Conference Talk Poem

Here is my first attempt at a poem based (loosely) on a conference talk titled "Come unto Me with Full Purpose of Heart, and I Shall Heal You" by Elder Patrick Kearon of the seventy during the priesthood session. Also DON'T FORGET TO READ MY OTHER POST titled "STRIKE THAT....REVERSE IT" because I posted this one right after that one, and I think the other one is better reading. So make sure to read both. Ok thanks :)

Dark the night, and I,
Far from the path
Disregard with prideful heart
the warnings of the wise

And soon my apathy turns to fear
tis not a thorn but scorpion
that pricks my wand'ring soul
and leaves me numb, alone.

And crying for the ones I left
I seek their tenderness
for in their arms is mercy found
despite disobedience

The venomous sting of sin
like a scorpion in the dark
will wound a rebellious soul
and poison a wand'ring heart

But turning to the savior
I find solace at his feet
for in His healing love
I recapture joy and peace.

Strike that... reverse it

So what I really wanted to talk about today is fast forwarding. This is a great technique I've learned over the last 2.5 years, but just recently have put to use. The main idea is that when you have a decision to make you fast forward in your mind to the outcome of each choice, thus you skip over most of the detail and get to the nitty gritty of the situation. I noticed that I did this with a certain girl the other day. We'll call her..... Jessica C. No no... J Clark. I made a choice about something that would have led to me pretending to be angry or hurt, which would have led to me believing that I was actually angry or hurt which would have turned into a miserable weekend. Now... this is a situation that I've played out several times in several prior relationships. And in the instant that I made this decision I "fast forwarded" to the outcome (aka the miserable weekend as described above) and was able, for the first time that I'm aware of, to change the situation. I immediately apologized, explained why I was sorry and what for, because at this point it only had made sense to me because I knew how it would turn out. Anyways, long story short, we had a great weekend and so I guess I just want to bare (bear?) my testimony of the usefulness of fast forwarding, that it works for I have seen it work, but only if you let it change your actions. How many times have I let things happen when I knew that I could change them if I had wanted to, or how many opportunities have I passed up because I didn't look at the results, only the effort involved? I've talked about this a lot in therapy, to avoid "certain situations" I can fast forward to what the outcome will inevitably be, mostly regret or shame or anger etc.
Anyways. I hope that you can find this useful in your lives, and, as always feel free to share experiences that you have had with this principle in the past or perhaps ways that you can apply it to things in the future. It seems that marriages could benefit from this, as Jess and I only see each other a couple times a week and we have benefitted from it and married people see each other... well..... every day. Best of luck.