Tree of Life

Not the Tree of Life, but there is a Tree and this is my Life!

It should be noted that I love my life and am so glad for all of the opportunities I've had and look forward to the amazing ones to come; I in no way want to end my life nor have I ever. But I sometimes wonder why I'm still alive, and with Celebration of Life Day coming up in 2 days, the sometimes occurs more often.

Last night I was feeling a little frustrated with life, I am graduating in less than a year and have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life after that. I'll have a bachelor's degree that has no application unless I go to grad school, which I currently don't plan on doing. And I'll admit a had a selfish moment where I thought of whether dying from my tumor would have been easier for me. Not that I think working in the spirit world would be easy, I'm sure it will be a lot of work. But I would now what my plans were and maybe I'd get so lucky to meet one of those three young men who died after helping the pioneers across the frozen river, instead of having to figure out how the crazy boys around me think. (let's not be delusional...those two situations probably have the same odds)
In this life doubting moment I decided I needed to do my scripture study because I had skipped it in the morning. I flipped to where my bookmark was (Alma 12) and started reading with hopes that a verse would immediately pop out at me and it took me reading 25 verses but it did. In verse 26 it says "And now behold, if it were possible that our first parents could have gone forth and partaken of the tree of life they would have been forever miserable, having no preparatory state; and thus the plan of redemption would have been frustrated and the word of God would have been void, taking none effect."
This life is a preparatory state and who am I to want to skip it. I obviously have lessons that I didn't learn well enough in the pre-mortal life and I apparently still have yet to learn them here. If I personally were to skip out on my needful mortality length and go to immortality, I could likely be forever miserable. Heavenly Father knows the lessons I need to learn--or possibly for me to teach other--in order for the Celestial Kingdom to be a place where I, along with my friends and family, feel comfortable.

Lessons Learned: The scriptures never cease to amaze me, I always find something I need if I'm looking. Although I'm sure dating does work in the spirit world, I'll stick with dating on Earth. (I'm a little bit afraid the guys in the spirit world would have the same problem as so many guys of run into at BYU but probably 10x worse. That is they are so focused on their important work to let themselves get distracted by girls. Getting into grad school vs. teaching people in spirit prison the gospel, pretty much the same thing right?)