Thinking While I Run

After last Friday's post, I got some interesting email and comments, so I feel that perhaps I wasn't clear:

I read about other religions out of curiosity, but the more I learn, the more strongly I come back to the faith of being a Latter Day Saint. Why? It's a feeling. There's a difference. I read other things. There's a lot of truth out there to be gleaned. However, my soul only feels full when I take the time to talk to the creator I know and love. Knowledge about religion is great, but knowing God and his Son is better. Knowing they will help you in any situation, and having faith that their answer may be different than you want, but that it's what is best for your eternal salvation is completing in some way. To have a big picture before me of where I came from and where I am going makes each action I do have meaning. It makes washing my children's clothes mean something, it even makes the running I do feel like I am growing and training myself to be something God wants of me.

I know that there are a lot of chances to serve in other religions, but I love that we have a lay ministry. I love knowing that not one of the teachers, priests, bishops, etc. are paid to do what they do, and I know that my calling in helping the sisters learn and grow in the Relief Society is so necessary, yet completely voluntary. My children's Sunday school teachers put their heart and soul into teaching my children, and they aren't paid a dime. My friend is on the dry food cannery board, helping people to build up their food storage and be prepared for hard times, and she's not paid a dime. Our Bishop (known in other churches as Pastor) puts in long hours AFTER he gets done being a dermatologist all day to support his family, and he'll only be in that calling for an average of five years and then someone else in our congregation will take a turn. These men have no formal religious training, yet they speak with the spirit of God. I can't explain it, but you can feel it. True, there are those that might act in a calling unworthily, thus making a bad name for the rest, but by and large, the people I serve with--and serve for, are serving me and my family right back. So, when my husband is gone on weekends with the Youth to Scouting activities, I think about how the parents of those scouts have served me. I think about how someday my son will be a scout (if he so chooses) and there will be godly men willing to take them camping and put up with their weird teenage-ness when I need a break from it. I think of how my daughters will be looking up to the wonderful Christian women that will serve them in the Young Woman's program, where they are taught to strive for virtue. And then I smile.

Some say it takes a village to raise a child, but as a Latter-Day Saint, I know that where ever I go, I'll have a ward.