The Choice Path

Ok, bear with me on this.  Sunday, during Church I had some thoughts come into my brain  (I know - scary).  I got to thinking about the choice to give up our tickets to Avenue Q.  And what happened as a result of that choice.  And this is what I came up with:

We had two choices:
Choice 1:  Retain the tickets that came with our season subscription and go to a show we knew in advance contained much material we didn't agree with.
Choice 2:  Give up the tickets and do something else, instead.


At this decision point in our life, we were at a place between a life going toward Christ  (Point A) and a life going away from Christ (Point C).  Now, I realize not all choices we make have results that make much difference in our life path, but in this case, I think, especially in retrospect, that this one did.


I don't know what the consequences would have been if we had made Choice 1.  That would have been what seemed like the easy way to go.  Instead, we took Choice 2.  We gave up the tickets and we went to the temple.

Because we went to the temple, I received some spiritual strength I would not have received any other way.  That moved me closer to Point A.
I was also able to exercise my faith in putting names on the prayer rolls.  I have since seen positive results come to those people whom I added to the rolls.


What dawned on me was that we never know what the consequences may have been if we make the other choice. There is always the obvious result. But the affects my choices make on other people are not so easy to measure. I think it is those affects that widen the gap even more. If my choice influences another person to make good choices, then we all come out winners. But if my choice in any way encourages a person to make detrimental choices, then we all come out losers.

And like the poem says, one decision can make all the difference.  Like gaining weight one month instead of losing it and suddenly at the end of the month, I'm not only, say, two pounds heavier; I am seven pounds heavier than I would have been if I had done what I was supposed to.  Making a choice that leads us away from Christ, doesn't just lead us a little away from where we were, it leads us a big way away from where we could be.

Now, that gap that has widened can seem like an uphill battle to close when we make wrong choices.  But we all do that (at least all of us who haven't been translated, yet).  And that's where sincere Repentance and the Atonement work hand in hand.  That is the only way to close the gap, to bring us back to the point on our life path where we should have been.  Christ can lift us up and place us there.  He is the only one who can do that.  Christ alone can remove the gap when we do our part.  I am so very grateful to know Christ in my life and to have His gift of the Atonement.  I really do want to move closer to Him and not farther away.

(One side note:  We do get to go see a Broadway production after all.  In the Heights is going to be in Orlando while we're there next month and we were able to get tickets.  Heather, who saw it on Broadway a month before it won all its Tonys,  assures me that this show will not be offensive and we're going to love it.)