November 20: "I know you not."

No picture.  I'm over it.

To start this I need to go back over a month ago.  We were told in sacrament meeting that a General Authority would be visiting for our Stake Conference and he wanted every adult to prepare a 12-15 minute talk, and every youth to prepare a 2-5 minute talk.

Today was the day.  Were we prepared?  No.  Not at all.  Rather than prepare talks, we came up with a list of reasons we were either not going to be at Stake conference, or why we were too busy to prepare a talk.  These reasons included (but were not limited to):

• Staying in Boise an extra day.
• Picking up my kids at my parents house and staying there for Sunday.
• Will has strep.
• Annie has a cough.
• Dallas has lots of homework.
• Amy has lots of... well...  toys to clean up.

You get the picture.  Boise didn't pan out and my Mom ended up watching our kids in Heber rather than Syracuse.  Long story short- we had no excuse.  We thought about just plain not going to church, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it.  We knew better.

So off to Stake Conference we went- no talks in hand.  No thoughts formed.  Completely unprepared.  Were we called on to speak?  Of course not.  The experience was something that was for our own growth, and we chose not to grow.

Guilt.

And then during my personal scripture study I read the parable of the 10 Virgins.  All were invited to attend and all awaited the event; some better prepared than others.  When it came time to meet the bridegroom, only half were able to trim their lamps and make it.  The other half were left scrambling, I'm sure well intentioned with a love of the bridegroom, but they were shut out at the door knocking and saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us."

I've been heartbroken knowing that I was one of the five that would have heard my Savior say, "I know you not."

In an odd little twist I'm grateful that we didn't prepare as we should have because now we know we will never let that happen again.  And I'm grateful that we didn't let our embarrassment of not preparing a talk keep us from the meeting.  We learned a very valuable lesson.