After the wonderful feedback I've received this morning, I just want to add one or two thoughts. First is that I think one part of trials and adversity is that they isolate you and I think to a certain extent they are engineered that way. Not because Heavenly Father doesn't want us to learn to bear one another's burdens, but because sometimes in order to build a relationship with Christ we are placed in situations where there isn't anyone else. Where He is the only one that understands and He only one can offer balm in Gilead. I'm so thankful for the many who do offer their love and support and give Christlike love. Second, sometimes it is just easier to say "I'm fine" than it is to explain the inner workings of the heart and I think that is true for most of us.
I have been sitting slash laying on my couch for the last hour and a half trying to figure out what to say, how to say it and what should really be said. I'm about to speak some contradictions and really the only way to see our way clear to correct action is through the spirit.
There is nothing more painful than to feel all alone in a trial, to feel in a deep dark pit with no light at the end of the tunnel, with no knowledge how to cope, no idea what will come next and having no idea what to do even if you did know what is coming next and to feel forsaken and alone, not only by Heavenly Father (even though you know He hasn't left you alone and you know He loves you, you just can't feel it) but by pretty much everyone else in your life. It isn't because they don't care, but because you have no idea how to share with them what you are going through because you have no idea how to face the conversations that will follow and even though you so want the help and support you can't face the pity, I told you so's or any other number of things that have come your way or you fear will come your way.
You wish so much you had someone to confide in, but in doing so in the past you have never gotten the response you really desired. You got lots of people telling you game plans that no amount of pondering and praying you felt good about or that you did feel good about, but saw no way to implement them. And so you lose people to confide in because they always follow up (using the good old commitment pattern) and you can't give them the answers they want. So you strike another potential listener off the list and soon there isn't very many people on that list and you don't want to bug them because you know they have their own trials and your trial seems so much the same and you can't figure out why it still hurts so much because surely you should have gotten immune to the ouch by now. And in some ways you have gotten immune to the ouch, it doesn't hurt the way it used to, the sharp surprise is gone and now it is a dull ache that sinks to your bones and slowly steals away confidence in things you've always taken for granted. You know that trial and adversity are a part of life and you've heard Elder Maxwell say that we shouldn't pray for the very things that are helping us to grow as the Lord would have us grow go away.
So you pray for peace, you pray for hope, you pray you know what to do, you pray that somehow you can make it through one more day and you pray to not be angry at the people around you who seem like life is going so smoothly (even though your know at this point in life that no one's lives are easy, trial just comes in different forms for everyone and some is more visible than others), and you don't want to be angry because you know that you don't want to coast and the previous set of trials you were facing had become second nature, so of course in order to level up things get harder. And you don't want to be angry because you know Satan is the father of contention and the father of lies and he is the one telling you that you are alone and there is no hope.
I have a feeling that there is a world full of people who have felt, are feeling or will feel this way at some point in their lives. That feel forsaken, alone and unsure. Who know all the right answers that should bring comfort, but are finding that those answers don't bring the comfort they used to. I wonder how Abraham felt when after decades of waiting for posterity that the Lord had promised him, he was asked by that same God to sacrifice that one son that had been given to him. I wonder how long he wrestled before he dutifully loaded his mules and took his son and servants to that sacrificial mountain. I wonder if he wondered what he would tell those servants who so dutifully came with why his son wouldn't be coming back with him. I wonder if he felt the bitter irony crowding into his heart and how he didn't shake his fist at the Lord who he knew had placed his place which now felt so painful and bitter. And I wonder sometimes if he didn't just want to run away. I think he did for we know even Christ our perfect examplar asked if he could be removed from the task at hand when the pain became so intense, when He felt overwhelmed by the sheer humanness of life and when he felt the pain of Abraham in being asked to give up his son, with Christ knowing it was He that asked that of Abraham (I have never thought that thought before, but it is profound). Our Savior Jesus Christ knows what it is for us to hurt even when we are following His direction because in the garden He felt it, He knows the pain, but still He asks it of us because He understands the triumph that comes. He knows the good and so sometimes we are placed somewhere and feel the evil. I don't know the relief Abraham felt when he climbed back down that mountain with Isaac by his side or the joy in his heart when Christ offered a ram to be sacrificed in Isaac's stead.
In the temple devotional today Elder Kim Clark gave a talk which talked about waiting on the Lord. We are promised strength as we run and face life's trials with urgency and pain and energy to face the daily walk with the Lord as we work to change our very nature to be like His. He knows what it is to run and feel weary and to walk and feel faint and want to wander from the course. But He knows the course is the only way and so Christ offers strength.
Sometimes in the vicissitudes of life perspective is enough other times no amount of perspective makes the ouch go away. But perspective and sword bearing angels can be enough. In this life where so many of us will be called upon to grow through pain and circumstances we never thought possible and have no idea of the outcome, know that the heavens ache to help you, that everything has a reason, that there are loved ones surrounding you and that even when life doesn't get easier there is peace and strength in the temple, the fortress of the Lord, and that when you can't go a step farther the Savior of the world, our redeemer Jesus Christ is equal to the task of carrying us because He knows the pain and He knows the outcome. Even if all you can do is trust Him for a moment, trust Him with your whole heart in that moment, perhaps the miracles you want still won't come, but you will be different after that moment and good things will still come.
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