People Are Just People

It's sometimes difficult not to internalize offensive remarks.  Even things that are unintentionally offensive can shape our outlook if we let them.  I distinctly remember an event that happened when I was thirteen or fourteen that had a profound influence on how I forever after chose to perceive offense.  I was at a very good friend's house - someone that I spent a lot of my free time with.  We were, perhaps in boredom, going through an old trunk of her mother's when we found a letter addressed to her mother from my father.  Not knowing that they had ever really had any interaction, we were curious. We carefully took the letter from the envelope and read.  To both of our great surprise, it was a letter discussing her mother's recent request to have her name removed from the records of the LDS Church (my father was the Bishop of our ward at the time).  My friend was completely shocked.  She had no idea that her mother was even a member of the church.  I remember her being so upset and feeling that her mother had kept this great secret from her.  It was a strange thing to witness - a friend feeling betrayed by a parent.  That night, when I went home, I asked my dad about the letter.  He told me that someone had greatly offended my friend's mother, and she decided to leave the church because of it.  We had a long talk about how, even though the Gospel is perfect, the people in it are not. People are just people, he said, and sometimes we say things without understanding or thinking about how it will affect someone else. Because my friend's mother chose to be offended, there is a real possibility that her family missed out on the blessings that the Gospel brings.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment; and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner.  But my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. 

The people in our lives come and go.  There are very few people, other than our families, that we will have a life-long relationship with.  I'm sure that my friend's mother never interacted with her offender again, yet her life was forever changed because of their encounter.  Unfortunately, this happens all too often.

The only real constant that we can rely on is the love that God has for us.  It will never change, no matter what we do or say or decide to be.  

For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool.  But my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation.

I had an experience a couple of years ago that was very difficult for me to deal with.  We had chosen to hold off on baptizing our special-needs son until he could better understand the meaning and importance of the ordinance, and the events surrounding the baptism were not what we had hoped them to be.  The missionaries were extremely inflexible when it came to our request to have him baptized on the same day as his younger sister.  As such, we had his baptism on a Friday night and hers on Saturday morning.  All of the rushing to get dressed and to be where we needed to be on time, along with many family members attending, was very overwhelming for us, but multiplied much more so for our son.  By Saturday afternoon, he couldn't take it anymore and had a complete meltdown - one worse than he'd had in many years.  Only after a priesthood blessing could I calm him enough that he could function.  I was so angry.  If only we could have condensed this into one baptismal ceremony, he would have been fine.  Why couldn't people be flexible?  At that moment, I was so grateful for the lesson that my dad had taught me some twenty years earlier.  People are just people.  These missionaries didn't understand how much my son needed things to be simplified.  They were nineteen year old boys, and they were just doing what they thought was right.  The important thing was that our son and daughter had chosen to be baptized, and now had all the blessings that came with doing so.  The church was still true, and Heavenly Father was pleased with my kids' choices.  People are just people, but because my son had decided to be baptized, the salvation of his family will be able to continue "from generation to generation."

How grateful I am for a father who knew the words to say to his teenage daughter, and that I have been blessed to hold those words in my heart to this day.  People are just people, "but my salvation shall be forever".

On his baptism day.   May 30, 2008

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