What am I to do with you, little boy?!

I brought in the mail one day a couple of weeks before General Conference. It included our tax return. We were supposed to review it and approve it for filing. How on earth does our simple financial situation warrant a half-inch stack of paper? It always alarms and confuses me. I stood at the kitchen counter and examined it trying to understand it. I looked at each page and tried to figure out what it meant and why it was relevant.

Finally, after several minutes, I understood it as well as when I started.

Then I looked up and saw Jamison sitting right in the middle of the kitchen table. He had spread various things around him and had a salt and pepper shaker in each hand. Everything was covered with salt and pepper. It looked like a dirty snow storm. And he accomplished all this right in front of me while I was facing him.

I hit myself in the forehead and said, "What am I to do with you, little boy?" Then I said, "Your grandma is going to be so mad at me."

Sure enough, a few minutes later when I was in the middle of cleaning the mess up and Jamison was trying his persistent best to climb back up onto the table, in walked Grandma. She took one look at us, hit herself in the forehead and asked, "What am I to do with you two guys."

Fast forward a couple of days. I was coming out of the Bountiful Temple after a multi-hour temple meditation and worship session. The topic for this meditation turned out to be the Invictus Response. You know: discovering that the Lord is the master of my fate and the pilot of my soul -- or rediscovering it or discovering it for the first or something. Anyway, I was pleased at the insight and quite proud of my spiritual progress.

I came out of the dressing room -- or I tried to come out -- and went around the corner just in time to see a man turn around and start a conversation with an ordinance worker. The ordinance worker was outside the dressing room and I was inside, and this man stood right in the middle of the entrance way facing out. You couldn't get around him without pushing him aside with an "Excuse me!" which I didn't do.

The Master of my Fate had placed me in this inconvenient situation and I was completely OK with that and I responded with absolute patience -- with silent absolute patience -- quite unusual for me. And I was proud of my advanced spiritual development. I was almost a finished work, shiny, beautiful to look at, my calling and election nearly made sure, the second comforter ready to settle around me and embrace me with arms of love and joy.

All I did was sidle up close to the man so that, as soon as he finished his discussion, he would turn around and immediately bump into me and recognize how severely he had inconvenienced me. And I was proud of the diplomatic way I was handling the situation and feeling quite righteous.

And it worked out just as I engineered it. He finished his conversation, turned around, bumped into me immediately, was appropriately apologetic, and disappeared into the dressing room.

And it was Elder Richard G. Scott.

I stood there for a second, then hurried after the ordinance worker who had been talking to him.

"Was that Elder Scott?!" I asked.

"Yes, it was," he answered.

Oh.

I didn't feel so righteous anymore.

In fact, I seemed to hear the Lord saying, "What am I to do with you, my son?"

My response was, "Well, my Lord. If you'd have let me recognize Elder Scott from the back side, I'd have treated him differently. I'd have stood back and given him room enough to turn around and perhaps he would have favored me with one of his loving smiles I've seen in the Salt Lake Temple."

And I seemed to hear the Lord say, "My son, when you eventually give yourself to me to be the pilot of your soul, you will treat everyone you meet as though they were all Elder Scott. You are still a work in progress, my son, with much left to do."

And as I stood there in the temple being chastised by the Spirit, I realized that our infinite Heavenly Father possesses infinite patience and he will continue to work with me and with others of us who are still works in progress for as long as it takes.