Standing Tall Among Both the Wheat and the Tares

I'm a convert to the church.  

I'll never forget learning about the concept of a temple recommend and being worthy to enter the temple.  It seemed like such a high goal having never had one, needed one, or even heard of one - to say I did not feel like I fit in would be an understatement. 

After I joined the Navy, I didn't fit in there either - in part because I was a member of the church and was striving tot keep church standards.  I found myself visiting a Catholic Chaplain and I will forever be grateful to the man as he told me while I was struggling: "Can I give you a bit of advice?" 

"Sure, I'll take anything at this point." 

"Lighten up, son. You're in the Navy now.  This isn't going to get any better.  You're getting ready to go to war and you're going to be relying on them, and they are going to be relying on you and if you let these things get between you, you're not going home.  My best advice?  Learn to laugh and not take things so seriously, use a bit of humor to cope." 

In the mission field I didn't fit in either - I had just finished four and a half years active duty in the military and I had learned to push it beyond what anybody in the mission field thought was humanly possible and our numbers showed it (I was so proud of my greenie, he quadrupled the work in one of the big cities all by himself - we were breaking every record possible).  But, regardless of my numbers, I didn't fit in there either.  It seemed I was about made for the doorstep to tract and that was it.  

After graduating from graduate school, our family moved from the super-liberal Portland area (which was where we were from and in a city that celebrated diversity, we always found our religous values accepted and tolerated despite that extreme disparity between the cultural norms and gospel principles and values). We were all excited as a family to finally go be with the saints in a town we couldn't believe had so many chapels so close to each other, less than a few blocks in one case, and a couple miles in others.  There were so many!!! 

But it came to pass that there was a culture here that long preceded our move, deep within the community and congregations - unseen and unrecognized to outsiders and only recognizable after anything different from the opinions of those long-established became apparent.  

To be fair, this is nothing new, not here, not in Catholicism where I came from, not in any other small towns - it's pretty typical.  You get anyone anywhere long enough, communities and people get set in their ways. It doesn't at all change the fact that this is the Lord's only true and living church upon the earth and that it has been restored in the last days, it just means we have imperfect people and a lot to struggle through (it could be worse, could be Nauvoo circa the 1840's, which I fully anticipate in not many years on a lot of different fronts). 

I have to thank my Brethren of the Twelve for helping sustain me or encourage me in some of the worst opposition I've ever faced in my callings that I just wasn't all that thrilled at going to church.  The opposition became so challenging that I honestly asked myself if I was going to remain a member of the church. As Peter asked though, where else is there to go?  A question I think we all have to ask and answer for ourselves at some point and most likely several times on our mortal journey. This is the right place. 

 As my friend, the apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said, "With one exception, imperfect people are all the Lord has ever had to work with.  I'm sure its very frustrating to Him but He deals with it."  

 I've had my heart broken by challenges in this gospel - but we're still here.  It doesn't change the fact that the church is a living and true church, we're not exempt from challenges and we need not think only the Savior or the Prophets have to pass through the tumult that come with human weakness - our own or those of others.  We have to remember the Lord has said he would try our faith.  And here we are.  

So what have I learned? 

I have/am learning that I am and have, in fact been, guided by the Holy Ghost through all of this. I know those Apostles and our Prophet are who and what they say they are, I've met them including the current president of the church.

And I know all our trials are going to be over someday. 

I just hope I can learn to handle my own challenges in such a way that my own behavior or weaknesses don't become an excuse for someone else leaving the church.   Though I have had to remember that the Lord said "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." 

I know many will be offended when we stand up - both in and out of the church - and I know a lot is getting ready to change, and we're gaining a lot, and we're going to lose a lot before this world wraps up. But in the end we only want to stand steady and be found doing what's right, swayed not by popular opinion or religious culture but by our Heavenly Father - to be the wheat amidst the tares, to be a sheep, to strive to be found on His right hand at the end.