Be of Good Cheer!

     Down in Irvine, with a church member's family and my missionary companion, I watched a church movie that I kind of wanted to see for a very long time.  It was a movie about the pioneers who toiled through the American plains to get to their promised land.  Through thick and thin, these astoundingly brave men and women threw virtually everything away to keep their covenants with God.  The movie is called 17 Miracles and to be quite frank, it was very lacking cinematically, but the point it conveyed went very deep in my mind-- so much so that it brought some memories of friends back home.

     Thinking upon the examples of these pioneers and their sacrifices, it oddly came to me to think of Mariah*, Amelia*, and Rochelle* while I drove back home from the movie.  These are good friends of mine and even now, I do miss them a lot.  They shaped the person who I am and I am forever grateful for that.  As much as they've shaped me, the things that they're doing are shaping their own experiences to be unique and different from any other person that they or I know as well.  I am doing things that will shape my experience to be different from others. 

     However, the choices that they make may at times worried me and filled me with a sort of resentment toward them, wondering "did they do this because of me?"  Upon that time, I realized that I think too much.  Obviously, I cannot control what they think and my resentment for them is only a fragment of the grandeur of my imagination.

     Regardless of anything they have done or will do, they're still my very good friends.  Because of that, I found that I must continually show them that I think that way-- that I care-- without resentment and without murmur; just like Levi Savage.  I will at times will be a bit down for many of the things that they do, but it is no concern to stop loving entirely.  They're there because they have done more good to you than they have done bad. 

     So, if you're like me and you worry your time away whether or not they're going to end up like the hypocrite that you are[were] and then get sad about it, I have 2 words to say to you that one of our church leaders talked about way back when:

"Stop it."

     Now live life; friends exist to help, not hinder!

     Food for thought.





*names altered