cleanliness is next to godliness

Today we took Eva back to church for the first time since Christmas (with the exception of sacrament meeting in PA). It has been so great to have her healthy for the last two months, but the weather is getting warmer now and it was getting old to switch off going to church every other week. Lucas was not feeling well, so he stayed home with Marc. (Another benefit: she got to wear one of her darling dresses for the first time! I love dressing my baby girl.)

Max was so good to help me by playing with Eva and keeping her entertained and somewhat contained to our area. Church is a lot more challenging now that she can walk! Because I had Max there, I was able to take notes in sacrament meeting. The talks were so good today, I was writing as fast as I could and I still couldn't catch everything. The topic was repentance and both speakers related it to cleaning.

My favorite talk was given by a woman that I visit teach. (I haven't really clicked with her, haven't felt that we have a lot in common, and I think that is the reason I got the assignment to visit her. I have been learning more about her and learning to love her. But that's neither her nor there.) She related a story of how she needed to clean off her very messy desk this last week before fulfilling an assignment to judge some piano students on their technique. Every day she was very busy and didn't get to the desk. She fully intended on getting to it, but something always seemed more important at the time, or maybe more fun. Finally, she decided she would get up early on Saturday morning and do it right before the students came. Unfortunately, one of her children became ill during the night and threw off her whole schedule. So, right before they arrived, she scooped up the entire mess and shoved it into a closet. When the students came, the house looked clean and orderly! But she knew that she had a big, unresolved mess hiding in the closet.

You can probably see where this is going. How often do we procrastinate cleaning up the messes in our inner lives? We may look clean on the outside -- as if everything is in order -- but inwardly we have feelings of inferiority and disarray. Incidentally, this is how the adversary wants us to feel. He wants us to be overwhelmed and to think that it's just too hard to change -- or maybe that we're too busy and we'll get to that later. The Savior, on the other hand, has the opposite message. He beckons to us and wants to help us tidy up our lives. She then talked about how we can make the Savior more involved in every step of the process:

• We can pray for the ability to recognize areas of our life that need to be cleaned up.
• We need to feel sorrow for his suffering in our behalf, in addition to the sorrow we feel for our sins.
• What are the chances that we will not commit a sin anymore? It is a very difficult thing to not return to our former bad habits. Ether 12:27 tells us that we are given weaknesses to make us humble, and the Savior will help us overcome all of our weakness if we let him.
• The Savior's healing role is also pivotal in making restitution. He can soften the hearts of those we have trespassed against.
• Full obedience gives us strength to keep our lives in order.
• If we are truly yoked with the Savior, we will follow where he leads us, and he will not lead us to sin. He can help us to stay clean, and we can feel this exquisite joy on a daily basis.

Another speaker related a story that President Hinckley told about his family's spring cleaning rituals. It was a lot of hard work, but the results were so worth it. He said: "Everything looks better when there's cleanliness."

This all is really making me evaluate my personal state of cleanliness, both literally and figuratively. I can see how it is essential to my long-term happiness. I have such a long way to go. Thoughts?