I'll admit. When starting this blog I
did so as a place to vent. But I'm of the firm belief that one does
not have to complain to vent ones problems. I can teach those things
I am learning as I am dealing with my issues as I pass through my own
life. And perhaps they will genuinely help others to understand how
my mind works, and even understand themselves better.
Attending Brigham Young University
Idaho has been a great experience in my life that has lead to a lot
of personal growth. Yet all around me people keep saying, “Find
your eternal companion!” And for all the seeking done, I still have
not found.
For the longest time I thought, “What
is wrong with me? Am I so messed up that I cannot find anyone who
wants to be with me?” And perhaps for a time I was. And that is
another topic I will discuss at a later time. For now I will simply
say, when you are dating, you were never meant to be a project for
another person to put you back together. Each person has the
responsibility to put themselves back together, to make themselves
whole with the help of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or rather, we are
responsible for going to Him so that He can put us back together. But
we were never meant to be a project for the person we date. It is
not, and never will be the responsibility of another mortal being to
put a broken you back together.
So when I figured that part out, I,
with the help of my Father did manage to rebuild myself. And in time
I knew there wasn't anything wrong with me, and that I am not messed
up. Yet I remained unable to find my own spouse. And I am presently
still so. But as I worked to seek the Lord's help in bettering
myself, and to become more like He is, eventually I felt His spirit
whisper the words, “You are single at no fault of your own, because
you are doing what is required of you. Your time just has not arrived
yet.” It's a comforting thing.
So 1) You are not a project, go to
the Lord and He will put you back together and He will show you what
you need to do to be so;
And 2) Once this is done, once you are
doing the things you should be, you will know you are single for no
fault of your own.
But is it anyone's fault then? In
life we look to place blame somewhere. I have been working to
eradicate the word blame overall from my vocabulary as it has served
me no real purpose. But still, where does the fault lie if we cannot
find a companion, and we are doing all in our power, and all that is
required of us? It's nobodies fault. It's the result of choices
people make in their individual lives. And it is nothing more than
that and perhaps that simply, it isn't our time yet.
I'll try to explain how this works.
This box represents the entire
YSA body. Since I am presently part of the YSA body of the LDS
church, that is what I'll use for my example. This example applies to
all of the YSA extending beyond the boundaries of the BYU campuses.
The line drawn through the bottom
area of the box represents the general population of the combined
student body, but not the entirety of it. In fact it's really not a
line at all. As we can see in my next diagram. It's just that so many
people are located in the same location it gives the illusion of
solidity.
You will notice also that to this
second box I've added two more elements. First a line at the top that
displays the finality of our lives if we have done all in our power
to try to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. It represents the state of
being of those who have done all in their power to reach it such a
state of being by actively and consciously working to become as the
Master. The second element I have added are dots all across the space
in the middle. The dots represent those in the act of traveling
towards the goal of being like Christ.
Of the dots I would like to make two
important distinctions. The first is this: That in order to become
like the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to start choosing and acting to
become so. As a result we will pull away from the general population
of YSA. Now don't misunderstand me, I am not saying these are bad
people or anything like that. These are YSA who love the Lord Jesus
Christ and desire to serve Him and return to live with Him. But they
haven't quite figured out these four things.
1) The reality of their ability to
become even as the Lord Jesus Christ is, and
2) That we have to choose in a very
active and conscious way to do this thing
3) They have not learned the purpose of
the covenants they have made, and as a result do not understand the
depth of the importance of keeping them, and
4) They don't understand the covenants
they have made beyond the words they agreed to, because they have not
learned to ask to Lord to “teach me how to understand ___________,
and how to do _________.”
The daily utilization of these 4
things makes a drastic difference in ones life.
Again I would like to take a moment
to say that the lack of understanding these things does not make them
any less LDS, nor does it make them any less of a person. Elders Boyd
K Packer, and Orson F. Whitney taught on different occasions, “They
have but strayed in ignorance from the Path of Right, and God is
merciful to ignorance. Only the fulness of knowledge brings the
fulness of accountability. Our Heavenly Father is far more
merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his
servants, and the Everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save
than our narrow finite minds can comprehend.” (April 1929, Orson F.
Whitney, CR, p. 110) Admittedly those I discuss now have not in
actually strayed from the path, they keep it according to their
understanding of it. Thus, in our Father's infinite mercy He gave
us the responsibility to “ask of Him,” and that is something we
each have to learn to do individually. But as we learn to do this, we
become accountable for applying the things we begin to learn by Him
through His holy Spirit. As taught above, we are held accountable for
the things we know and understand. That is part of the mercy of God.
But as you begin to learn to do these
things and begin to apply them in your lives, you begin to move
forward on the path of becoming as Christ. The majority of the YSA
will not figure this out early on, because it is a very difficult
thing to learn. Yes, they will learn, but the reality of becoming as
Jesus Christ is something I have observed that only comes to people
when they are ready to act on that with full diligence and purpose of
heart. The words, “Be ye perfect as I, or your Father who is in
heaven is perfect” are not statements given to use so that we can
simply dream about becoming as God in the life hereafter. When does
God provide a commandment without first providing a way to accomplish
it? He does not give any command without providing a way for it to be
accomplished. And this is no different in that sense. But the amount
of work that goes into it, and exactly how we do this thing is
something that comes to us individually through the Spirit of God.
And as you do this, and as you pull
forward, you become a spec in the box, now isolated from the large
majority of not only the YSA, but of marriage candidates. In some
ways you will appear odd to them, in some ways they will appear odd
to you, there will be maturity gaps in terms of Spiritual
understanding, as well in many cases in temporal things (spiritual
and temporal maturity to not always coexist within the same person),
and you will feel very isolated. Jesus Christ Himself had to walk a
very lonely path, and in the end for a time He had to walk it alone.
Is it then any surprise that the path to being like Christ is a
lonely one? I declare no, it is not.
When we think of people we think of
them as this:
When we think of changing how we are,
we think of it like this, in extremes, either we go from really good
to really bad, or from being any kind of bad/less than good to
becoming magnificent in obeying God.
But it's not like that is it? We move
like this, in a pattern of back and forth motions. But this is the
key, the motion has to be continually up. Those who are working to be
as Jesus Christ are not exempt from failures and falling, but so long
as you do not give you, you are not falling backwards, you're falling
sideways, but you're still moving in an upward motion. Our Father
always intended for us to learn from our mistakes. But whether we do
or not is entirely based on how we choose to look at the situation
and respond to it.
So
again, is it any surprise that as we move forward and away from the
general masses that the road begins to be lonely? Even in normal
society that is how it is when you choose to leave the location of
the largest population. If you move from a large city to a small town
it's lonelier because there are a lot fewer people. When you leave
the small down to a middle of nowhere tiny town, there are even fewer
people, and it gets lonelier. And when you walk out of that town and
into the forest alone, you are alone because you have separated
yourself from everyone else by the choice you made to leave where
they were. This same principle and truth applies to us as we learn
and grow in the realm of the gospel, and in spiritual development.
But like the man wandering through the forest, if he spends his life
doing it, he will once in a while meet other people, and eventually,
he'll figure out where He needs to go and how to get there.
So
it is with dating in the YSA community. Those who early in their
lives figure out how to move closer to the Lord Jesus Christ,
specifically in being taught by Him how to be as He is, will pull
away from those who have not learned, and those who learn faster will
pull away from those who learn slower. They will feel isolated and
alone at times, but it need not last forever.
Look
at my last diagram.
Notice
I have circle locations where two of the wandering dots traveled
closer together. We can pretend for the diagrams sake that these are
people who found their companion in the great wilderness of life, on
their lonely path to be like Christ. They happened upon a fellow
lonely traveler, and decided to love each other and to get married,
and to move forward as a pair of dots working towards the mutual goal
of being as Christ. The lonely road does not have to remain lonely,
but we have to choose to walk it all the same while it is. To quote
President Uchtdorf, “...patience was far more than simply
waiting for something to happen—patience required actively working
toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results
didn’t appear instantly or without effort.
There is an important concept here: patience is not passive
resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience
means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something
and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising
faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our
hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring
well!”It is not my place to tell anyone where their dot is. Likewise it is not your place to tell yourself where your dot is. If you want to know where your dot is, study the Gospel, study the whole thing out, and go to the Father and ask Him in the name of Christ where you stand in becoming as He is; ask him to teach you how to become as He is, and little by little He will enlighten your mind, and He will begin to teach you how to achieve this task. He will tell you where you're individual dot is, whether or not it is still in the “line” or whether or not it has begun to move beyond it. He will show you how to move beyond it and towards Him and His son Jesus Christ.
If you, like me, have not been privileged to find your eternal companion at this time, don't find fault in others. First, if you know you need to be fixed, fix yourself under direction of the Lord. And then know, that as you do all that you can do that you are doing what is required of you by the Father. You are doing all in your power to fulfill the purpose He created you for. To be happy and have a family. And in HIS time that blessing will be fulfilled. Just keep walking the path, and He will see to it when the time is right.
If I can offer one last piece of advice: don't be shallow, and examine the way others choose to be. If you see someone choosing to be like Christ, ask questions, find out how deep it runs, think seriously. A man or woman is made entirely by the choices he or she chooses to make. Before God the only thing that makes us unequal are the choices we make in our own lives. God loves us all equally, but we do not make equal choices in our own lives. If you find someone who is choosing to work and learn to be like Christ, consider why. I'm not telling you to choose to love them, I'm telling you to think about how they choose to be, and ask yourself what you are looking for as you examine that person. Then when you find the person who suits you, you'll know why they suit you. And if you ask the Lord if that person is genuinely working to be as He is, He will let you know the truth of it.
For me, it is the purpose of my entire life.
