The Perfect Answer
“Hey, Dave! How’re you doing?”
As I’ve said in a previous post, this can be a dangerous question to answer honestly. However, early this morning, as I was walking through the tunnel from the Tabernacle to the Conference Center and I was asked this question, I had the perfect answer:
“I get to sing Christmas carols with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! I’m doing wonderfully well!”
The tenor who had asked the question smiled and said, “It doesn’t get much better than that!”
My life isn’t perfect—far from it. I have problems. I have pain. I have infirmities. I have worries. I have sins to wrestle with. I have family members who are struggling.
No, my life isn’t perfect. But in the midst of all my struggles, I also have profound joy.
And the singing Christmas carols with the Choir is one of those great joys.
Now this great blessing comes at great cost. I have to sacrifice many hours each week. I have to stand for long periods of time, which is difficult for me with my knee and ankle injuries (which are healing, but very, very slowly). I have to get up very early on Sunday mornings—and I am definitely not a morning person. I have to practice and memorize and work hard to maintain pitch and tonal quality and vowels and all the myriad things that go into singing with the Choir. It’s hard, exhausting work. I have to put off or give up things I love or want for something I love more.
And it so totally worth it.
I feel the same way about my family. I will pay any price to be with my family in the eternities. Along the way, I will make mistakes. I will falter. I will offend. I will disappoint. I will be discouraged. I will weep and suffer pain and criticism and persecution. But my Savior suffered all things for me to make eternal marriages and eternal families possible. So I will keep on striving to make my marriage an eternal marriage and to bring my children with me into the celestial kingdom. That means I will have to put off or give up things I love or want for something I love more.
That’s what sacrifice is: giving up something you love or want, laying it on the altar, for something you want more. And that can be painful and difficult.
But in the end, it will be worth any sacrifice.
