Yet another rare one

In reading what's going on in all of your (my family members) lives and especially this evening visiting with my wonderful daughter I have a few thoughts I'd like to share. I'm making these like the man's rules list because they are all important (they are all number 1 in importance).

1. Success in life is ultimately how we follow our Savior's plan.

1. The way to happiness is in how full your cup is, not in how empty.

1. Some time we just need to faithfully drive on into the night before we can see the sunrise.

1. Every trial even self inflicted ones are a blessing in an eternal sense.

1. We learn by listening and applying good stuff. hint(make sure you listen to good stuff)

1. If we look for good in bad times we can find it. We have to look with effort sometimes.

1. Everybody has doubts, weaknesses and shortcomings.

1. We have the final freedom about how we react to our trails and successes. (We can wreck both with a poor reaction or make both a success)

1. Sometimes we need to use that freedom to ask for help.

1. No one is a mind reader, we need to be clear, concise, loving, communicators.

1. We can't expect others to solve our problems.

1. Smiles are contagious-so are frowns, growls etc...

1. Our Father will always listen.

1. So will our Mother.

I'll work on another list for in a few days or weeks (maybe months) These aren't all my ideas they are just good ideas and thoughts.

A rare one

Since I post so rarely I guess its time I post about a rare event. In the past few years I've been studying the meanings of life and working on trying to find the most important things therein. Two weeks and a day ago I experienced the beginning of a real life-changing event (I've had a hernia fixed and back surgery but they were easy to get beyond). I had a G-I bleed as the doctors call it. It ended the next day so I didn't go to the doctor. On Monday I started having some pain in my stomach that kept getting worse until I had to go to the doctor. After some blood tests, a CT scan and some various pleasant drugs I felt better but was informed I needed to go to St. George for further poking and prodding. No reason was found for the bleeding and some Zantac and another antacid stopped the pain in my stomach, but the CT scan showed something amiss in my liver. In St George I was subjected to more tests and basically told I could go home, there was no real reason for my GI bleed and the stomach pain. I asked about the suspicious stuff in my liver only to discover it hadn't been looked at. Dr. Wu, whom I really liked because she's very thorough, said she would find the Kanab CT scan to look at. Eventually more tests were ordered and the final test was a Liver Biopsy. At that point I started thinking very seriously about what the rest of my life might be like. Last Tuesday, I went to look at results of the Liver Biopsy. Justin Brinkerhoff is my Doctor though he's really a PA. As I watched him look at the results and try to figure out how to tell me about them I felt a great empathy for him. He had to figure out how to tell me some really bad news that I already knew in some interesting way. A week before in the St George Hospital in the middle of a long night my Father in Heaven had let me know that everything was going to be all right. Not that I would be healed but just that everything would would be all right with some sort of a deadline that is now real.

I've now had a real Life Changing event. The Final Diagnosis was a Metastatic, low-grade neuroendocrine tumor (carcinoid tumor). When I got home I immediately started reading everything on the internet about these words and their meaning. My uneducated conclusion was that I've got somewhere between now and 6-10 years to enjoy life. I've pondered about how my thoughts and actions over the last few years have been guided, and how good people in doing their callings in the church and people that love me (friends and family) have guided my thoughts until I could accept this event with gratitude whatever the outcome. I think my Father in Heaven has been preparing me for this. I don't know what the next few years will bring, but I do know that each day will be very precious and that interactions with people I love will be very special and that interactions with unpleasant people will be sad because I don't know if I'll be able to help them discover that contention, anger, and all those other negative emotions aren't a solution to anything. I'm still Tim Esplin the human being, but my perspective has changed. I now need to bridle the natural man completely. I can't let anything evil, negative or even apathetic spoil my remaining time on this earth.

To those of you I know and don't know - There is meaning and purpose to life. It is positive and beautiful. We are here to be good and help others to discover that, we are here to learn to be faithful and obedient children of our Father in Heaven and in doing that be able to become like Him. There are two types opposition to that. One placed here by a loving Father in Heaven (this earth and its complexities placed into motion for us to gain experience and to learn and grow) and the second put here by Satan, the father of lies, (Pride , Selfishness, Arrogance, and the Idea of self-entitlement or that we deserve something better and we deserve it now). The choice seems simple to me now, the every day application is another matter. I ask for your help and patience.

There's much more to this but I haven't words in my simple mind to express it yet.

The Free Spirit

After several weeks of thinking about several important parts of my life and what I need to change to become the person I want to be, I had a moment of personal discovery. I was trying to answer a question for Jeanette and some things just seemed to fall together as the answer to all my pondering over the past few weeks. The answer came from the sixth verse of the song "A Poor Wayfaring Man" the line that says "but my free spirit cried I will". This line is in response to his friends query, "If I for him would die". WHAT IS MY FREE SPIRIT? A riot of thoughts and ideas followed in a few seconds. I'm still working them out, but the main idea is that the person that is able to free themselves of one main human frailty could actually give their life for a noble cause without doubting. It started as several ideas and I've narrowed this to just one thing that is the root all human problems. SELFISHNESS. Selfishness makes every problem we have worse. I've been trying to think of a problem I have that isn't caused or worsened greatly by selfishness. I'd like challenge any reader of this post to find a problem you have that could not be resolved by being totally unselfish. For this to work you have to believe in God and His Eternal Plan which includes the Atonement of Jesus Christ. If you don't there's no reason but fear to keep you from doing anything you'd like any time. The "Free Spirit" isn't someone that can do anything they want (Drugs, alcohol, no responsibility, no cares, that person will be in bondage to the natural man or woman). The Free Spirit is a person doesn't let selfish personal desire from preventing them from gaining all the good experience in life and personal relationships that is possible. Take a look at your life, looking in this direction showed me plenty of things to work on.