Calmed and Directed

1. Inner Struggles

Stepping into the apartment, I was very proud of myself. The date had gone really well! She told me that she loved the restaurant, the flowers, and the activity afterward— but as we entered the apartment I could tell something was on her mind. She had fallen silent and her slightly furrowed brow told me the lighthearted, carefree feeling of the night was gone and may not return.

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She went and sat on the couch with me. The silence was less awkward than I expected it to be; both of us were deep in thought. And as we sat there she took a sharp breath before whispering, “So I’m thinking about going on a mission.” OH. NO. Great. Just great! What was I to do? Do I support her in her desire to leave for a year and a half? Or do I discourage it? How do I answer? I had to respond within a couple seconds and my mind was going a million miles a second. Is there a chance that she’ll stay? What if this is just a test! How seriously is she actually considering leaving?

Without fully making a decision in my own head, words just flooded out. “You would be a fantastic missionary.”
I spent the rest of the night wrestling with those words.

2. Scripture, Personal and Powerful

I used to not be the best with staying on top of religion. There is a lot to do! Go to this meeting, go to that get together, write a talk, teach a lesson, go visit the widow down the road. And I guess I just got complacent. It’s easy to get complacent. With a never ending number of things to put your time and focus in, no wonder why you it can be easy to lose sight of certain things. It was one day I had actually found time to read the Book of Mormon. I came across a section where Mosiah is teaching his children about the scriptures. I realized that this is exactly what I needed to hear. I was to do all these things in church so “so that I can become [a man] of understanding” and that if “it were not for [all of this church stuff, I would have been ignorant]… not knowing the mysteries of God” (Mosiah 1:2-3).

I felt enlightened. If it were not for all of these things that I learn through the activites of the church, I would be missing out on all of these important truths. These truths, or mysteries of God, are key to our time here on Earth. They help guide me to my purpose and give me reason to stay on top of the many things we are asked to do.

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3. A Wilderness Quest

A wilderness quest. It seems every person in life has one of these at one point in their life. It just takes that moment of crisis; that moment of uncertainty. It is then that a person must make a change. They must reach out to something greater than themselves— that is because the answer cannot be found within them. It comes from something higher than humanity itself. This experience happened to me a few years ago and just like others who came before me, it happened in a sacred moment with nature.The scene was my family’s cabin in Michigan. We own a small lake there and quite a few acres of land. It’s in the middle of nowhere and dirt roads are commonplace. This provides for an excellent opportunity to be alone.I had a lot of things on my mind at the time. I wasn’t sure what I should do with my life. It was causing me a good deal of stress and so I decided to take a walk around the woods  of the property. As I crossed a hill I saw the lake glittering through a section of the trees. The sun was bright but I was hidden amongst the shade of the trees around me. It was there in that moment that the scripture came into my head, “Peace, be still.” Mark 4:39. Jesus commands the wind and storm around him to be still. And as I looked around, I thought that nothing could be quite as still and calm as this. That spiritual experience in the woods helped me learn that everything is in His hands. And just as the winds and storms were calmed— I was calmed too.