Too many action spy shows...!!!!!!!

I had this crazy scary dream last night about one of my cousins trying to kill me. It was funny because the dream didn't sound at all scary when I tried to tell Paul about it, but it was quite terrifying. I haven't even seen that cousin in years, and I always liked him. (He was nice to me when I was little, anyway.) My cousin first stole my possessions (a wallet, I believe and some other things that I can't remember) and then told me he would kill me. When I tried to run, he broke down a door chasing me and was going to hit me with a big hard-backed book when I woke up...

I don't know what's up with my crazy violent dreams. Maybe it's the latent result of watching several seasons of 24, and maybe it's because Paul and I have recently been watching Chuck. All the running around and shooting and fist fights might be catching up with me. My favorite dreams of that sort are the ones that turn me into a karate-chopping action hero. Sometimes I just flat knock out all the bad guys!

Random, I know. But I needed to write something... :)

Preparing to Meet God.

I'm feeling deeply introspective right this moment. I have been reading Alma Chapter 34 for several days now, (I just keep finding more and more brilliant amazing doctrine in each verse so that I cannot quite move on to the next chapter.) and I had a powerful memory come back to me this morning. Verse 32 reads

For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.

I remembered the first time that I read those words in my personal scripture reading. I was probably ten or eleven years old because that was around the time when I started reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. I was a good reader and could fly right through all the stories with fairly decent comprehension of what was going on. I got to this part in which Alma and Amulek are teaching the crazy Zoramites, and suddenly I came to this verse.

It hit me hard and left a mark. It was like a light turned on in my mind. I thought, "Hm. So that's what life is about." I thought about it for a long time and repeated the words over and over in my mind. I was forever changed by those words.

If I was going to meet God some day, I thought, I needed to be ready. I would have to talk to him about everything I had done in my life and all the things that I had worked for. I wanted my life to be devoted to preparing for that meeting. It put everything else into perspective and nurtured in me a powerful desire to do everything that God would ask me to do. When I met him after my life, I wanted the meeting to be a good one, a happy one. I didn't want to have regrets or to feel bad about my life.

I don't pretend that I've done everything right up to this point, but I can say honestly that I have devoted my life ever since then to that preparation. I feel like my testimony of the gospel really started that day, and I still look forward to my meeting with God. I know it will be happy as long as I keep pressing forward.