HONEST, SIMPLE, SOLID, TRUE - C Terry Warner

 

Honest, Simple, Solid, True - C. Terry Warner   

Really good GEMS in this talk!

How then can a person come to be honest, simple, solid, true?

We are members one of another, connected to each other, and especially to God, by spiritual sensitivities and obligations profound as eternity. 

THIS IS A STORY OF HOW A WOMEN HEALED HER MARRIAGE, VERY TOUCHING.    

Whether it is felt in His breast or in ours, the Savior’s love can achieve what force cannot because where force calls forth counterforce, love calls forth love. In the human image of His divine sacrifice, we, too, can outlast and conquer vengeance. I received a while ago a letter from a woman whose father had been emotionally neglectful and whose husband turned out to be much the same way. When she tried to talk about why he was distant, he said it was because she was always angry. This angered her more, and she told him she was only angry because of his lack of love, which made him more inclined to withdraw. They had got themselves encircled in the bands of death and the chains of hell. She went to the mountains alone, intent upon reading one of the contemporary self-help books. She wrote later:

As the writer began describing the intense need we each have for love, I began to feel more and more deprived until I felt such a huge longing that I could barely breathe. I decided to write all of this down for my husband to read, and enumerate the many times I had felt emotionally deprived. I began to write furiously, to pour it all out onto the paper. The longer I wrote, the more I began to have a feeling come over me that what I was writing was false. The feeling continued growing until I could no longer squelch it, and I knew intuitively that the feeling was coming from God, that He was telling me that what I was writing was false. “How could it be false?” I asked angrily. “I lived it. I know it was there because I saw and felt it. How could it be false?” But the feeling became so powerful and overwhelming that I could no longer deny it or fight against it. So I tore up the pages I had written, threw myself down on my knees, and began to pray, saying, “If it is false, show me how it could be false.” And then a voice spoke to my mind and said, “If you had come unto Me, it all would have been different.”

I was astounded. I went to church. I read the scriptures often, I prayed pretty regularly, I tried to obey the commandments. “What do you mean, ‘Come unto You?’” I wondered. And then into my mind flashed pictures of me wanting to do things my own way, of holding grudges, of not forgiving, of not loving as God had loved us. I had wanted my husband to “pay” for my emotional suffering. I had not let go of the past and had not loved God with all my heart. I loved my own willful self more.

I was aghast. I suddenly realized that I was responsible for my own suffering, for if I had really come unto Him, as I outwardly thought I had done, it all would have been different. As that horrible truth settled over me, I realized why the pages I had written of my suffering had been false. I had allowed it to happen by not truly coming unto God. That day I repented of not loving God, of not loving my husband, of blaming, of finding fault, of thinking that others were responsible for my misery.

I returned home but did not mention to my husband anything of what had transpired. But I gave up blaming, knowing that I was in large part responsible for the state of our relationship. And I tried to come unto God with full purpose of heart. I prayed more earnestly and listened to His Spirit. I read my scriptures and tried to come to know Him better. Two months passed, and one morning my husband awoke and turned to me in bed and said, “You know, we find fault too much with each other. I am never going to find fault with my wife again.” I was flabbergasted, for he had never admitted he had done anything wrong in our relationship. He did stop finding fault, and he began to compliment me and show sweet kindness. It was as if an icy glass wall between us had melted away. Almost overnight our relationship became warm and sweet. Three years have passed, and still it continues warmer and happier. We care deeply about one another and share ideas and thoughts and feelings, something we had not done for the first 16 years of marriage.

GREAT STORY!!!

Chris was a young father who, not far into the semester, had become overwhelmed by the pace of the class. His attendance flagged; after a while he did not come at all. My daughter was surprised when he showed up for the midterm exam. When the test was over he told her that a few days before, the professor, one of the most internationally distinguished at this university, knocked on the door of the trailer where Chris lived with his family. Since Chris had no phone, the professor had gone to the school records, located the number of his parents in Pennsylvania, and obtained his address by calling them. At the door he said simply, “I haven’t seen you for a while and have worried about you. The midterm exam is coming up and I’d like to know what I can do to help you prepare.” Honest, simple, solid, true.

AND I LOVE THIS ONE TOO!!!

This university has not come this far because we have more time for scholarship than the faculty and students elsewhere or because our IQs are higher or because we’re more fiercely competitive. And it will not realize its prophetic destiny for any of these reasons. We have come this far and we will attain that destiny because, in the long term and very often in the short one, people respond more energetically, think more clearly, work more joyfully, and build more wisely when they put one another ahead of self; when they welcome the interruption brought on by another person’s need; when they do their work in ways that enhance each other’s work; when they forget about getting credit; when they renounce in their hearts all sense of belonging to an elite company, even a company of the brightest or best trained or the most doctrinally pure; when they reach out to and embrace those who are violating all these principles. I am here this day because of those who treated me graciously in spite of my frequently making things worse by trying aggressively to make them better when patience would have been much the wisest way.