Recently my left knee has been aching a bit. The ache has reminded me that I injured it during the winter of my senior year in high school, while ice skating. Before I started dating Grandma, a cute girl named Marty Jones asked me to go ice skating with her and some friends. I knew it was something I shouldn't do, because I was on the basketball team. The coach restricted us from doing anything outside of basketball that risked injury. However, I ignored the rule, thinking that I would be all right. Besides that, I had a hard time saying no to a cute girl.
I was at the end of a long string of skaters. We were playing “crack the whip.” The line turned in such a way that the last person in the chain moved along the ice at a very fast pace, like the end of a whip. I was going so fast that I lost my balance and fell to the ice on my left knee.
It wasn’t a serious injury. The skin wasn’t broken. I had a bruise, but not a serious one. However, the left leg is used to “take off” when making a layup. There was enough pain that I couldn't use my left leg normally.
During a game that followed the injury, the coach put me in the game against a big player from Fremont High School. He was taller and heavier than I, but he was also slower. I had worked hard to develop several moves to get past a defender and score. I had just the right combination of moves to easily score on this player. However, whenever I went around him with a clear shot at the basket, my knee buckled and I wasn’t able to make the layup. Needless to say, it was a very disappointing night. I was upset with myself and the coach was unhappy with me as well.
What is the lesson to be learned from this experience? A seemingly small and innocent choice to go ice skating when I shouldn’t have resulted in consequences I hadn’t anticipated. I let someone else talk me into doing something that I knew I shouldn't have done. As a result, I let down my coach, my team and myself.
In truth few choices are really small--especially decisions to do something we know is wrong.
I don’t know what my knee will do from this point forward. However, I suspect it will occasionally be a source of some discomfort for the rest of my life. I will use this consequence as a reminder to make good choices. President Boyd K. Packer said, “We cannot set off on a wrong course without first overruling a warning" (cited by Elder Kenneth Johnson, “Yielding to the Enticings of the Holy Spirit,” Ensign, Nov. 2002, 8).
It is important for all of us to listen carefully to the whisperings of the Spirit when making choices, so that we can hear and respond to the warning that will surely come to protect us.
