a leader with integrity

Growing up in the Church, our youth tend to know more about integrity than most teenagers. Its a section in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, a value in Personal Progress and if we only had a dime for every time we heard a story in Sunday School about little boys and girls who steal gum from the store and go an apologize because they felt guilty about not being honest, we could have bought enough gum for each of those kids. The hardest part is realizing that not everyone has those same standards.


When I was in high school, I was involved in Student Council and our Freshman Orientation  program and a few other things, but they were always things that I cared about. At first, it was shocking for me to see that other kids were involved in those things just to put them on their college applications and had no intention of working hard or gaining anything other than a title. As I got older, I became less shocked and more annoyed because I tended to have to pick up the slack for those people. One of those times was the end of my junior year when we were putting on Prom. I was class secretary and another one of the officers was a girl that I had known since I switched schools in the first grade. We were friends, but some things had recently happened and we had had a falling out. When I was at the prom, one of my sponsors pulled me aside and asked if I had sold the girl a prom ticket the day before and I hadn't, but I guess she claimed that I did. Once everything was sorted out, we knew that she had stolen a ticket for her boyfriend and had tried to blame me for not having recorded it. What I hadn't expected was that the school's administration decided to turn the other cheek and give her a second chance so I was going to have to work with her for all of senior year againEspecially after writing this out, I know that it sounds really trivial, but it was a big deal to me and I struggled with the fact that my integrity didn't mean all that much in this situation and neither did her lack of integrity.


In Monday's lecture, I immediately thought of this when the question was posed, "Is it worth it to have integrity?" I spent a lot of time last year wondering the same thing. I always came back to yes because all that matters is what Heavenly Father knows about everything, but I still struggle with just accepting that things are not always fair and don't always seem to have justice at first. Because of my experiences last year, I sometimes think that it might be better to just quit sometimes. Similarly, I have been wondering lately whether or not I should just move out from my apartment because things seem to not be working out so well. I want to keep my integrity, but some of my roommates are so petty that its really hard to tell if it's worth it. I dont really know what the right answer is at the moment, but I know that I need to stay out of the pettiness and keep my integrity no matter what because my Heavenly Father would be really disappointed if I treated my roommates that way when I do know better and when I have been given so many tools to work through this.