More prepared than we realize

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the October 1985 Conference.

I love teachings about the premortal life—specifically things that reassure me that I have been prepared in advance for this life. I keep kind of a collection of quotes about it (I say "kind of" because I don't think I actually have all the quotes in one place—but I am always on the alert for them) because I find that doctrine so comforting, I like to turn it over and over in my mind when I'm feeling discouraged. (I also think it's something I have to really work to believe, which is why I can't just learn it once and forget about it.) So it was cool to read these words from President Nelson just this week. He said:

You were taught in the spirit world to prepare you for anything and everything you would encounter during this latter part of these latter days. That teaching endures within you!

Even though I said rather cynically to a friend that it would be helpful if I could remember ANY of that "preparation," because I certainly don't FEEL prepared, or even like I have ANY previous knowledge that is helping me with my current challenges—I really did love hearing this doctrine so specifically from our prophet. It seems like previously when I've encountered the idea, it's been vaguer, like "maybe we were even prepared for our specific challenges!"—but not saying we were for sure.

In 1985 Elder Maxwell gave a talk about Premortal Life (of course he did) and he pointed out some other implications of this doctrine. (See the original talk for citations to the quotes he uses in this passage.) He said:

Premortality is not a relaxing doctrine. For each of us, there are choices to be made, incessant and difficult chores to be done, ironies and adversities to be experienced, time to be well spent, talents and gifts to be well employed. Just because we were chosen “there and then,” surely does not mean we can be indifferent “here and now.” … 

In fact, adequacy in the first estate may merely have ensured a stern, second estate with more duties and no immunities! Additional tutoring and suffering appears to be the pattern for the Lord’s most apt pupils…Our existence, therefore, is a continuum matched by God’s stretching curriculum. 

This doctrine brings unarguable identity but also severe accountability to our lives. It uniquely underscores the actuality of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
It also reminds us that we do not have all of the data. There are many times when we must withhold judgment and trust God, even in the midst of “all these things.” …

Agreeing to enter this second estate, therefore, was like agreeing in advance to anesthetic—the anesthetic of forgetfulness. Doctors do not de-anesthetize a patient, in the midst of what was previously authorized, to ask him, again, if it should be continued. We agreed to come here and to undergo certain experiences under certain conditions.
Elder Orson Hyde said, “We have forgotten! … But our forgetfulness cannot alter the facts.”… Yet, on occasions, there are inklings. President Joseph F. Smith observed how “we often catch a spark from the awakened memories of the immortal soul, which lights up our whole being as with the glory of our former home.”…

There can be sudden surges of deja vu. A flash from the mirror of memory can beckon us forward to that far pavilion, filled with “everlasting splendours” and resurrected beings…

Thus, when we now say “I know,” that realization is rediscovery; we are actually saying “I know—again!”

The tone of Elder Maxwell here, with its message of accountability and trials, is a liiiiitle less encouraging to me than President Nelson's, but honestly both aspects work together to give me hope. I'm glad to think that Heavenly Father didn't send me down to earth completely unprepared for what was coming. I'm really glad to think that He didn't send my children down unprepared either! That helps me feel slightly less panicked about my numerous failures in my interactions with them. And of course, when I trust that I WAS prepared, in spite of not FEELING prepared, then it helps give me motivation to "withhold judgement and trust God" about the specific challenges I am facing. If He personally oversaw my previous preparation—then who am I (under that "anesthetic of forgetfulness" as I am) to challenge what HE thinks I am ready for?

After I wrote the previous paragraphs, I was practicing the piano—I'm re-learning Rhapsody in Blue, which I learned sixteen years ago in college—and I was thinking about how much easier it is to learn it the second time around. Certainly I can't still play it well. No one else would think I remembered anything from before. If I just sit down and try to play it through, it sounds as clumsy as if I'd never learned it. But as I practice, I can just tell it is coming more easily. My fingers already know the spans they have to reach. My ears know when there's one tiny note wrong in the harmony. The way the weight of my arms drops onto a chord—even the way my shoulders or wrists feel after playing a passage of music—I couldn't have remembered it, nor described it to you before starting the re-learning process, but now I find it familiar all the same. And after I've played a section through twenty times, it feels as natural as if I'd played it fifty. I wouldn't say the process is easy, but it's without a doubt easiER. As I was noticing this, I had the thought: "If I didn't remember the experience of learning this piece the first time, I wouldn't even realize how much easier of a time I'm having this second time through." And then, another thought with great force: "Such is your mortal experience."

I've been so frustrated with not FEELING like I'm prepared. And it's because I don't remember the preparation, and what good is preparation if you don't remember it? That's what I've thought till now. But the dramatic difference in re-learning this piano piece, versus learning it for the first time, makes me feel amazed at the possibility that my premortal preparation might be giving me similar benefits—and the only reason I don't notice them is that I've forgotten that first learning process. Maybe my heart and mind recognize familiar patterns, things I practiced for long ago, just as my ears and arms and fingers do in Rhapsody in Blue. Maybe my struggles are—well, at least lesser struggles—because I was more prepared for this life than I realize.


Other posts in this series:

Love: three talks with wise counsel—by Jan Tolman