Good Gifts

Sara Leavitt showed up at my apartment soon after I returned from a two-year church proselyting mission in the Dominican Republic.  The truth is I was smitten from the start.  She was my roommate’s sister, and I had the temerity to ask her on a date.  From my perspective, that date was a disaster – mostly because I was convinced she was too far out of my league.  More than two years passed before I asked her out again, and suddenly the timing was right.  Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I consider that same girl is now my wife.

Sara and I were married for four years before we were blessed with a baby.  I understand now that four years is a blink of an eye, but back then the wait was excruciating.  There were occasions when we wondered if it would ever happen at all.  Then, in a whirlwind of hopes and dreams, we were welcoming a perfect baby boy to our family.  Well, now our house is bursting at the seams with five (and a half!) beautiful, healthy, energetic children who keep us on our toes and make life worth living.

Partway through law school, I set my sights on a career as a criminal prosecutor.  I’m in no way a natural-born trial attorney, but I wanted to work at a county attorney’s office – preferably one close to my Nebraska home.  I applied for law clerk and attorney jobs at my present employer in Lincoln, Nebraska, four times before I broke through.  I’ve now been at the county attorney’s office in Lincoln for eleven years.  In those eleven years, I’ve experienced my share of frustrations, but overall I’d call it a rewarding challenge that’s also allowed me to provide a comfortable living for my family.

Why am I telling you this?  Because it came to me in a sudden epiphany during the car ride to work one morning last week that these are just a few examples of how God has blessed me time again with my righteous desires.  The Savior explained it this way in the New Testament:  “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”  The blessings in my life have rarely come in the way I was expecting or in accordance with my own timetable, but they have come.

All of which brings me to my writing ambitions.  (Surely you knew that’s where this was heading.)  There are certainly dark days when I’m convinced I’ll just as soon be struck by lightning as publish, but lately I’ve been praying for two things with respect to my writing:  An advocate and an audience.  Maybe the answer is no on both counts, but as I consider my life to this point I have to wonder if one day the answer might actually be yes.