On nursing and "long enough"

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 1979 Conference.

Sometimes when I'm nursing Ziggy, he will start to latch on and suck at the nipple, and then he will suddenly pull his head back and look at me accusingly and start to cry. So I sit him up and burp him, or I try him on the other side, or I bounce him for a minute and then see if he will try again. Usually that works, but every once in awhile he just repeats the pattern again and again: sucking for a second, stopping, pulling off, crying. And I know exactly what the problem is! My milk hasn't let down yet, so he is sucking and not getting anything, and that makes him so sad that he cries and pulls off, and then of course there is no stimulation to TELL my milk to let down, and the cycle continues.

I know many mothers have harder problems with nursing. It's not too bad for us. If Ziggy really gets inconsolable and won't even try to nurse anymore, I can usually just use the breast pump for a couple minutes until the milk lets down, and then put Ziggy back on to finish nursing. BUT—during the periods where he is trying, and giving up, and trying, and giving up, and I'm frantically trying to relax (yes, I know it's a contradiction—ha ha) and visualize waterfalls and fountains of milk—I just feel so frustrated! Because it all seems so unnecessary, and I just want to MAKE Ziggy understand that if he would just keep AT it, just keep nursing and sucking, for just another minute or two, the milk is right there! It's so close, and so good for him, and there's as much of it as he could ever want—but he just needs to keep TRYING! And it will come! The milk will always come!

One time late at night when this was happening, and I was so frustrated and flustered by Ziggy's screaming, and trying to keep him quiet so he wouldn't wake up everyone else—I whispered to him, "Oh, don't you know that you are just inches away from being completely full and happy?! But you just have to make an effort! The tiniest effort!" And then I started laughing at myself because I was trying to reason with a baby, but at the same time I felt an overpowering feeling that Heavenly Father wanted to say the same thing—to me!

I had been feeling kind of discouraged lately, like the heavens were a little bit closed off, and I wasn't feeling the light and revelation I had been hoping for. And I was slightly grumpy about it, because I had been trying to put in all the effort I could—pondering, and praying, and reading the scriptures—and I felt like I really should have gotten an answer or at least—something—by now!

And then I thought of Ziggy rearing back his head and howling because he didn't taste any milk. And how useless and counterproductive it was for him to howl, when he could have just…kept nursing for another minute, and the milk would have come! And I realized I was Ziggy in this situation! And why was I howling instead of just nursing? God wanted me to have all the spiritual nourishment I needed—but it wouldn't come until I was willing to be persistent enough to work for it!

In the October 1979 General Conference, President Boyd K. Packer said,

Sometimes you may struggle with a problem and not get an answer. What could be wrong? 

It may be that you are not doing anything wrong. It may be that you have not done the right things long enough. Remember, you cannot force spiritual things.

"It may be that you have not done the right things long enough." How long is long enough? Well…only God knows that.

One more story: my husband Sam has a friend who left the church many years ago. Once this friend was talking to Sam and telling him about one night when, in great anguish of soul, he called desperately on God. The friend described his feelings of loneliness and acute need, and then he told Sam, "I prayed and prayed, but I felt nothing from God. And that's when I knew there was no God—or if there was one, and he would ignore me when I needed him that much, he wasn't much of a God anyway."

I felt so bad about that story when I heard it. I thought, "Well, why DIDN'T God answer? This friend needed Him! He was reaching out! How could Heavenly Father not reach back?" And of course, I still don't know all the reasons. People and situations are so complicated. Maybe it would have been too much all at once for this friend, to have a witness from God, if he didn't intend to really act on it. Or maybe there WAS a whispering from God, but he ignored it and later decided it hadn't happened at all. Or maybe something else entirely. Who knows!

But as I've gained more experience with revelation myself, I've seen SO many times that my answers and my comfort didn't come right when I expected or wanted it! It's almost more the rule than the exception! Yet at the same time—I feel like my testimony that God is always there for me is stronger than ever! I think it's because looking back, I see that my answers and my comfort and my blessings were always so close! And they were going to come! And they did come! They came as soon as I put in a little more effort and a little more faith. They came when I persisted a little past where I thought I could. And when they came, they came so abundantly that they were unmistakeable!

I'm not blaming Sam's friend, necessarily, for feeling abandoned when he cried out in his despair, and it seemed God was silent. While that is happening, it's so hard! I don't want to minimize that hardness. But I just wish he hadn't given up quite so soon. Because maybe he was like poor little Ziggy, sitting there and crying for milk; and all the while, it was two inches away, in abundance, just waiting for him—if he would persist a little longer in trying for it!

Other posts in this series:

• As You Persist, You Will Hear His Voice by G
• Simply Prophetic by Jan Tolman