The Need to Understand Agency

It's Sunday morning.  I just finished getting ready for church, which starts in about half an hour.  As I was doing my hair, I was listening to the scriptures.  I was listening to 2 Nephi.

As I was listening, I was receiving guidance. I was also comforted by a feeling of peace. I felt as if a set of caring arms or the softest blanket in the world was being placed around me.

Then this thought came to me:  you need(ed) to learn the importance or value of agency.  Then my thoughts went to the fact that you learn best when you experience something yourself.  We must gain a testimony and a working knowledge of the importance, value and absolute necessity of agency.  How else can/could we have the courage and faith necessary to let it be the governing principle that it is.

It's a tough thing for a person like me to learn.  It's a tough thing for a person like me to realize, that in some situations, there is nothing I can do to help, and that another's decisions are not due to the fact that I failed in some way.  Tough things to learn, but necessary.

Our Oleander Trees

Our backyard is surrounded by oleander trees.  They are great trees.  They provide greenery all year round.  And in Arizona, that is wonderful.  In the spring they burst with beautiful white flowers.  Some of our oleander trees have begun to bloom.  Others are laden down with buds.

Yesterday the wind was really blowing.  I looked into the backyard and saw some of our oleander trees bending under the weight of their heavily bud-laden branches.  I worried that maybe the wind would be too much for them and they would break.

They didn't.

And today, those trees are covered with beautiful white blossoms.

I thought about that, and, of course, compared it to our lives.  The winds will blow.  We're told that.  It is never if they will blow, but when. When we feel those winds in our lives or see them blowing in our children's lives, worries arise.

I think we often don't see our burdens as "buds"--something hard that is going to produce something beautiful.  Instead, they feel like heavy burdens that are going to break us when those winds come.  But, if we are patient and steadfast, the winds stop and the blossoms come.