Nobody ever said that life was easy, but I don’t recall them ever telling me that it would be this hard either. I guess it was designed this way for a reason, because if it wasn’t hard we wouldn’t be able to achieve that which is our potential as children of God. The Lord said that he would try us as gold and as silver, “The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.”(Proverbs 17:3) So the question that we all ask one time or another in our lives: why does life have to hurt so much? What have I done to deserve this pain and suffering that, in the moment, is seemingly eternal in every sense of the word? Or, why is this happening I was making so much progress, why God, why did you do this to me?!
Recently I have had a change of mentality and a change of heart towards the trials that we face in life. Yes, life is hard and it is unpleasant in many ways, but the Lord has His sight set on things of a greater consequence than we can even imagine. I recently came home after having served a two year mission to the people of Chile, as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, yet the easiest.
Let me explain myself. While one is a missionary they have a defined day to day purpose: Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. It is clear, it is plain, and it is simple. You sleep, eat and breathe the gospel of Jesus Christ for two years and there is nothing more you have to worry about. Yes, people are closed-minded to religion often times, and yes there is a certain degree of persecution that one faces while out there preaching repentance, but you are completely focused on others and their physical and spiritual wellbeing that you learn the greatest and most amazing lesson: to forget yourself.
Now, I would suggest that this lifestyle is the hardest in the sense of overcoming human nature, but the easiest as far as being happy. There is no greater joy than helping someone repent and accept Jesus Christ as their savior and make a covenant to remember and serve Him for the rest of their lives. I would propose that “life” as we know it is the easiest as far as human nature goes, yet the hardest as far as being happy goes. Yet the world would have us believe as Christians, that it is exactly the opposite. It would have us draw nearer to mammon and distance ourselves from that one true thing that will and can make us happy. I had to learn this lesson the hard way, because like I stated in the beginning, nobody ever said that life would be easy after the mission, but they sure didn’t try to dissuade me of the false notions I had in my mind, that the mission was the hard thing to do and that “normal” life would be easier. What a foolish notion that was, and I have come to know all too well the veracity of that fact.
Little did I know what journey I had embarked on when I left my home to go on my mission, but even less did I understand what I was about to return to when I stepped foot on that flight home. How can I explain it to those who haven’t been engaged in such an incredible experience? Those of you who have served a mission know exactly what I mean when I try to explain it, but the reality is that it is something you must experience to be able to truly understand. But, I will try to convey what it is like.
Say you are learning to play an instrument, say the piano. Now you spend hours and hours learning and practicing and performing all in hopes that one day you may be truly proficient in and have master the art of playing the piano. Now that is not a short time taken to learn such a skill, and much toil and strife is experience mentally, emotionally, and maybe even physically to do so. It has changed you, the very fiber of your being is impacted by the lessons you have learned while passing through the journey of learning to play this instrument. You begin to play small gigs: bars, restaurants, hotels, anything really that you are offered. Now why? Well to get notoriety of course and reach one day the biggest stages that a concert pianist can reach. Well let’s say you reach that goal, and you play in Abravenel Hall, and you perform spectacularly, wowing your audiences night in and night out. Then, abruptly it’s all over. You were just getting used to the simple, yet higher life style that you were living and they ship you off to those bars and crummy hotels where you were playing before. The people there don’t know the difference, they haven’t been where you have nor have they seen or done what you saw and did.
That’s what it is like in a sense. You work so hard to learn how to live a life dedicated 100 percent to others, and their understanding of the gospel, then you are ripped out from there and shipped off to a world that once was familiar, and that once you could have called home and greeted whole heartedly, but now you can’t, because now you are different. How can you give someone a purpose greater than preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ? It is impossible.
That is why I can’t go back. I can’t return to who I once was because then all would be in vain. I have been changed. I have become more loving, more helpful, more of an altruist. So I continue down the path that is set before me. It is a path less traveled, whether it be because it hasn’t been discovered quite as often or the fact that it isn’t necessarily that easy of a path compared to the others we can choose, either way it is still less traveled.
So I will end with the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
With Love,
The one walking beside you.
Recently I have had a change of mentality and a change of heart towards the trials that we face in life. Yes, life is hard and it is unpleasant in many ways, but the Lord has His sight set on things of a greater consequence than we can even imagine. I recently came home after having served a two year mission to the people of Chile, as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, yet the easiest.
Let me explain myself. While one is a missionary they have a defined day to day purpose: Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. It is clear, it is plain, and it is simple. You sleep, eat and breathe the gospel of Jesus Christ for two years and there is nothing more you have to worry about. Yes, people are closed-minded to religion often times, and yes there is a certain degree of persecution that one faces while out there preaching repentance, but you are completely focused on others and their physical and spiritual wellbeing that you learn the greatest and most amazing lesson: to forget yourself.
Now, I would suggest that this lifestyle is the hardest in the sense of overcoming human nature, but the easiest as far as being happy. There is no greater joy than helping someone repent and accept Jesus Christ as their savior and make a covenant to remember and serve Him for the rest of their lives. I would propose that “life” as we know it is the easiest as far as human nature goes, yet the hardest as far as being happy goes. Yet the world would have us believe as Christians, that it is exactly the opposite. It would have us draw nearer to mammon and distance ourselves from that one true thing that will and can make us happy. I had to learn this lesson the hard way, because like I stated in the beginning, nobody ever said that life would be easy after the mission, but they sure didn’t try to dissuade me of the false notions I had in my mind, that the mission was the hard thing to do and that “normal” life would be easier. What a foolish notion that was, and I have come to know all too well the veracity of that fact.
Little did I know what journey I had embarked on when I left my home to go on my mission, but even less did I understand what I was about to return to when I stepped foot on that flight home. How can I explain it to those who haven’t been engaged in such an incredible experience? Those of you who have served a mission know exactly what I mean when I try to explain it, but the reality is that it is something you must experience to be able to truly understand. But, I will try to convey what it is like.
Say you are learning to play an instrument, say the piano. Now you spend hours and hours learning and practicing and performing all in hopes that one day you may be truly proficient in and have master the art of playing the piano. Now that is not a short time taken to learn such a skill, and much toil and strife is experience mentally, emotionally, and maybe even physically to do so. It has changed you, the very fiber of your being is impacted by the lessons you have learned while passing through the journey of learning to play this instrument. You begin to play small gigs: bars, restaurants, hotels, anything really that you are offered. Now why? Well to get notoriety of course and reach one day the biggest stages that a concert pianist can reach. Well let’s say you reach that goal, and you play in Abravenel Hall, and you perform spectacularly, wowing your audiences night in and night out. Then, abruptly it’s all over. You were just getting used to the simple, yet higher life style that you were living and they ship you off to those bars and crummy hotels where you were playing before. The people there don’t know the difference, they haven’t been where you have nor have they seen or done what you saw and did.
That’s what it is like in a sense. You work so hard to learn how to live a life dedicated 100 percent to others, and their understanding of the gospel, then you are ripped out from there and shipped off to a world that once was familiar, and that once you could have called home and greeted whole heartedly, but now you can’t, because now you are different. How can you give someone a purpose greater than preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ? It is impossible.
That is why I can’t go back. I can’t return to who I once was because then all would be in vain. I have been changed. I have become more loving, more helpful, more of an altruist. So I continue down the path that is set before me. It is a path less traveled, whether it be because it hasn’t been discovered quite as often or the fact that it isn’t necessarily that easy of a path compared to the others we can choose, either way it is still less traveled.
So I will end with the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
With Love,
The one walking beside you.
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