Charity

1 Corinthians 13:8-10
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

The entirety of 1 Corinthians 13 is centered on Charity.  From this chapter we learn that Charity is the love of Christ, without it we are nothing, and it is the greatest of the three traits often listed in the scriptures- faith, hope, and charity.  From the verses quoted above, I have come to understand a little more the permanence of charity.

The Bible and Book of Mormon are both filled with prophecies of the time when all shall be made perfect.  All human beings will be resurrected, brought back to life with a perfect and immortal body.  Pain and sickness shall be done away.  This will be a time of great change, as every individual will need to be perfected.  Human knowledge will change, we shall see the faults in our discoveries and theories and have the opportunity to perfect our knowledge.

The prophesies of ancient prophets, which we learn through scripture, and modern prophets, which we can learn by listening to them and reading their words, will change.  This one surprised me a little, since prophecy comes from God, so I figured it was perfect.  The words that we receive are perfect, however; they are merely a part of all that God desires to give us.  In our imperfect and still child-like state, we are not able to learn all, so the prophecies we receive are part of the whole truth.  The prophecies will change because they will become complete.  In other words, like human or physical knowledge, or spiritual knowledge will become perfected.

Charity is the only perfect thing that we, as imperfect beings, are able to access.  As the pure love of Christ, charity cannot be imperfect.  Christ loves each of us perfectly and completely.  This is why He suffered and died, so that each of us might overcome our sins and imperfections.  As we exercise charity, as we strive to love all, despite their imperfections, as Christ loves us despite ours, and as we avoid judging those who sin and instead seek to help them overcome sin, we grow a little more into the perfect beings we someday shall be.  We cannot do it without Christ.  Our love isn't yet perfect enough to overcome judgement and fear.  For this reason, Christ gives us His love, He gives us Charity.  It is already perfect, it will not change, but it will change us if we give it the chance.

Pleased to report- Success!

I am quite proud of myself.  I successfully made it from Tuesday to Tuesday without playing Candy Crush at all.  I think I got lucky.  My parents came to visit, I spent a lot of time cleaning to prepare for that, and it wasn't too hard to keep myself busy.  Along with my parents visiting, they bought me ice cream.  Receiving my reward early made me feel much more obligated to keep to my promise.

Now, my parents bought me two different flavors of ice cream (mint chocolate chip because it's amazing and vanilla to eat with yummy peach cobbler).  I feel that since I got double the reward I was intending, I ought to do double the work.  I let myself have today to check the many "candy crush requests" and to run out of lives several times.  Starting tomorrow, I will pay my second week for which I already have my reward.  Thursday to Thursday- it shouldn't be too difficult.  I'm going to Carlsbad Caverns tomorrow, on a hike on Saturday, and to Tuscan from Monday to Thursday.  I can do this!

Something to do

The challenge I made myself has finally become rather challenging.  Throughout the weekend, my parents were visiting and we were either out and about and busy or at home talking to each other.  If I ever felt the desire to play Candy Crush, I would just close my laptop and talk more with my parents.  

They left yesterday, and as fate would have it, I'm not feeling well today.  I came home from work early and spent the entire afternoon switching between reading, watching netflix, and trying to take a nap.  Around 3:30, I hadn't yet managed to actually take a nap and I was too tired to keep reading.  Checking my 13 Candy Crush requests was starting to look pretty tempting.  I thought of all my back up plans: play guitar- I gave it to my parents to take home since I only have 3 weeks left that should be busy and I don't want to have to deal with it on the plane; Blog- not feeling up to writing; work on a book- again, not feeling up to writing (not even feeling up to reading).

Options exhausted, I did the only thing I could do.  I closed my laptop, rolled over in bed, and tried again to fall asleep.  It finally worked...for about an hour longer than I intended.  I'm going to have trouble falling asleep tonight.  However, it's 5:30 and, despite already having been home for 6 hours, I still have not played Candy Crush.  I just have about 6 more to go... I need to find something to do. More netflix maybe?

Today will be easy

Fortunately for me, it is the third Wednesday of the month.  This means that community game night is tonight.  It starts at 6:30 and ends whenever I'm tired enough to go home and go to sleep.  I only have to keep myself occupied until 6:30.

Even more fortunately, I have family coming to visit this weekend.  Family is a pretty good excuse to get myself to clean the house up a little bit.  An hour and a half of cleaning, then game night.  I have no need to play Candy Crush.

This will be hard

It is time I buckle down and finally take up the challenge of the habit I've been avoiding.  Instead of developing a new habit, I'm going to un-develop a habit that is wasting far too much time.  I meant to write this up Sunday, but I was reluctant and felt like procrastinating and was certain I would think of something else that I could call my habit this week.  However, I need to do this... I need to quit Candy Crush. At least for a little bit.

When I first came up the mountain, I was spending a little too much time playing Bejeweled Blitz.  I decided to cut back, but I had no clear cut plan on how.  As a result, I felt bored, found a new game, and now spend all my time on it.  I'm kinda back where I started, but I'm going to do better this time.  Here is my plan:

1- My fault last time was that I went from one game to another; therefore, I am abstaining from all internet games.  I'm still going to allow myself to play other stuff on my computer (like solitaire) but nothing which requires me to be connected to the internet.

2- Since there is so much I'm not letting myself do, I need something to take up my time.  Instead, I shall do one of three things: Pick up my guitar and learn and/or write a new song, Pull out my notebook and get started on a book that I've decided to write, or Blog. You might here from me a lot this week, but that's okay, because I have lots of things about which I've been meaning to write.

3- To reward myself, should I succeed in completing the week as planned (and I will make myself do an entire week- that means all the way till next Tuesday) I will let myself buy ice cream.  This seems like an adequate reward, it's been a few weeks since I've had ice cream.  Any suggestions which flavor I should buy?

Note to self:

When you are lonely and emotional and suffering from Merlin withdrawals, reading your own blog posts from the past year is a very bad idea.

An Ending

Warning: this might give away spoilers to the BBC series Merlin, but only if you have no idea how Arthurian Legends end.

The last season of Merlin was recently added to Netflix.  13 episodes- I got through it in 4 days. Thursday night, long after I ought to have been asleep, I watched the credits of the last episode slide across my screen.

Since I began watching in 2009, I was more than aware of the general story line.  I knew Arthur would marry Guinevere, Morgana would be evil, Merlin would be a great wizard, love affairs, epic conquests, tragic ending.  I knew what was coming...but I let myself fall into the story anyways.

Back to Thursday. I slowly closed my laptop, turned the lights out, and laid down, wide-eyed and very awake.  How was I supposed to sleep, Arthur just died, Morgana has finally be defeated.  Merlin lost his best friend and Gwen lost the love of her life.  And possibly worst of all- one of my favorite tv-series was over, forever.  How was I supposed to sleep?

I'm not sure how I did fall asleep, but I recall waking up the next morning.  I was still as emotionally distraught as I had been the night before, but I pulled myself together enough to get to work.  Other students were laughing, making jokes, and intermittently focusing on work.  I sat in front of my computer, lugubrious and lost in thought, stopping myself from bursting out, "How can you be happy? Arthur died last night!"  It's a little sad how affected I've been by this.  Not only have I known what would happen for 4 years, but it only ended last night in my world, the last episode was originally aired in the UK in December.  I held myself together for the rest of work, then came home and satisfied Merlin withdrawals by finding Merlin-themed memes on Pinterest.

You might be wondering why I'm so torn apart by a tv show.  The reason, Merlin was incredible.  It was adventure and comedy, inspirational and occasionally terrifying.  The CG was horrible and the insults were hilarious.  After every episode, I was left with these thoughts:

No matter how big or ugly your problems are, be it monsters or armies, you can always defeat them by believing in yourself.

"Then I'm happy being insane, surely it's better than being miserable" -Arthur

Love can overcome the worst of curses.

A dull job is made much better by friendship and laughter.

"Being different is nothing to be afraid of" -Merlin

You can fix mistakes.(and there is usually another solution when you mess up and ignore the dragons advice)

Never judge someone for being a klutz, they just might be something great in disguise. 

"In life, you always have a choice. Sometimes it's easier to think that you don't" -Gwen

Don't trust cute girls who randomly show up right before a major war/decision.

Merlin wasn't just about watching a bunch of good looking knights go off on adventures only to be saved unexpectedly (and unknowingly) by a better looking warlock.  Merlin was evidence that good things are still being made, things that teach and inspire and leave you feeling like the world can be a better place.  That is why, in the Dragon's ever-wise words, "The story we have been a part of will live long in the minds of men"- Kilgharrah (The Great Dragon)

Week 8

Well, it's been a while. I seem to have gotten busy/lazy/procrastinatory and not written in quite a while, which is really quite a shame because I've had lots of interesting ideas to write about, I just haven't written them.  This shall have to be remedied...eventually.

I realized I never posted my goal for week 7, which was the week of June 23-29. Last week didn't count as a week in my goal because I was on vacation.  To be honest, I don't remember what my goal was. I think I intended it to be no candy- like I intended week 6 to be no candy, but my adviser had dark chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joes.  One can't just pass those up.  About 1 day into the week, I changed my goal...but I don't remember to what it was changed.  This is why I'm supposed to be blogging these things.

Anyways. For week 8, I've decided to focus on enforcing good habits instead of developing new ones.  This is a little different from the maintenance week I had about a month ago.  That was working on habits I've developed since the plan began.  I'm focusing this week on two habits which I've been working on for a while- praying every morning and studying my scriptures.  Since coming to the Middle-of-Nowhere, I've had lots of time on my hands and set a goal to study my scriptures for at least 30 minutes a day.  This goal kinda collapsed while I was on vacation, I think I got 5 minutes a day instead.  Morning prayer has always been difficult for me. Saying a prayer before going to bed is easy to remember, but I don't wake up well, or quickly, so remembering a prayer in the morning is much more difficult.  This habit also faltered significantly while on vacation.  So, this week will be designated to re-enforcing these two essential habits.

Of all the habits on which I have focused, these are the two that truly make me feel like I'm becoming a better person.  Running might bring me closer to making my goal distance, making breakfast might bring me closer to good eating habits, going to bed early brings me closer to getting to work on time.  Prayer and scriptures bring me closer to God, there is nowhere else I need to be.