Really is Progress

It has been what I feel I can only describe as an insane week, a good week, at the same time an insane week. I started a twelve week program called Go Vertical that helps in focusing the mind, goal setting and emotional release techniques to help let go of baggage from the past. After only a week I find myself with an excitement for life and a joy to see what is just around the corner. At the same time I find myself exhausted from short nights and lots of adrenaline dumps and maybe, just maybe feeling a bit jaded.

  Now I invite all of you to chuckle just a bit as I let you in on a little secret, there was a point in the week when I wondered for just a moment what life would be like without struggle. With so many things looking up, with me feeling so hopeful, I just felt sure my struggle was over, or would at least take a bit of a hiatus. Yes in that moment I forgot an eternal mortal truth, mortality was created with struggle as it's goal. I don't mean to say that Heavenly Father wants us to be miserable, He just knows we get a lot higher when we take the stairs instead of always walking on a flat surface. Anyhow in that foolish moment I wondered what life would be like now that I had "the tools I needed" to move past struggle. All I had to do was use tools and repeat and then I would be fine...yeah...no. Yes slaying dragons does wonders and saying my declarations help me face the day in a better frame of mind, but that doesn't mean my struggle is over, that just means that we are leveling up. It's sort of like the game of Super Mario. When I was little the first level was really hard for me, in fact it took a whole lot of lives for me to even get half way through the first level. But as I practiced and put in a whole lot of effort I finally made it to level two. Then it took a whole lot of practice to get to level three...and so on. Sometimes I went back to level one just to remind myself that that which had been so hard once did get easier and that when I put in the effort those harder levels would get easier too. Not because the game took pity on me, but because my skill and tenacity helped me level up to a new level of play.


  I would guess that life is much the same way. The logistics of the video game did not change, no matter what level you were on it was a matter of running, jumping, and sliding at just the right time to get where you needed to be. But just because I learned to jump in level one, didn't mean it wasn't still hard to jump when the scenery and circumstance were different in level three. I think sometimes in life we think (and I am definitely feeling this way today) that if we figure out something once that we have mastered it and we can move on. That once we figure something out we move to the next skill and the next skill after that, but I'm starting to realize that isn't exactly the case. Perhaps it is called enduring to the end because we are meant to do some of the same things over and over again, just in new circumstances so we can use that same basic skill set in a myriad of different ways. I would guess the root of the skills we are to learn in this life is charity, the pure love of Christ. In fact the first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, might and mind. Second only to that is to love your neighbor as yourself. We are here to learn to love those around us, even when we see them in all their human mortalness, instead of the Gods and Goddesses they will one day be. We are here to learn to love other's as our Savior loves us and I think we are also here to learn to have charity towards ourselves to forgive ourselves and to keep forgiving and keep trying.

  Last week I shared how I chose to give my anger to Christ because I valued my relationship with Him more than my own perspective and emotion. This week that was put to the test. I had made plans and those plans were sort of changed without my input and I have been struggling letting that go. It is times like these that I feel a bit like a two year, I want what I want and I want it now. I am sorry to say I haven't handled things as gracefully today as I did last week, but perhaps this is me adjusting to level two. At least right now I know where I want to end up, even if at this moment I'm not completely sure how to get there. Yes I have the tools and some skills, perhaps now it is learning how to apply them in new ways to fit new circumstances.

  Perhaps enduring to the end simply means to keep trying, that when it feels as if we have failed, because our solution just didn't work as well as it did last time that we just keep trying, that we never give up. Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can always try again and we can always learn again. Mortality is a whole lot about a heart willing to try again and a lot less about immediate progression. Perhaps what feels like a step back is really two steps forward, because realizing what is going on inside us and around us and what we are hoping for really is progress.