I have a beautiful place just 5 minutes away where I love to jog sometimes. I wanted to show it to my family so Sunday after church we took a walk on the dirt road where the views are amazing! I showed them this home that I’ve always liked and thought if I was rich it would be the kind of home I would choose to live in. It was especially sweet to me that Jeremy loved it too, and instead of being defensive that we didn’t live in such a house he stood there with me for a while admiring all of it and wanted to take my picture in front of it! (I had the girls pose instead though)
Hope pondered cool inventions we would come up with to make us rich and Dallin told another long and riveting story. As we walked hand in hand, laughing and loving each other in the tranquil breeze surrounded by God given beauty I was reminded again of how very rich I am! I am rich in those things that really matter. Daily we are striving and working toward an eternal family. Our little home, barley 1100 square feet, is a haven from the world. We like to call it our cottage home. It has been perfect for building foundations of testimony in our children that will not let them fall. I know we were led like Lehi who took his family from their lives of gold and fine things to a wilderness, to live in this place. We are still being guided as we wade through our own wilderness to the Lords pre destined Promised Land for our family.
Just before our Sunday stroll I came across this talk from President Packer. I was meant to find it. His words ring true to my soul. They have come into my mind over and over again.
“It is the understanding of almost everyone that success, to be complete, must include a generous portion of both fame and fortune as essential ingredients.
The world seems to work on that premise. The premise is false. It is not true. The Lord taught otherwise.
I want you, our children, to know this truth:
You need not be either rich or hold high position to be completely successful and truly happy.
In fact, if these things come to you, and they may, true success must be achieved in spite of them, not because of them.
It is remarkably difficult to teach this truth. If one who is not well known, and not well compensated, claims that he has learned for himself that neither fame nor fortune are essential to success, we tend to reject his statement as self-serving. What else could he say and not count himself a failure?
If someone who has possession of fame or fortune asserts that neither matters to success or happiness, we suspect that his expression is also self-serving, even patronizing.
Therefore, we will not accept as reliable authorities either those who have fame and fortune, or those who have not. We question that either can be an objective witness.
That leaves only one course open to us: trial and error—to learn for oneself, by experience, about prominence and wealth or their opposites.
We want our children and their children to know that the choice of life is not between fame and obscurity, nor is the choice between wealth and poverty. The choice is between good and evil, and that is a very different matter indeed.
When we finally understand this lesson, thereafter our happiness will not be determined by material things. We may be happy without them or successful in spite of them.
The crucial test of life, I repeat, does not center in the choice between fame and obscurity, nor between wealth and poverty. The greatest decision of life is between good and evil.” President Packer
The greatest decision of life is between good and evil, that is all that matters. The rest is the mists of darkness that cloud our judgment and darken our view of eternity. They are distractions that keep us from the beauty of an incomprehensible reward. I have seen and been in the homes of the rich and famous. I have also been in the homes of the most humble. It is those who are good, who have chosen the good that I most admire and feel at home with.
