Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

Today as I watched the Easter Video on LDS.org something stood out to me and I started asking myself some questions. What brought Peter, the future leader of The Lord's Church, to deny his master? How am I the same?
When Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him three times that same evening, Peter adamantly said he would not. In his mind he could not betray his Savior. He believed, as do we all at times, that it would be near impossible for him to fall. I won't drink that beer, I won't break the law of chastity, I won't betray my family. Peter's fallacy wasn't in believing that he would be faithful to the end, it was in over estimating his own strength to the point of openly testing it. He went where he should not have been.
His plight was similar to Alma's son, Corianton. To Corianton Alma said, "Now this is what I have against thee; thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom." Corianton was so sure of his own strength that he went all the way over to the land of Siron to test it out. If he had stayed and tended to the ministry like he was supposed to than he could have avoided his problem.
Peter, as strong as he was, didn't believe the Lord's warning and so he went out to test his strength. Surely he just wanted to be close to the Lord in his final hours, but had he known how weak he truely was, he might have chosen a different course of action. Maybe he would have stayed home until he heard the cock crow. He wouldn't have put himself in a position to deny the Savior.
Being where you are supposed to be and not venturing out side the guidelines of the gospel is a good lesson to be learned, but it is not what I wanted to learn from Peter in this case. After Peter heard the cock crow, he "went out, and wept bitterly ". If this were the end of Peter's story it would be a sad one indeed. But it was not. What Peter did after this is what is amazing. He got up and proceeded to become the man that Jesus wanted him to be. It seams that he was no longer the boastful Peter who thought too much of his own strengths. Now he was the unquestioned leader of the Savior's Church.
Perhaps at times we too have wandered towards Siron, boasting in our own strength as we go along thinking, "I won't do this or that", but then we end up in some place where we should have never been in the first place, "weeping bitterly". But that should not be the end of our story. Just like Peter we must get up and with the help of the Savior,  become the men and women that we ought to be. This coming Easter, let us remember that even as we cry the tears of sin that Christ died and rose again to wipe them away. Let us come unto Him and let Him carry the burden of our mistakes. He will make us whole and he will show us who we need to be. I know this to be true, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.