We Believe in Being Chaste

I just sent this email to my family.  But I want to tell the whole world, so let me include the other three of you who read the blog. :)

Dear Family,

I just want to share with someone, and as no one is here, I'm going to open up my little computer and send you a message.  Because it's 2013, and I can do that.

Tomorrow for Relief Society I get to teach Elder Bednars's talk, "We Believe in Being Chaste."  I was grateful for his talk when he gave it.  I remember the overflowing of the Spirit I felt then.  With the backdrop of an excellent conversation with Rachel and Asael just a week before, I appreciated it more as I listened to it on July 5,  driving down I-93, into Boston, as the Spirit opened the eyes of my understanding and taught me.  And I learned still more from it as I studied it on July 8-9--then continued to reread and relisten for the past two months.  Amazing. We really, truly do have living prophets and apostles who teach us God's plan, path, truth if we will make room for them in our lives.

As I am standing here working on my visual aid/lesson plan/framework (a big puzzle--since for me the talk has helped many pieces of years of learning shift together more), I can feel the Spirit in my home that was different than an hour ago when I was starting. 

I believe in being chaste!  I am grateful for the law of chastity, God's single standard, its undeviating direction that has helped, is helping and will help me have happiness in mortality and makes possible my progress in eternity. 
I am grateful to know.  So grateful.  And sad for those around me who do not know.  But also grateful for the reality of repentance, for a Savior,the Great Physician who symbolically and literally heals us.  Who makes it possible for all of us, regardless of the past, to be chaste.* 

If you haven't studied Elder Bednar's talk, go do it (read, listen watch--just parktake!). Because then you can remember and learn more about WHY the law of chastity is so important.  He teaches truth.  And Ruth loves truth. :)

And I love you!

Ruth

* A wonderful thing about the law of chastity, is that--like tithing, for example--it is possible to live it perfectly.  (And unlike tithing,, it IS the higher law (I believe).) Yet we can still live it perfectly!)  And anyone can--regardless of whether they did in the past or not.  Satan, the father of lies, says if you have been unchaste or impure, then the state of purity and chasteness is gone. But that's not true.  Through Jesus Christ, anyone, ANYONE--willing to pay the price to get there--can be completely clean and chaste.  Isn't that amazing?  Amazing!