Clarification

Hi folks. I received a voicemail message this afternoon that bothered me a little bit and made me feel that I needed to clarify something. I apologize for not addressing the individual personally yet, but the time difference between here and the east coast makes it a little bit difficult.

The message that I got thanked me for the recent update and said that neither he nor his wife understood how destitute I had been prior to my move to Utah and shortly after. Although I have been short on material wealth, I feel that I have been far from destitute. This is definitely a learning situation for me. I feel that I am learning what it takes to truly be a disciple of Christ. At least I hope that I am.

I had another friend say that there were a lot of trials that I have been through that I did not have to go through. That is probably true, but everything that I have been through has been a learning experience. Unfortunately, we seem to learn the most when we experience the most adversity. I am not trying to purposefully seek out adversity either, but I am not going to run from it either. Hopefully I will emerge from the refiners fire a better, more grateful and more humble man.

I feel that I should also clarify a point that I made on a previous blog about it being difficult for me to find strenght to go forward. I am in no way considering not going forward. Quitting, in any way, shape, or fashion has not entered my mind. I desire to live "after the manner of happiness." And the only way for me to do that is to "Keep Moving Forward," as is the motto in my favorite move of all times, Walt Disney's Meet the Robinsons which ends in a fabulous quote from Walt Disney himself:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”–Walt Disney

Thank you all for your friendship, faith, prayers, and support. I hope to be able to return the favor some day.

Movin On Up

Thanks to a good night's sleep. I woke up to a new prospective. I now feel like George Jefferson.

Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.


Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin',
Just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues,
Gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
There ain't nothin wrong with that.


Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

The Law of Undulation

Forgive me if this entry is a little long. There are some feelings that I need to get out. I feel that I need to start with an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (1942, HarperCollins, New York, New York.) The Screwtape Letters consists of a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior devil to his young nephew Wormwood, who is just learning the art of tempting mortals. In this letter (pages 37-41) he discusses what he calls “The Law of Undulation.”

My Dear Wormwood,

So, you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? ...Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully, you would have seen this undulations in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (the Savior’s) efforts to get permanent possession of the soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us (demons) a human is primary food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours… But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least form their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is through such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…He cannot tempt to virtue…He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hands; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why hey has been forsaken, and still obeys. (Emphasis added)

I feel like I am going through a trough. I have had so many trials and heartache during the past few years that I am beginning to wonder when it is going to end. I am beginning to wonder how I am going to get the strength to go on. I know that school is only a month away, but it seems like that month might as well be a year.

There are several things that keep me going. One of them is a talk from Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entitled, Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence (BYU Devotional 3/19/1999), in which he quotes Hebrews 10: 35-36, 38-39:

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise…

…If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him…

…We are not of them who draw back unto perdition. (Emphasis added.)

I do not want to stop climbing the mountain just before I get to the top, even if it is obscured by fog. Although I do not look like it, I am familiar with weight lifting. I am aware of the theory that says that it is when the muscle has been worked so much that it can barely function, and a spotter is required, that the most growth occurs.

I know that with Jesus at my side I have the best spotter in the world. I also know that I am surrounded by a team of spotters who are my friends and family. I also know that I am meant to do most of the work. I am thankful for all of you who are spotting for me, praying for me, calling me, and encouraging me. Your support means the world to me and I could not do it without you. I will keep you posted of my progress.

Love,

Mark

Go and Sell All That Thou Hast, and Give to the Poor...and Come, Follow Me

Many of you may have been wondering what on earth I am doing in Utah if I loved (and still love) Florida so much. Well, I have decided that it is time for full disclosure. Although my time in Florida was one of the best times in my life, it was also one of the hardest times in my life. I have often said that socially, emotionally, and spiritually it was tremendous. I have grown more in those areas then I would have ever thought possible. Financially, it was a disaster! I burned though all of the money in my 401k, accrued thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and had a car repossessed, all in a space of two years.

The week before my car was to be repossessed I found myself sitting at my job as a telephone customer service representative for a major software company one day and had just gotten off of a particularly nasty call. I said to myself, "I don't have to take this any more," and instantly went online to Brigham Young University's web page and began to apply for admission to their undergraduate program. I had not been thinking about going back to school at the time and I don't know what came over me. I just knew that I was sick of the kinds of jobs that I could get without a degree and knew that I had to do something so that none of the problems that I had been having would ever happen again. As an after thought, I also applied to go to school at the BYU campus in Idaho. I didn't really want to go to Rexburg, I had been there before and was not all that impressed. It was cold! (It had earned itself the nickname of "Iceberg!") But I felt that applying there would be the right thing for me to do.

The day that my car was repossessed I decided to quit my job. I could not justify spending 6 hours commuting to and from work on a bus to work for 8 hours at a job that I was not satisfied with. I really enjoyed the people there, but working there was sucking all of the life out of me. At the same time I told my landlord that I would be leaving at the end of the month. The plan was for me to move to Utah and go to school because I was convinced that BYU in Provo, UT was going to accept me.

The next few weeks were tough because my landlord had agreed to let me out of my lease if I would vacate my apartment before the end of the month so that he could rent it out and I had no where to go. I had not heard from either one of the schools yet either. I was scared. I didn't know what was going to happen and I was running out of options. I was talking about my situation with a very good friend of mine and Matthew 19: 16-21 came into my head and I felt that Heavenly Father had given me a task to do and I needed to trust him. I also though of the scripture further down in the chapter that says that it "would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19: 24) So I decided to do exactly what The Savior had told the rich man to do so I sold or gave away most of my stuff. I sold my Select Comfort Sleep Number 5000 bed to some very good friends of mine who will be getting married in July. (This was very hard because it was the only bed that I have ever been able to sleep comfortable on since I became an adult.) I sold several of my books on amazon.com, sold some more books, videos, and furniture to a friend of mine from Church, and gave away most of the rest of what I owed to either the Goodwill or the Salvation Army. I now can fit the bulk of all of my earthly possessions in two suitcases, two duffel bags, and a few boxes.

I was not accepted to BYU in Utah, but I was accepted to BYU in Idaho. When I found that out, plans to move to Utah were already in the works. I stayed with my brother Keith and his wife Caroline in Florida for a few weeks and then, thanks to my bishop, hopped on a plane bound to Salt Lake City. This haven't been easy since I got here. I had to stay with the brother of a friend of mine in SLC for a week until I could get a ride to Provo. (Thanks Naomi!) Then I stayed with my friend Elliot for two weeks in Provo where I subsequently got the stomach flu and had to go to the emergency room to have fluids pumped back into me. Now I am staying in South Jordan with the parents of a friend and former co-worker of mine from New Hampshire. And I just started working at Target after being unemployed since October.

Like I said, things haven't been easy since I have been out here. If it hadn't been for the generosity of others I would definitely be on the streets at this moment. But I feel exceedingly blessed. The Lord has allowed me to reconnect with many old but good friends. He has helped me to get everything but my housing worked out with the school, and he has helped me to get a job. I am excited for this new beginning and am grateful to all of those who have helped me, encouraged me, and prayed for me. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

I hope that this wasn't too long. I will write more later. Until then, God bless.