Big=Little IFF Little=Big

I found a new equation today, as you can see. Actually, I included the "IFF" (if and only if) in here for my little sister, Britte's, sake. Math nerds.

I decided in my Sunday School class today that big things are actually little things, but only if (and only if) we make the little things in our lives big. Let me explain: The little things, like reading our scriptures and saying our prayers, writing in our journals, going to the Temple and doing our family history work, make us who we are inside. They are the building blocks of our character. My character is determined in the little things that I do every day--the things that are inconvenient at times, tiresome, wearisome, and even sometimes a little confusing (I knew I should have taken that Understanding Isaiah class at BYU...). I don't necessarily have to understand how these things are changing me. I just have to have faith that they are, and then be able to step outside of myself and evaluate how I'm doing.

Creating your character is like creating any piece of art. It takes planning. It takes patience. In ceramics (and unfortunately, in some of our lives), it takes beating the clay, throwing it against the table to get all the bubbles out so that you have something you can actually work with--something that won't explode in the kiln. It's only after all that preparation that you're clay is ready to be formed into something worthwhile; ready to withstand the incredible heat it will soon be exposed to. If you didn't do all the little preparation, then the big test will seem just that--a big test. But if you did go through all the little preparation, then the big things are just another little thing. And suddenly taking out your extra pair of earrings, or looking for someone to share the gospel with so the missionaries don't have to do quite as much tracting, or walking across the plains, or building a Temple with your bare hands when you know that the people waiting to overtake the city are just going to burn it down to the ground anyways, or being asked to serve in a calling that you don't feel quite prepared for--they aren't big things any more. They're just little things. Because your heart was ready for it.

You only learn to jump rope by jumping.