Simply Smiddy - The Idaho Convert

One year ago today I sent you all this email... (attached, well quoted, below) It was the hardest email I ever had to write. I cannot express to you how hard it was to align my will to God's will. Coming home was the last thing I ever wanted to do. I loved serving. I don't think I would have wanted to come home even if it wasn't early.  Serving my mission was something I always dreamed of. I loved it, EVERY SINGLE SECOND! Even when the rain was chucking it down.  The past year has been full of surprises, blessings, and growth. I have gone through hard time which have made the good times even better. I KNOW that the Lord has a plan, he had a specific plan in sending me home and he has a specific plan for you, even when you dont quite understand it.  Some of the highlights of the past year have been... 1. I got to take Kaylee and Kalin (my half brother and sister) to the temple open house. Now this is a HUGE deal because, their mom, my step mom past away seve...

You are a divine, amazing child of GOD !  You are the offspring of God almighty. When you come to understand that, the light within you will come alive. You will shine like the prince or princess that you are. When you live up to your potential as a divine child of God, you will have a shield of righteousness protecting you from the sins and stains of the world. When you are right with god, doing his will, you will be blessed and you will be HAPPY. Don’t expect to be perfect before you go on a date, just be in a state of repentance that allows you to have the Holy Spirit with you. YOU NEED THE SPIRIT in order to be protected! The Holy Ghost is your shield from the sins and stains of the world. We should be in a constant state of repentance and we should also understand that the people around us are consistently changing, progressing and doing their best to be the person God needs them to be. Dating has always been an EXTREMELY scary thing for me. I grew up with the stronge...

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...