It will change just when it is supposed to

Sometimes obedience doesn't make sense, we are going along in life doing our best to follow the spirit and be an all around good person. On our way we find ourselves getting tired with where our current circumstance is. We grow tired of what seems very limiting circumstances and we want to expand ourselves, find a new job, go back to school or find a new hobby, yet when we pray for direction the Lord simply says no. Now sometimes that no has a "not yet" attached to it and sometimes for reasons we don't know it is simply a no. We in our mortal circumstances only see what is before us, our boredom, our frustration, our anxiety or our helplessness. All that we see is that we feel like we can't go on any longer. Our endurance feels as if we have reached our limit and we cannot go on any longer.

I've been reading C.S Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" in which the uncle Screwtape is writing to his nephew explaining that as a tempter all you have to do is convince a mortal that they can endure anything for a time, but only for a designated amount of time and usually that mortal's time limit is just short of the heavenly time table. Screwtape even says that it is much more humorous if the limit the mortal sets for themselves is just barely short of the heavenly progress designated time, thus the tempter finds great humor in seeing the despair of the human falling short just as they were about to find a reprieve. Now remember we are the mortals, we are the ones facing what seems our own limited view of our endurance, we tell ourselves that if we can just make it through til the end of the day that tomorrow will be better and we've so got this. But then we make it to tomorrow and find that it isn't any better, in fact it might even be worse. As this pattern continues we find ourselves more and more frustrated and feeling very alone and despair starts setting in. The adversary puts in our minds a vision of days stretching endlessly before us in this exact same pattern. We focus so much on what we feel we can't do that we forget that we can do a great many things.

In the church we are always being taught to see things through an eternal perspective, to see the long view, yet it is a matter of having the right kind of long view. The despairing pattern of always seeing things staying the same causes us to feel overwhelmed and nigh onto giving up, in these moments we need to remember that Heavenly Father, the ultimate power in our universe holds this earth and our lives in his hands, He is a God of miracles and can change things at a drop in the hat. So instead of focusing on all that is wrong remember that Heavenly Father truly does wonders among us, He does the miracles and we do the enduring. Now this may seem affair, and I don't know about you, but I know I don't want to be the reason that the minions of the adversary are laughing because I just missed out on the opportunity of a life time to learn something I couldn't learn any other way.

If this post doesn't make any sense I apologize in advance, I think this post is for me. I've been staring at something for a couple weeks that feels like it will go on forever, I feel so powerless, helpless and frustrated. I've fallen into the trap of only seeing what is negative and focusing on my own lack of control and helplessness. What I need to keep in mind is that my God is a god of miracles and what may seem like eternal misery today truly can change and will change just when it is supposed to.