To give all I have

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the April 1984 Conference.

I suppose I've been in a kind of…wistfully nostalgic mood lately. Or "pre-nostalgic," maybe, as I contemplate how fast my my oldest children are hurtling toward adulthood? Okay, let's be honest, this is practically my permanent state of mind—but it only gets worse as time goes on, and it HAS been particularly strong recently. So maybe that led to my finding this talk, President Russell M. Nelson's very first talk in Conference, particularly poignant. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. There he was! New to the apostleship…overwhelmed…probably nervous…never knowing what was to come, where he would end up, what he would be. But _I_ knew, reading it, that someday this man would be the President of the Church. It felt…well, as I said, poignant.

Saturday of April conference of 1984 has been circled on our calendar for many years, for that date was targeted as the first time in my life that our only son would be old enough to attend general priesthood meeting with me. Last night, that long awaited goal became a reality. Brothers and sisters, little did we know that on that day my name would be presented as a member of the Council of the Twelve.

He also (adorably) talks about how the shock of it sent his daughter into labor. His twenty-second grandchild was born the night before he gave this talk! :)

Then he says this:

Feelings of commitment well up from the depths of my soul. My sweetheart, Dantzel, and I first made those covenants in the temple of the Lord over thirty-eight years ago, to consecrate our lives to the service of the Lord. Today, I reaffirm that promise, to give all I have to the building of the kingdom of God on the earth. In accepting this call, knowing that challenges, charges, and keys will be conferred and that buffetings will likewise come, I commit my effort, my energy, and my all. 

I felt such love for our dear prophet, reading these sentiments he expressed thirty-five years ago. And though I can in no way compare my own sacrifices to his, I felt a shock of recognition as he talked about the covenants he'd made years before, and how he reaffirmed them now.

There was a moment of great personal significance recently where I had that same realization: that the choice to give all I have is one I've already made. Of course I have to keep renewing it; keep choosing it—"reaffirming" it, in President Nelson's words. But in that moment of clarity, I suddenly knew that there really wasn't any more question about if I could or should or wanted to promise God my all. That part was done. The only question was, would I keep the commitment I'd already made—to give all I have.

And (though of course I actually carry this out with widely varying degrees of failure), I knew immediately, even as I had the thought, that I DID want to. I really did. With all my heart—even if it meant "challenges and buffetings" would come.

It is cool to think that President Nelson was having those same thoughts during his own moment of personal crisis and testing, and that…what's more…he has DONE what he promised he would do. He has given his all! I love him for it. And I hope I can look back at my life and say the same in thirty-five more years!