Beauty

“They” (the world) want what “we” (all those who are righteous – not necessarily nor exclusively members of the church) have.  Beauty has always been, and is becoming even more so about flawlessness.  Models have perfect hair, no ache, beautiful eyes, a tiny body, brilliantly white teeth, lovely hands and nails, and smooth skin.  In short, they are fantastically gorgeous.  And more and more it’s all become increasingly . . . radiant – even glorious.  Models in advertisements almost have a glow to them. 

And doesn’t that description resemble the description of a resurrected being?  Flawless perfect beautiful brilliant lovely gorgeous radiant glorious glowing.  But ironically, those who obsessively seek beauty are likely to lose it.  Yes, if you spend hours on end in the bathroom perfecting your attire, you will be pretty pretty.  But the hard work one puts into their image in this life will bring forth no beauty in the life to come.  One of my favorite scriptures – and one of the ones that puts the most fear into me – is 2 Nephi 13:16-26: “Moreover, the Lord siath: Because the daughters of Zion”(notice this is addressed specifically to “the daughters of Zion,” not the daughters of mammon) “are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet – Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion . . . In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, and cauls, and round tires like the moon; The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers; The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings; The rings, and nose jewels; The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins; The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass, instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; burning instead of beauty . . . And her  gates shall lament and mourn; and she shall be desolate, and shall sit upon the ground.” 

But it is not the fact that “she” cared about what “she” looked like that causes “her” to receive this awful reward.  Looking nice is not at all a bad thing (it’s actually quite important to care about your appearance), but the vanity that often accompanies beauty is dangerous.  Vanity leads to all sorts of problems: pride, hate, envy, ect. – such qualities destroy righteousness and thereby destroy eternal beauty.  Everyone will be resurrected.  Everyone will receive a degree of glory.  And thus, everyone will become beautiful.  But only those who worked hard to have faith, integrity, virtue, charity, joy, love, optimism, will-power, humility, and kindness will have those qualities when they are resurrected.  And again, ironic, those who strove to be nice people in this life will receive a higher degree of glory, and thus be more beautiful than those who did not work at being nice.

When I was little, my mom told me that the nicer you were, the prettier you became.  I believed her so entirely that once at recess when a girl asked me “why is so-and-so so pretty?” I told her it was because so-and-so was nice, and the nicer you were the prettier you were (the girl who had asked me then declared that from that day on she was going to be the nicest person ever). 

As I grew older, I remember deciding that while my mom’s lesson was a good way to get me to be nice, it was only partially true.  I understood that the nicer you were, the more people would like you, and in that sense you would be pretty, but I rejected that your physical form would change if you were kind.  But now I know that while what my mom said might seem silly, it is true, for . . .

Beauty in the fair fades with familiarity.

Beauty in the not-so-fair in the same grows.

Thus when time and acquaintance away the image,

We must prove more than a mere mask

For love and liking are the results of

a pretty habit,

a pretty mind,

a pretty humor,

a pretty heart

Not a perfectly polished pretty mask.

The more you get to know someone, the less their appearance matters – the less you see their physical shell and the more you see who they really are.  And if “who you really are” is good, then people will see this and you will be beautiful in their eyes.  But if “who you really are” is bad, then people will see this and you will be ugly in their eyes. 

In all things, we must learn from the example of our Savior.  Jesus Christ was lowly.  He “hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Mosiah 14:2; emphasis added).  Vain people, puffed up by pride, look at the poor, the ugly, the humble, and they belittle them.  They despise them.  “But wo unto the rich, who are rich as to the things of the world.  For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek” (2 Nephi 9:30).  Christ is “the meek”!  And the world, blinded by beauty, could not see the Savior as the glorious being He was/is.  And thus, “He is despised and rejected of men” (Mosiah 14:3).  The meek, humble, lowly people who lived when Christ did were able to see Him as He was.  Satan does not want us to be able to recognize Christ, so he makes beauty enticing.  He draws us from Christ-like qualities through vanity.  Let’s do just the opposite—let’s turn from vanity, turn from worldly beauty, and strive for Heavenly beauty—beauty that is eternal.

Life and Rock Climbing

As you can tell from the title, I have come to the conclusion that we are all rock climbers.

Our goal in rock climbing is to become strong and fit.  As we start climbing, some people are wonderful at it.  They begin climbing and just keep on going and going and going – reaching incredible heights.  And others are not so wonderful at it.  They start climbing, and fall.  And they start again, and fall.  And they start again, and fall.  And it seems like they are making no progress at all.  But the goal was never to climb the highest – the goal was to become strong and fit.  So even the people who fall and slip and mess-up can reach the ultimate goal – as long as they try again.  The only way they will be unsuccessful is if they become discouraged by their falls and decide to give up. 

The plan of salvation isn’t a grand total tally up where we get positive points for doing good things and negative points for doing bad things and there is a certain point threshold you that you have to meet to be granted access to Heaven.  This life is about becoming better.  Heavenly Father wants us to succeed.  He wants us to go rock climbing so that we can become stronger and better and happier than we were before.  And at any point along the way we can say “Heavenly Father, I’m sorry I haven’t been doing so good.  I am going to be better starting now.”  And Heavenly Father says, “Okay, this is your new starting point.”

Of course, there is a bit more to it than that. 

We do have to repent before we can get to the new starting point.  But that makes sense.  If a rock climber was to fall, they’d need time to recuperate.  They need to tend the wounds—clean gashes, set broken bones, and let the hurt heal.  And all this is painful!  But it would be far worse to try and go on without treating the injuries.  If we do not take care of the sores, then we are more likely to fail when we try and start our climb again.  The cuts and gashes get in our way, impeding our progress and causing us pain. 

Growing up, whenever I told my mom I was sick, she would ask “where does it hurt?  What feels sick?  Is it your head?  Are you nauseous?  Do you have a stomach ache?  Do you feel like you’re going to puke?”  And most of the time my reply was “I don’t know.  I just feel sick.  I don’t know where it hurts.  I don’t know if it’s my head or my stomach.  I feel gross and I want it to go away and that’s all I know.”  When we fall in our rock climbing adventure, sometimes we don’t know where the pain comes from.  We just know it’s there.  And no one else—even someone with a scrape in the same place—truly knows what the pain is like.  No one else, that is, except our Savior, Jesus Christ.  When we fall from our climb, he is the one waiting there for us.  He is the one to clean our scrapes and set our broken bones and prescribe the needed rest.  And he is the only one who can do this job because he is the only one who knows what we are going through.  He has felt the exact wound that we are experiencing and he know exactly how to make it better.  Have you ever gone to the doctor and had them say “Well.  Something is definitely wrong, but we don’t really know what it is.  You can try this and see if it works and if not we’ll try something else.”  Because Jesus performed the atonement, he knows exactly what is hurting or making us sick.  He never has to play the healing guessing game.  He is the only person who can truly empathize with us. 

I love my Heavenly Father for sending me on the rock climbing adventure of life so that I can become better than I was before.

I love my Savior for tending to all my hurts when I've fallen in life.

Faith in the Love of God

I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like everyone that I talk to is going through a life crisis right now.  Granted, it is a few weeks past the middle of the semester for me, so everyone I talk to is also dealing with the insane stress of school . . . plus I’m living in Provo Utah, five minutes away from the BYU campus, where everyone is either (A) stressed because they’re not in a romantic relationship, (B) stressed because they are in a relationship and they’re discovering that it’s not always rainbows and butterflies, or (C) fed up with relationships and are trying to find a way to become a catholic nun or priest while still belonging to the LDS faith.  But, many of the problems I hear about are much bigger and more serious than the things listed above—deaths, depressions, failing testimonies, loneliness, extreme physical health issues, extreme emotional health issues, family problems, and the list goes on and on.

And it seems to me that most of the more grave issues are the result of fear, despair, and/or ingratitude.  Fear paralyzes us.  It makes us so worried about what will happen in the future that we fail to do the Lord’s will when we ought to.  It causes us to loose sense of our direction and focus and we become so lost that we do not know what we are doing or why we are doing it.  Despair makes us focus so much on our shortcomings that we are blinded of our potential.  We become so apathetic because of our current situation that we decide to stop trying to become better.  Ingratitude –or probably more accurately, unawareness—keeps us from seeing the Lord’s love in our lives.  We fail to see all that he blesses us with, and we begin to feel very alone and sad and helpless.

So guess what?  As a result of all the craziness that has been going on around me, I’m going to tell you about my favorite part of the gospel: love. 

To begin with, one of my favorite scriptures—1 John 4: 16-21

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.  Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.  We love him, because he first loved us.  If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?  And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”

I love it!  And I believe it is true.  Every bit of it.  God loves each of his children.  And once we realize this love, we forget our fears.  I like rhyming, so sometimes I write poems (if you think that my rhyming is silly or weird or whatever, that’s okay, because I write my poems for me and for Heavenly Father, so really Him and I are the only critics whose opinions count).  And looking through my journal, I found one that I wrote that I think goes with this idea of love casting out fear:

Oh how meager my mind!  How brittle my brain!  What great shame does wrack my frame!  How soon do I forget to forget the meager, brittle, shame-filled world and march on the path both straight and narrow with my banner unfurled!  Straight and narrow, yes it may be, but the true tricky trick is a fear that can’t be seen.  To walk in a straight line on solid ground is not a hard task.  Would you find it hard to walk down a strait, narrow hallway I might ask?  But Satan has at his hand a weapon called fear.  And with it he does make us think failure is near.  He tells us it is not an easy path we walk.  He tells us it is the ridge of a mountainside—the very top!  One small slip and to destruction you will fall!  Come now, you’re too weak, too frail, too small.  But let not his lies lead you astray.  Such things are not true—not true I do say!  You are strong!  And your path is not so narrow, so impossible, nor so long as he does say.  For help is near you, ready to reach out.  Please believe these words and in Christ do not doubt!  He is the way, He knows the way, and He will never lead you astray.  So rise up and take cheer.  And never do fear.  Heaven will help.  Christ is always there, for your trials—your very ones—he has felt.

Heavenly Father loves us so much.  He is there to help in every instance of our lives.  He cares about us.  When six-year-old tommy loses his favorite toy, Heavenly Father is sad!  When twenty-year-old Susie fails the test she studied so hard for, Heavenly Father grieves!  When fifty-year-old Mr. Brown is crying because his son is making poor decisions in his life, God too cries.  And he will send us comfort and love at all times of our lives—both when we are sad and when we are happy.  But this help is often small and simple (“by small and simple things are great things brought to pass” Alma 37:6) and often it is easy to miss or to overlook these blessings in our lives.  Which is why gratitude is so important.  Gratitude is the lens that revel God’s love and help in our lives.  Gratitude is love.  President Uchtdorf once spoke about this:

“The divine love of God turns ordinary acts into extraordinary service. Divine love is the motive that transports simple words into sacred scripture. Divine love is the factor that transforms reluctant compliance with God’s commandments into blessed dedication and consecration.

Love is the guiding light that illuminates the disciple’s path and fills our daily walk with life, meaning, and wonder.

Love is the measure of our faith, the inspiration for our obedience, and the true altitude of our discipleship.

Love is the way of the disciple.

I testify that God is in His heaven. He lives. He knows and loves you. He is mindful of you. He hears your prayers and knows the desires of your heart. He is filled with infinite love for you.”  (The Love of God, October 2009).

Heavenly Father tries to lift our hearts daily.  But we must have enough love in our hearts to be able to see it, ‘cuz it’s usually not huge overpowering spiritual experiences that he send us, but tiny little “I love you” notes.  Another poem I wrote comes to mind:

 Oh Lord, oh Eternal Father.  You are my Father, are you not?

     For to my aid thou hast come when you I diligently have sought.

  In the shining rays of a sun now setting

     You have comforted and calmed all my fretting.

  And through the glistening of the fallen snow

     Thy love for someone as small as me I do come to know.

  And through the kindness of the human race

     I do see thy kindness, and thus, thy face.

  Any when my family’s love for me I see,

     I get a small glimpse of eternity.

Usually Heavenly Father tells us he loves us in the sunset and in the snowfall and in small acts of kindness and through our family.  But so often we go about our lives too busy or too worried or too self-absorbed to realize that Heavenly Father has blessed us with so much love!

And this love that He has for each of us is personal.  Yes, the Lord loves all his children, but He also loves you.  Individually.  Specifically.  And he sends little bits of love that are meant individually and specifically for you.  And the little bits of love that He sends you are tailored for you and no one else. 

Something that makes me happy beyond description is when subject matter in classes overlap.  When I learn something in my history class that fits perfectly with the stuff I’m learning in my biology class I get so excited!  Or when we talk about the need and purpose of government in one class and then I read 2 Nephi 2 for my religion class.  And this has happened to me literally countless times over the past few months.  One Sunday morning I was doing some reading for my religion class and it was about the atonement.  It was fast Sunday, and when we got to church nearly every single person who got up bore their testimony about the atonement.  Then in Relief Society, guess what the lesson was about . . . the atonement!  Another time, I read about Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation in Jesus the Christ, then we talked about the plan of salvation in my Book of Mormon class, then a week or two later we talked about the plan of salvation in my Joseph Smith class, and then Elder Bednar (yes, the apostle) came to our stake conference and he spoke about the plan of salvation (that was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life).  And there have been soooo many other times when what I’m learning in one class relates to what I’m learning in another class.  I am amazed at how many times it has happened.

And then I realized something: that was Heavenly Father’s way of telling me that he loved me.  He knows how much I love being able to relate one subject to another and he has guided me to do things that have allowed this to happen so often.  He guided me to take the classes I’m taking and He is guiding me to study the books that I’m studying, all so that He could help me be happy.  Yes, this small blessing was made just for me.

And there are other blessings that Heavenly Father sends me.  Once upon a time, I was having a horrible day.  So many people that I love had had something absolutely terrible happen to them over the weekend and I was just stinking sad for them.  It literally felt like my heart was weighing me down.  I trudged my way to my class, trying to figure out how the heck I was going to focus on anything academic when I was so full of sorrow.  I took my seat in class, got out my notebook, and class began.  My teacher likes to sing hymns at the beginning of each class, even though it’s not a religion class.  As he was turning on the projector so that we would have the words to the song, I was thinking to myself “I’m not really in a singing mood today.  I’ll just listen.”  But then I saw the title of the song we were going to sing: “How Great Thou Art.”  This is my favorite hymn.  Absolute, number one favorite hymn.  And you better believe I sang it!  And as I sang it, I felt the love of my Heavenly Father enter my heart and lift it up.  He comforted me that day.  I know (I do not believe—I know) that Heavenly Father made sure that the song we sang in class that day was “How Great Thou Art” and I know that He did it just for me.  For me! 

And if Heavenly Father sends me little “I love you” reminders, I know He sends them to all of his children.  He sends them to you.  Yes, you.

One more poem:

Some days are better than others. 

Some days the darkness is all we can see.

Some days we see the human race as our sisters and brothers

And some days all we can perceive are their mounting infirmities.

Some days the only glad tidings is that the day is almost at an end

And a request for a new day Heavenward we can send.

Some days are simply rather bad.

Some days we are lonely.

Some days we are sad.

Some days we are depressed. 

Some days simply are not the best.

Some days it may have been better to have just stayed in bed—not even to have gotten dressed. 

But that’s okay.

That’s alright.

Because even if today is not your day

And even if tomorrow brings nothing but sorrow

And even if this entire year you don’t have any cheer,

There will always come a day for the gloom to dispel.

And the love of God in your life you will feel.

And then you’ll look back

On those times that in joy did lack

And you will see clearly the blessings that before you could not

And you will see that you received all the help that you sought.

For Heaven knows and controls all

And though you are small

And though the devil—the father of lies—may try and shake you

Your Father—God Almighty—shall never forsake you.

I have faith in God’s love for each of His children individually.  He sends each of us little “I love you” messages every single day of our lives. 

I am reminded of Christ’s visit to the America’s after His resurrection.  After teaching them for a long time, He did “perceive that [they were] weak” and He decided to stop teaching for the day and let them rest (3 Nephi 17:2).  At this point, they “were in tears, and did look steadfastly upon him as if they would ask him to tarry a little longer with them” (3 Nephi 17:5).  And out of love and mercy, Christ invited them to bring any sick, lame, blind, halt, maimed, deaf, or in any way afflicted to him so that He could heal them.  But, what truly touches me is the fact that “he did heal them every one as they were brought forth unto him” (3 Nephi 17:9).  Christ is all-powerful.  If He wanted to, He could have healed all the afflicted at the same time.  He didn’t even need them to be brought to him—they could have stayed in the crowd, or at home, or wherever they were and he could have healed them.  But Christ had each hurt person brought to Him one at a time and He healed each of them individually.  It took much more time and much more effort to have each person brought up one by one to be healed.  But such things—time, effort—do not matter to Heavenly Father and Christ.  They love the children of the earth too much to let time and effort matter.  And I believe that Heavenly Father does the same thing for us that He did for the Nephites.  Each of us has wounds that need to be healed.  And Heavenly Father not only heals these wounds, but he does so “as they [are] brought forth unto him.”  He does so on a personal and individual level.

Heavenly Father loves us.  He does!  And what a blessing it is to know this.