This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the October 2013 Conference.
There were some amazing talks in this session. Elder Soares' talk on meekness was great. Elder Bednar's talk on tithing is a classic. Elder Uchtdorf's talk "Come, Join With Us" is so profound and still completely relevant (it's the "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith" talk). But the quote I finally chose to write about was from Elder Bednar. He talks about the "significant but subtle" ways Heavenly Father often opens the windows of heaven to us—for example, rather than just giving us a new job, giving us "the blessing of greater personal determination to search harder and longer for a position than other people may be able or willing to do." Then he says:
Sometimes we may ask God for success, and He gives us physical and mental stamina. We might plead for prosperity, and we receive enlarged perspective and increased patience, or we petition for growth and are blessed with the gift of grace. He may bestow upon us conviction and confidence as we strive to achieve worthy goals. And when we plead for relief from physical, mental, and spiritual difficulties, He may increase our resolve and resilience.…
I wrote about a similar subject in this post a couple years ago, but I'm thinking about it again today. It's our wedding anniversary (25 years!) and so many things have shifted in my understanding of God's plan since that happy, blissfully ignorant day Sam and I walked out of the temple as husband and wife. I've received so many "blessings in disguise" (though plenty of the undisguised ones as well, of course!) and surprising learning experiences. So many perspective shifts which seem at first like just interesting ideas and then surprising truths and then established realities barely worth remarking on anymore. I have changed and I am changing. It's strange to think as much change or more is likely ahead.
Elder Bednar then says this:
I testify that as we are spiritually attentive and observant, we will be blessed with eyes that see more clearly, ears that hear more consistently, and hearts that understand more fully the significance and subtlety of His ways, His thoughts, and His blessings in our lives.
I don't know how you'd know or if it even matters, but I wonder what the difference is between seeing more of God's already-existing blessings and actually receiving more blessings that weren't there before? Is God's goodness and mercy "poured out" consistently over our lifetimes and it's only our own comprehension that changes? Because I've definitely become more aware of God's involvement in my life, and my definition of what constitutes Him blessing me has certainly expanded, but I'm also convinced that the amount of tender mercies themselves truly must have doubled and tripled and exponentiafied (??) since I first started trying to write them down. Even during the most seemingly boring and mundane stretches of time, when I think to myself, "Wow, everything feels so stagnant and dull right now, surely I haven't had the light of heaven in my life for weeks"—or during the hard times when everything actually seems bad—I will look back at the tiny moments of clarity and tender mercies jotted down and realize there wasn't a single day God didn't reach out to bless me in some little way. Has He always been doing that? It is hard to comprehend.
Either way, learning to see the "significance and subtlety" of God's ways is no small blessing. I am constantly praying for even more of that ability in my eyes and ears and heart, because there are still plenty of experiences I resent or dread or misunderstand. Still plenty of "blessings in disguise," I imagine, which I just don't yet comprehend with my "natural eyes." But even to be able to conceive that they someday might be blessings, to step outside of my current blindness far enough to even realize that I might be blind, to be able to even imagine a different understanding than my present one—this is a powerful gift. This remarkable article by V. H. Cassler about "Dark Miracles" (the author's term for "blessings in disguise") has been so impactful for me. She says:
One of the most important things I have learned in this life is that a lot of the fish God gives us look initially like serpents, and many of the loaves look like stones. We must have faith that those stones could one day be seen by us as bread.
I suppose that kind of faith will expand God's blessings more and more as we, like a four-year-old going through his rock collection and not being able to throw out a single one of them, examine and re-examine each of our mortal experiences and see the beauty they contained. I don't suppose paying tithing (which after all was the entire premise of Elder Bednar's talk) is the only law tied to the blessing of expanded understanding. Perhaps all of God's laws are tied to it. But I just know that I want to keep seeking it.
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