"A Little Testimony"

Papa Johnny sent this email out to all of his children last month and I wanted to make sure I had it in my journal:

Hello All, A while back, I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting, and I have realized that I don't often share my testimony with my family -- so -- this was the testimony I shared as best as I remember it (Kempton was there, so he is exempt from this reading). I don't share this because there is anything earth-shaking about it -- just felt that I should:

 “ I don't know if I was a normal little kid, but I have a strong memory of something that happened when I was 5. I know my age because I remember where I was. It was a dark and cloudy day, and I was standing at the front window with my chin on the sill, watching the rain hit the glass. I was contemplating what it would be like to not exist. I became quite troubled and went in to the kitchen and asked my mother, “How long do we live?”. She chuckled and said, “about a thousand years”. I didn't know how much a thousand years was, but I knew it was a big number, so I went back to the window and continued to wonder what it will be like to not exist after a thousand years.

Even today, I will sometimes awake with a start in the middle of the night – heart pounding -- and say “Lord, how is it that I exist? -- and yet I do”. For that matter, how does anything exist, and yet it does. I was preparing a talk a while ago, and I asked myself, why would a rock be created to last forever, and yet intelligent life created to die? It didn't make sense.... And then I thought, why bother with creation at all if not to be happy. Just as I had that thought, a scripture came to my mind with a force that I rarely experience – 'Men are that they might have joy'.

So it doesn't matter that you don't know HOW you are. It's important that you understand WHY you are. You are that you might have joy.

So that chubby little boy has now lived a chubby little life, and he still has no clue how he came to exist, but he knows now that he will never not exist. I've learned for myself that this is true, and my hope is along with you, that we will one day hear the words “Well done thou good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”