Weapons of Mass Destruction

SECRET: I am learning to really love insititute and devotionals

In insititue a week or 2 ago, we had a really interesting lesson! Brother Sackett was late, so we sang a few Christmas songs at the top of our lungs and laughed while we waited for him to show up. If it had been a normal, everyday class at the school, I'm pretty sure everybody would have left to go do better things. But today everyone was pretty content to just sit and hang out, enjoying the free time to relax a little bit.

Once he got there, he came rushing in looking pretty flustered. Makes sense when you wake up 20 minutes into your class after only getting about 3 hours of sleep that whole night. What was odd though was that he was carrying a shovel. ??? Odd, yes. But nobody thought too much about it, just laughed and continued on in our own little conversations.

I can't remember the name of the talk we went over but it was the one where he talks about how the Lamanites (or Nephites...lame that I don't even know) had to bury their weapons and promise to never pick them up again. By being extremely aggressive and violent and killing others, they were rebeling against the Lord and keeping the spirit from reaching them. The talk asked (my class is one where we go over conference talks from the previous conference) what we had in our own lives that was preventing us from having the spirit or from the Lord fully reaching us. What was our "weapon" that we were using to rebel against the Lord?

My first thought was kind of a chuckle and "Which one?" I immediately felt that blah feeling of guilt or just un-pleasantness as several ideas flashed through my mind. Brother Sackett told us to think about it while he went around passing out little pieces of paper. After everyone had one, he told us to pick a weapon and write it on there, assuring us that nobody was going to read it. I finally picked one that I haven't struggled with for a while, but had a strong feeling that something may be coming up with it fairly soon. Slightly confused, I wrote it down, folded it and waited for him to continue; not thinking much of it.

Brother Sackett looked around at everybody, grabbed the shovel and headed outside with a simple "Follow me." Laughing and FREEZING, we followed him out to the backside of the building where he went ahead and dug a small hole. There's no doubt that he had EVERYBODY's attention! He gave us a spill about how hard it can be to change habits, how hard it is to completly let go of something. He asked us to fold up our papers and "bury our weapons", promising to never dig them up again, allowing ourselves to become better. "I don't want to see anyone out here next hour trying to get their weapons out again!" (Hilarious Bro. S :) )

Jake come home from Iraq yesterday and it's had me thinking about "The War" ever since. With thinking of Iraq and our little burial, I came up with the Weapons of Mass Destruction because that's exactly what they are. These things that build up and keep us away from what's right, DEFINETLY have the power to destroy us and those around us. If we let them, they can definetly do some "mass destruction."

My weapon is 1 that I definetly go back and forth on sometimes. My feeling was right though: the last few days, it has stirred up again for whatever reason. Today was my last day of insititute. Walking in, I saw the area where we gathered in the snow and felt something inside of me. Suddenly, the struggle got to be a little less. I had a little tiny burst of determination to keep it buried and continue moving on.

It had an opportunity to "hit me hard" tonight, and it's as if I was barely even touched by it. And it was an AMAZING feeling! It was refreshing. It was encouraging. It was just all around...good! My new determination to KEEP IT BURIED made a huge difference because instead of thinking that I would try, or get there eventually or just acknowledge that yeah maybe it's not the best, I thought I am DONE with this from here on out. If you're struggling with something, maybe it's time to make a defining moment of burying your weapon because it makes a HUGE change for you and really does make overcoming it a little bit easier.


I would be happy to head to UVU with you ;)