Private reflections--Men are that they might have joy.

2010
So I had an epiphany last night. I was reading in The First 2000 Years. If you ever want to gain a better understanding of Heavenly Father as a person, or how his plan is so perfect, you should take a glance at that book. Amazing! I was reading about one of the reasons it was necessary for us to come down to this earth and gain a body. Joy. Here is the first thing I learned. In the preexistence, we were able to feel joy, but only to a degree. It would not be until our spirits received a body that we could truly feel joy right down to the very fiber of our beings. This was one aspect of gaining a body that excited us so much that we would shout for joy as the plan was put in place, so much so, that we would follow that very risky plan to come to this earth, knowing our eternal fate would rest on the shoulders of our Savior, and that if He failed, our ability to ever be truly happy would be naught.

Down here on earth those desiring that joy may seek it out in destructive ways, either through drugs and alcohol, immorality, overindulging in any form, _____, but aside from the actual physical responses of those things, their acts of irresponsibility bring only the opposite of what they were seeking out. It has been said that those who followed Satan and did not gain a body, tempt us to use ours in destructive ways so they can try to feel that joy through our body for a moment.

There was something else that dawned on me and I would love your thoughts on this. If our spirits need our bodies to truly feel joy, what happens when we die? This truth that the spirit needs the body to truly have joy would suggest to me that when we do in fact pass from this world, that capability will be as it was before coming here, limited. Yes, there will be peace/rest/Paradise for those who lived a good life and a lesser _____ for those who did not, but will we truly be able to feel that joy like we did here on earth? As I understood it, no. That will, however, come to us again when our perfected spirits reunite with our perfected bodies in the resurrection, and then, not only will we be able to feel that true joy again, but we will be able to feel the pure joy as our Father in Heaven does.

Sadly, I have not caught the vision of this truth until now, and before this moment, I have merely endured. Until now, this earth life has held little value to me. (I came, I got my body, I learned the gospel and am doing the things I need to, I have my family and they are mine for eternity.) I have been one that clings to the knowledge that this second estate is but a moment. I want this test to come and go so that I can rest and be happy.

But wow! To think of the joy that comes from this life, this estate. When I think of joy, I think of serving others, jumping in the old blue truck and taking a ride around town with my sweetheart, entering the temple and performing the work for ancestors who have passed on and did not get to do that work for themselves, doing family history work with my mother, playing gotcha-last with the kids, eating a chocolate brownie that got whipped up by my daughter with a sweet tooth, sitting out in the sunshine on those first spring days after being sunshine deprived for the last 3 months, seeing my dad and his dog everyday after his walk, signing off from work after a LONG grueling day, hearing my boy teach himself to play the piano, cooking something that makes my family go "WOW!," watching the kids play with their dad. I could go on and on. That is true joy.

This may just be the gospel according to Bonnie, but I don't want to waste anymore time just enduring life. I want to spend my time truly living it!