Proportional Elephants

My companion and I were trying to draw an elephant on a sticky note. We had a couple of images of elephants that we were trying to use as something to go off of but it wasn't working very well. I'm no artist. We were struggling to get the proportions right so that it would actually look like a presentable little elephant.

Finally my companion threw in the towel and said, "You do it." Aaah! So I thought for a couple of minutes about elephants. I looked at the three images that we had and went back to the drawing board. There was nothing wrong with the elephant that we had but I wanted this little drawing to look more like an actual elephant instead of a caricature. Some things needed to be changed.
I took the penciled image that we already had and began drawing a new elephant on top of it. Suddenly I had an epiphany! Inspiration! The drawing came together and looked like a beautiful little elephant!

Now, I don't know how to draw elephants. What helped this little elephant to change was the fact that I was suddenly asking , "How can I make this elephant look correct?" instead of saying, "This elephant looks awful!" Instead of saying, "I know something needs to be changed," I asked, "What looks weird about the elephant and what would make it look normal and more proportional?"

Oftentimes, we recognize that something about our life needs to change. We need to be more patient, more loving, more gentle, more Christlike in general, yet we are not quite sure how to go about it. We want to make our lives more in accordance with the standards the Lord has set. Yet we are making statements. We say, "I need to be more -," rather than asking the Lord how we can fix the problems and situations that we are facing. We try all the normal things: pray for patience, ask for suggestions from family members and friends, read and study the scriptures. There are things that are often overlooked and questions that are often not asked, however, that can help us to become the person that God needs us to be.
God needs us to be specific in our prayers and our desires. If we desire and even expect direct and specific answers, we must be willing to ask specific questions.
When I told my mom over and over again that I was bored during a car ride, she didn't have many answers or solutions to give me. However, when I changed my statement to the question, "What can I do until we get there?" she was much more inclined to give me varied and specific answers. Questions lead to answers.

Our Heavenly Father is much the same way.

When we seek His guidance and direction, we need to ask Him specific questions and He will then give us specific answers and help. As we seek His help in overcoming weaknesses and fears, we can ask what He needs us to do in order to strengthen our weaknesses. We can ask Him to do things to help us. We can ask Him to help us feel peace and comfort in order to know something is true or in order to know that He loves us. When we ask Him clear and direct questions, He can then bless us with answers and guidance and personal revelation and inspiration through the Holy Spirit.
Ask Him for help. He loves each of us more than anyone else loves us and because of that, He is willing to do more than anyone else to help us.

"Frogger"

My companion plays a game called "Frogger". Whenever we walk across a bridge that spans a highway, she stops immediately at the edge of the road below (usually making me run into her because I'm not paying attention). The point of the game is to make it across the bridge without being "hit" by the cars that are speeding along below. As soon as she spies a gap in the cars she darts across the bridge, only stopping if she is about to be "run over." When the way is again clear, she's off! Points are gained only by getting all the way across the bridge without being "hit" by a car.
The first time I saw her play this game, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind. The first was, "What in the world is she doing?" As I thought about it, a scripture in Mosiah 3 came to mind. Verse 19 says, "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, for ever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

Throughout our lives we are asked to run, figuratively speaking. Sometimes we are asked to run across a bridge. There are many things we have to avoid; we have many obstacles that stand in the way of our ultimate goal of returning to live in God's presence eternally. Our sins and mistakes and the "natural man" as the prophet Benjamin says, are some of these obstacles.
God wants us to return to His presence, however. He wants us to find peace in this life through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to have eternal joy in the next life. The Articles of Faith 1:3 says, "We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel."
An ordinance is a sacred act like baptism that outwardly shows our inner commitment to our Heavenly Father and to obeying the commandments He has given to us.
As we are obedient to the commandments and as we seek the help and guidance of our loving Heavenly Father in crossing "the bridge of life" we will be more happy and more at peace than if we were trying to do everything on our own.
In The Book of Mormon in Mosiah 2, a king named Benjamin teaches the people about keeping the commandments. He says, "And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold our faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it."
If we will seek to avoid the sins and temptations of the world, (the cars speeding below the bridge), and if we will hold fast to the truth and commandments that God has seen fit to give to us, if we "become...as a child," we will be brought to heaven. We will come to understand the love that our Heavenly Father has for us and we will gain greater and greater desire to know Him more fully and to understand the sacrifice of His Son. We will find more peace and happiness by obedience to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, than in any other way.