Real Problems

Words I thought I'd never type: I enjoyed the last stake high council speaker at church.  Normally when these speakers are announced, I crack open a book, play on my phone, try and flirt with the girl next to me, or even just drop all pretense of paying-attention, conk my forehead on the front-pew and take a nap.

I'm largely uninterested in yet another string of luke-warm platitudes constructed around such hard-knock life-stories as "I was a star center/quarterback/home-coming-king at East/West/Skyline/whatever who was AP on my mission then immediately married high-school-sweetheart/the beauty-queen/a model, attended the U/the Y/USU to became a lawyer/dentist/CFO, became rich and successful as a matter of course at everything I touched because monetary wealth is a clear sign of God's approbation and blessing," and "sired my race of Aryan superman through which I could vicariously fulfill my juvenile and sophomoric teenage fantasy to win the state basketball championship."  (I'm not even exaggerating about that last bit).

So it was genuinely refreshing to hear a story from someone who'd actually had real problems--we heard from someone who was divorced with kids and inactive in church when he remarried his girlfriend of 10 years (they didn't get sealed in the temple till a year later); someone who once had to work 4 jobs just to make ends meet; someone who was laid-off from his grounds-keeper job at 49, so went back to school for his Associates--not his BA, MBA, or Doctorate, but his Associates--which took him 6 years.

This was someone for whom tithing was once a sincere test of his faith, for whom there was never a clear, guaranteed light at the end of the tunnel, for whom the church was perhaps once a burden than a support, someone who's genuinely suffered emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, yet somehow got through with his sense of humor intact--that is, for once, I heard from someone who actually had something to say!

These are the sorts of people I actually look up to--these are the sorts of folk that I suspect God can actually do something with--that in the eternities, I have the gut-feeling that it will be better for these passionate ones than all the MBAs, beauty-queens, and high-tithing-payers of the church together.