Simply Smiddy - The Idaho Convert

Stop expecting perfection from yourself. Stop expecting perfection from your neighbour. Stop expecting  perfection from your parents. Stop expecting  perfection from your church leaders. Stop expecting  perfection from your roommates, friends, spouses, children, etc.  “Except for Jesus, there have been no flawless performances on this earthly journey were perusing. So while in mortality let’s strive for steady improvement without obsessing over what behavioral scientists might call toxic perfectionism.” -Jeffery R. Holland Isn't the commandment "to be perfect" (3 Nephi 12:48) such a daunting and overwhelming request? For me, it is.  But living in the fallen world and state that we do, I believe that Heavenly Father isn't commanding us to be perfect and wanting us to feel inadequate and awful about ourselves when we fall short. Truth is, we will probably ALWAYS fall short. We will not achieve perfection alone in this life. That is w...

Today as I sat in sacrament meeting I started to write down my testimony in my journal, as I do every fast Sunday, and it wasn't long until I was just overtaken by the gratitude I have for each and every person I have come in contact with in my life thus far. I am grateful for PEOPLE. The thing is, there are no such thing as coincidences. You don't just meet someone by "chance". Everyone you meet you are meant to meet. God is in EVERY LITTLE DETAIL of our life! This past month has been full of experiences where I have been able to be reminded of some of the people that have had eternal impacts on my life. Take just one minute to think about the people that have had the biggest impacts on your life? Who has inspired a change in you that, looking back, if you wouldn't have met them or changed, would you be a different person? I can most definitely think of a couple of those kind of people. One in which, I have been really grateful for recently. I am grat...

As I have been thinking about this blog post, I was reminded of some of my biggest take-aways from serving my mission. There were two things that kept coming back to my mind over and over again, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I would connect the two. But as we know the Lord works in mysterious ways and last night as I stood in line for a funnel cake at Lagoon I was pondering my talk, and I quickly was tuned in to the conversation happening behind me. There was one older woman talking to a young woman. The older one was expressing her frustration with the Lord. She expressed how she couldn’t listen to one more talk in sacrament meeting or one more relief society lesson where whomever was teaching would speak of how they were miraculously healed because of their faith. She felt that she had the faith to move a mountain. She knew no one else with greater faith than herself. The woman had been suffering through some physical pain for a long time now, she had faced many treatments and e...

      I am beginning to see a pattern in all my recent blog posts... they all pertain to faith. What can I say, I love faith. Faith is such a broad subject. There are so many ways to describe and teach and define faith. It all kind of depends on what lesson you are aiming to teach, in this post I want to talk about the power that can come when you walk in faith.      This past week I was studying a lot in the New Testament, Matthew 4 to be specific. We read about James and John just leaving their ships and livelihood in order to follow Jesus Christ. How did they do it? They had faith. They trusted even though they couldn't see completely the outcomes of their walking they knew that they were walking in the right direction. Walking in faith.      In the Doctrine and Covenants 35 we learn that faith precedes the miracle. I truly believe that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is possible because of faith! Faith truly is THE power. It was by fait...

It will all work out, in a swings and roundabouts kind of way.  I have faith that I can be healed. I have faith that I am home for a reason, outside of just the surgery. I have faith that God KNOWS me and LOVES me. I have faith that you don't have to be serving as a full-time missionary to progress eternally. I have faith that every little detail, everything, is all for a specific reason. I have faith that even though things are not always easy, they are possible. I have faith in my Saviour, Jesus Christ and the healing, enabling power of His atonement. And I have faith that whatever storms come our way will surely pass. I have faith that we really can do it! The truth is sometimes, things do not go the way we planned them. Sometimes your plans, though GOOD plans, don't work out because God has better ones, even when they don't seem better at all! He can see the biggest picture while we can only see and comprehend bits and pieces of it.  I had always dreamed of the...

    My Stake President, President Sponenburgh was sharing his conversion story the other night and he said something I really liked, because I know it's true! He said, "Before I actually received the message, God was preparing me to receive the message. I would drive in my car and think about Jesus Christ for no reason and I didn't understand it until it happened." That's what so cool about the spirit of missionary work, EVERYONE can be compared to a seed and every seed is at a different level, but in order to grown into a big tree the seed has to be well prepared!     Growing up I found myself questioning and thinking about the Saviour very often, probably more than an average child would. I know now how much God prepared me to receive his gospel.   I remember when my sister and I were playing in the trailer park, there was this rock hill over by the train tracks and we would often sneak away and play on this rock hill. Those moments I spent on that h...

if i made a list of everything i learnt on my mission, it would never end!  and if there is one thing i learnt it is that my mission is never over. we are all serving a mission here on this earth! and we all have purpose and there truly is a plan. i think if there was one easy guide or solution that i have learn, like the trick to this mission is best explained by a little parable... because i love and miss england i will describe it by thinking of a full english breakfast. you have your eggs, toast, beans, tomato, sausage, and your bacon. lets think about the chicken and the pig. whats the difference between them?  well, the chicken contributed to the breakfast & the pig gave everything!  so how does this apply to us, to me? i have learned a lot recently about the power and importance of aligning our will to the will of our heavenly father. so often we want so badly for him to grant our every wish and every hope. sometimes it doesn't work like that. he knows w...