Loving God's Children

A life-long pursuit of mines is to cultivate the pure love of Christ. It's really a central pursuit of mine. All that I do and that which I hope to become is Charity. 

These last couple of days (probably magnified by mother nature), I've been made aware of areas in which I clearly can continue to improve.

Opportunity #1: I had the chance to help a friend in the ward babysit her children so she and her husband could attend a fireside with visiting authorities. After the fireside, if she messaged to let know they were pau, I was planning to encourage them to go get some dessert. Thankfully, she beat me to it and after checking up on how things were going, she asked if it'd be alright if they grabbed ice cream on their way home. I was happy to oblige. Until I felt like the courtesy-time was overdue (which sadly wasn't even that long, I was just fine, and I had no other obligations to attend to!). I really didn't like my lack of charity at all and knew I needed to pray away the feelings of being taken advantage of and replace it with generosity and goodwill.

But then there was Opportunity 2 and 3.

Opportunity #2: Sunday morning I received a text from my RS president asking me to pick up a sister that lived downtown as well. Sure. After she gave me her address, I thought, Oh--low income housing. When she included the few extra details she knew about this sister, including the potential for cognitive issues as well, I was starting to feel the resistance. I knew this was going to stretch me. It did. She didn't respond to my texts, my phone calls, or my buzz call. When I finally got a hold of her, although she said she'd be right down, I waited an additional fifteen minutes for her and we were late to church. (Later I found out she's having issues with her phone, her buzzer doesn't work, and we made it with enough time for the sacramental ordinance.)

Opportunity #3: After church during our Linger Longer, I go say hi to the sister missionaries and then they ask me if I've met the new investigator. I haven't so they ask me if I'd be willing to go meet her and visit with her over refreshments. No problem. She's nice enough and at first I'm like, Cool, that's great that you make your baby's food from scratch and you patrol the chat room your sixth grader and friends are in during their sleep over. The more we talk though, the more I start wondering, Hmmm.....hmmmmmmmm.... *insert contemplating emoticon right about now* Is it just me? Or is something...off....?

Driving home through the streets of downtown, I continued to see the diversity of God's children. And I felt overwhelmed and frankly distraught. Heavenly Father, you have some very, very odd children. Like really odd. I know you realize this because you're God, but do you realize this???

Clearly I still have lots of loving to learn.

But I glory in these opportunities, as overwhelming and distressing as they are in the moment. Because it's my direction to become who I want to become.

I'm grateful for patient Soundboards and the inspiration they offered via visiting general authorities in their part of the world.

Sometimes I need to pray for love and then act. But in my pursuit of charity, there will also be (maybe many) times when I need to first act (in faith) and trust that the love will come.

I experienced it clearly in Opportunity 1. As soon as they got home I determined to just enjoy visiting with them and hearing how the fireside was and immediately I felt love and gratitude for the opportunity to serve.

So here's to learning how to love more like the Savior. And act in faith as I try to do so.