Choice

I got this nifty new laptop a while back and I have been marveling a bit at the metaphor that it places before me. You see, I have to charge its batteries regularly. Every time I attach the power cord, I find myself thinking of the other things I need to do to charge my batteries regularly. If I don't charge my laptop's batteries, it begins to shut down programs so as not to lose stored information. When I fail to study my scriptures regularly, my Spirit begins to operate on reserve power as well. I suppose if I failed to nourish my Spirit further, it would begin to shut down, to wane and die. I have to choose to nourish. All of life is a choice, if only a choice in the attitude we will bring to a challenge placed before us. I must choose to nourish my soul so that I can always choose faith over doubt, hope over despair, joy over pleasure. I have known people whose testimonies I thought were solid and find out that they have waned, that they have in recent times chosen differently, chosen not to nourish those seemingly solid testimonies.

Some of those people whose testimonies have faltered lately have left me mourning and somewhat sucker-punched. I began to think that certain sorts of people found faith more difficult, that a person of science might find it eventually insurmountable to remain a person of faith. But that is not true. God is the ultimate man of both science and faith for it is His world those of science set out to discover, to prove and disprove. A person, any person, must choose faith and joy over doubt, must choose happiness. How am I choosing happiness over despair? Faith over doubt?

I've gone through a gambit of emotions lately. Self-righteousness has, unfortunately been among them. It is too easy in my pride to say that certain choices I would never make. But in the better light of some humility and self-knowledge, I need to examine all my choices. More than ten years ago, DH and I were assigned to give talks on Joshua 24:15--choose you this day whom ye will serve. Somewhere in the preparation of that talk, I got stuck on the word "this" and that became the focus of my talk--choosing this and every day to serve the Lord. That a daily recommitment to serve the Lord is necessary in order for it to stick. There is an adage, that where our time is spent belies whom our master is. If I look honestly at how my hours and minutes are meted out, it may not be so easy to see that I have chosen to serve the Lord. I give a lot of lip service to finding a way to more purposeful living, but I still find myself mired in happenstance. I get stuck, I get lost, I am forever on some tangent or other. And I fear, that it is in these small happenstance choices that the big "never going there" choices have their beginnings. In fact, I know that is how these things happen, both for good and ill. Truth be told, I am fat because I choose to eat more calories than I expend. I choose not to plan my nutrition better. I choose to embroil myself in happenstance. Truth be told, I needed to get rid of the TV just as much as the kids because it is far too easy to get stuck watching any old worthless thing when there are far more worthwhile choices piling up for my time.

Sometimes when I am good about learning from the scriptures and not just allowing them to pass before my eyes, I write thoughts and questions in a little book. A week or more ago, (and this is where perhaps a tangent can be a good thing), I started out reading in 2 Nephi about feasting upon the Word. That led to a topical guide search of the word study and to D&C 26:1 where the Lord admonishes Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer to "let your time be devoted to the studying of the scriptures." Those words haunt me in a good way, when I let them. I don't think, by quoting them here, that the Lord expects or even wants us to spend our days and hours and minutes devoted solely to the actual reading of the scriptures, like the rabbis of Orthodox Judaism for whom study is preferable to the exclusion of all other pursuits. I do think that the study of scriptures can and should encompass where our hearts our, what words and phrases and thoughts and ideas occupy our minds and that in this way our time can be devoted to the study of the scriptures even as we change diapers or file motions, solve equations or teach Biology 100. If and when I can focus my mind in this kind of study and pondering, drawing my whole soul out in prayer and study, even among the mundane and necessaries of life, my choices become more eternal and I can more fully protect my heart from doubt, focusing my mind on eternal joy.

One thing I talk a lot about with my kids is choice and consequences. The idea I share frequently is that what we choose determines whether we get further choices or whether our options become limited and foreshortened due to our own less than stellar use of agency. I want my children to understand and love agency and freedom. But in understanding, I want them to know that our ability to choose does not extend to the consequences that come as a result of our choices. Agency is not a cafeteria plan. Cause and effect is real, even when the effects are temporarily hidden from view. My goal is to firmly entrench in them the concept while the consequences of their choices are small: throwing a frisbee in the house might mean you break mom's vase--and even if you didn't mean to do it, it's still broken. Hopefully if they really understand agency now, when choices become very serious like those of chastity and honor, obedience to laws and integrity in business and personal dealings, their understanding of eternal cause and effect when combined with the Holy Ghost, will help them to make the best choices.

And ultimately, I know that my children will best understand these concepts of choice and accountability by my actions, by the choices I make and own. I choose one way or the other every day. I'm trying to choose more consciously the things I really want, the outcomes I dearly desire. I want to choose light. I seek light.