The Impossible Choice

Have you ever been caught in the middle of a seemingly impossible choice; the kind of choice where both options offer good and desirable results, but which will result in one choice forever eliminating the other?  This is not a choice between ice cream and cake; where, today you can have one and another day you can have the other.  No, making this choice will forever eliminate the other option from your life.  There will be no chance of ever coming back to this place to remake this decision again.  I think we have all faced decisions like this in our life.  If you haven't yet, I'm afraid you will.  They are life changing and significant steps, ones which we tend to consider long and hard. These are choices that we try to see from every angle before we step out in such life shaping directions.  Of course we often seek God's help in making these choices, and hopefully we get assistance from the spirit in choosing how we should proceed.  However, I have found that sometimes God will leave such a choice largely up to us.  Often we do not get a confirmation of such choices until after the choice is decided on, and sometimes the confirmation is not immediate.  Why are we sometimes left to make such decisions alone?  It seems to me that in making our own choices about our own lives we gain power and responsibility over those choices and  gain thereby, ownership of the direction in which our life proceeds from that point on.  In these type of choices we use our agency and display our personal priorities.  We exercise our personal judgment and learn how to manage the magnificent but weighty gift of agency which our Heavenly Father gave to us at a great price. 

This is the type of choice that God gave to Adam and Eve. It was not an easy choice whether or not to partake of the forbidden fruit, and the consequences were eternal.

God gave two commandments: one not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the other to multiply and replenish the earth; but only one commandment could be obeyed at a time, because obeying one would eliminate the other choice.  It was impossible in the way the choice was set up, to obey both.  When faced with this type of a decision, what do we do?  I believe that we can gain some insight into making such choices from the story of Adam and Eve.  Ultimately they chose the path that would move them forward and would give them the ability to create and serve their own family. They made it possible for our lives to happen. This choice required that they would pass through sorrow, and ultimately die for their decision.  Of course, the choice to partake of the fruit was the decision that Father wanted them to make all along, but he provided them with the option to do or not to do it, and allowed the decision to be entirely their own.  I believe this is also what happened when Father left Jesus alone on the cross.  For at least a brief period of time Father left, even Christ, alone, to allow the decision to complete the atonement and surrender his own life entirely in Christ's own hands.

This life is going to show what we are made of, one way or another.  Our choices will become our legacy.  They will decide our fate, and create who we become.  The final product of the culmination of our life's choices will be our gift to Father.  Have we glorified him by making choices that move us forward and which help us and others grow-- despite the potential suffering or work involved?  Or have we limited our progress by becoming distracted or blinded by false guides. Perhaps we have simply stopped moving altogether.  Are we content to watch the world pass by and to forfeit control of our own destiny?  I think not.  The power is in each of us to take the talents that God has given us and to build on them.  There are many things which we cannot control in this life, but the choices we make each day to build our own lives in positive ways are entirely our own. How vital is agency!

Moses 4:3,4  Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;  And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.

Agency--the responsibility of making our own impossible choices. Joy, man's reason for being.  May we stay free and continue to grow by choosing wisely our paths-- that our life's choices may lead to joy.