The deeps in you

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Relief Society Session of the October 1995 Conference.

This is going to be an interesting week. Abe gets to do a week of Home MTC, and I'm hoping it will be good for all of us! The Stake President came over tonight and told the other children that in order for Abe to learn well in our Home MTC, the spirit has to be in our home, and that means we can't have any contention! He asked everyone to "indicate with the uplifted hand" that they would sustain him and Abe in this effort to have the spirit, and everyone raised their hand, so I'm hoping we can have an extra un-contentious week! 

I have many, many other spinning thoughts and feelings which I won't/can't share now, though I'm sure some of them will come spilling out soon. But many of them circle around this new era (not SO new, but I still feel pretty baffled by it) of parenting older children. There are so many difficult new skills I'm discovering I don't have—and realizing I need to learn. And it makes me look back on the things I thought I already knew about parenting and re-evaluate those too! It's all very…stretching.

The Relief Society Session of this Conference is kind of a famous one because it's where President Hinckley first read the Proclamation on the Family. And I was there! I remember it pretty clearly—my mom and I got to go to the Salt Lake Tabernacle with our neighbor, who had been in the General Relief Society Presidency years earlier. We sat right up on about the 5th row. I remember feeling kind of excited when President Hinckley introduced the Proclamation, wondering what it was going to be about, and then feeling a little let-down when I realized it was all boring stuff we already knew anyway.😄(Now I love the Proclamation and even have it memorized, so let that be a lesson to me!)

What I don't remember is any of the other talks given that night. I guess they didn't speak to me as a Young Woman the way they do now. They are really good! And, to my point earlier about learning new parenting skills, I was especially struck by Sister Elaine L. Jack's talk about "A Balm in Gilead." She talks about how in Relief Society we can be a healing balm for each other through our struggles. This is the part I loved:

While we often have the desire and the natural tendency as women to fix what’s broken, we are not the “solution society.” We are the Relief Society. We understand the power and strength of the fruits of the Spirit described in Galatians: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. We can soothe a suffering heart when we can’t eliminate the trouble. We can bring reassurance and support, kindness, and calm.

I do often get frustrated when I hear about other people's trials and realize how little I can do to help. Even in my own family, and more and more as my children get older—there are sometimes things that they have to suffer alone. But they don't actually have to be totally alone while they suffer—they can have relief—and that's what I love! I love that one of my special gifts and charges as a woman is that "errand of angels" the song talks about.

Then Sister Chieko Okazaki takes up the same theme, and this is so, so good:

Psalm 42:7 says, “deep calleth unto deep.” The deeps are not just the deep knowledge of the gospel but also the deeps in you…And sometimes, even when we do not want to, powerful currents of mortality carry us into the deeps—into the deeps of sorrow and suffering and soul-searching. There in the deeps, we discover who we really are and who the Savior really is…

Everyone has days when it is possible to carry the burden; there are other days when the burden seems to have a crushing weight. Some of you already know the enormous strength that comes from sharing your burdens with someone else who cares for you. Some of you are trying to carry these burdens alone or are struggling with the even heavier burden of denial and pretense that there is no burden.

Please, sisters, recognize that no one can carry your burdens for you except the Savior, but also recognize that each one of us can make a burden lighter by sharing it. Please, don’t try to carry your burdens alone, and don’t make a sister do it alone…I ask you to be sensitive to the struggles of your sisters, to offer a hand to lift a burden where you can, to be a listening ear when speaking will ease an overburdened heart, to seek that compassionate friend who will understand and reassure and strengthen you at times that are difficult for you. In this way, we tend our nets, strengthen each strand, and keep our sisterhood whole, healthy, and healing.

My children are starting to go "into the deeps," and it's so hard…for them and for me. I love to see them growing through their challenges. I don't want to take that growth from them. But I become every day more grateful for a Savior who understands exactly how they feel…and exactly how I feel, watching them. It adds layers to my gratitude for Him and for this humbling, sorrowful, joyful calling I hold as a mother. I want to do my part to lift burdens and "soothe a suffering heart" in every way I can!