What's Important

El Veneno said: It’s a Job-like perspective. All I have to do is get through the now and eventually God will even the score. In the mortal perspective, things could be a lot better.

…and this: I don't want time to keep passing me by. I wish there were a pause button so I could stop and figure stuff out before I go any further. The future freaks me out. I'm scared of looking back in 20 years and feeling like I've wasted my time. I already feel like I've wasted so much time.

I had really felt like I had learned how to cope with stress and trials, to take that Job-like perspective. And most of the time, I think I do well with that. I still have my moments, times where I get overwhelmed with things and “crumple,” and my wife is there for me to lean on (and vice versa…it’s a good thing we don’t both crumple at the same time very often!). I have been having some personal struggles lately that have nothing to do with SSA, which have been weighing on me. As usually happens when I am stressed and/or down, I struggle more with my SSA, which gets me down more (not like it used to, but still…).

Some of this has to do with career plans and finances, and the crossroads facing me. Not knowing what road to take, not knowing how to solve certain dilemmas, it gets me down. When I read the quote above about the future, I really felt that I could relate. The decisions I am now facing are ones that I sometimes feel should have been made 10-15 years ago; that I should have been a ways down the path I am about to choose, and I am just starting it. So, just when I was about to start a really good wallow, I read this in the same post:: There's more I could say; like the fact that Elder Bateman said: "It is the eternal marriage relationship and the power to create life which produces happiness in mortality and a fullness of joy in the life to come." This got me thinking about the wonderful blessings I DO have, and how much joy my kids bring me.

I had gotten to a point that I was fairly happy with who I was before I got married. I knew that a relationship would never give me any happiness that I lacked within myself, that it wouldn’t change how happy I was with who I was. I still had things I wanted to change and improve upon (like my struggles with porn and masturbation), but I knew it was a matter of time before my life got to where I wanted it to be.

Then I got married and was happier than ever.

Then we had a kid.

Wow.

I have never been able to put into words the multiplication of joy that simple addition brought into our lives. We wondered and marveled over and over at how complete we believed our lives were, and yet how empty they would be if that child were no longer a part of our lives. Each child we have added has increased the sum total of our joy to where there is hardly room to receive it.

Thanks, Veneno, you have helped more than you can know.