Making a new pie

Today in Relief Society our lesson was on the plan of salvation and the purpose of life. Our bishop's wife taught it, and she did a wonderful job. She's a smart, confident woman with a lot to share. We were talking about the purpose of life and what we're supposed to do here on earth, when she told a little story about something that had happened to her years ago. She had started the tradition of making a special mincemeat pie for an older gentleman in their ward for Christmas each year. One year she had the pie all warm and ready and placed it on top of her car for a moment while she unlocked the door. As she did that, the pie slid off and shattered all over the garage. She says that she stood there stunned for a minute and thought about what to do. She could go buy a new pie, or even just call her friend and explain what had happened and hope he understood. Instead, she cleaned up the mess and went inside to make a new pie. When she took it to her friend he was overjoyed and thanked her profusely for her kindness. Even more importantly, she said, she felt a deep sense of joy and satisfaction at having done something hard. The first pie hadn't been much of a sacrifice, but the second one was.

For some reason today, this simple story hit me hard. Maybe it means nothing to some of you, but I like to bake. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a good pie. I could just picture standing there with pie shattered all over the garage. I'd probably scream and kick the car and spend all day being mad about it. Or I'd sulkily make the new pie and hope my friend knew what kind of effort it took to make. Maybe she did sulk about it for a while. She didn't say. I realized today that for too long I've been sitting around staring at parts of my life that are shattered like that pie. Staring at the pieces and getting mad about them isn't going to put them back together. It's time to sweep up the garage and get back in the house and try and find a new recipe that will work with the ingredients I have left. It may be hard, but life is hard. I need to stop hiding from the hard things in my life and turn them into something good.