Crew Member Next In LIne

      As I said in an earlier blog, I had struggled with who to put first in our Relation Ship crew, but I KNOW I chose right because our Heavenly Parents, our Savior and the Holy Ghost SHOULD always come first in all things in our lives. And so who would be next? Ourselves, of course! How could it be our Relation Ship without our being a member of the crew, and one of the more important ones, right under the four we already talked about. So why would we, ourselves, be the next important crew member? Again, if we are not in the Relation Ship, then what does any of it matter? It's not ours! It's just out there floating somewhere and we are, well, maybe we don't even exist, because we can not have a Relation Ship if we are not a part of the crew! That does seem to be repeating myself a bit, right? Okay, I will try not to repeat so much and I hope you are understanding what I am saying.

     So I am just going to accept the fact that you understand our importance in our Relation Ship crew! So what do we contribute? Well, first off, since it is our Relation Ship, we are contributing our everything to make it a successful voyage. At least I hope we would contribute our ALL in a good way! In other words, that we are honest, sincere, respectful, patient, considerate, and loving! And not just to the rest of the crew, but to ourselves as well. For as the scriptures tell us in so many places "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself". And how can you love someone else if you do not understand how to love yourself. I do believe we all struggle with this one and the world definitely does. BUT we are not being asked to love in an egotistical way, but to, technically, treat others as we would want to be treated. And we have to like ourselves, and yes, even love ourselves somewhat if we want to be treated right. So there is nothing egotistical about being honest with ourselves! Being sincere with ourselves! Respecting ourselves! Being patient with ourselves, especially when we mess things up or don't do as well as we thought we should have.  We need to be considerate of the person we are and the person we are working towards becoming. And we DO need to love ourselves as children of Heavenly Parents who love us. I mean, that means, we have the potential to become a God or Goddess ourselves one day. Does that not count for something valuable about ourselves! 

     And so, if we do our part on this Relation Ship voyage with the help of our first four most important crew members, we should be able to sail the waters of life and face all the turmoil and storms that may come our way. And we COULD just leave it with these 5 very efficient crew members, but few of us go through life with that scant number of crew members in our life's voyage. So next week we will pick another important crew member or two. Just remember to love crew member #5 as best you can by improving and working to make him or her the best he or she is capable of becoming, at least in this world's voyage!!