Course Correct When Necessary

Life can be very crazy, fast paced, busy and overwhelming at times, during those blurs of activity have you ever slowed down and taken stock of where you are? I've had a bit of a cold for the last couple weeks, had a quilting project I was trying to finish in a very short time table, had a lot of books on my reading list, trying to meet my goal of cooking from scratch more often and wanting to be available to encourage my spouse with school pursuits, all of these things have come together in a bit of a perfect storm of feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the Spirit. In trying to accomplish so much of what I wanted while having limited bodily energy I let the wrong things slide. Prayers were fuzzy from a headachy brain and scripture study was shortened for more sleep after late nights. All of a sudden about three days ago, once I started feeling better, I realized I had moved from the Lord and in doing so allowed limiting beliefs about Him to influence what I thought He could or would do in my life.

Now I realize that sometimes colds just happen, I realize that sometimes things outside our control will cause us to perhaps slacken our best efforts, or just make them not possible, but I realized something, we need to still check in and see where we are, because if we don't we can leave the Lord far behind and not even realize that we left. Course corrections are a natural part of driving, sometimes there is a bump in the road, sometimes the road curves or a car sneaks closer to our lane so we turn the wheel by degrees to keep going in the line we want to be in. Why should life be any different? The adversary sends us bumps in the road, busyness that distracts, illnesses to confuse tired minds, tasks to overwhelm; all of these things can cause us to slacken our obedience or forget to prioritize our study and devotion with the Lord. After those times when we feel the Lord is so far away remember that He wasn't the one who moved and He understands mortality, He welcomes us back as we realize that we aren't where we want to be. He doesn't love us less for having left, He just anxiously waits for our return, we are all the Prodigal Son at some point in our lives and He never wants us to stay away.

I'm so grateful for the words of prophets and leaders who speak the love of God and of His Son to all of us. I have been under a lot of stress lately, but instead of taking that stress to Heavenly Father I was trying to tell myself it wasn't a big deal, Women's Conference last night reminded that there is no stress, pain or fear too small or insignificant to the Lord, He loves us and He knows what is coming to each of us, His love extends past our own fears and He wants to comfort us, but He will not compromise our agency and He cannot and will not force us to do those things to invite His spirit to be in our lives. What He will do is wait anxiously to realize a course correction is in order, He will wait anxiously for us to remember that He is a God of miracles and only our own limiting beliefs limit Him. It is our privilege to ask for miracles in faith and then our duty to build our faith for the miracles to come, but the first step is realizing He wants to give us miracles and the second step to ask, from there He will help build our faith. He loves us so much and wants so much to bless us and bring us to eternity, but we need to stay close by and course correct when needed so we see eternity in our view. Check in with yourself often, know that mortality can mean moments of laxness, but by checking in often those periods can be shorter and we can stay more where we want to be.

Remembering Lot's Wife

  In posts past I have talked about not getting caught in bitterness and not falling prey to the trap that today will be tomorrow and the next day in a never ending stream of stuckness. Today I've been thinking about something similar, but a bit different, clinging to days that are past. Okay, that makes me sound so very clingy and I don't necessarily mean it like that, but I mean looking at days behind me with a wistful smile. Looking back to that "perfect" day, that one day or a string of days when life seemed so calm, beautiful, peaceful and happy and wishing to have that day back again. It is so easy to get caught in a cycle of wanting what was instead of hoping for what can be. Elder Holland's talk reminded me how dangerous it can be to only look to the past, dangerous may sound a bit extreme, but anytime we limit the Lord we can end up on dangerous ground because we limit our faith and the adversary can use that against us.

When we wish only for days that have gone before we begin to lose hope for good things that can still come to us in the future. We limit the Lord because as our hope fades our faith becomes weaker. The adversary plays on our fears and makes the memory of good days behind sweeter than what might still come before. In my mind the Savior asks us to remember Lot's wife because He wants us to trust Him, to long for His will and trusts in many good things to come in the future and not to always be looking behind.

I know that memories are so sweet and they should be something that brings us joy, but I also know that the Lord has so many beautiful things before us, even if at the moment things don't look so sweet, but trusting the Lord allows us to grow in a way that simply pining won't bring.

Elder Jeffrey R Holland's "Remember Lot's Wife"

"Luke 17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.”
Hmmm. What did He mean by such an enigmatic little phrase? To find out, I suppose we need to do as He suggested. Let’s recall who Lot’s wife was.
The original story, of course, comes to us out of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, when the Lord, having had as much as He could stand of the worst that men and women could do, told Lot and his family to flee because those cities were about to be destroyed. “Escape for thy life,” the Lord said, “look not behind thee . . . ; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Genesis 19:17; emphasis added).
With less than immediate obedience and more than a little negotiation, Lot and his family ultimately did leave town, but just in the nick of time. The scriptures tell us what happened at daybreak the morning following their escape:
The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;
And he overthrew those cities. [Genesis 19:24–25]
Then our theme today comes in the next verse. Surely, surely, with the Lord’s counsel “look not behind thee” ringing clearly in her ears, Lot’s wife, the record says, “looked back,” and she was turned into a pillar of salt.
In the time we have this morning, I am not going to talk to you about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor of the comparison the Lord Himself has made to those days and our own time. I am not even going to talk about obedience and disobedience. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about looking back and looking ahead.
One of the purposes of history is to teach us the lessons of life. George Santayana, who should be more widely read than he is on a college campus, is best known for saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Reason in Common Sense, vol. 1 of The Life of Reason [1905–1906]).
So, if history is this important—and it surely is—what did Lot’s wife do that was so wrong? As something of a student of history, I have thought about that and offer this as a partial answer. Apparently what was wrong with Lot’s wife was that she wasn’t just looking back; in her heart she wanted to go back. It would appear that even before they were past the city limits, she was already missing what Sodom and Gomorrah had offered her. As Elder Maxwell once said, such people know they should have their primary residence in Zion, but they still hope to keep a summer cottage in Babylon (see Larry W. Gibbons, “Wherefore, Settle This in Your Hearts,” Ensign, November 2006, 102; also Neal A. Maxwell, A Wonderful Flood of Light [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1990], 47).
It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind. We certainly know that Laman and Lemuel were resentful when Lehi and his family were commanded to leave Jerusalem. So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future. That, apparently, was at least part of her sin.
So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind."

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_remember-lots-wife/

Thoughts from Sunday School

I was sitting in Sunday school today feeling a bit miserable with a headache so I was having a hard time focusing on the lesson and on any thoughts I could share, other than the fact that I really really wanted to point out that our current political options reminded me a little bit too much of Hel 2:4-5 and I felt like our teacher was doing everything possible to avoid that conversation. Sometimes it frustrates me that we can't talk about truth and parallels in the scriptures, we live in a world of judges being killed on the judgment seat and of leaders lying and working in darkness, yet because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or create contention we just talk about the importance of praying, reading our scriptures and going to church and the importance of talking about things that bug us so they don't cause contention in our own hearts (that last one though I think is really important, the first chapters of Helaman show that when we let contention grow we become distracted from what is really important and we stop progressing, like the Nephites we let our guard down and a whole army of Lamanites come marching in with breast plates, head plates and shields. This struck me very powerfully because this was something new for the Lamanites, if we go back to the book of Alma we see Moroni introducing protective clothing to the Nephites, up to that point both Nephites and Lamanites just had loin clothes, battle meant bleeding to death or sun stroke from too much exposed skin. Yet as Moroni introduced this armor more and more Nephites survived battle and the Lamanites still wore their loin clothes and died in large numbers. Now in the Book of Helaman we have a huge army of Lamanites marching upon Zarahemla, the heart of Nephitedom with defensive shielding and the Nephites don't even have guards in the land to protect their city.

This parable shows us a couple things, first because the Nephites were distracted by contentions in the city, namely in-fighting trying to determine who should be the chief judge and judges being assasinated on the judgment seat they didn't think to keep an eye out for Lamanites, they were so distracted by their own little problems (little in the sense it was just a Nephite problem) they forgot there was a blood thirsty army camped on the borders of the land. Second because they were distracted they were not progressing, they let the fortifications fall into dis-repair, they forgot that their enemy the Lamanites were learning from previous battles and would be better prepared to fight. Instead of preparing for the next time they would have to fight the Lamanites and getting new techniques they succumbed to inner contention and opened the door for a war.

Satan does this to us all the time, he brings up little things for us to nit-pick about that we forget the bigger picture. He gets us so focused on inner battles that we forget he is still out there devising new strategies to discourage and tempt us. He encourages us to focus on where we are right now, we forget where we can be and where we are still needed. So this week was our first year anniversary and needless to say I've been looking forward to it for about a year. We didn't go on any trip, we didn't go to a hotel we just gave each other our undivided attention and it was a very good day. Yet somewhere during the next 12 hrs Satan tried to sour that precious day, he reminded me of the many people around me and all the cool things they did and all of a sudden I couldn't seem to remember all the beauty I had seen just hours before. Then he went one better (in his mind) the next day my husband disappeared emotionally and I was left wondering where he went and why. I spent the next days focusing on feeling like I was left high and dry and picked on and poor me and drawing closer and closer in on myself. Instead of addressing the problem I let it eat me alive. Then there was my husband again saying he loved me and spending time with me and saying it had been a hard couple days for him. Then all of a sudden I could look back and see how my selfish concerns and allowing the adversary to distract me took me from where I could be most useful, instead of being a help mete I had just been plain grumpy. I allowed myself to be taken away from my purpose and in stormed armored Lamanites with the intent to hurt my marriage. Instead of finding new ways to express my love and encouragement my silence became a tool the adversary could use against my spouse. The adversary loves using contention and pride to mess with our marriages and relationships, even when we tell ourselves we won't say anything about something that is bugging us he uses that too, because we let what is bugging us eat us alive. I am the first person to say don't say things in haste because then unwanted bitterness comes out, but at some point when you've thought things through you've got to share or you might just go nuts.

As I was sitting on the couch with my beloved yesterday I told him I was so glad I get to keep him for eternity and in that moment it hit me, it really hit me, a thousand years down the road we can still be together (dependent upon covenants of course), 10 thousand years we can still be together, an eternity. That is why marriage is so important, that is why taking time to find the right person is so important, why having the help and guidance of the Lord is so very extra important. You know those couples you see that just seem like power couples, they support each other and help each other do amazing things because they work together? Heavenly Father intends each of us to be those power couples He knows that we can do amazing things together, that is why Satan works so hard to separate and distract us, because if one power couple makes him tremble than an eternity full of them make him weep. We need to be willing to let distractions go, to find safety in the Lord and to always be working to progress instead of stagnate, life is too important to let Lamanites in armor take over what matters most to us. I know there are some circumstances outside of our control, there are things we wish could be different, Heavenly Father will work with those things in His time, in the mean time we seek His will and allow ourselves to find peace in the infinite power, strength and love of the Atonement.

Overcoming Walls

A few weeks ago I talked about the voice that lies and thinking about what voice I want to feed. So of course that voice that we don't want to feed has been getting louder and louder the last little bit. Maybe louder isn't quite the right word, more persistent might describe it better. It seems like for every unspoken word, every missed expectation, every crumb on the floor, every unsure moment, every thoughtless word there is this little voice coming nearer and nearer to the front of my mind encouraging self-pity, frustration, sadness, loneliness and jumping to conclusions about motives. That voice encourages isolation, encourages your voice to not ask questions, to not seek clarification and if clarification is not possible to assume the worst. This voice is a cousin to the voice from a few weeks ago, but this one isn't so much about anger or frustration, this one feeds on loneliness and hurt, it wants to grow bitterness and isolation. I've been feeling very dark inside lately, feeling like trees growing over a garden path and the farther I walk down the path the trees grow closer and closer together blocking out sunlight...now these aren't happy spring time trees with blossoms and green leaves, these are like grumpy trees without leaves and are blocking out light by sheer force of branchy will.

It amazes me just how quickly that voice when we feed it can obscure light in our lives. We begin to think that sunshine is a myth, that life has always been lonely or sad and always will be. We can become so caught up in our hurt that we withdraw within ourselves and don't even try to fix it. The voice tells us we're stuck and we're hurt and we should just run away.

Yet all the while the Lord is sending us tender mercies, parking spots just before the end of the road, your mom gives you two delightful surprises in one day (man I love onion rings), you get a raise at work, the Spirit shows you how to fix your car so you don't have to take it to the shop and spend more money. We have to make the conscious effort to see the blessings. There comes a time when we have to decide we don't want to be the victim, we don't want to be grumpy, we don't want to be stuck anymore and then we go to the Lord and even if all we can say is "Father I'm just so tired and don't know what to do" he fixes it. No, what made us sad in the beginning doesn't magically disappear, but we realize the dark trees growing over head are being pulled back, that there is still sunlight and we see the tender mercies as God's hand actively working in our lives. So many verses in scripture say ask and ye shall receive, draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you.

If we focus on the bitterness, the sadness, the isolation, the things that frustrate us, we build a wall the Lord will not scale, because our agency built that wall. When we use our agency and invite him into that wall He enters in and all of a sudden the walls that seemed so insurmountable have cracks in them and bigger cracks so that as we continue choosing light and continue asking the Lord for eyes to see tender mercies we find that though the circumstance has not changed the trees of bitterness that had taken root in our lives and blocked out the sun have been uprooted. But for the trees to stay gone we must rely on the Lord, trust his forgiveness of us and in turn we offer that forgiveness and love to others because bitterness is best combated with love to ourselves and others.