Life-Correction

“Hey, Ivan,” Nikki said as she brushed her long dark curly hair behind her shoulder, “do you want to marry somebody like me someday?”

“Wait, what?” I said, as I straightened my tie and we stepped up onto the beautiful Provo Temple grounds.

“I’m not proposing,” she said with an “in-your-dreams” look on her face, “I’m just saying, you do want to marry someone devoted to God and immovable with things pertaining to religion, right?”

“Well of course I do,” I said, completely oblivious to where she was going with this.

“Well, girls like me don’t marry guys like you, so why would I date a guy like you?”

Wow, I thought, now that was quite a blow to take from my best friend as we walked underneath the October trees towards the temple to do a session. Prior to this conversation she had commented on the kind of music I listened to. We had agreed to disagree on whether listening to edited rap music was really affecting my spirit or not. I argued that it was just music that she didn’t like and she was too sensitive anyway.

After contemplating in the temple, I said, “Nikki, I’ll think about the music thing, but I want you to know that I don’t change for girls. If I decide anything it’s because I’ve changed my mind.” She just looked at me and said “Ok, do what you want,” with a look of complete victory in her eyes. I didn’t like changing for girls. I am very self-confident and firmly believed that there was a girl who would take me just how I was. I also didn’t like admitting I was wrong. Even after pondering to myself, I was yet again convinced that I was perfectly in the right.

 “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Nikki said as she headed off right before General Priesthood Meeting a few days later to give me time to get dressed. Since Wednesday afternoon a lot had happened. After our mission reunion Friday night, she had suddenly realized her feelings for me and we had decided to date. While putting on my suit for the meeting, I thought silently to myself about how glad I was that she realized the rap music wasn’t that bad, whether or not she wanted to admit it.

I started to listen to Conference and noticed that I had left all my note-taking supplies at home. I was in a side room packed with young single adult priesthood holders in the stake center near my apartment building. I have always loved Priesthood Meeting because the leaders are a little more relaxed and a lot more specific and straight-up in their messages, knowing that all of their audience is composed of males 12 and older. The messages are specifically tailored to help us as Priesthood holders.

To be honest, to this day I only remember one of the talks given that session. Elder Patrick Kearon of the First Quorum of the Seventy gave a talk that totally changed my outlook on life. As I listened to the other speakers I still felt good about my music decision until I heard a story about an old man who had served in World War II. Elder Kearon said of that man, “He learned that to survive in a minefield, you must follow exactly in the tracks of the vehicle moving ahead of you. Any deviation to the right or left could—and indeed did—prove fatal…….Deviating to the right or the left of the safe track ahead of us, whether because of laziness or rebelliousness, can prove fatal to our spiritual lives. There are no exceptions to this rule” (General Priesthood Meeting talk “Come unto Me with Full Purpose of Heart, and I Shall Heal You” Patrick Kearon Of the First Quorum of the Seventy).

For some reason as I listened to the rest of Conference, one thought kept running through my head--what kind of music would I be listening if I had to go through a minefield? More importantly, what kind of music am I listening to as I go through this minefield of life? Right then and there I knew without a doubt that I needed to get rid of all my distracting music. If I wanted the Spirit to guide my daily life I needed to give him the best environment to reside in so that he could be completely comfortable.

That night I deleted over seventy dollars of music that I had purchased recently over the last month. The funny thing was that even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do, it was still hard to just throw away hard-earned money, but I couldn’t put a price on my spiritual well-being.

After Nikki returned from an outing with her mom and two sisters, she came over to the apartment. I, to my surprise, proudly admitted my change in judgment on the music and my overall verdict. Admitting I was wrong also came surprisingly easy, which is a good thing because now it’s a part-time job of mine, since Nikki and I were recently sealed for all eternity on the 15^th of January 2011