Mystery Dum Dums

Dum Dums are a popular brand of lollipop. One of the things that sets Dum Dums apart from other candies are their mystery flavors. It takes a lot of time and effort to have to shut down the factory to clean all of the equipment in order to switch from producing one flavor of lollipop to the next. So the manufacturers of Dum Dums came up with a solution. Rather than shut the whole factory down for hours at the expense of thousands of dollars to scrub out all of the cotton candy flavoring before they could move on to watermelon, they would simply start adding the next flavor until the watermelon had pushed all of the cotton candy out. Then they just took all of the half cotton candy half watermelon lollipops and put the mystery flavor wrapper on them. Thus, thanks to the mystery flavor, they could run the factory pretty much constantly. This is a cool fact to know, but what does it have to do with our journey to become more like our Savior Jesus Christ? A lot of us are sort of half waiting to start our lives after we get all of our issues worked out. As soon as I get my mission call, as soon as I'm Temple worthy, as soon as my kids are all baptized, then my real life can finally start. My faith right now doesn't really count because I still have so many doubts. My sobriety right now doesn't really count because I still occasionally relapse. My marriage right now doesn't really count because my spouse and I have so many unresolved issues. We just want God to shut everything down, clean out all the bad, pour in only good, and then everyone will love and respect and accept us. We don't want to be fifty percent good and fifty percent bad. We don't want to be fifty percent brave and fifty percent scared. We don't want to be fifty percent strong and fifty percent weak. We are convinced that no one could ever love all of the half cotton candy, half watermelon mystery Dum Dum flavors that we're making as God's divine grace mixes with our human weakness. But everyone always loves the mystery Dum Dums the most. Yeah, sometimes the mix of the Savior's Atonement and our stupid choices, like butterscotch mixed with fruit punch, might be terrible. But sometimes our best efforts mixed with the Savior's help, like orange and cream soda, can be weirdly perfect. There are combinations of Heaven's grace and us being too much of a dum dum to know that what we are trying absolutely should not work that lead directly to miracles. Amazing things can happen that we could never have dreamed of when we have the humility to let the goodness of God flow through our impure, imperfect selves. When we let God's love flow through us, we will eventually be cleansed every whit. But until then, let's not throw away all of the strange, amazing, indispensable Mystery Dum Dums that we make with faith, humility, courage and the grace of God. Some of those Mystery Dum Dums may just turn out to be some people's absolute favorites.