Monday Rememberings

Today I spent most of the day reading for Teach For America. I also said hi and hung out with some of the ladies from church who came over to visit Mom (the Relief Society is being wonderful about supporting Mom after her surgery), took time out tonight for a nice FHE, talked to a dear friend on the phone who had to put up with my post-readings brain-fried-ness, and drummed a bit when the stress got kinda crazy. I had forgotten how amazingly cathardic it is to drum when stress is getting to you. It’s amazing how quickly it all just disappears—more people need to beat on things now and again, and we’ll all feel better.

I was responsible for the lesson tonight for FHE, and I gave it on Elder Jensen’s talk on remembering from this last conference. While preparing it, I thought of an experience of Elder Eyring’s that I read about in one of his books, that then reminded me of a recent experience of my own. The Elder Eyring experience is cited in his book To Draw Closer to God, in which he talks about a day when he was on a spiritual high after having a meeting with the First Presidency as a member of the Presiding Bishopric, and really feeling inspired in some of the solutions he presented to various problems—but then, when he got home, because of that spiritual high he was rather arrogant and dismissive in how he spoke to his wife regarding a problem they were dealing with. He had let his positive spiritual experiences lead him to arrogance, because he hadn’t fully remembered where the inspiration for those experiences had come from in the first place. I did the exact same thing a week ago Sunday—I had an amazing and almost overpowering spiritual experience during church, in which I felt answers to something I had been praying about for weeks flood over me, and I felt more strongly than I have in months if not years that I was okay before God. But that same day, I found myself putting off my scripture study during the day until I found myself doing my daily study late at night, just before bed, when I was already a bit sleepy and not nearly as in tune with the Spirit as I would have been had I studied earlier in the day. The problem was that I, like Elder Eyring, had experienced a high enough spiritual high to mistakenly start thinking a fair bit of myself, and I had let myself coast. I hadn’t remembered and dwelt upon the true source of those feelings and answers that I had treasured. Studying Elder Jensen’s talk tonight was a welcome reminder of the same principle: “Remember, o man, and perish not.”