Stories in this episode: Vinnie's experience of coming unto Christ is made up of small decisions that end up changing his heart in unexpected ways; Lisa's decisions about which hymns to sing at her son's funeral end up leading to a moment of profound healing. PLEASE NOTE: stories may contain themes addressing topics that are sensitive for some listeners. We suggest previewing before sharing with children or youth. Show Notes: To see pictures and links for this episode, go to LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel Transcript: KaRyn 0:04 Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay. Well, here we are barreling toward another election here in the US. And it seems that whether we like it or not, decisions and decision making is in the air and it's on our minds. I, for one, love it. The thinking about the decision making, not the actual making of the decisions that I find desperately difficult sometimes, but the thinking about decision making that intrigues me. I studied communications in school and the sheer amount of energy that researchers have put into understanding the who, what, where, and why of decision making is amazing. There are theories about the psychology of decisions, the neuroscience of decision making, the economy of decisions, everywhere you look, we human beings are trying to figure out how to make the right choice. Or if I go to my cynical place, we human beings are trying to figure out how to get people to make the decisions that we want them to make. But there's a reason that we've invested so much effort in trying to figure this out. Decisions can feel weighty and really big. In fact, the origin of the word "decision" actually speaks to that. It comes from a Latin root of a word that I can't pronounce well enough to say it here and embarrass myself, but it means to cut off. When we make a decision, when we choose to go one way or the other, we are literally cutting off another option and all the possibilities that that option represents. If that isn't enough to make you never want to make another decision, I don't know what is. I hate the loss of all that possibility. But one thing I think most of this research might be getting wrong in that careful analysis of the process is that decision making doesn't have to be so hard. As followers of Christ, we have access to some really powerful tools to help us know what to cut off and what to keep. And whether you are decisive or indecisive or somewhere in between, today's stories about the power of our decisions—both big and small—will get you thinking about what we choose and why we choose it. And how that has everything to do with moving closer to our best selves as disciples. Our first story comes from Vinnie, who, like most of us, couldn't see the collective power of the decisions he was making until much further down the road. Here's Vinnie. Vinnie 2:37 Small decisions in our lives can lead to either good or bad consequences later on. And it's the small decisions that sometimes we don't even realize we're making that can affect us in so many different ways. It all started very young. I grew up in a family just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. I had great parents, my dad's Catholic and my mom was a convert to the Church. We never went without anything we needed, but we definitely weren't rich or well off in anyway. My parents both divorced when I was one, so pretty young. And they both remarried at some point when I was about two or three. And I don't know if it was the competitiveness between them. I was probably too naive as a young kid. But I was with my dad every other weekend. And we would go to the youth programs for the Catholic Church and see some of the people there or even sometimes there's activities for youth on Sundays or on the weekends that we were there. And when I was with my mom, we would go to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And so I got to have a taste a little bit of both. My mom didn't go to church a lot. She went often but not regularly. And we weren't a family that had you know, family home evening that had dinner together. And we weren't a family that prayed together. We didn't do regular fasting. I didn't even know what fasting was until I was 18, 19 years old. And so we didn't have a lot of those basic teachings that you see in the Church now. I think deep down, there was some feelings that there was a difference between the Catholic Church and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I attended. Both churches teach great things. Both have great principles. But I felt more of something when I attended church with my mom, but I never understood what it was, never really knew what it was. At some point, my dad stopped taking us to church. And my mom, she let us make a decision when we were about 14 whether we continue to go to church or what we wanted to do. I have two older brothers, one is four years older, the other one is five years older. They both decided not to go to church anymore. They went a totally different direction. I think for me, personally, this small decision that I was making there was that I wanted to please my mom. And so I would go on occasion. Sometimes I would skip out or go do something else during church and then come back. And so there was some trouble that I got in, there's mischief that I did. And I was not living in any way that was to the standards of the Church. I would occasionally attend the youth meetings for the Church, got some good friends. I shouldn't say friends. They are friends, but one was a particular leader that really helped me. He was a Scout leader and I remember him even asking me, "When are you going to do this more and put more into this?" And I kept telling him, "No, I'm not going there." And so that was one of those decisions that I was like, "No, I don't want to do this." And I would get mad if people would say something about a mission or something like that because it wasn't in my plan. I had no desire to do that. It was at this point, when I was just about graduating high school, where I had to make some more decisions. And my brothers, I had watched them get into some serious trouble and some really bad situations. And I made the decision that I wanted to get away, I wanted to do everything I could to be the opposite of what I saw. And it was then I made the decision to go to Chicago, at 18 years old, to get away from everything. And at that point in my life, I was thinking away from everything. Away from church, away from family, I wanted to go do my own thing. By being the mama's boy that I was, my mom made me promise that I will at least try to go to church. So here I am in Chicago by myself, and I went a couple times to a ward that I found. And I was the individual that sat in the back, that wouldn't take the sacrament. And that as soon as it was over, I would run out the back. And I was the person that would complain to my mom, and one of my friends back East that nobody talks to me. But yet I was the one not making any effort at all to talk to anybody else. And the last time I had gone to that church, I was walking out, and an individual stopped me and he said, "Hey, I've never met you." And I said, "That's okay." I had the East-Coast attitude. And he says, "Who are you? Where are you from?" And we talked for a moment and I said, "Look, I gotta go." He goes, "Hey, I just want to let you know you're going to the wrong ward." I said, "Come on, how many words are in Chicago?" And he gave me the information of the other ward. And I said, "Okay, thanks. I'll see if I can make it." I walked out the door. And I shared this experience with my mom, and she goes, "You need to promise me you'll try one more time. You need to at least contact this bishop and try one more time, and then I won't bug you anymore about it." I said, "Okay." Now I've got my way, right? I can go do this one more time. It's been the same every single time. And I can move on and not worry about it. And it was here where I called the bishop and he was nice, but I was short. And he gave me directions and it may have been a week or two before actually went. It wasn't like right away. And so I get in the car and I follow directions. And I got absolutely lost. Here I am in Chicago, lost, no clue where I am. This was before cell phones. So I didn't have any way to call anyone or look anything up. I didn't have a GPS. So I looked at the directions. And I kind of set a prayer off the cuff and just said, "You know, if you want me to go to church, you're gonna have to find this because I don't want to go anymore. I'm done. I have other things I need to do and I don't want to do this anymore." And I looked down at the note and this thought came to me, and again, there's another decision, right? I said a prayer. Whether it was consciously or subconsciously, I wanted his help. But I didn't want it because of my own pride and natural-man self. And I looked down at the directions. And I just had this thought come to my mind, "What if it's a left instead of a right?" And it wasn't five minutes later, I was parked in the parking lot of the church and I was kind of dumbfounded. I was like, "You got to be kidding me." Here it was at this point where I went, "Well, I made the promise to my mom. I'll do this one time, and then I'm done." So I walked in and I sat, again, way in the back away from everyone. And I listened and as I sat there, I don't remember who was speaking, I don't remember the hymns that were played, but I remember being scared to death. Because all of a sudden, I felt something that I had never felt before and certainly never that strong, if I ever had felt it. I literally was like, "I don't know what this is," and it scared me. And as soon as they said, "Amen," I
