What made you gold

Have you ever felt like Heavenly Father was the enemy? You knew He was there, you knew He had placed you on a specific path, you knew He had a reason for it, you felt miserable and felt like you have no control in the situation. You knew He loves you, but you don't feel it, because in the midst of this trial you feel like a plaything of the cosmos, you can't run away because you know there isn't anywhere better to go, but you feel trapped in a "growing opportunity". You begin questioning all the things you felt directed to do, you feel like they were pointless and all that excitement you had turns to dust and ashes. You saw so a realization of so much potential in this journey and the next thing you know, you feel you've gotten into the middle of it and all that hope and potential has come to not. You don't know why Heavenly Father asked you to do it, because you can't see a reason for it. It isn't worth the time or money or effort and now what do you do.

 A lot of those thoughts have had a much more dominant place on the stage of my mind than I ever want to have happen again. Even knowing Heavenly Father had given direction for each stage, I still felt betrayed, I still felt like I had been led down a rabbit hole and then left alone. I knew in my mind that Heavenly Father had a purpose for the rabbit hole and that He loved me, but I couldn't feel it. I've heard the phrase, and even wrote a blog post about the fact that in the midst of the test the teacher is silent. I know academically speaking that there are times in our lives when Heavenly Father won't be as present or at least we won't feel His presence as strongly, this isn't necessarily due to sin, but is simply part of the test. We came to this life to prove to ourselves that we would follow our Father and our Savior even when we couldn't seem them. There will come a day when our Father in Heaven will abide with us, He will not be restrained from being with us, but in preparation for that day we must prove we want Him to abide with us, which means sometimes our heart strings will be tugged upon and when what we desire is His presence, having Him feel far away tugs quite heavily at those strings.

In moments when we don't feel that confirmation, in moments when we feel we are facing our struggles all alone, when we feel the world has turned against us, when the path seems fraught with pain and sadness then are the moments we choose God. But sometimes its not that easy...

In the early days of the church the Brethren often talked about having a spirit of discord or a spirit of sadness or a spirit of anger. Nowadays when we read those talks and discourses we think they are just talking about someone being discordant, sad or angry. But I want to think with me for a minute about the spirits that followed Lucifer out of heaven when he became Satan. I would imagine that they feel very discordant, sad, angry and bitter, because when they chose to follow Lucifer they chose to give up their birth right and in believing Satan they believe the lie that God hates them, because if He loved them He would let them come back. But it doesn't work that way for them, so they do their best to teach us that lie and share their skewed perception of Heavenly Father with us. That third part of heaven wants us to feel anger, bitterness, frustration and sadness. But we have protection, we have help, we just have to choose Heavenly Father in those moments when we feel all the negative emotion against Him we can muster. Because in those moments the followers of Satan think they have us in their grasp, but when we choose God, even when it doesn't make sense, and when we ask for His angels and armies to assist us they will and then we can find peace.

This mortal life can have so much pain and sadness, but it can also have peace and joy. Just because we are keeping the commandments doesn't mean heartache won't come, but it does mean we can call down the powers of heaven on our behalf, we can find relief, we can find hope, we can find peace.

We won't always find all the answers, we won't always end up just where we thought we would, sometimes there isn't immediate relief of painful circumstances. But call out to the God who gave you life, to the Father who calls you child, because there will come a day when you see where you were and what you have become and you will see that the trials that seemed to burn so painfully were what made you gold.