What Matters Most



{Bailey's Blessing Day, 1995}

{I needed to write down the answer to a prayer that came today, so I can read this again when difficult days come again :)}


Even with snacks and bingo and soda and their favourite candy, crayons and notebooks, it was a Kramer gong show to keep the teenagers and a sleepy husband watching, listening to, sleeping through conference....

So why did we I just watch 10 hours of general conference...

My heart desperately needed help, hope and answers...

There was many awesome moments of conference that warmed my heart, but nothing that felt like the answer I was searching for....

Until the very last talk, of the very last session....

Elder Bednar, while spending a Sunday afternoon with Elder Robert D. Hales as he was recovering from a serious illness. At one point, he asked Elder Hales, "What lessons have you learned as you have grown older and been constrained by decreased physical capacity?"

"When you cannot do what you have always done, then you only do what matters most."

 

 

There was my answer.

 

My mind flooded back over the last four years of struggle and uncertainty. So much for us has changed. We have had to give up so much, accepting that we not in control of our journey and that healing would not come in they way we had asked and prayed for...

 

But then my mind realized something.... not one blessings of the gospel has been taken away from us or changed. If nothing, our understanding of and gratitude for the blessings of the gospel continues to grow.

 

 We have clung to the knowledge that our Heavenly Father loves us and will help us, when nothing else could bring solace. We have felt our Heavenly Father's tremendous love for us as our dear friends have reached out to succour our weary hearts. We know more of the things that matter most because of the journey we have been asked to walk.

 

 So, no, we have not been robbed of a single blessing, we have been blessed beyond measure as we continue through this Refiner's Fire.

 

Only doing what matters most is such a blessing. How grateful I am for answered prayers.

 

 

{Holly's Baptism Day, April 2002}