LDS Marriage and Family. Thank you kindly Brother Goodman.

What

Girl in class: “You cry in a peaceful way, not painful. You cry because people cannot experience the joy you are feeling.”

So What

I have never experienced the clarity that I do as I live this gospel. Outside of it, the world truly is as in Lehi’s vision, a cloud of dark mist. I remember it. And it’s true. You cried because you were lost, and that you were lost is the only think you knew. You cried because you didn’t understand why you were crying. Because you could not feel the Savior’s compassion over you, but you thought you should. You cried because you actually did believe you were alone and you felt that that wasn’t enough. And then one day you found Him. And you cried again, but this time because of what His atonement does for you: It claims you jealously (as if you can hear Christ saying over you, “She is mine, Satan.”); it allows you to have hope for the world, for your own life, too; it helps you to forgive yourself and others; it allows you to have compassion for yourself and detach from the “old man of sin”; it renews you, makes you gentle and humble; you come to experience charity for everyone you walk past; you finally obtain protection from the gross ambitions of the adversary; so you can finally find direction in the dark mist by grabbing onto the iron rod and running in the direction of that great Tree; and so you can come home.

After all that discovery, you are free in the way you had always wanted to be.

We are not free when we run in random directions in a seemingly unassuming darkness. We are free when we know everything we need to know and then get to decide which way we would have our lives be. And there is not joy greater than having discovered that. And my classmate is right, I think. My greatest sorrows are no longer for myself.