Building Zion one heart at a time/ the Pioneer heart

Wow, to be human is to be vulnerable! On this blog I can be selectively vulnerable, I can write, erase, write some more and then edit to my heart's content. But often in life things come out of your mouth in a moment of ...something...and all of a sudden you find your heart rolling around on the floor in front of you for the world to see and there isn't anything you can do about it. You can't take it back and you can't soften it, it is what it is. Today was one of those days in Relief Society. As readers of this blog already know the things I won't go into all that I said, you already know it, but I have carefully worked to conceal it from my ward, well today I didn't go into deets, but I said enough to feel awkward.

But other than feeling awkward and vulnerable enough to sink into the floor I did it because I realized we all have things that make us feel awkward, that make us feel vulnerable, things that bring us doubt, cause us to question, to feel overwhelmed. I realized today we all have things that happen in our house that nobody else knows. Now having just typed that it sounds epically creepy and I don't mean it that way, I don't mean like a real skeleton in the closet, but we all have things that cause us to cringe or weep that we want to keep the outside world away from. This is just human nature, but Satan uses this and heightens it, he tells us we have to put our best foot forward all the time, we can only show the good, because people don't really want to know and their lives are perfect so we can't show our own.

Well people welcome your wake up call, we all have stuff, it is part of the human condition, we all have trials and adversity that cause us to question our faith, question our purpose, question our life choices. What causes those questions will be different for each of us, but we all have them. The early saints in Jesus' day had struggles, they faced a clash of tradition versus new doctrine and a world who didn't believe them. The pioneers of this dispensation faced mobs out for their blood and lives, they faced division as they adopted doctrine that had been missing for millenia. And as pioneers in our day we face a world full of gathering darkness, with division and people searching and preparing for the coming of our Savior. We are each pioneers because we do all have stuff, our own personal journey exceeds the journey of anyone else because our Heavenly Father has personally tailored things specifically for us, this means sometimes we do go into places where there isn't anyone to talk to except for heaven because no one else gets it, but that doesn't mean, we can't share we are having a struggle with someone.

We all have stuff, it is part of the eternal law of returns, we gain experience through well experience.  Part of our covenants is to bear one another's burdens, to serve the Savior by helping lift each other. To be a place where anyone at anytime can come to find relief. This means I have a lot of work to do, so that I can have listening ear like Christ so that I can love and support. Right now I'm working to see the Savior's face when I see those around me, for they are Christ, they have been purchased with a precious price and I want to help my Savior in helping them.

We often think that Zion will come one building at time, we will all be called to Zion and we will build it together as citizens of a city. Zion is built one heart at a time, as we learn to love we create in our heart and home a place where we see Christ's face and learn to love like He does. When we do this we prepare in ourselves a place where Christ can come and dwell. This goes two ways, we also need to be willing to share, and be willing to know that what comes back might not always be perfect, we are Saints in training and it takes time to gain all the Christlike attributes. But as I lift and I share and you lift and you share we all learn and grow together to be a little kinder and to learn how to share so we can all bear one another's burdens.