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Tuesday night was our monthly Inklings discussion; ladies in my neighborhood gathered to study general conference talks. We range in age from early 30's to 80's, and on any given evening, there are three to fifteen women present. This week, one of my friends told us of a family member who heard a therapist speak about a term new to them all - scrupulosity. The speaker said he was seeing scrupulosity more and more in his practice. He knew of many people - particularly women - leaving the church because of their need to get rid of their obsessive need to be perfect. It was too much; walking away from the church was the only way to stabilize their mental health threatening to shatter. This drove the conversation as we went on to decide: IS perfection the expectation - doctrinally - or merely culturally? If so, what does it look like? Does it help or hinder actual progress? If it's only a cultural expectation and you're steeped in it, how do you abandon it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoning the church altogether? Most women I know have felt the cultural tug of these expectations. Working on human imperfections can feel like the hopeless task Hans Brinker had keeping back the sea with his finger in the hole in the dike. It's too much, our faults are relentless as the sea, and the practice to tame and subdue them, like the sea - OY. But Jesus. When you're overwhelmed and discouraged, this isn't the point in your life where Jesus should exit - this is His entrance cue. He isn't the reason for the overwhelm and discouragement - He is the solution. But He only comes when He's invited. He's so terribly polite, and He's paid such an excruciatingly high price to honor our agency, He will only come when we knock. Or in the case of the overwhelmed and discouraged - when we pound on the door. "I can't do this alone. It's too much. Please help me." In April 2025, Sister Tamara Runia taught: "I've learned that if you wait until you're clean enough or perfect enough to go to the Savior, you've missed the whole point!" (Tamara W. Runia, "Your Repentance Doesn't Burden Jesus Christ; It Brightens His Joy, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/04/43runia?lang=eng ) And... "We don't stay on the covenant path by never making a mistake. We stay on the path by repenting every day." Repentance has two parts. Before you're yoked with Jesus Christ, repentance looks like stopping anything that is in between you and Him. But when you've asked for His help and entered a covenant relationship, repentance doesn't mean you never make a mistake again, it just means you keep starting over. With help. I had a piano student many years ago who had come to one of those lessons fraught with peril: a lesson of accountability where there was no good for it but to simply announce at the door: "I had a terrible week, I didn't get to the piano once." As I tried to give an encouraging pep talk, a version of that idea came out of my mouth. I said something like, "You've had weeks like this before, and you'll probably have them again. But you aren't a failure at this unless you quit piano lessons altogether. You just have to never stop starting over." It was at this point the Holy Ghost nudged me and said, "That's true for you, too, you know." Perfection isn't about walking the path without deviation. It's about course correcting as you go, shame-free, and continuing the process. Or as C.S. Lewis refers to it, going in for the "full treatment." Repentance isn't shame-ridden self-flagellation, which Sister Runia also talks about. It's simply turning around, facing the Son, and starting over - over and over again, for the rest of your life, knowing full well you can't do it without Jesus' help. Elisha told Naaman his leprosy would be cured if he bathed in the River Jordan seven times (see 2 Kings 5). While this story is often told to underscore the need to listen to the voice of a prophet, there's another terribly important principle. The number seven has significance in the scriptures; it symbolizes and signifies perfection - in this context, perfection meaning " being complete." As in finished. The prescribed cure for Naaman was to complete the process of bathing the number of times which signifies completion. So what would have happened if Naaman had bathed in that filthy river water two or three times - examined himself - and thought, "This isn't making any difference at all." Read that to mean: "this process isn't making any difference." What if he'd continued on and thought the same hopeless thoughts after the fourth, or fifth, or even the sixth time, and for his mental and emotional health, given up on the entire process because he couldn't see a difference? Repentance isn't an act; it's a process. In a world riddled with scrupulosity, where some would tell you the answer is breaking up with Jesus, I would implore you to stick with Jesus. In a world where we fall short by design , Jesus Christ is the very point of our falling short: to see what we'll do next - which way we'll turn. Sister Runia: "I testify that while God cares about our mistakes, He cares more about what happens after we make a mistake. Are we going to turn to Him again and again? Are we going to stay in a covenant relationship?" That's what the covenant is for. I'm in for the full treatment, and no matter how many times I get it wrong during the treatment - until it's completed, I won't be. That's what it means to be perfect IN Jesus (see Moroni 10:32-33). The covenant relationship gives me access to HIM - His power and perfection - while I finish the process. And the loveliest part of the covenant relationship - with me on one end in all my flawed splendor, is that on the other end is someone upon whom I can rely completely. It's against His nature to not be all in for my full treatment as well, because He's already paid for it. How could I possibly break up with such a devoted Friend?

When I was in college, I would come home from my last final of fall term to find a gift waiting for me from my mother. This was usually a couple weeks before Christmas, but this gift was never wrapped in Christmas paper - no, no. Just ordinary wrapping, a mysterious, book-shaped package, whatever could it be? My darling mama, having hooked me on the magic of books at age 2, always had a book gift waiting for my first day without homework reading. Christmas break meant diving into a book I CHOSE - huzzah! If you're watching/listening from heaven: thanks, Mama. <3 It's hard to remember if I got George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch, as one of those Happy End-of-Term gifts, or if it was an actual Christmas gift that year. But Middlemarch, behemoth that it is at 800+ pages, found its way into my library. In spite of the book cover touting it as one of the greatest novels ever written, I undoubtedly felt daunted by it because: A. It was 800+ pages B. As an English major, I had been drowning in classic literature for weeks C. It was 800+ pages Middlemarch never got read. It moved from house to house with me after I married. I attempted it more than once, but never got past the first 50 or so pages. Did I mention it was 800+ pages? At some point, I watched BBC production from a DVD box set of George Eliot novels. Our book group had read another Eliot novel by then, Silas Marner (5 stars, by the way, highly recommend), and my mother lent me the whole set of DVD's for that. I quite liked the movie, attempted the novel again, and made a little progress in getting past page 100. If you think I sound 4, you would be right. However, by this time, I really was intrigued with the main character, Dorothea Brooke, and her high integrity and character, particularly in contrast to her choice of a husband. For the record and in my defense: I have read big books before: Jane Eyre and the original Les Miserables, Count of Monte Cristo and Atlas Shrugged, Witness... It's not like I'm afraid of big books, except for the part where I kind of am. And it's very often not the size, but the age of the thing; ardent readers, please be so kind as to back me up on this. Older novels take their sweet time telling a story and sometimes, modern-day or ADD brains can grow weary of the set-up before they're properly hooked. Time passed, I read the book in 2-5 page installments, half of which was part of the previous read in an attempt to remember what was going on. At some point, Audible got involved, and I started listening while I sewed. I made some serious headway while listening and put the physical novel away altogether. On a side note: British actress Juliet Stevenson is a top-drawer narrator; I’ve listened to novels by her more than once. That thing that happens with complex, classic novels - finally happened. Almost imperceptibly, the multiple plots had started to intertwine sufficiently where I was finally interested in all of them, and it wasn't odious to jump from one to the other. Does this happen to any of you, or is it just me? Another huge hiatus with less time to sew, and I swear, at this point, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to pick this dang book up ever again. I decided I'd watch the movie again for a sense of closure already and be done with it. But the movie changed my mind. I was actually interested in these people - particularly the 6 people who comprised the 3 love stories of the novel. I decided to get serious about listening ONE. MORE. TIME. If you're still reading this, I have to say - is it only me who is wondering at this point: what is wrong with this book? Or: what is wrong with this woman? As I embarked on listening - AGAIN - something struck me about why this book was such an ambitious climb. Virginia Wolf once referred to Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" - and I. AGREE. It has one of the most complex characterizations - of everyone - of any novel I've ever read. It's a massively in-depth commentary on human nature - no stone of any internal motivation is left unturned. As I jumped in this last time, it surprised me to discover I was genuinely interested to learn what Ms. Eliot had to say about this person... or that. I realized an impediment from earlier attempts was this very depth of delving into the motives of human nature. There's not much of a plot, so in a way, you could say Middlemarch is a 19th-century Seinfeld - very nearly a book about nothing. If you're not interested in what makes characters tick, I should warn you: you should probably just re-read Hunger Games. The final joke on me over this 47-year project: I was busy during the holidays a few months ago and wasn't in my sewing room much. By now, I was completely into the story, and decided to dig out the physical novel again so I could read it nightly before bed. I couldn't find it. After FORTY-SEVEN YEARS of the biggest schizophrenic, hot-and-cold, on again-off again literary project of my lifetime, I could not find that stupid book, and ruefully realized I had no doubt gotten rid of it in a recent literary purge. Two days before Christmas, I scooted over to Barnes and Noble to purchase another copy of the book that had almost literally become my literary albatross. I'm sorry, Mama. I finished it last week. I loved it. In spite of the most scattered approach EVER - to a project that deserved better - it was worth it. I'll have to tell you why later, as this prelude is a tale all its own. It's my homage to lengthy 19th-century set-ups. Those of you who haven't been scared off by this harrowing tale - stay tuned. https://www.laureensimper.com/post/choose-thy-love-love-thy-choice

"Take My Hand," Greg Olsen If you go into a Deseret Book store, and look for the book Like Him, and turn to page 49, you'll find this essay from 2021: I’ve had the blessing of learning from some gifted clinical psychologists about the nature of the brain—particularly, the different cognitive functions of the limbic system and the frontal cortex. It’s had profound spiritual implications on my better understanding the spiritual gift of temperance.   The limbic system of the brain is where our instincts reside, such as eating, breathing, and mating. The baser emotions of fear and anger, often referred to as the fight-or-flight response, come from the limbic system. In spiritual terms, the limbic system of the brain controls our natural man (see Mosiah 3:19).   The frontal cortex is where our humanity lies, where the difference between man and other animals is manifest. The development of the frontal cortex allows reason and principle to override instinct and emotion.   Because humans have a frontal cortex, there is what has been called a “pause” between an external stimulus and a person’s response to that stimulus—in either a thought, a word, or a behavior. The frontal cortex serves as a filter for our brain, stopping us from acting on every unhealthy impulse our limbic system wants to act upon. In spiritual terms, the development of the frontal cortex is what allows us to tap into our divine nature we have inherited from our Heavenly Parents (see 2 Peter 1:4–7). And parenthetically speaking in a spiritual sense, the frontal cortex begins to develop in humans at age eight. Imagine that!   Our Heavenly Father has given us the capacity to learn, reason, and ultimately choose to change (aka repent) so we’re not doomed to stay in the limited existence of merely reacting to outside stimulus. Because of the way our brains are created, we’ve been given the means to act rather than be acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:13). It is here where temperance is born.   Jesus Christ was perfectly temperate. He had the infinite capacity to live within that millisecond pause between stimulus and response and, with perfect righteousness, override His human instincts of hurt, fear, or anger. His eons of perfect obedience to the Father gave Him the power to temper the baser instincts and, instead, choose to act on higher, holier principles of forgiveness, faith, and charity.   We fallen mortals will struggle to develop temperance—this mastery over our own instinctive existence—for two basic reasons: The first reason is our fallen natures themselves, which will create the resistance and opposition necessary for us to change and grow. Oh, how our feet of clay hold us down! The spirit may be willing, but our flesh, indeed, is weak (see Matthew 26:41). The limbic system was designed to keep us alive, but inherent in that is the lifelong struggle between spirit and flesh.   Human nature (inherent limbic system) will always be in opposition to our divine nature (developing frontal cortex) because it’s built into us. But there is a second reason we will struggle to bring forth that divine nature. The wickedness of the world at large provides an unhealthy nurturing environment in which to do it. To use Book of Mormon vernacular, the voices of the world—media, social media, government, even academia—“stir up” emotions. Sadly, this is often used to pit groups against each other, just as that strategy was used time and again in the Book of Mormon. Remember, emotions reside in the limbic system. Emotions, unchecked— untempered —make it difficult, if not impossible, to find our humanity—our divine nature—within the pause between the stimulus and the response.   We can take great hope in overcoming instinctive living where we merely react emotionally to our environment. The reason we can govern ourselves when we know correct principles is because  principles have the power to subject emotion.  This is temperance—the ability, enabled by the Spirit, to control our appetites, passions, and even ideas.   Temperance is at the heart of every other Christlike quality. Christ had the ability to fast for forty days because of His perfectly developed temperance. He had the ability to ignore Satan’s temptations—when Christ was at His weakest—because of temperance. He had the ability to say exactly the correct and necessary thing in every situation because of temperance. His perfection turned that millisecond pause between stimulus and response into an eternity, allowing Him the power to make every single human choice intentionally.   Jesus Christ has the ability, because of His infinite atoning sacrifice, to widen that pause for us. To develop temperance is to cultivate the ability to develop all other virtues. To develop temperance is to cultivate the ability to do the most intentional living our Father in Heaven hoped for us. It requires more than reading or even studying doctrine; it requires metabolizing it—writing it on the fleshy tables of our hearts (see 2 Corinthians 3:3).   As God’s word and will become ever more a part of us, we will know the correct principles sufficiently to govern ourselves, as the Savior governed Himself. It is temperance that will widen the pause between stimulus and response, allowing us to   truly choose  to be like Him.

I've always admired people with great discipline, probably because I fancy I don't have any. And while that may not be entirely true, it's not entirely NOT true, either. Let me put it this way: being a random/abstract person can be challenging - nay, intimidating - when you live in a world with sequential/concrete people. My mother. My husband. How did I ever manage to do well in school? What a funny li'l lab rat I must've been. School undoubtedly trained me to run that maze and get that cheese. The structure must've sustained my random abstractedness. Becoming a mother felt like a free fall through outer space. Suddenly, all structural mechanisms had to come from inside me, but at any given moment, THIS is what it's like to be me: Guess which one is me... I spent much of active duty motherhood bewildered, overwhelmed, and depressed. Bewildered, because I had no idea how I got here. Overwhelmed, because I hadn't even the tiniest sense of routine and how to run a home. Depressed, because it seemed so simple to everyone else around me. Wow. What a loser I must be. The hardest thing for you - is keeping yourself alive? And now there are other humans involved? I had zero internal tools to navigate this new job where I was the CEO of my home, and as Batman, I foolishly fancied I had a higher calling that came with a note from home: "Please excuse Laureen from these menial tasks; she is on call to save the city." This is all to say: I thought routines were somehow beneath me - which is really to say - they were actually far above me. Measuring in light years. Any routines my children grew up with were the most serendipitous accidents. I didn't begin to know how to practice establishing routines until our oldest was out of the house. Thanks to FlyLady online, who had her own cape lurking in her closet, she had the right kind of brain to explain to me that routines are like practicing a choreographed dance routine. I need to learn one step at a time - master it, and then add the next step. Thanks to teaching Suzuki Piano Method for so many years, I got that. Slowly, over time, routines emerged. Ish. Fast forward to last year. Empty nesters for years, any sense of routine that had been won by then had been wiped out with nearly dying two years earlier. Any bump in the road threw Little Miss Random/Abstract into free falling again. Sleep had become an Issue again, and I went to see a sleep therapist. Even if you're normal, I don't need to tell you that sleep issues are a major bump in anyone's road. One of my assignments from the sleep therapist was - if you're giggling as you're reading this, you're way ahead of me - to establish regular routines for going to bed and getting up in the morning. More than that, I should shoot for going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time, despite what happened in between. For Batman, that is the organizational equivalent of splitting the atom. For those of you wondering what any of this harrowing tale has to do with faith here it is: I had been praying for help with routines. Begging, actually. The fact they'd dissolved again wasn't lost on even me. I felt completely helpless to make such a tectonic change on my own. I knew I needed power beyond my own. I knew I needed Jesus. Because - as a dear little 3-yr-old told me many years ago - "Jesus has all da powa. My mama tol' me." I started to pray every day for Jesus' strength to add to mine - frankly - because I fancied I had none. I thought HIS power could get my sorry self out of that bed every morning, or throw that sorry self into bed at night. What I didn't realize was that there would be some effort required of me in this project. I had to get myself into and out of bed - Jesus was not going to levitate me. It's an incredible confession coming from an alleged adult, but there it is. Somehow, that li'l random/abstract brain was surprised to work through the discomfort of stopping doing something terribly important to save Gotham and go to bed already, or get out of bed even if I didn't feel finished sleeping. I had to relearn what Scott Peck calls the legitimate pain of discipline. I say relearn because as I've spent the last eight months hurling myself into bed and heaving myself back out again eight hours later, I recognize the discomfort. I'd simply used various life circumstances as excuses - the notes from home - to not put myself in a place to feel it. I was equally surprised to discover that discomfort doesn't kill you. I started getting up at 6:00 a.m. no matter what. It didn't go perfectly, but now, eight months later, when I usually awaken naturally at 5:45 or so, I smile and silently thank Father. I can't even believe it's true. It's still not 100% but it's a significant enough change to cause wonder and delight every single morning. I reach up to turn out my light at 10:00 p.m. no matter what - and while it still doesn't go perfectly, it happens regularly enough to make me smile in gratitude and praise. Now. Faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is a terribly important qualifier. The reason we say faith in Jesus Christ is because in spite of our failings, our proclivities, our reluctance, our openly rebellious attitudes, we can do absolutely nothing by way of change - NOTHING - without Him. NOTHING. Not stop biting your nails or kicking your dog. Not stop swearing or wanting to gossip. Not start exercising or reading scriptures every day. Not start going to church or paying tithing again. Not start learning French or reading a biography every month. Not start eating healthier or stop chirping about it to everyone who hasn't decided it yet. ANY change we want to make rests on putting our efforts - with all our reluctance and discomfort - on one side of the yolk - and allowing Jesus Christ - with "all da powa" - to do the heavy lifting. But He needs your discomfort of new effort. He needs you to power through the fear of - "What if I can't do it?" He needs you to power through the fear of - "What if I can?" He needs you to get your feet wet. Getting your feet wet means rummaging through your meager wallet and pulling out your widow's mite of desire and ability. THIS is the amount you have zero faith in - because when has it ever been enough in the past? Getting your feet wet means you hand it over. Put it into the hands with wounds in them - knowing that to Him, the amount is immaterial in the equation. HE is enough - and because He is enough, He HAS enough - to make YOU enough. The popular cultural feel-good phrase of "I am enough" makes me cringe a bit. I am SO not enough - never have been. That's the point. Being not enough is what gets me to my knees, begging for more - for HIS enough. If I may edit that with my ever-twitching red pencil - I prefer to say instead: "I am enough... WITH HIM." Faith IN Jesus Christ means I fully recognize that any upward urge, any upward decision, any upward movement and progress- at all - is only possible because Jesus is the One and Only of God's children who navigated earth life with perfect precision. Then, He gave His life to pay all the debts we accrue in our imperfect navigation, and offers to share what only He could earn with His perfection and sacrifice. Every good thing comes from Jesus, and is possible because of Jesus. Even people who don't believe in Him will be astonished to learn one day that all improvements they made in their lives were only possible because of Him. Psalms 16:2 says, "My goodness extendeth not to thee." Thank heavens the footnote gives us the more accurate Hebrew: "I have no good apart from Thee." Even something as mundane as learning routines is only possible because Jesus helped me through the discomfort of trying something I didn't think I could do, and kind of didn't want to do. I'm grateful I trusted Him enough to exercise faith IN Him, because I had very little faith in myself. Exercising faith IN Him looks like this: me getting my feet wet and taking the first uncomfortable steps towards Him, knowing He'll be right there on the other side of the yoke, carrying the biggest part of the load. Because He already did - in Gethsemane and on Calvary.

Actually, there's no such thing as lizard logic. Lizards have teeny tiny brains capable of survival thinking: fight-or-flight, eating, and procreating. That's it. Which explains why behavioral scientists often refer to the limbic system of the human brain as our 'lizard brain.' When humans are behaving in instinctive survival mode, the limbic portion of the brain is at work. Lizard brain. Interestingly, baser emotions like fear and anger are also centered in the limbic system. Makes sense, as fear and anger would most likely be manifest in the fight-or-flight mode. And seriously, when's the last time you saw anyone at their rational best when they're afraid or angry? The prefrontal cortex is the feature of our brains responsible for higher-ordered thinking, reasoning, and problem solving. Because of the ability to reason, humans have the capacity to override  the emotional response triggered in the limbic system. This is worth considering when you look around for even a few minutes, and see more and more people respond emotionally first  - so quickly it's almost Pavlovian. And since Pavlov's research involved conditioning a nearly reflexive response to related stimulus, to even make this observation begs the question: have we been conditioned to respond emotionally? Has formal education indeed conditioned us to go straight into our lizard brain for response? I would also suggest the 24/7 stimuli of media/social media has aided and abetted in this training - and if that's true, the larger question is why? What purpose would be served to have the masses conditioned to remain in the most instinctive cognitive processes? The scriptures would call a person utilizing higher ordered processes an agent "to act". Conversely, a person ever remaining in the lower ordered processes will forever remain an object "to be acted upon" (2 Nephi 2:13-14). In 2013, I watched an interview with three Utah moms who were concerned about the Common Core standards which were being implemented in public schools across the country. The three moms interviewed a clinical psychologist about the social and emotional ramifications of the standards. Terms like 'social-emotional learning' were already being used to describe what educrats were calling more rigorous educational standards. The gross nature of the deceit in the word 'rigorous' is a topic for another blog. This interview was where I came to more fully understand that the emotional response was a lower cognitive process, and that it could be trained and made reflexive through the repetition of exposure and practice. Dr. Joan Landes, the clinical psychologist, reviewed various assignments where middle and high school students were instructed to use 'emotional words' in persuasive essays or speeches, urging community officials to take some particular course of action on a variety of issues. The assignments had a strong current of teaching student activism. Worse, she illustrated that training focused on emotion was beginning as early as second grade. She used a sample exercise from a workbook which instructed the children to recognize the most emotion-laden words in a fill-in-the-blank exercise: My mother _____ me to clean my room., A. Asks B. Reminds C. Nags The correct answer was the word most laden with emotion - 'nags'. Dr. Landes explained that simple exercises of this nature were sequenced as precursory to the later writing assignments described. She pointed out that while work like this appears innocuous when taken out of context, when taken in the larger context of work given older students, it seems the intention is to train children to be social activists. Moreover, it trains them to tap into  the limbic part of their brain rather than override it. As a clinical psychologist, she asserted that the optimal developmental training would be to strengthen the prefrontal cortex rather than weaken it in this manner. An important conclusion Dr. Landes made was this: students trained in this way are being trained to have their limbic system override  the higher-ordered thinking of their prefrontal cortex. She emphasized the folly in training the human brain to turn off  the very part which makes it human. How foolish to train a brain capable of higher-ordered thinking to stay in instinctive behavior patterns centered in the same part of the brain from which non-sentient animals operate. Foolish? Or by design? I spoke with Dr. Landes more recently about using this example for this essay, and she said something even more powerful: " The limbic system is primal and powerful. It takes thousands of years of civilization to partially  keep it at bay so the prefrontal cortex can function logically. The limbic system can hijack the prefrontal cortex at any moment . What the woke educators are doing is igniting the wildfires of the limbic system in children, when what is needed is for those primal instincts to be "banked and cooled by a hundred restraints" (citing Will and Ariel Durrant) for the logical brain to develop rational, critical thought." (emphasis added) The most chilling warning Dr. Landes made in 2013 about this type of education was this: with this mechanism of training the limbic system to hijack the logical brain as its fundamental strategy, educators are training a generation to become social activists by making them more highly susceptible to believing propaganda and demagoguery. As I write this eleven years later, I can now say her concerns feel all too prescient. The dearth of rational thought seems to be diminishing, and the extremely unusual circumstances of 2020 seemed to only accelerate the downward trajectory. Downward, because civilization does not bode well in a society leading with animalistic instincts. Consider some observations which I made a year after the first covid outbreak. If you're playing along at home and doing the math, that would be seven years after the Landes interview and ten years after the Common Core standards were first introduced to public schools. That's approximately half of one generation. Fear played a major role in controlling the population. Fear lives in the lizard brain. https://www.laureensimper.com/post/fear-a-reality-check When responding in any situation, all of us would do well to take a somewhat clinical look at our first responses. Are they more emotional or rational? If emotional, what triggered the response? If more rational, what helped you "bank and cool" that hot first emotional response? Is your ability to do this improving with time and experience? Or worsening? And if you conclude that media/social media have played a part in a worsening trend, you also have to ask yourself - is manipulating human emotion simply random folly, or is it by design? And if by design, to what end? Are lizards easier to train? And control?

Let’s hear it - three cheers for difficult! Crickets. Humanity is not, as a rule, a fan of difficult - the thing that distinguishes this few minutes of eternity called mortality with the rest of our existence on either end. I don't know very many people who love hard. Of course there are the perverse few, but generally, humans don't just lean away from it, they'll go to great lengths to avoid it. The spectrum can be as broad as pushing a snooze bar repeatedly to preferring getting shoved in a locker over standing up to a bully. We even say it out loud from time to time, "Why can't it ever be easy?" The answer is short and simple: It can't. It can't ever be easy, because that's not what Here is about. "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so,... righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad...." (2 Nephi 2:11) Gordon B. Hinckley has quoted a 20th-century journalist on more than one occasion, to the point where this has often been attributed to him. Nevertheless, Jenkin Lloyd Jones wrote: “Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. "Life is just like an old time rail journey…delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.” As I'm emerging from a particularly difficult few weeks, I'm thinking about the three reasons I think earth life was designed to be difficult because of the opposition at every turn. "We'd gone about as fer as we could go..." Living in eternal realms of glory before this earth life, there was only so much we could learn in our quest to grow up like our Heavenly Parents, from the safety of Their presence. The crucial sticking point for inheriting Their glory as Their heirs: we needed to discover what we preferred if left unsupervised with a constant array of opposites before us for the choosing. It was necessary to leave the actual presence of God, and go away to school. This is the place where we learn, by our own experience, to distinguish good from evil. More importantly - we're here to learn from that experience to prefer what is good, beautiful, and true - more than that which is evil, ugly, and counterfeit. "Who ya gonna call?" We didn't just need opposition to widen our field of choices, but to place us in a place that seems - for the entire time we exist there - irredeemable and broken. If we got even the slightest notion that we could do it on our own, we would never feel the necessary desperation that would cause us to look helplessly upward for power greater than our own to help us. Interestingly enough, thanks to temporal / temporary comforts such as wealth and luxury, or power and influence, there are many humans who believe just that. You need to know you are broken to consider searching for Someone to fix things. Enter: Jesus Christ - the Mender of broken things, the Healer of sick things, the Redeemer of irredeemable things. Jesus Christ was planned for from the very beginning, Father knowing we would put ourselves wrong with the glory we came from. However would we find our way back, if a Rescuer wasn't sent? C.S. Lewis wrote: "Christianity does not make sense until you face the sort of facts I've been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness. "It is after you have realized there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind that law , and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. "When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you begin to understand that our position is nearly desperate, you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. "All I'm asking you to do is to face the facts that Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it were possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. "Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) The dismay Lewis points out comes living in a world full of opposition, sensing you're not really from that world, and begin - possibly wistfully at first, but eventually desperately, as he says, to work to put yourself more at home with where you came from. That means pushing against the opposition and not giving into it. That will mean more than just letting Jesus mend and heal you. He'll also have to help you as you carry the oppositional load of your earth life - carrying it right along beside you. He carried it alone in Gethsemane and on Calvary, so He could walk with you as you live it. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30) Which brings me to the third reason earth life is so difficult: "[You're] here to PUMP... you UP!" There's something most mysterious about Grace - the thing that happens when the Savior breaches the gap of our current capacity and the higher capacity He possesses. You get really, really buff. Just like our bodies respond to resistance training, so do our spirits respond to pushing against the ever-present opposition of mortality. Avoiding or surrendering keep us soft as plump little spiritual marshmallows. But strapping on that yoke with Jesus yields results that are often not seen in this lifetime. I like to picture what it will be like when we're finished with this sphere of existence and move onto the next. My mind has conjured the scene in Forrest Gump when he is being bullied because of the braces he needs to wear to straighten his legs. Forrest must have had the braces sufficiently strengthen his legs by this moment - as he awkwardly runs away in the braces, his legs take over on their own, and the braces fall by the wayside. Forrest simply runs - and runs faster - on his own. The analogy doesn't work completely, because even after this life, everything we learn and achieve will be because of the help of Jesus Christ. But - when the restraints of mortality are behind us, I have a feeling the lack of that tug from opposition isn't simply going to surprise us. I suspect it's going to take our breath away. We have no idea how very earthbound we are, because in the here and now, we’ve never known anything but having feet of clay. But because we partnered with the One who beat all the opposition for us , Jesus offers to share what He alone could earn - with all of us. If we choose to grow the muscles. We will have been conditioned from our resistance training, having grown spiritual muscles we could gain in no other way - because we carried our yoke with a perfect Partner. I guess it's not the actual difficulty I cheer; I'm not one of those perverse few. But I tell you what, I cheer for what it teaches me, what it's growing in me, and Who I'm better acquainted with because of it. The fruit of difficulty is most definitely worth cheering about.

I spent my 65th birthday in the hospital. I had a serious case of covid, as had Dale. That Friday - November 19, 2021, was the first time I'd seen in him two weeks. He was finally well enough to be allowed to come see me. Less than 72 hours later, I would be life-flighted from Park City to Intermountain Medical Center to spend the better part of the next month on a ventilator. I didn't know what was ahead of me on that Friday night in Park City. It was the first time I remember feeling it was a struggle to breathe. I also remembered that you have to breathe differently - more deeply - when you sing. So I sang. I searched YouTube to find one of my favorite Tabernacle Choir songs - David Warner and Mack Wilberg's "Benediction" (from the Tabernacle Choir CD Heavensong). It miraculously modulates sixteen bars - six times - backwards - around the musical Circle of 5ths. I'm sorry if I lost you non-musicians there; I have to include this nerdy factoid because my musician friends will be scrambling to listen for it and be just as amazed as I was ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLSHUUORuqs&list=RDhLSHUUORuqs&start_radio=1 ). The lyrics paired with this heaven song are the most sublime prayer of praise, and end with sixteen bars of "Amen." Benediction Come to us this night, Console our souls, Becalm our fears, And bless our sleeping.   Come to us this day, Awake our hearts, Renew our minds, And bless our rising.   Come to us this hour, Restore our hope, Confirm our faith, And bless our living.   Come to us we pray, Receive our love, Behold our joy, And bless our praising.   (David Warner) On that November night, nearly three weeks away from home, I sang that song on repeat for close to an hour. I just kept clicking to repeat and starting over - working to fill my lungs to sing, the "amens" being the strongest (I knew those words the best). I found out the next day nurses could hear me through the shut door of my room all over the floor. Oh well. Little did I know that as I sang, I was shoring up a spiritual foundation for the next three months of trying to die, God intervening and saying, "NOT NOW," and then me trying not to die. Fast forward to autumn 2024. It had been three years since the event that changed my relationship with God in the most excellent ways. I was at my hairdresser's and noticed a piece of graphic art on the wall - the graphic atop this post. It abbreviates this glorious thought from Psalms: "And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God..." (Psalms 40:3) In my mind, instantly, I was back in that hospital room in Park City, singing my sickened lungs out. I realized THAT'S what God did with that night of praise for me. He didn't just inspire me to sing to strengthen me for the long haul ahead, He taught me to view HIM differently. He taught me to view US - Him and me - differently. He put a new song in my mouth - and heart - and taught me a deeper way to praise Him forever. He taught me to not just be grateful but to actively praise His goodness - in every detail of living. I learned that praise is a better way to testify, that praise makes you see every single thing in your life - good and bad - through the lens of God tenderly and precisely curating a curriculum for your good. I learned that praise evens out the perspective of good days and bad days; with God - they're all good days. I learned that praise is gratitude on steroids. Right after a vacation over Thanksgiving week last fall, I started to read the Psalms in the Old Testament - one psalm a day - at the beginning of my scripture study. WHAT an awesome idea. Translation: SO not my idea. Complete and total inspiration. The psalms take such delight and reverence in everything God is - and does - and is capable of - it can't help but delight the reader - me - as well. C.S. Lewis said this of the Psalms: "The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express that same delight in God which made David dance." Delight indeed. According to the Psalms, there is nothing God cannot do. There is no hurdle great enough to stop His good work from moving forward. If we lean into Him with our need, His strength will help us do anything He requires. All superlatives lose their meaning and pale in their superiority when placed beside the God and King of the Universe, the Creator of this World, the Savior who conquered all of death and evil with His blood. One hundred fifty songs of praise - asserting that God isn't just good - He is great. And He loves us. And all His work is to bring us home - if I will allow Him to align my will to His. We need no other ally. Learning to praise in the hard things (another blog last year), in the everyday things, and in the fleeting sublime things is an eternal lesson worth learning. Learning to praise will put you with this blessed group of saints spoken of in Revelation, who will: "...fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." (Revelation 4:10-11) On that glorious day, we'll fully appreciate why we wear the crowns of the kingdom - Who earned them for us - and give them right back - in complete adoration and praise.

(Originally published in The Millennial Instructor, Vol. 1, 2017) Imagine waking up in the morning and having someone ask you this question: Would you rather work all day today, or play all day?  No brainer, right?  Days where you choose what to do look very different from days loaded with chores to accomplish. Yet, Heavenly Father told Adam and Eve that He was going to curse the earth “for [their] sakes” – what??  The Fall made work necessary… for  us? How can that be?   Work is an eternal principle. Here’s how you can tell: God does it. He works all day, every day, and at the end of some of His busiest days when He was creating our home, He pronounced that what had been accomplished was “good”. God is a worker – His work  and glory are “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39) – and He designed His children’s mortal test so we can learn to work like He does. We work for our sakes , to give us the chance to do what He does every day, and grow from doing it in a place with opposition. Wanting to live with Heavenly Father, and having a life like Heavenly Father, gives us a compelling reason to not just learn to work, but to learn to love it.   Throughout the Book of Mormon, the people of God were always described as being industrious. ·       “[I] did cause my people to be industrious” (2 Nephi 5:17) ·       “…they were industrious, and did labor exceedingly” (Mosiah 23:5) ·       “…precious things, which they had obtained by their industry” (Alma 4:6) When describing the Lamanites in their most wicked times, Mormon describes them as an indolent people who “sought to obtain [riches] by murdering and plundering, that they might not labor for them with their own hands” (Alma 17:14). The Lamanite culture was so much more than just coveting the right to government they thought they were owed; it also included coveting the property of others, justifying any behavior to get it.   Yet, when many of the Lamanites were converted to the gospel by the sons of Mosiah, Mormon describes the fruits of their repentance: “And they began to be a very industrious people” (Alma 23:18).   Mormon describes the hard work and industry of the Nephites during years of war with this interesting commentary: “There never was a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni.” (Alma 50:23)   The Book of Mormon taught the early Saints of this dispensation the ancient word ‘deseret’, meaning honey bee (Ether 2:3).  As the Saints settled Utah, the use of the beehive as a symbol, and the word ‘Deseret’ were used prominently as constant reminders of the Saints’ commitment to industry and self-reliance.   In modern times, the glaring lights and blaring voices from the great and spacious building are constant – and everywhere. There are so many attractive and comfortable philosophies being peddled – “flattering words that are pleasing to the carnal mind.” One of Satan’s most alluring doctrines is about the purpose of this life: to seek pleasure, comfort, and ease. If that’s the true purpose of life, then hard work is to be avoided, working only until enough comforts have been acquired to stop.   Leisure time is important, but if we think that’s what life is for, leisure time is much more likely to become idle time.  Expecting comforts eventually becomes expecting luxuries. Remembering that the purpose of this life is to train for life with our Father in Heaven will help us stay spiritually focused, and see Satan’s distractions as only having temporary appeal, with no lasting value past its momentary pleasure.   Imagine a round stone on a steep incline. How much effort is required to get the stone from the top of the incline to the bottom? Just an initial push, and gravity and velocity will do the rest, taking the stone quickly to the bottom. Now – imagine the opposite motion: how much effort is required to get the stone from the bottom of the incline to the top ?  Quite a different story. And imagine this: not only will an initial push not   get the stone to the top of the incline, if we don’t keep pushing – constantly – the first effort we made to move the stone will have been for nothing, as the stone will roll back down the incline to where it started. Now that   is opposition.   It’s hard to think of work as a blessing when we have these mortal bodies that crave ease and comfort, particularly when voices from the great and spacious building are telling you it’s your birthright to live a life of ease and comfort. But you will not develop any celestial muscles rolling down the path of least resistance your whole life. In fact, we aren’t the stone at all. Elder David A. Bednar has taught repeatedly the important doctrine that we are agents – sent here to act  – not objects to be acted upon. That’s what he’s talking about. As Heavenly Father’s children, we aren’t rocks, we’re the pushers of rocks.   There’s an ancient Greek myth about Sisyphus, one of the many mortals who offended the Greek gods. His punishment was to spend eternity pushing a large boulder up a steep mountain every single day. At the beginning of the next day, the rock was back at the bottom of the hill, and Sisyphus had to start over again.   Bleak little story, for sure. But think about the many boulders you need to push up the hill every single day as you train and discipline yourself: beds don’t stay made, teeth don’t stay brushed, houses don’t stay dusted, and gardens don’t stay weeded. Thanks to this earthly arena created by the Fall, we live in a telestial world where rust never sleeps. Things in our world don’t stay ordered and done. They keep needing to be done over, and over, and OVER again.   This fallen, telestial world creates the perfect environment of opposition. That stone on the incline will not remain in the same place every day, so there are two choices: one is going with the flow and taking the path of least resistance, letting the boulder go where it will on its own – down . The other choice is practicing pushing against the opposition, and through steady and consistent effort, developing, over time, the spiritual muscle of self-discipline. The downward path only appeals to the natural man . The upward path only appeals to the divinity in man . Every day, hundreds of choices present themselves: which part of our nature do we want to nourish, strengthen, and train today?   To sleep in, or not to sleep in? To gossip, or not to gossip? To eat a second donut, or not? To start that big term project, or play another video game? To read scriptures, or check Instagram?   Every day, we are practicing becoming someone higher, or lower, than the person we are right this moment. Like the rock, there is no standing still . There’s no status quo in a soul. The lower choices require nothing of us, and chosen often enough, will quietly close doors of opportunity in our future. The higher choices require more of us, will often feel like we’re going to battle every day, but will quietly, over time, open endless doors to us.   Work will only become joyful when we stop facing the world and start facing the Son. If we keep looking at the pleasure-seekers in the great and spacious building, we’ll either join them in their temporary quests, or we’ll always feel deprived as we try to do celestial things with a telestial focus. Boulder pushing is challenging enough with  a celestial focus – it’ll feel excruciating while watching a boulder whiz down a hill past you on a zip line. Staying focused on the Savior allows grace to enter the equation: that infinite, inexplicable force that makes the efforts of boulder pushing even possible in a fallen world. Grace is the force that turns the work…into joy.   When we remember we’re working to grow up to be like our Parents, we’ll see a higher purpose to rolling a boulder up a hill. We’ll relish the developing of stronger muscles, the breathtaking views of endless vistas ahead, the exhilarating company of fellow workers making similar decisions, and the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost.  Heavenly Father really did make this world a place to work for our sakes. Praise Him forever because of it.

Look at these two cuties, would you? The date was June 2, 1955. Seventy years ago, these two young pups went into the Salt Lake Temple as individuals and came out as an eternal family. This photograph shows them at the threshold of their honeymoon cottage just a few hours after their wedding. Aren't they adorable? They're my parents. Mom and Dad wrote letters to each other while Dad was in Korea; they fell in love in those letters. Dad bought Mom china at the Noritake factory in Japan on the way home before he'd even asked her to marry him. She's said it's the china she would have picked if she were with him. It had pink roses; the only thing she requested for her funeral was that her casket be covered with pink roses. Dad's been gone nearly three years; Mom joined him early last year. As I've thought about their anniversary today, I've thought about the important lessons I've learned from growing up with them as my parents. Both had firm witnesses of the reality of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Both served well, in completely different ways. Both worked hard, in completely different ways. Both studied deeply, in completely different ways. Their differences complimented each other; they didn't think alike AT. ALL. But they learned to think together. Both wanted a home where people felt welcome, and they created it, in spades. I watched anyone who came to our house welcomed and invited in. I learned there is no circle on earth that can't be made bigger so no one ever feels left out. Ours was the Kool-Aid house, and at any given time, literally anything could be going on: driveway basketball games, backyard baseball or football games, or out in the street kickball games needing every piece of construction paper in the house for a one-issue run of a "neighborhood newspaper" teaching our friends - Lutherans, and what great sports - "Come, Come Ye Saints" - for a July 24 "pageant" on our patio as the stage "Ennie-ay-Over" - and who even knows how to spell that? - a game where one team in the front yard throws a softball up across the house, to the waiting team in the back yard. You warn the other team the ball is coming by shouting "Ennie-ay-Over" as the ball is thrown. This continues like volleyball - with the house being the net - until someone is able to actually catch the ball. Suddenly it's a brutal game of surprise tag, where the team who caught the ball rushes around the house to catch the other team unawares - expanding their team by keeping any opposing team members they can pelt with the ball they caught. Our parents were such good sports. They took all our childhood machinations in stride, and aided and abetted in many. With Dad being a school teacher, we didn't have a lot, but we always had enough - and plenty for my parents to make a lot of magic for us. It wasn't always perfectly harmonious and happy. We didn't always get along, or even like each other very much. But Mom and Dad modeled beautifully what keeping covenants looks like in the messiness of everyday living: you get up the next day and try again. The children left home, the parents learned who each other were again, and realized they loved each other in new ways. They continued to gather us and our families home for a monthly Sunday dinner, a tradition which continues after their departure. As the aging process accelerated, covenant keeping was even more starkly beautiful - through serious surgeries, chronic pain, loss of mobility and eyesight, and then having to let one go on ahead, leaving the other behind for a time. There is so much more power to hanging on than we know. When the only thing that matters is the only thing that's left, my parents still had each other, and their covenants. After any randomly difficult day which might have included tension or tears, the next day, one felt her way towards the other with very little eyesight left; the other stepped carefully toward her with a walker to keep his balance. In 67 years of living together, they adored each other in all their brilliant, hysterical, vexing, maddening, marvelous messiness. Because they love Jesus Christ even more than each other, their lives were their offering to Him till the day they died. They offered it up every morning because their covenants clearly stated they weren't going anywhere, in spite of the mess. The covenant said they wouldn't let go. Tennyson describes the loss of aging perfectly: "Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." (Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King) With so much stripped away physically - that firm resolve to not let go of Him - or each other - was all they had left, and Jesus Christ has always promised that that is enough. Jesus turns the ordinary into sacred - the mess into a marvelous miracle of sealing. Because they wouldn't let go. Happy heavenly anniversary, Mom and Dad. I miss you like the dickens. Thank you for teaching me to serve and work, to never leave anyone out, to try again every day, and to never let go of the Savior. These two cuties? Exhibit A of what messy covenant keeping looks like. Isn't it beautiful? P.S. The difference between adorable in 1955 and beautiful in 2020? Sanctification.

You know what takes a lot of practice? Like - a lifetime - and from the looks of mine, longer than that? Charity, that's what. President Nelson invited members of the church to take intentional steps to develop greater virtue and charity ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/04/57nelson?lang=eng ). Charity is the quality we develop as we practice honoring the second great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love the way the Savior loves us is a high bar for humans - A. Because humans are fallen and fickle and flawed; and B. Because humans are weird. There, I said it. It's easy to think we're becoming charitable when we "practice" on our families - WEIRD THOUGH THEY MAY BE - or with the not-so-weird - or with people who get us and whom we get - or with people who are like us, or think like us, or look like us. The suspicion of Otherness must run very deep in human nature, because it doesn't seem to come very naturally to any of us to even tolerate Others outside the safe, ordered, predictable parameters of Sameness - much less LOVE them. But that is the assignment. That is the project of this lifetime. And weird and different as every human creature surely is, the Savior came into the world to love them all. His life showed how to do it, and His atoning sacrifice punctuated the assignment - A. That He really means it; and B. To give the assignment by essentially inviting us: "If I will go to this length to rescue all of you, can I get you on board to help me with the rescue mission?" This assignment is connected to developing virtue - the quality we develop when we honor the first great commandment to love God. In the essay on virtue ( https://www.laureensimper.com/post/virtue-the-confidence-of-self-mastery ), I referred to one of the seminal gospel teachers in my life, Brother David Christensen. He teaches that when God showed Abraham the noble spirits whom He would make His rulers (see Abraham 3:23), we were among them. The human family was shown to Abraham as the spirits who were to come to the earth to learn to rule over themselves - His children who would have agency to choose to grow. God gave each of us our own little kingdom - consisting of intelligence - and a spirit that had been begotten and carefully raised and nurtured by Him over eternity - and a body, heart, and mind made of what Elder Ballard's grandfather, Melvin J. Ballard, once called "unredeemed earth" ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/1984/03/struggle-for-the-soul?lang=eng ). That's the unruly part that needs to be tamed. The first part of our test in this life was to learn to rule - ourselves. As I've pondered this idea of ruling over ourselves, I've considered that this desire to rule over, have dominion, or control - is very godlike. It only makes sense that our Eternal Father would endow His children, through spiritual genetics, with a quality He possesses. It makes sense to me that we come from our heavenly home with the desire to order things, to be in charge of something, so we can do this important work of learning to be in charge of ourselves. It's here where the destroyer and imitator can pervert and confuse. In a fallen world, if we're not careful, instead of doing the work of mastering ourselves, we're tempted to turn our attentions to others, and meddle in their work. The purpose of this life is to learn to obey God - to follow His eternal, fixed, and unchanging law. We cannot learn this for someone else. Everyone has to do it for himself. We violate others' agency when we try to force, intimidate, bully, browbeat, or even more subtly, manipulate, or put on a guilt trip. Any aggression or subtlety we use to wangle our will upon the will of another child of God is unrighteous dominion. Father paid the high price of the life of His Son to afford agency to His children and give them the chance to learn from their choices. We can help Him in honoring each other's agency by working to provide the optimum conditions for others to learn to obey as well. It's the condition we all lived in while we lived in Father's presence for the eternities before we came to this earth. It's the quality we are told throughout the scriptures will qualify us to live in His presence after this life, and is the second important thing we are here to learn. Mormon describes it in Moroni chapter 7: "But charity if the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him , for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure...." Moroni 7:47-48) So. Our mission on this earth isn't just to gain a body - it's to tame that body! Virtue. We are here to rule and reign over the tiniest of kingdoms, to see if we can be trusted with anything greater. And since God forces none of His children, our corresponding mission is to learn to have influence upon our brothers and sisters with the only thing that our Father uses to influence us - love. Charity. Now that's not to say we aren't influenced by other forces in this universe. We are absolutely influenced when we brush up against the natural, immutable laws of the universe, be they gravity, entropy, or chastity. But when we are battered and bruised by our encounters - whether they're a result of our own disobedience to natural law, someone else's, or inevitable fallout from living in a fallen world - I've come to learn from my own experience that the only influence God will use to teach us about our unwise encounters with natural law is His mighty, all-encompassing love. He is the ultimate Father of the natural consequence, and waits - arms open - to receive us, comfort and nurture us, and teach us a better way - as soon as we're ready. Oh, the room He gives us while we learn. It can be difficult to fully comprehend how the filth of this world offends the glory of God - is wholly incompatible with it - how we must be made clean to develop the capacity to abide in it - tolerate it (see D&C 88). When we can more fully comprehend what it means to become clean before God, in the midst of the pollution of this earth, only then can we begin to comprehend the generous gift that has been given to us in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is grace. We can have confidence before God as we take seriously our assignment to master ourselves, and to provide our brothers and sisters with charity - the optimum environment they  need to learn to master themselves . Charity is the condition that makes a person feel safe, and you need to feel safe to do the scary work of killing the natural man, or as C.S. Lewis called it, allowing the great Physician to perform the surgery on our hearts that will cut out all that is impure and unholy in us. When we've felt the relief of grace for ourselves, we better understand what a generous gift it is. We better recognize how much room Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have afforded us in our own weirdness while we learn. When we've felt grace, we're far more inclined to offer grace. Our grace isn't the same as the Savior's atoning sacrifice which sanctifies. Our grace to others is the generosity of giving them room to be weird. Flawed. Imperfect. A work in progress. Growing. Otherwise, we're the petty debtor Jesus speaks of in Matthew 18:23-34 - who niggles over a debt a fraction of the size of his own forgiven debt. The more we appreciate the generosity offered to us, we'll be more than inclined to offer it to others. We'll be compelled. "Oh, to Grace, how great a debtor - daily, I'm constrained to be..." ("Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," Hymn #1001, verse 3) We need to practice virtue in order to practice charity. The more we tame ourselves, the more we can fully appreciate this lengthy process of becoming that all of us are undergoing. When we can generously offer this to everyone taking the test, we really will be like Him. The greatest way to stand confident in the presence of God is to feel the peace of working on ourselves - practicing virtue - and giving others the safety to do the same - practicing charity. And since practice is a daily thing - we can feel confident that we're about our Father's business right now - in all our beautiful weirdness.

President Russell M. Nelson taught in General Conference last month: " Charity and virtue open the way to having confidence before God! Brothers and sisters, we can do this! Our confidence can truly wax strong in the presence of God, right now! " ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ftsoy/2025/05/03-nelson?lang=eng ) President Nelson wasn't talking about the confidence of the world - the participation trophy mentality of Stuart Smalley that's mostly hopeful bravado. ( https://youtu.be/_S9TC_O89J0?si=_dxrOEiDtwJ7qzDK ) Nor was he talking about living largely without that confidence, hoping we were maybe good enough to have the confidence to stand before God at the end of our lives. He didn't mean that we should live out life without knowing - knowing - that we can "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). Right. This. Minute. President Nelson is trying to teach that we can have that confidence every single day - in all the splendid messes of our lives - as impure and unrefined as you can get in a fallen world... IF... IF... we've taken on the project of pairing our unrefined imperfection with the refined perfection of the Lamb without blemish - entering a covenant relationship with the Son who earned the inheritance for all of us by his infinite atoning sacrifice. IF... we've taken on the project of developing virtue and charity and made them our daily walk. President Nelson got his text from D&C 121:45-46: “ Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence  wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.” I've come to see virtue and charity as shorthand - two pinnacle qualities which describe honoring the First and Second Great Commandments – to love God first, and our neighbor as ourselves. Every discussion about what virtue is inevitably includes using synonyms such as strength and power. I've come to wonder if virtue isn't speaking of self-mastery. Wouldn't power or strength over yourself be the ultimate mortal power or strength there is? All it takes to answer that would be considering those completely lacking in self-mastery. Devoid of virtue, these are easily the weakest humans there are. I can't think of a better way to live the First Commandment - to honor and worship God - and to practice becoming like God - than to practice self-mastery. Because He is exalted perfection, Father practices perfect, exalted self-mastery, as does His perfect, exalted Son, Jesus Christ. If Father and His Son wish to give us the kind of life They have, it seems that would entail practicing self-mastery. Even imperfectly. Entering a covenant relationship means we lean into Their perfection, borrowing Their perfection as we practice imperfectly, enabling Them to give us power in the practice. Power to change. For me, on any given day, imperfection looks like staying up too late, being cross with stupid drivers - which I never am - eating a second cookie... or seventh... jumping to conclusions about another person's motives or behavior, scrolling longer than is needful, feeling discouraged that I pray for the same help with the same problems So. Many. Times... You get the idea. While the destroyer tries to convince me I'm the only one so remedial, I strongly suspect I'm not alone. In Abraham, the Lord describes preparing His children for earth life: "And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers ; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born." (Abraham 3:23) I always read that scripture and assumed it was talking about the great ones of the earth. As in - Not Me. Until I had a gifted, inspired gospel teacher - Brother David Christensen - testify to the youth of our stake that Christ was describing us . Jesus Christ chooses those who take on the mortal project of entering a covenant relationship with Him to refine themselves - aligning their wills to the will of God - making a lifestyle of practicing higher and holier ways - relying on the perfection of their covenant partners. This lifestyle is the antithesis of those who follow the philosophies of the world; Babylon seeks the path of least resistance and makes it the chief mission of life to avoid anything unpleasant, uncomfortable, or difficult. Those who choose the lifestyle of climbing will become the rulers Christ speaks of in Abraham. Virtue – or the strength and power of self-mastery – is the strength and power to rule and reign over yourself - without any outward compulsory force causing you to do it. Over a lifetime of practice, those who practice self-mastery make choices based on unchanging eternal law, and not on fickle, temporal - temporary - emotion. How they feel at any particular moment is irrelevant to the choice. Because of the great love they have for Father and Jesus Christ, and because of the inner strength and power they’re developing, those who practice self-mastery are honoring the First Commandment as the ultimate way to worship God. Because that’s who HE is – that’s the way HE lives - and that's the way THEY strive to live. That's virtue. And it all sounds like an impossibly high way to live for a girl who sat down to write still in her exercise clothes. But hey! I exercised! I committed today to more practice. More glorious, soul-stretching, messy, chaotic practice. Considering doctrine which promises the power of rocket thrusters beneath our own pathetic power of tiddly winks can exhaust an ordinary mortal. Can Jesus Christ really make more of this "unholy mess of a girl" - to quote Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story? He really, really can. He really, really doesn't care what you're capable of - or incapable of - right this minute. He really, really doesn't care how much you're starting with, or how much you end up with. He really, really doesn't care where you've been, or what you've done. NONE of that qualifies or disqualifies you. He only cares what you do next. He will never stop inviting - not even at the end of the day (see Matthew 20 - or https://www.laureensimper.com/post/prison-of-choices-and-on-coming-late ). " Come . Come partner with me. Let me help you. Let me walk with you. Let me teach you. "Let me make you holy." Ultimately - wouldn't you say that's it's holiness we're talking about? Covenant relationships, taken seriously, produce virtuous people - which eventually produce holy people. God is holy. The Pearl of Great Price refers to the name of God as "Man of Holiness" (Moses 6:57). To honor the First Commandment is to spend your life trying to grow up to be like Dad. Which is impossible without the rocket thruster help of the only One who has been virtuous every single minute of His existence, and who suffered unspeakably to give you the chance to grow into it with His help. When Jesus Christ comes to rule and reign over the earth, He will not rule and reign over serfs with no will of their own. He will not rule and reign over grumbling, reluctant servants. Jesus Christ will rule and reign over imperfect, virtuous apprentices, who have learned - through their own experiences - to love their God most by practicing higher and holier living. He will rule and reign over future kings and queens, priests and priestesses - who have learned the joy of ruling and reigning over themselves.

[Originally published November 7, 2015] I had the wonderful experience to speak to a young single adult stake of women this morning. A dear friend is the new stake Relief Society president, and invited me when their original speaker couldn't come. I rarely write my talks out, but felt strongly impressed to do so this time. The topic was on developing spiritual confidence... On its surface, the topic of spiritual confidence has some contradictions that must be addressed. Much has been spoken to your generation in particular about developing confidence. The world has actually structured the way childhood should be conducted around the notion that this is the all-encompassing objective of raising a child. At best, this has produced dubious results, and at worst, disastrous results. I can tell you that I've learned from my own experience that the world's definition and approach to confidence is Satan's counterfeit for the real thing - the confidence that waxes strong as you stand in the presence of God. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are called the Creator, and Satan is called the destroyer. As the destroyer, he can create...nothing. He can only copy and imitate. The best gifts and guides that Father has for His children are imitated by Satan in an effort to distract us, deceive us, get us to digress from our path back home, and ultimately destroy us. VOCABULARY LESSON! You've all heard the term 'anti-Christ' used to describe a person or belief that is against the teachings and mission of Jesus Christ, but the prefix 'anti' has a second, lesser known meaning. 'Anti' also means 'like' - so something 'anti' is something very like something else. That finally made the name 'anti-Nephi-Lehi' so much clearer to me! The converted Lamanites wanted to IMITATE the righteousness of their forefathers when they took the name of 'anti-Nephi-Lehi'. Thus, the term 'anti-Christ' uses both meanings of anti: an anti-Christ doesn't just fight the Christ, he IMITATES the Christ. In October 2010, Elder M. Russell Ballard taught something very important about Satan's counterfeits when he talked about fishing lures used in fly fishing. To be effective and catch the fish - they had to look like the real thing. The world's counterfeit of confidence, versus the real confidence that your Heavenly Father wants you to feel, are worlds apart. And because we live in a temporal - temporary - world and are surrounded by temporal - temporary - things, it's the most natural thing in the world to become confused or deceived if we don't know the Lord's doctrine. Elder Jorg Klebingat of the Seventy gave a beautiful talk in April this year about approaching the throne of God with confidence. I recommend it for the 'how's' of developing confidence. Principles like taking responsibility for our own spiritual and physical well being, and making the commitment to intentionally practice repenting, forgiving, and obeying, are timely, timeless, and priceless. But I want to spend our time this morning talking about the 'why's. Elder Bednar has consistently taught that the doctrines of the gospel are the 'why's', and the principles and commandments are the 'what's' and 'how's'. The commandments are how we obey God, but the doctrine is why. One of the most life-changing doctrines President Boyd K. Packer has taught me was that true doctrine, understood, changes behavior - that the study of doctrine changes behavior quicker than the study of behavior changes behavior. I want to talk to you today about why we want to develop spiritual confidence. Stephen R. Covey once said that it's easier to say 'no' - to things that don't matter, for example - or especially to something that is wrong, or even evil - when there is a greater 'yes' burning inside of you. It's my belief that knowing the doctrines - the why - of the gospel makes it easier for us to not only be obedient, but to be more willingly, joyfully obedient. It's in learning the why's of the gospel that we're able to write God law's on the fleshy tables of our hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:3). So let's start where all the great missionaries in the Book of Mormon do - with what Elder Bruce R. McConkie called the three great pillars of eternity: the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement. These are the doctrines that will best prepare us to make and keep sacred covenants in the temple, and enrich our temple worship afterwards. Understanding the Creation and the Fall are essential to better understanding the Atonement - most particularly - our individual need for it to help us enter into the presence of the Father after getting dirty in this mortal, temporal - temporary - world. Abraham 4:18 teaches something powerful about the Creation - it says that the Gods watched over the things they had created - the planets, the sun, moon & stars, the water, etc. - they watched over these things until they obeyed. This is a beautiful illustration of nurturing. God the Father and Jesus Christ watched over the earth until it knew how to stay in its orbit! They watched over the seas until they got the whole tide thing down. They watched over the trees until they knew their job to create new leaves in the spring, and shed the leaves and go dormant in the fall and winter. They taught all their creations to obey. Now, the teaching of their children - with free will - was different. They had been teaching us to be obedient for a very long time, but they prepared this beautiful earth for us as a testing ground to see if we would choose to obey in conditions of both light and darkness - both good and evil. When confronted with the eternal laws of God and Satan's counterfeits that only satisfy in the immediate now, which would we choose ? Abraham describes what this test would be like, from the vantage point of the pre-earth life: "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; "And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born." (Abraham 3:22-23) Institute teacher David Christensen testified to the youth of our stake several years ago that we were all these noble and great ones, and get this: he taught that the thing we were to rule was ourselves . God gave each of us our own little kingdom - consisting of intelligence and a spirit that had been begotten and carefully raised and nurtured by Him over eternity! - and with a body, heart, and mind made of what Elder Ballard's grandfather, Melvin J. Ballard, once called "unredeemed earth". The first part of our test in this life was to learn to rule - ourselves. This has staggering implications about the importance of agency. It has implicit ramifications of the importance of liberty, an essential condition every man needs to learn to govern himself, as Joseph Smith said, and not be compelled by any other man. And so it also suggests the importance of not exercising unrighteous dominion over anyone else that will inhibit the highest use of his agency. As I've continued to ponder this idea of ruling over ourselves, another great truth has been revealed. It would seem that this desire to rule over, have dominion, or control - is actually godlike. It only makes sense that our Eternal Father would endow His children, through spiritual genetics, with this quality He possesses. It makes sense to me that we come from our heavenly home with the desire to order things, to be in charge of something, so we can do this important work of learning to be in charge of ourselves! And it's here where the destroyer and imitator can pervert and confuse. In a fallen world, if we're not careful, instead of doing the work of the day, which is to master and govern ourselves, we will turn our attentions to others, and meddle in their work. The purpose of this life is to learn to obey God - to follow His eternal, fixed, and unchanging law. You cannot do this for someone else. Everyone has to do it for himself. We violate others' agency when we try to force, intimidate, bully, browbeat, or even more subtly manipulate, or put on a guilt trip. Any aggression or subtlety we use to wangle our will upon the will of another child of God is unrighteous dominion. We don't have to look very far or think very long to know how Father values individual agency - He honors agency at all cost s ! Look at the price He paid to provide it - the life of His perfectly obedient Son! We can help Him in honoring each other's agency by working to provide the optimum conditions for others to learn to obey themselves. This is the condition we all lived in while we lived in Father's presence for the eternities before we came to this earth. It is the one quality we are told throughout the scriptures will qualify us to live in His presence after this life, and is the second important thing we are here to learn. Mormon describes it in Moroni chapter 7: "But charity if the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure...." Moroni 7:47-48) So. Our mission on this earth isn't just to gain a body - it's to tame that body! We are here to rule and reign over the tiniest of kingdoms, to see if we can be trusted with anything greater. And since God forces none of His children, our corresponding mission is to learn to have influence upon our brothers and sisters with the only thing that our Father uses to influence us - love. Now that is not to say that we aren't influenced by other forces in this universe. Our Father is a natural consequence Dad. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson calls God the Creator in one place, and in another, he refers to the laws of nature, and of nature's God. We are absolutely influenced when we brush up against the natural, immutable laws of the universe, be they gravity, entropy, or chastity. But when we are battered and bruised by our encounters - whether they're a result of our own disobedience to natural law or inevitable fallout from living in a fallen world - I have come to learn from my own experience that the only influence God will use to teach you about your unwise encounters with natural law is His mighty, all-encompassing love. He is the ultimate Father of the natural consequence, and waits - arms open - to receive you, comfort you, nurture you, and teach you a better way - as soon as you're ready. Elder Neal A. Maxwell said: "It is important to understand that obedience is not simply a requirement of a capricious god who wants us to jump hurdles for him for the entertainment of the Royal Court. It is really the pleading of a loving Father to you and me to discover, as quickly as we can, what we will discover eventually , that there are key concepts and principles that make for happy survival in a planned but otherwise cold universe. Faith and obedience compensate for the shortfall that is true of each of us in terms of our limited experience and limited knowledge. We simply have to rely on these other things to carry us forward at times because our experience and our knowledge fall short. And that pleading from a loving Father, and His prophets here, is to spare us the kind of pain that we will feel if we will not listen." Now, at this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with developing spiritual confidence! Here it is. I found a little sleeper scriptural gem the other day - you know, one of those that pops out and you wonder, "when did they put that in there?" In Colossians 1:16, Paul says this about Christ being the creator of this world: "For by him were all things created... all things were created by him, and for him." That little world 'for' just jumped out at me, and the note I wrote in my scriptures, was... "even me." Sisters, all things are created for a reason. There is purpose in all of it. God needed light for our home; He made a sun. He needed something to cool the newly-fashioned earth; He created water. We need to eat; we create a meal. We want to express our feelings; we create a journal, or blog, or write a song, or paint a painting. Sadly, since we're flawed creatures living in a fallen world, sometimes we need attention, and we create chaos, or a crisis. All things that are created - are created for a reason. And that includes us. We started out as little intelligences in the vast expanses of the universe, and something about the way we responded to God's perfect light and love, even back then, caused Him to beget us and make us His children. He chose us, from the beginning, for a reason! And it was to become like Him. You have entered into the ultimate self-improvement program of the universe - God's plan of salvation! You have entered a covenant relationship with an exalted Being who is the ultimate life coach and mentor. He has the power to cleanse you, heal you, and transform you. HE. CAN. CHANGE. YOU. That is the good news of the gospel - you can change! You don't have to stay this way! You were made to become like your Maker! As Ezra Taft Benson taught, you can do more with your life - with Jesus Christ - than you will ever be able to do on your own, without Him. You can have confidence before God as you take seriously your assignment to master yourself, and to provide your brothers and sisters with charity - the optimum environment they need to learn to master themselves. Love is the condition that makes a person feel safe, and you need to feel safe to do the scary work of killing the natural man, or as C.S. Lewis called it, allowing the great Physician to perform the surgery on our hearts that will cut out all that is impure and unholy in us. This is serious business, to sign on for Father's plan - and I repeat: we have a life coach and mentor that we can trust completely, because He has never done anything but the Father's will from the beginning. Ever. I can scarcely take that in. Jesus Christ was truly the needed sacrificial Lamb without blemish. Before blood ever flowed in His veins, we bore testimony to our doubting brothers and sisters who were listening to Lucifer - John says in Revelation: "[we] overcame [Lucifer] by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of [our] testimony." (Revelation 12:11) Sisters - we knew we could trust Jesus Christ to do what He said He would do because He always had. To tie up this idea of governing only yourself, and leaving the work of governing someone else to himself, I want to leave you with the beautiful words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ironically, when he was being held unjustly in Liberty Jail. These scriptures speak of why we can as Paul said in Hebrews, "come boldly unto the throne of grace". (Hebrews 4:16) From D&C 121:34-46: "34. Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? "35. Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson - "36. That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness. "37. That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved [because he never does it that way]; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man [or woman]. [And sisters, manipulation and passive aggression is also unrighteous dominion.] "38. Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God. "39. We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men [and women], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. "40. Hence many are called, but few are chosen. "41. No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood [or in your home or apartment with roommates, family members, or with a spouse, or with children, or in your church callings], only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned. "42. By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile - "43. Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost [this isn't chewing someone out - it's speaking up to correct when something is wrong, but only when prompted by the Holy Ghost!]; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; "44. That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death. "45. Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly [and virtue is the ultimate mastery of self, and chastity is only one component of virtue. The opposite of virtue is vice - and if you have a vice you aren't in charge of yourself! Virtue is to master yourself.]; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distill upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. "46. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion [and sisters, we will need the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in the days ahead], and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth [and who carries a scepter? A ruler. You will rule in your tiny little kingdom because you rule over yourself.]; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever." (D&C 121:34-46) Sisters, the reason I can testify to you of these things is because I have been taught them by the Holy Ghost. I have been taught by a member of the Godhead as a result of prayer, fasting, scripture study, and temple attendance. There is a price to be paid to know these things, but I can tell you that it is a privilege to pay it, and you will never regret that you did. I pray that you have heard something today, through the influence of the Spirit, that you can take to your next coaching session with the Savior. Heavenly Father and the Savior are your best friends; they will help you! I testify that doing this work will make your life an adventure. Get after it; we're running out of time.