Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life
-2 Nephi 31:20
This week has been crazy. And it's only Wednesday. Yesterday, I was lamenting to Jennifer about all of the things in the past couple of days that had really gotten me stressed out / worked up. I finished the laundry list by telling her, "...and I got into a fight with Sarah..." She just started laughing - hysterically. Her laugh is completely infectious and I in turn laughed hard.
Now, a little background....Sarah is an instructor (I say instructor, because she is not a professor, she does not have a PhD) of one of the classes that we are taking this summer. She is younger and has a certain attitude about her - basically, she is a know-it-all. Maybe she bugs me because I am kind of like that. You could tell her that the sky is blue and she will say, "No, it's not" just because she is ALWAYS right. Anyway, I won't go into details, but she had made a change to a quiz that we were going to take in class. I decided that I had a concern regarding this change, so I thought I would go down to the front of the room to ask her about her my concern. Jennifer told me, "Don't bother...you know what she is going to say." I proceeded to the front of the classroom and asked Sarah my question in a hushed tone to which she yelled (yes, YELLED) "No!" Sarah then proceeded to make comments to me like, "Well it is just common sense that you wouldn't be able to do that." I continued to argue with her, in an equally elevated tone, with a captive audience of about 50 people. She eventually became flustered, said "I am not going to argue with you" and semi-gave in to my request. I felt slightly vindicated and totally degraded.
After thinking about it for the past couple of days, I continue to get kind of angry about something so unimportant. Everytime I get angry, Jennifer has a way of making me laugh about it. Although, Sarah is definately going to get a page in "The Burn Book." I was thinking about the idea of "enduring to end." I guess I should have just let the issue go and had a love of God for all men (including Sarah), but sometimes it is just hard. Enduring to end is applicable to every part of your life - from the smallest to the largest aspects. Sometimes I struggle with wanting to give up when something gets to hard - Jennifer is so good at helping me to put things into perspective and see the bigger picture. We have so many things going on in our life right now, I sometimes forget what the big picture is. The big picture is of course - progress. Progress toward achieving our goals - both temporal and spiritual. Jennifer and I tend to set some lofty goals, but we always manage to achieve them - together - by enduring to the end.
So, the message for the week - endure to the end. Even when you don't want to. Even when its hard. Even when you are dealing with a particular individual named Sarah.
