Charity Suffereth (Allows) Long and Is Kind: How "God Is Love"

I see "eternity" as, literally, extending for time and ALL eternity - and I believe that we won't be "placed into a kingdom with boundaries" until we're done becoming - or, more precisely, reached a point of becoming where any new development is a result of creating things outside ourselves. When we're done with the internal becoming and are ready to move on to external creating, that's when we will become like God. We'll be ready to step fully into an eternal round.

With that in mind, I'm not hung up at all on a timeline.

On the other hand, the LDS Church simply MUST preach a timeline. It simply must talk in terms of the importance of this life - since it's all we have right now, and since it's important to be moving forward and "becoming" more complete, whole and fully developed. Anything except that is stagnation and regression, and, while those things can be reversed, we can't preach it in such a way that we encourage it. We can make theological and doctrinal allowance for both stagnation and regression, and we do exactly that with grace / forgiveness, but we also must stress the importance of progressive change, and we do that with repentance. Either one is "dead, being alone" - but when you combine the two (and mix in patience and humility), you get the mindset that says:

I will do what I can to live according to the dictates of my conscience and best understanding, and I will hope in the Lord to provide what I can't see on my own - according to His timetable and not my own.

So, as long as someone really is doing the best she can to live what she believes to be truth and right, I believe she will become exalted - and the key to me is "become" instead of "be made". I believe God exalts his children more through his patience and long-suffering (his charity / pure love) than by any direct action on his part.

Read 1 Corinthians 13 with that in mind - looking at it as a description of God and his interaction with us. It might be an interesting experience.