Bits And Pieces

Last night I went to a concert, mostly so that my buddy wouldn't have to go by himself. I'm not sure that he would have went by himself, so I think I also had that consideration in mind. It's a little punk band called Authority Zero. To be honest, I just couldn't get into it at all. It felt like a lot of noise to me. I did like some of their more mellow stuff, which for most bands is probably still really hard. I liked the reggae-influenced songs they had, but then that made me feel like just going to a reggae concert. Anyway, what I think I disliked most about the concert was that they didn't actually get on stage until about midnight. Have you ever heard of that? Usually concerts end a little early, like 11 or so, which I think is perfect. By the time they got on, I was already so tired, so in addition to not even liking them that much, I just wasn't really to be at a concert because I was already so tired. But the band who preceeded them had the bassist from Unwritten Law. I thought that was odd, but I guess if your band isn't touring or not putting together an album, then it only makes sense to go out with other bands and you can get some extra cash.

I'm going to post more on this later (I feel like I keep saying that, or at least I've been thinking it a lot), but on Friday, November 30th, I hit my ten-year anniversary as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Shouldn't I get a watch or something like that? I can't believe it's already been ten years. Dave baptized me, Greg Reid confirmed me. The girls played I Know That My Redeemer Lives on the violin, accompanied by Greg. Joyce even sang a song too, but I can't remember it now. Something I've been thinking about today was the second discussion with the missionaries when they invited me to be baptized. I really had no idea what it was that I was committing to. I really didn't. If I had known then what I do now about what the church requires, I don't know if I would have agreed to it so quickly. At the end of the discussion, the missionaries invited me to be baptized.

I told them that I didn't know that I wanted to be baptized. I had just gone through six discussions with my brother's church and they had asked me if I wanted to be baptized in their church. And I just wasn't feeling it with my brother's church (this is an editing comment - I didn't realize until Amy pointed it out a couple of times to me, but sometimes I use too many pronouns, I'm working on it). With the missionaries, I wasn't really feeling any overwhelming desire to join the church. Or even just a whelming desire (that's right, it's a word. Not just a word, but it actually means to submerge, or overcome utterly, so why do we say "overwhelm" all the time then? Doesn't that seem repetitive? anyway...) to join. I nothing'ed the church. I liked it, liked the people, and everything just fine. I just didn't really think anything about why I needed to get baptized. Until they asked me. So when I hesitated, they suggested that we kneel down right there and pray about it. That is a pretty bold move, ladies and gentlemen. A lot of missionaries wouldn't ask that right on the spot like those ones did.

I think it was just the missionaries, Dave, and myself at that discussion. We kneeled and said our own silent prayers. In my head, it was the most simple prayer ever. "Should I get baptized?" I asked silently. You know what happened? Nothing. I didn't feel anything. In fact, it was probably only about 30 seconds long that we prayed. I stopped praying and got up because I was afraid that I wasn't going to get an answer. And all I could really think was, "just say yes so that you don't have to keep praying anymore." Isn't that funny? This is the first time that I have ever expressed those thoughts aloud in any kind of forum whatsoever. I mostly thought that and wanted to move on so quickly because I had the idea in my head that the answer would be something grand, or at least be very powerful. I thought I'd start crying, or I would feel a warmth in my heart, or anything at all. I probably thought that because I had actually felt those things in varying degrees at different church related functions - Doug's farewell, the airport with Doug, even the first discussion. I thought it would be something more identifiable like those things that I had felt before.

Never did it occur to me that I had actually received my answer. It really came in a way that was perfectly suited to how I would be able to read it. I just remember feeling like I should stop the prayer because I might not get an answer, but that I should just say yes because that just felt like the thing to do. I've been thinking a lot today about what I really said yes to when I agreed to get baptized. I know I didn't explain this very well, but it's really hard to explicate much more than I already have.

Essentially, by agreeing to be baptized I agreed to everything that followed it as well. I agreed to serving a mission, to taking upon myself temple covenants, giving up a portion of my income, my time, talents, and so many things with which the Lord has blessed me. I also said yes to receiving the companionship of His spirit, to peace in times of despair, to a hand up when my knees are weak, and to the joy of living as a member of the Church. I remember thinking soon after I was baptized so much about how difficult it seemed to me then about living an entire life just as God has asked. I didn't have a lot of things to give up on - alcohol, drugs, immorality - but in a short time period of about a few months my view of life was lengthened from what I thought would be just my time on earth to all of eternity. It was daunting, and a very real concern that I had when I joined the church. It took me about a year to get comfortable with really knowing that I was going to live the gospel, or at least try my very best, for the rest of my life. Well, I didn't mean to write so much on this topic, but more will come another day.

You know what really amazes me about the church? promptings and actually feeling like there is communication between myself and God that goes beyond anything that is actually verbally expressed. Elder Bednar asked in a meeting one time, "what are we learning that has not been said?" Tonight as I watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional I realized that I'm so busy this next month with Christmas activities. On the 7th I have my work Christmas party. On the 11th is Amy's Ward Christmas Cruise. The 12th is Christmas Choir Festival. The 13th is Amy work party. Tentatively I have seeing the Christmas Carol planned for the 15th, but I want to push that to the following week so that I can go to my Branch Christmas party. Then the 21st Unwritten Law is playing with Lagwagon. The 22nd is Chewie's Christmas party, but I might leave early to go see the Vandals play a Christmas concert that same night. Isn't that absurd? Oh, and the 20th Amy and I are going to go see the Rockettes perform at the OCPAC. As I watched tonight I felt very strongly that while these things are going to be fun, I better not get so caught up in the "Christmas spirit" that I actually miss out on living the spirit of Christmas. Make sense? I'm going to be doing a lot of fun things this next month, but it's really not going to mean much this holiday season if I don't do anything to make someone else's season a little bit brighter as well. There have been other things here and there that I've thought and felt this last week. I'm just so grateful that there is a very conscientious and concerned Father in Heaven that attempts to reveal to me those things that I could be doing better. After ten years of being a member of this church, I feel like I'm only just now figuring out how to identify what it is that He is trying to communicate to me.

I realized today that I haven't been blogging as much because I've been really tied up in reading Harry Potter. I just finished the second one this week. I just love those books and am so glad that there are five more for me to go through. I have to give a shout out to Greg for inspiring me to do that because he just recently read through all seven in the last couple months and I've been meaning to read them for the longest time, but am only just now finally doing it. There are so many books that I'd like to read. There's just not enough hours in the day.

The Raiders won today. That, my friends, constitutes a winning streak. I know it stands at two and will probably end there because they play the Packers next week, but in the last several years there have just not been many of those so I'm going to celebrate it. Jamarcus Russell finally made his debut. The future looks plenty bright right now.

One last thing...Dave shared this last year with me, at least I think it was Dave. He was talking to me about a particular thought that had been expressed in church, or by some General Authority about the word "Christmas." It is so indicative of worldly trends and of the adversary's efforts to take the Christ out of Christmas, as we see so often in the abbreviation X-mas. How can "X" ever serve as an adequate replacement for the name of our Savior? Since then, I've never written it that way.

Here's just another one of the many times where I will wish you all a very Merry Christmas, or as President Hinckley expressed tonight, that I hope that if there is any way that I can be of service to you, that you would know that you could call on me. And also, that I hope we could all express that similar attitude toward those we come in contact with in our daily comings and goings. In the words of the Boss himself, "Merry Christmas Baby!"