Action, moving, doing something and being okay

A couple of days ago FoxyJ wrote an excellent post about the "The Celestial Perpetual Motion Machine." It struck me as very fascinating. She always would say fascinating things as we would gather at the computers in the office. The biggest reason why it hit me was because I'd been thinking about the same things as of late. Honestly, though, I've been thinking about this since October or so of 2000 when I was a greenie in the mission field.
A while back I was talking with a friend of mine about his fear of not moving forward and acting because he was so afraid of making a wrong decision that he was tied down by catatonic, "I-might-make-a-wrong-choice" fear. While none of us want to make wrong decisions, inaction is just as damning. Why? Damnation means a stop in progression. When we're not moving forward, we're at least stopped, even if we're not taking steps backward.
Thinking back to my parents and the way that they raised me has taught me how the Lord helps us. My parents were really good at teaching me to make my own decisions and then at letting me make them. They were also very good at holding back for a little while to see if I'd correct myself and come back to a good path in life. (I mean this spiritually and well as everything else.) If I weren't coming back to where I should be, my parents would bring me back.
Have you ever felt this with our Father in Heaven? We're all given the Light of Christ to help us make decisions that will bring us happiness. In my mind this also teaches us that when we stray a little bit, we know. And when we've wandered off a short distance or a long way away, God will try to bring us back.
So what does this have to do with inaction and moving? Well, if we're not moving, we're not going forward on the path to happiness, we're not making decisions that will help us draw closer to our Father in Heaven. We're not even making the wrong choices so that we can recognize them, come back/be brought back and then learn from them. Now don't go off saying that Vanessa said that it's okay to sin a little and we'll get our stripes and then we're hunky-dory. What I'm saying is that we're human and we're going to make mistakes. Why not be moving forward when we make these mistakes? Then when we're brought back we'll have some good, forward-moving inertia.
The crux of my run-on blog is that we should have the courage to move forward. I really feel that our Father in Heaven trusts is to make right decisions, otherwise why would He have sent us here? I also believe that He knew that we'd make mistakes, so we have a Savior. But have you ever noticed that the more that you move forward, the more you make use of the Atonement of the Savior? I think it's just that we're becoming more sensitive to better choices and recognize more often how to correct our behavior.

And honestly, this belief that I need to keep moving forward--if for nothing else to someday have things be alright--this belief that acting and doing something has been what's kept me going over these last few, somewhat turbulent weeks. Even though I really enjoy my thesis (see here), it's not easy. It can be really hard. But I'm forcing myself forward because I refuse to stop anymore. I want to be happy. One of my favorite scriptures is 2 Nephi 5:27 And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness. I think that scripture encapsulates everything. Maybe I should've just posted that. Remember that 2 Nephi 5 comes right after Nephi's psalm and "O wretched man that I am!" in chapter 4. Nephi's bemoaning his mistakes. And they're fleeing from the Lamanites. And their family's been torn in two. Yet, they're happy. I think this is a very telling part of the Book of Mormon.
We can be happy too, even in all of our struggles. I think that a lot of this is simply desire to be good, looking to God and then having the courage to go forward.

There. I'm done. Sorry about the hugely long blog entry. If you're reading this sentence right now, I'm really impressed that you made it this far.