"In an unexpected circumstance or a time of critical need, lightning will strike, so to speak, and the future will be in your hands...sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you."
- Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
There's this blog post I've been almost writing for a few months now. In fact, I think I started a similar one a couple years ago but decided it was maybe too personal so I let it sit in draft for...a long time. Then came the day I cleaned out my drafts (this happens often) and that one went to the trash. But today, I keep thinking about it, so I'm bringing it back with some more recent thoughts.
Our lives can change at any moment. Though we usually think of change as a frightening thing over which we have no control, these changes can also be exciting and bring renewal to our lives and our focus.
In these times of change, especially if the change has brought some kind of challenge into my life, I often find myself going back to the core of my beliefs; often to remind myself why I keep going, or to double check if I really believe in the promises of my Heavenly Father. Sometimes I wonder if he's there, or sometimes I wonder if I'm really strong enough to make it through a particular challenge. If I choose to stick to my convictions, to really involve him in faith through my prayers and my actions, I am always able to pull through. But there have also been times I gave up for a moment, or longer...when I found myself face-down to the ground, wondering how I got there. Even in those moments when I have found myself facing circumstances of my own creation OR those happenings of the mortal world in which we live, if I choose to, I have ALWAYS been able to find a way back. Back to the faith I once had, and the strength I once thought I didn't possess is suddenly very real, and very available to me.
On my mission in Nauvoo, I remember very clearly one day walking down the road, reflecting on the lives of the pioneers. On their seemingly unwavering faith and zeal...their striving to stay faithful and keep going no matter what...and suddenly I felt completely overwhelmed with this awful feeling of inadequacy. How could I possibly do what I was doing? How could I look people in the eyes and honestly feel I was worthy to portray that kind of commitment and willingness when I knew I had experienced moments of doubt in my own life? The real question I couldn't push from my mind was,
"Would I have kept going like they did? Would I have been one of the ones who kept going, who left their home for their faith, who left family and friends and comforts...to follow a prophet...into a wilderness that was completely unknown to me? Would I really have been among them?!"
I suddenly felt very, very small. I felt that if the answer were no, I had no business being where I was, doing what I was doing. I had no business walking around, toting a testimony I wasn't positive was rock solid.
Then came the answer. I hadn't even really been praying...it had seemed more to me like a thought that kept going through my mind. Something I kept tossing around in my brain, threatening the peace of anything else that might have been there. But the answer came clearly, and peacefully....almost gliding into my troubled thoughts and smoothing out all the turmoiled rough edges. I remember feeling the words were almost audible.
"Yes. You would have been one of them, because that's who you are today. You don't have to be perfect, and questions and doubts are not indications of weakness or unfaithfulness. They keep your convictions strong, and you will have so much influence for good as you keep going."
Some may argue that's something that should stay between the pages of a journal or something I tell in private to friends or family who might really need to hear it. But I can't get this topic out of my head, so there it is for all the world to see.
I'm also not finished. :)
Since then, opportunities to question have kept coming. I keep having to get on my knees and desperately plead for my Heavenly Father to let me know He's there...that He hasn't forgotten me or someone I love. And the beauty is, each and every time, He has answered me, and each time the answer has been that He knows me, that He hasn't forgotten me, and that He will always be there...that I can make it, no matter what the questions or challenges or doubts might be. That He will never leave us alone. That answer has come in a million different ways. More than I can even list. But the answer has always been a consistent and undeniable YES.
We are here to experience truth, to experience our testimonies. To experience those feelings of growth as we have the opportunity to become more and more like our Heavenly Father. We have to ask, and we have to learn. In this past conference, Elder Bednar quoted President Joseph F. Smith's experience with trials and learning in his own life. He said something I recognized with everything in me...and I haven't forgotten it since. He said,
"As a boy...I would frequently...ask the Lord to show me some marvelous thing, order that I might receive a testimony. But the Lord withheld marvels from me, and showed me the truth, line upon line, until He made me to know the truth from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, and until doubt and fear had absolutely purged from me. He did not have to send an angel from the heavens to do this, nor did He have to speak with the trump of an archangel. By the whisperings of the still small voice of the spirit of the living God, He gave to me the testimony I possess."
I am learning not to be afraid of those moments because if I keep going through them, I always find the answer, and I always find I am stronger than I thought I was. If it hadn't been for that feeling of doubt or questioning, I never would have even looked for the answer.
"It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop."
It is never worth giving up. Never, ever, ever. The greatest rewards truly are found in building faith, in believing in God, and knowing He is there. Anytime we choose to leave pieces of that behind, we WILL weaken, and we WILL fall. And that fall will be more painful than any challenge and the choice to keep going ever would have been. It is ALWAYS the right choice to choose faith, to choose our Heavenly Father.
When we make that choice...every time we make that choice...He is then able to not only help us keep going, but he is also able to accomplish the greatest good THROUGH us. He can accomplish wonders through us, just as Elder Holland's quote says at the beginning. We go through trials so that we may know from the crown of our heads to the soles of our feet, as President Joseph F. Smith shared, and it is then, as President Uchtdorf so beautifully states, that we will then know a little more of the greatness ahead of us and the goodness we can do...because we will have pulled through one more set of "impossibles."
With the loving aid of our Heavenly Father, we are so much more than any mere challenge, or change, no matter whose "fault" it might be. I know that, and I promise I will never truly forget it because I know my obligation is not only to myself, but to everyone I will ever meet. That knowledge and the promises that come with continuing onward are far too valuable to ever consider throwing away.
3 comments:
So this was just what I needed to read... right now. Perfect timing. I am so glad I have such an aspiring cousin to call my own. :) Love you.
I can handle posts like this all day long. Too much information on the world wide web via blogspot usually come in the form of birthday stories and the horrible awful words of nursing and/or breastfeeding!!!!
Thank you for sharing. I really needed this.
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