This is what I’ve longed for…

My daughter bought a CD, South Pacific and let me enjoy it. I have the movie on laser disc, precursor for the DVD for you wondering what the heck that is, and so I’m familiar with the music. I was sitting back enjoying these tunes while doing my chores on the computer and they snuck back into my emotions.

There is one tune where Emil and Nellie are thinking to themselves about the possibility of love as they gaze out from Emil’s home across the vista before them. Nellie is wondering how a sophisticated Frenchman might find a hick from Arkansas interesting while Emil has similar reservations, “Officers and doctors probably pursue her…” There he is feeling close to that dream, the one that has been in his heart dormant since his wife died, wondering if love could happen again. He looks at his home set on the hill with the Pacific Ocean as a back drop, the young woman with whom he has with him, having the picture in his mind of what paradise is as he sings, “This is what I need, this is what I’ve longed for, someone young and smiling here upon my hill. . .”

Last Sunday was Fast and Testimony day and as I sat there I kept hearing part of that in the back of my mind, “This is what I need, this is what I’ve longed for…”, and I kept trying to figure out how it had anything to do with my testimony. There were far too many folks in line to share their own testimonies and so I decided not to add to that line, still not sure what I might add to the spiritual moment of another. I make a fool of myself often enough without putting a microphone in front of me, much less when I haven’t thought out in advance, at least to some degree, what I might say.

Tonight as I listened once more, “This is what I need, this is what I’ve longed for…”, it came to me that my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was the completion of that thought that I’d had last Sunday. I know, it was a love song, an expression written for a musical. I must be a cock eyed optimist or something as I write my thoughts and expect anyone with half a brain to make the same connection I just did.

Taking it a step further, another tune comes to mind, “This nearly was mine”. Wouldn’t it have been a shame had I not listened to the Spirit as it directed me to join, to learn of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to be sealed in the Temple of the Lord for time and all eternity with Lucy? “One partner in paradise, this promise of paradise, this nearly was mine…” To think such thoughts cause my emotions to overflow with gratitude that I did join, that we have each other and that the promises of paradise are not something we nearly had; instead, they are within our possession. “This is what I need, this is what I’ve longed for…”