Timing

So my mind has been musing on the topic of time lately. Why do things happen when they do? What if- WAIT..no one says that ever right? So I’ve had some thoughts on time—and more specifically- timing. Good timing and bad timing, and what it all means.  I’ll start with a story. Cause stories are cool.

Bad Timing

It was a dance in junior high, just like all the others. Slow songs like “I’m Blue”, by Eifel 65, “Beautiful Soul” by Jesse McCartney, and my personal favorite,  “I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden, played blissfully to our young teenage ears. Hopefully this is bringing you back and making you smile. It did for me. Anywho, the dance was going well for me, but things could have gone better. I had had my eye on a girl for most of the night, and my courage was losing in a battle against my nervousness in walking over and asking her to dance. Well, to the disappointed moans of the young crowd, the DJ announced that the dance was ending and would close with one last slow song. Seizing the opportunity, my courage surged and I made my way towards her direction, when all of a sudden I was cut off—by a complete stranger of the female gender. She then asked me if I would like to dance. Break for a moment. Have you ever seen the movie Anastasia? You know that part when Rasputin is in the underworld and he sends his little demons to kill Anastasia again and they don’t do the job? He then explodes in a fit of rage and frustration, with is decrepit body doing funny things like his lips going way to down his beard. Well, that’s what my inside felt like. My outside just smiled and said “sure”. The rest of the song wasn’t bad. But I was disappointed to say the least.

That, my friends, is an example of bad timing. We’ve all had it happen to us. Whether it’s getting the bad night at the buffet as a family and all getting sick, having a whole bunch of midterms packed into one week, or needing to use the bathroom when the door is locked.

Good Timing

I don’t think we recognize the good timing in our life as much as we do the bad. It’s just kind of how we are wired. However, that’s not to say that we can’t change that part of us—it’s just hard, really hard. I can’t do it very well. I just had something come to mind that shows good timing in my life. My freshman year of college, my cousin decided to come down to BYU for the winter semester. Things were awesome. Endless hours of ping pong and racquetball, camping at the Marriott center for a BYU vs. Utah basketball game, and missing our only Friday class due to the cause of sleep, are just some of the good memories we enjoyed together. But, those great memories aside, after simply introducing him to a group of my really good friends from the fall semester, he started dating one of them. In the words of Brian Regan, “one thing led to another” (if you don’t get the joke it’s ok- look up those exact words on youtube and you will laugh) and they just got married this past month. Now I’m not taking credit for it. Nope.  Father time gets the nod for this one. It was just the way things worked out.  I’m super happy for them, and was glad to have played a small role in it. Good timing? I'd say.

How Bad Timing Isn’t Really Bad

So here is my thinking on this one. Have you ever had something frustrate you because the timing of it all seemed so wrong and just—for lack of a better word- bad? I’m not talking about inconsequential things like the bad beef at the buffet. I’m talking about life-altering decisions. Big ones. Decisions that mean the world to you. I won’t give examples. We each know what’s important to us. I’m gonna show what I think about this bad timing with another seemingly bad timed situation. It teaches some serious truth. It’s from a talk by Henry B Eyring, called Waiting upon the Lord.

"Let me encourage you by telling you a story. It was told to me by my father. He told it with the intent to chuckle at himself. It was a story about his trying to do his duty, just the way you try to do your duty.
Now you have to know a little bit about my father. His name was Henry Eyring, like mine. His work in chemistry was substantial enough to bring the honors some of you will someday have, but he was still a member of a ward of the Church with his duty to do. To appreciate this story, you have to realize that it occurred when he was nearly eighty and had bone cancer. He had bone cancer so badly in his hips that he could hardly move.
Dad was the senior high councilor in his stake with the responsibility for the welfare farm. An assignment was given to weed a field of onions, so Dad assigned himself to go work on the farm.
Dad never told me how hard it was, but I have met several people who were with him that day. I talked to one of them on the phone the other night to check the story. The one I talked to said that he was weeding in the row next to Dad through much of the day. He told me the same thing that others who were there that day have told me. He said that the pain was so great that Dad was pulling himself along on his stomach with his elbows. He couldn't kneel. The pain was too great for him to kneel. Everyone who has talked to me has remarked how Dad smiled, and laughed, and talked happily with them as they worked in that field of onions.
Now, this is the joke Dad told me on himself, afterward. He said he was there at the end of the day. After all the work was finished and the onions were all weeded, someone asked him, "Henry, good heavens! You didn't pull those weeds, did you? Those weeds were sprayed two days ago, and they were going to die anyway."
Dad just roared. He thought that was the funniest thing. He thought it was a great joke on himself. He had worked through the day in the wrong weeds. They had been sprayed and would have died anyway.
When Dad told me this story, I knew how tough it was. So I said to him, "Dad, how could you make a joke out of that? How could you take it so pleasantly?"
He said something to me that I will never forget, and I hope you won't. He said, "Hal, I wasn't there for the weeds.'"

Elder Eyring then goes on to say “You will be in an onion patch for most of your life. So will I.” In the context of this topic, I take that to mean there are going to be times that are rather untimely. Things we want, but not at the time, or things we don’t want, regardless of when they come. But the conscious decision to be happy regardless of when things happen is something we have control over. More importantly, I believe the decision to be happy with the timing of God is one of the most important ones we can make in life, as hard as it is. And it’s super hard. Elder Maxwell explains the logic in being happy with God's timing this way:"Indeed, when we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God’s timing, we really are suggesting that we know what is best. Strange, isn’t it—we who wear wristwatches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars."

One of my favorite scriptures comes to mind. It’s in Romans 8. It says, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Yep. Everything. All. Good comes from everything—the good timing, the bad timing, and even the ugly timing (okay I’m not sure what this last one means, it just kind of works with the sentence).  I think about that story of Hal in the onion patch and just realized how that story has helped me in hard times. In other words, something good resulted from his bad timing.  Talk to y’all next month.