The Queen of Diamonds!

DIAMONDS! ...are a girls best friend!

A Diamond is forever!

Ahhhhh, the dazzle of diamonds. Who doesn't love them? The dictionary describes them as a precious gem of great brilliance. They adorn the finger of almost every married woman. They are most often made into beautiful and dazzling jewelry, and they are very expensive.

Have you ever wondered how a diamond is made? Did you know that it is made from the same stuff that makes coal and pencil lead, and even us?! Carbon! That's all it is. All living things are based on carbon. The carbon diamonds are made of usually come from the bodies and shells of microorganisms like algae in ancient oceans that may have been around for millions of years. The atoms in the carbon that makes diamonds are arranged in a way that make the bonds very strong. This organic carbon gets buried in rocks that were dragged down into the mantle of the earth where it is then subject to high temperatures and pressures caused by the weight pressing down on it. Sometimes nitrogen or sulfur becomes trapped in the crystal. These impurities can give color to the diamond, making them very rare and even more valuable. A diamond is one of the toughest gems there is.

If you or I were to somehow fall into an ocean trench at the edge of a tectonic plate where rocks are being dragged underneath a continent, we might reappear millions of years later as diamonds!

Hmmmmm.......we might reappear millions of years later as diamonds! I think that is exactly what is happening to us. We trained for eons of years before we came to mortality...here in mortality we are subjected to intense pressures and a "refiners fire"...wouldn't you agree? I think the Lord would! And then we will have another thousand years of training before we finally emerge as that precious gem of great brilliance!

"And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels..." (Malachi 3:17)

"For I, the Lord, rule in the heavens above, and among the armies of the earth; and in the day when I shall make up my jewels, all men shall know what it is that bespeaketh the power of God." (Doctrine & Covenants 60:4)
















I've heard it said that a woman's most precious jewels are her children. I'm sure Heavenly Father and Mother feel that way about us. We are as precious as Diamonds. Here in mortality we are just like that carbon, buried far below the earth's surface where it is just like having the veil over our eyes...we feel the pressure and the heat, but we have no idea just how brilliant the outcome will be.

Mortality is hard. We are subject to pain, sorrow, disease, death, and challenges of all kinds. Do you often see life in 3-D? Doom, despair, and discouragement?! Why does it have to be so hard?
"For it must needs be, that there is opposition in all things...if not so...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility." (2 Nephi 2:11)

Our trials and opposition are the necessary temperatures and pressures to make our lives of carbon into the rare and precious diamonds that the Lord has in mind for us. The greater the pressure the more rare the gem, and the greater the character. Add a little nitrogen (other peoples free agency that affects us) and sulfur (difficulties that are not our fault but we have no control over)...and then you have the makings of an even more rare diamond!

Try turning your 3-D vision into this: Three--the universal symbol representing spiritual sight & Diamonds! Once we SEE how beneficial the trials of life are and the spiritual side of things, we can see that we really are diamonds in the making...that the outcome will be not only rare, but virtually priceless.

We had Elder Neal A. Maxwell come and speak at a Regional Conference in 2001, and he said our trials mold and shape our character, and that when we stand before the Lord to be judged our character will be our resume. Our education comes through our sorrows and sufferings...it administers to development of such qualities as faith, patience, long-suffering, charity, meekness, humility, compassion and many other virtues that are necessary to become what we need to be in Eternity. He said it is a mistake to waste time wishing for something different, something better. If we wished away all the pain and suffering, toils and heartaches, how can we ever expect to acquire the education we came here to acquire?

How can we expect to become that diamond?
I wrote down some of the feelings that I had after this conference, as it really aided me in some current challenges at the time...and I was amazed in reading them again at how much they still apply to my trials today. I had read something that Elder Jeffery R. Holland said in view of life's disappointments, that we have to bear them; we have to believe; we have to hope for an end to such sorrows and difficulty; we have to endure until things come right in the end. [Which may not be in this life for some of us.] And then I wrote this from my own thoughts; "My life may be small and of relative insignificance, but I have my own mission to fulfill. It may be many things or it may be one thing--but whatever, it is of great importance to the Lord."

Perhaps that is how that carbon seems...that ancient microorganism that gets buried down to such a remote place for so many many years....small and insignificant...continually pressed, continually in the refiners fire, completely out of view to the world, shaping and transforming that matter into something of such great value...so brilliant and full of light when it is brought before the light...the reflection which of course comes from the sun....The Son. And His image will be in our countenances....just as light dazzles and radiates from that diamond.


And we women will become the Queen of Diamonds! His jewels! So precious! So valuable! So rare! So full of light!

Absolutely dazzling!

And we will be able to live with Him forever...a Diamond is forever!