A Friend Needs to Die to Set An Example

Last Friday (Jan. 23, 2009), my good friend Tanner Holst passed away. He was only 17 . . . he had the cold, which turned into pneumonia, which turned into a bacterial infection that wasn't responding to the antibiotics, which led to his death in the hospital that Friday night. This all happened really fast. To my understanding, at the beginning of last week, he went skiing with one of his friends. Yet, this is not why I am writing about him.

I'm writing about him because while I sat at his two hour funeral service, several thoughts crossed my mind of me needing to do better in life. Thus far, I had thought that I was doing well. Sure, I had my rebellious moments in Junior High, and I've never been perfect (who has?) and I know I never will be, yet I am going to strive to do so. At this funeral service, however, I realized that I am the most selfish, self-centered man in this world. I realized that no matter what good deed I had been doing, I had been doing it for the glory and the recognition. I had not been doing good for the warm fuzzy feeling. This troubled me.

The evening of the day that the funeral was held, I had a massive struggle to deal with. At first, my feelings of selfishness only bothered me a little, but as I pondered them I grew more and more angry at myself and unknowing of what to do. I felt that my life was leading to nothing, and that if I were to suddenly die, as Tanner did, no one would be able to say anything remotely as nice as they did as Tanner's funeral. The most people would say is : "He (meaning me) was a nice kid. " But they'd have no supporting facts.

Thus, the struggle raged on until, at last, while venting to myself in my downstairs living room, I fell to my knees by the couch and prayed. I didn't say a word in that prayer; I knew Heavenly Father would understand. I merely felt the way I was feeling to let Heavenly Father know what was up. Whilst kneeling and praying I felt I needed to get over myself and focus on worrying about those who struggle around me. I felt that to come over all these selfish and prideful feelings was to serve secretly and let no one know it was me. So be it.

I now have several ideas of how I can uplift others without worrying about being in the spotlight. The only thing I am ashamed of now, is that it took a friend to die to set an example for me to correct myself and walk more in the path of my Savior.