Put Your Faithful Foot Forward

The August before I started seventh grade, my family sold our house on Valverde and moved into an apartment. It was in that apartment I memorized the words to every Winnie the Pooh movie as 2-year-old Kati watched them constantly in our close quarters. In our small shared room with bunk beds arranged in an L-shape to prevent anyone's head from getting crushed should the bunk beds fall in an earthquake, I told Missy that KIIS 102.7 was a "bad" (aka evil) radio station. Sure not every song was perfectly devoid of swearing, but Missy was mainly just a cooler 2nd grader than I was 7th grader. While Missy and I didn't agree on which music to play on our alarm clock radio, we shared a sense of fear--fear that Dad's promise of being in a house before Christmas would not be fulfilled. But it was, we moved into our house on December 12th, if I remember correctly. Just in time for Christmas.

In seventh grade faith was all about patience, and patience was all about waiting. Faith was not a principle of action; rather, it was a principle of inaction. Only in recent years, perhaps even recent months, has faith become a forward-moving rather than a stationary principle. This morning I woke up with a feeling of dread. Last night our management company insisted on extra, unwritten, unagreed-to terms in our lease. The fear of not having a home at Christmas returned.

At the same time, opportunities are sprouting in my life that I have waited for and hoped for--sometimes faithfully and more often doubtfully--for years. These opportunities provide a stage for reflection, and reflection affirms that nothing has ever gone terribly wrong in my life. For all the fear, and for all the struggle, I've never had a difficult experience that did not provide me with an opportunity to learn and grow. I have never had to be patient for a promise or event that was not sweeter for the wait. And the waiting was sweeter when I had faith.

Faith is doing your best to accomplish the tasks of the day rather than becoming consumed by the uncertainty of the future. Faith is believing in solutions and working toward them. Faith is seeing challenges as opportunities, trusting that Heavenly Father will add His infinite wisdom to the intellect, agency, and resources He has already given us, to help us find solutions. Faith is the act of picking up the phone, the scriptures, or the instruction manual to find answers. It is the act of dropping to your knees, dropping your fear, and dropping your pride to receive what He is ready to give. When I act in trust and confidence, knowing that nothing can go terribly wrong when Heavenly Father is on my side, the dread flees and faith flourishes.