wondering where that bench was.  And then I saw it.  And I sat on it.  And I started to pour out my heart to a loving Father in Heaven.  I was sobbing while expressing so much gratitude for where I am today, the fact that I can walk again after not being able to for a year and a half, for the beautiful air, for the help of losing weight, for being so happy, for being a new me.  I didn't want to leave my bench when I was done.  Somehow it seemed so sacred to me.  I continued on my run grateful for my experience and so grateful for so much.

Gets me thinking - 3 Trust in God

Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles made the following statement about this most significant decision:

“The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. It is a hard doctrine, but it is true. The many other things we give to God, however nice that may be of us, are actually things He has already given us, and He has loaned them to us. But when we begin to submit ourselves by letting our wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him” (“Insights from My Life,” Ensign, Aug. 2000, 9).

As Elder Maxwell observed, this submission to the Lord is hard doctrine. It requires us to rededicate ourselves to His will at the start of each day and sometimes every hour or even from moment to moment. As we are willing to do so, we find the grace, or enabling power, to do what we could not do for ourselves.

Gets me thinking -- 2 Hope

“Believest thou in the power of Christ unto salvation? . . . If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed” (Alma 15:6, 8)

“If ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words” (Alma 32:27).

“They were in captivity, and again the Lord did deliver them out of bondage by the power of his word” (Alma 5:5).

"We should not underestimate or overlook the power of the Lord's tender mercies.  The simpleness, the sweetness, and the constancy of the tender mercies of the Lord will do much to fortify and protect us in the troubled times in which we do now and will yet live.

Gets me thinking --1 Honesty

“Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of ‘my will and not thine be done.’ . . .

“Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled (see Alma 38:12; 3 Nephi 12:30).

“The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives (see Helaman 12:6). They pit their perceptions of truth against God’s great knowledge, their abilities versus God’s priesthood power, their accomplishments against His mighty works” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1989, 3–4; or Ensign, May 1989, 4).