Choice

After getting through Young Women New Beginning's I was sitting in a meeting after church and Phil told me that a girl that was investigating the church and had come one week with me to church had died last Saturday night. It was an interesting process to go through emotionally for me because I had only ever met this girl once. How does that play in to how I felt about this girl? I wasn't sure, but I didn't want to cry during the meeting. I made it to the car after the meeting and cried the whole way home.
I cried as I thought about all the beautiful young women I had just been with that all seemed to have these loving families, bright futures, big dreams and the gospel. I cried that I hadn't done more in the past two weeks to reach out to this young girl who had little direction in her life. She was sweet, kind, happy, interesting, young and should have the same future all these other girls hopefully get to experience. What makes us different? What determines what our lives will become and where we end up? One of the values we have in YW is choice and accountability. We make choices everyday, some are small and some change the course of our lives forever. To be a teenager without the gospel I can't even imagine. The value of prayer and the knowledge and perspective of eternity helps me each day to make the right choices. So I guess meeting her only once doesn't really matter because in that one meeting you can see all the possibilities her life holds. You can see that she is a daughter of God and that makes you love her. I pray that something good comes from all of this heartbreak and sadness and that her mother can feel the peace the Savior can give her.