Choices

Our ward conference was today. Our Bishop spoke about choices. He shared a quote a coworker has on his wall at work, "Life is hard; it's harder when you're stupid." Then he related it to our choices. Another quote that I really liked was, "Pain is inevitable, but often we choose misery."

Then in Relief Society we talked about President Eyring's talk, "Mountains to Climb", where he shares his thoughts and experiences in life regarding the choices we make. Will we have a firm foundation of faith through our personal integrity? Will we serve our Heavenly Father and His children with love? Will we make the choices we need to make to be happy?

We are always talking in the church about agency. How very important agency must be to our Father for Him to lose one-third of his children right at the start, before this mortal existence even began. Our Stake President emphasized that today; he also shared that teaching our children how to make correct choices is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.

As parents we tried to follow the counsel by Joseph Smith, "We teach them correct principles, and let them govern themselves," to a certain extent. Sometimes we failed to do it well; fortunately our children have turned out well. Rachel and I have had many deep discussions of late regarding choices, and it has all been positive. She brought up the same quote from Alice in Wonderland last night that was brought up by our Bishop today...
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't care much where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't matter much which way you go.

We all know that we need to care where we want to get to, because it does matter which way we go. There are always forks in the road, knowing ahead of time what our decision will be when we get there can make all the difference.

I am so very grateful for the choices, positive and negative, that I have made throughout my life. Some of  them brought me great sorrow, most of them brought me great joy. All of them taught me the lessons I needed to learn.