Ready

Sunday is a day of rest.

At our house that involves naps. Sometimes they are mandatory, sometimes not. When they are not, those that choose not to lay down and close their eyes do have to enjoy quiet activities. Or quietly enjoy their activities.

Either way, Boy, there is nothing quiet about jumping off beds. And Miss Thing, door slamming also isn’t quiet.

Back to my story.

Yesterday I settled down on the couch for my Sunday nap. I always like to read a little before closing my eyes. I usually read scriptures or books and articles that are spiritual in nature. To me Sunday is a day of renewal and I can often find that in the words of wise people. Yesterday was no exception. I started reading a talk from the Ensign, “The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality” by Elder David Bednar. As he discussed the Atonement and one of it’s purposes to “make good men better” I was enlightened and uplifted. He gave numerous examples from the scriptures about people who prayed for strength to change their circumstances and not for their circumstances to change. He called this the “enabling power of the Atonement.” I have read the scriptures he spoke of many times but never read them that way. It was as if a light went off in my head and I thought about my own life, my own struggles and the things that I go to my Father in Heaven for. I was overcome by his profound words and how I can apply them to my life.

At the end of the article I read this, “From a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on October 23, 2001.”

And I was overcome again. Because I was there when he first gave this talk.

I don’t remember this talk but I do remember being there. At the time he was the president of a small college I had just left. A college I had come to feel at home. I was, at the time, just starting to navigate a much larger place that still felt foreign and constantly overwhelmed me. The opportunity to hear the then President Bednar speak was one that I, and the many others who I had transferred schools with, could not pass up. After the devotional that day many of us stayed after to shake hands and be near him and his wife and sense what was still so familiar.

There is a phrase my mother uses to explain why we forget things we know we have heard. “You weren’t ready to receive it.” Yesterday as I read that talk then learned that I was there when it was first given I realized that I wasn’t ready to receive it then. The life experiences that I have had since that time, I think, have made me more ready.

After all that’s what life does, make us ready.