One step at a time

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 2013 Conference.

There were lots of missionary stories in this Conference (here and here, for example) but what stuck with me from this week was this quote by Elder Uchtdorf. It's not like this is an unusual metaphor (I feel like everyone always compares everything to babies learning to walk) but it's just such a good reminder of how God sees our faltering efforts—not with anger or impatience or annoyance, but cheering us on with love:

We have all seen a toddler learn to walk. He takes a small step and totters. He falls. Do we scold such an attempt? Of course not. What father would punish a toddler for stumbling? We encourage, we applaud, and we praise because with every small step, the child is becoming more like his parents.

Now, brethren, compared to the perfection of God, we mortals are scarcely more than awkward, faltering toddlers. But our loving Heavenly Father wants us to become more like Him, and, dear brethren, that should be our eternal goal too. God understands that we get there not in an instant but by taking one step at a time.

I do not believe in a God who would set up rules and commandments only to wait for us to fail so He could punish us. I believe in a Heavenly Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him. Even when we stumble, He urges us not to be discouraged—never to give up or flee our allotted field of service—but to take courage, find our faith, and keep trying.

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Always calculated to bless

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 2012 Conference.

It was hard to choose a talk from this session. Elder Holland's talk, "The First Great Commandment," is one of the best talks ever! (I miss him!) President Packer's talk on the Atonement of Jesus Christ is also great. And Elder Eyring's "Where is the Pavilion" made a big impression on me the first time I heard it. I'm writing about that last one because it has been the most baffling to me, in a way. As with so many of Elder Eyring's talks, I've felt that there is something about it I just cannot grasp. I remember reading it several years ago hoping it would have answers to my questions, but I just couldn't find them.

Something shifted this time and I think I understand a little more. The "pavilion" covering God is an image that works for me. And it makes sense that this is true:

Many of us, in moments of personal anguish, feel that God is far from us. The pavilion that seems to intercept divine aid does not cover God but occasionally covers us. God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible.

Of course if God seems distant, the problem is on our side and not His! But so many times I've felt frustrated with Elder Eyring's remedy for it:

Our own desires, rather than a feeling of “Thy will be done,” create the feeling of a pavilion blocking God. God is not unable to see us or communicate with us, but we may be unwilling to listen or submit to His will and His time.

Our feelings of separation from God will diminish as we become more childlike before Him.

I think I've just felt in so many cases that I already am trying to accept God's will, and I don't know what else to do. And when any person is feeling alone because God's love isn't getting through to him or her, it feels unfair to add another burden of guilt saying "That blockage you feel is your own fault!"

That's where my perspective shift came this time, as I realized how actually liberating it is to know that truth! Just imagine if we didn't know it was our fault. If we had to guess whether or not God actually was withdrawing from us; to wonder if He had removed His loving presence because of our sins or for some other reason. It would be horrible because if God Himself decided not to be close to us, what recourse would we have? What could we do about it? Nothing. Whereas, knowing He wants to be close—knowing He is always there as soon as we are ready—puts the next steps within our own control and gives us something solid to hope for.

The other thing I realized is that Elder Eyring isn't really saying "the problem of the pavilion lies with you!" as an accusatory thing. He is saying "the problem of the pavilion is a part of our mortal experience, but your efforts to figure out how to remove it will not be in vain!" He talks about the faithful woman longing to have children children, who 

"felt as committed and consecrated as Mary, who declared, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord.' But although she spoke these words in her heart, she could hear nothing in reply." 

Clearly this woman wasn't doing anything worthy of censure. She was trying! She did want God's will! But the fact that "she could hear nothing in reply" showed her that she needed to search for an even deeper understanding. This wasn't a punishment but a blessing! God was inviting her to trust His purposes and His plan on a new level. And she did it!:

For the first time, she asked not for another child but for a divine errand. “Heavenly Father,” she cried, “I will give you all of my time; please show me how to fill it.” She expressed her willingness to take her family wherever they might be required to go. That prayer produced an unexpected feeling of peace. It did not satisfy her mind’s craving for certainty, but for the first time in years, it calmed her heart.

The prayer removed the pavilion and opened the windows of heaven.

Again, it was suddenly clear to me this time that there is no shame or blame attached to our needing time and effort to reach these new depths of understanding:

Submitting fully to heaven’s will, as this young mother did, is essential to removing the spiritual pavilions we sometimes put over our heads. But it does not guarantee immediate answers to our prayers.

Abraham’s heart seems to have been right long before Sarah conceived Isaac and before they received their promised land. Heaven had other purposes to fulfill first. Those purposes included not only building Abraham and Sarah’s faith but also teaching them eternal truths that they shared with others on their long, circuitous route to the land prepared for them. The Lord’s delays often seem long; some last a lifetime. But they are always calculated to bless. They need never be times of loneliness or sorrow or impatience.

In other words, the whole point of a person taking responsibility for the "pavilions" between her and God is not for her to feel guilty about it. It is so she can think, without "loneliness or sorrow or impatience," "Okay, I know God still loves me and hasn't withdrawn. That truth is a constant. So the fact that I feel alone right now means I have some work to do. Somewhere I am missing something He needs me to know. Now I need to search for what."

I've seen so many times where, in my own life and the lives of those I love, the clouds of mortality are obscuring our vision. I'm sure Satan is actively encouraging those clouds to cover us too. It's not even necessarily our fault…but whether it is or not doesn't matter because the next step always lies within our power: look up anyway. Seek God anyway. He is close, He loves us, and He will always reward our efforts to try harder, look closer, be more trusting, wait more patiently, understand more deeply. Those are the very efforts that will clear the clouds. As Elder Eyring says: 

For any of you who now feel that He is hard to reach, I testify that the day will come that we all will see Him face to face. Just as there is nothing now to obscure His view of us, there will be nothing to obscure our view of Him.

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I had to do it. So I did.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the April 2012 Conference.

This week, I've been thinking about something from Elder Eyring's talk. The talk is called "Mountains to Climb" and it's actually one I have a few different questions about…but one of them comes from this story of a woman Elder Eyring admired:

I was stunned to learn that [she] had forgiven a person who had wronged her for years. I was surprised and asked her why she had chosen to forgive and forget so many years of spiteful abuse.

She said quietly, “It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I just knew I had to do it. So I did.”

My first thought on hearing this is to be impressed with, as Elder Eyring was, the faith of that woman. My second thought is to consider all the myriad of things that, like that woman, I "just know I have to do" but that I still haven't done. I tell myself (somewhat correctly, I think), "It's okay. These things take time. Improvement takes time. Give yourself time." But I wonder…does saying that show faith? Or a lack of faith? What if I "give myself" so much time that I run out of time? Should I be patiently saying "I'll trust God to help give me the gift of forgiveness in His own time" or should I be urgently praying and working and trying not to be satisfied with my current state? I know the answer is probably "both" but that makes it tricky to know how to improve. 

Elder Eyring does say—somewhat confusingly, I think, after saying "That is why I was unwise to pray so soon in my life for higher mountains to climb and greater tests"—as if just not praying for those things means you won't have them—but anyway, he says, 

I cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop.

There are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of patience.…

My mother fought cancer for nearly 10 years. Treatments and surgeries and finally confinement to her bed were some of her trials. …I remember at the time thinking, “If a woman that good needed that much polishing, what is ahead for me?”

If "falling short of what I should be doing" counts as a trial…then this implies that state may last much longer than we wish! And it implies that all of us, no matter how good our intentions, need "polishing" to the very end, and therefore have to be patient with the process!

Maybe the connecting thread between the first woman who forgave because she "just knew she had to," and President Eyring's mother who was so good but also needed "polishing" to the very end—is just that both of them patiently kept turning back to God. They were, I don't know, let's call it "patiently persistent." The first woman actually didn't say how long it took her to "just forgive." Maybe it DID take a long time. But she knew she had to do it so she KEPT trying to do it until she succeeded. And President Eyring's mother, who he says "suffered so long and so much," had to KEEP learning new heights of faith and patience all through the ten years before she died. Being patient with our shortcomings is good. Being persistent at overcoming our faults is good too. Doing both allows us to move (which we couldn't if we didn't persist) joyfully (which we couldn't if we ONLY focused on our shortcomings) along the covenant path. And that's why Elder Eyring can say with confidence:

If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing. In all conditions, we can choose the right with the guidance of the Spirit.…We never need to feel that we are alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never are. We can feel the love of God. The Savior has promised angels on our left and our right to bear us up. And He always keeps His word.

(And for a much more eloquent treatment of this balance, which was helping influence my thoughts as I wrote this post, read Elder Matthew Holland's talk from the most recent conference! It's so good!)

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We arise and choose to wait upon the Lord

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 2011 Conference.

I loved Elder Robert D. Hales' talk about waiting on the Lord. That's a phrase that I've often wondered about, because when you are trying to get revelation about something, and it's not coming, there's no real way to know if you're, a.) asking the wrong questions, b.) not ready to understand the answers, c.) supposed to try harder and with more urgency, d.) supposed to "wait upon the Lord." And then what does it even mean to "wait upon the Lord"? Well, Elder Hales will tell us:

What, then, does it mean to wait upon the Lord? In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end.

To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it “with great diligence, and … patience.”

It means praying as the Savior did—to God, our Heavenly Father—saying: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” It is a prayer we offer with our whole souls in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Waiting upon the Lord means pondering in our hearts and “receiv[ing] the Holy Ghost” so that we can know “all things what [we] should do.”

As we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we discover that “tribulation worketh patience,” and we learn to “continue in patience until [we] are perfected.”

Waiting upon the Lord means to “stand fast” and “press forward” in faith, “having a perfect brightness of hope.”

It means “relying alone upon the merits of Christ” and “with [His] grace assisting [us, saying]: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.”

As we wait upon the Lord, we are “immovable in keeping the commandments,” knowing that we will “one day rest from all [our] afflictions.”

And we “cast not away … [our] confidence” that “all things wherewith [we] have been afflicted shall work together for [our] good.”

So basically…everything. "Waiting on the Lord" means we do everything. Have faith, stand fast, press forward, keep the commandments, pray, etc etc etc. Ha! It makes sense, but it's not as helpful as I would have liked. But this was:

Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”

Does this mean we will always understand our challenges? Won’t all of us, sometime, have reason to ask, “O God, where art thou?” Yes! When a spouse dies, a companion will wonder. When financial hardship befalls a family, a father will ask. When children wander from the path, a mother and father will cry out in sorrow. Yes, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Then, in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord, saying, “Thy will be done.”

Somehow this made more sense to me. Waiting on the Lord is not just "doing everything." It's absorbing the trials and challenges that come to us, and being challenged by them (because that's what they're designed to do!)—and then, in our confused and shaken and perhaps wounded state, at that point choosing again to keep seeking God. I love how Elder Hales says "we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord" because I have been at that point and I know what it feels like. All the feelings that come first—the uncertainty, the fear, the discouragement, the exhaustion—are part of what comes next: our decision to stand up and move forward anyway. Of course, "moving forward" means continuing to do all the things we know we should do, but it also means holding on to our belief those things are working—that they matter—that they make a difference. And we believe that because we trust God. We trust him enough to wait for His promises to be fulfilled.

Other posts in this series:

The Book of Mormon—by Rozy

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Patience is a purifying process

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 2010 Conference. 

I must have read this talk on patience by Elder Uchtdorf before, but it's been a long time, and I noticed all kinds of intriguing things. Like this:

Indeed, patience is a purifying process that refines understanding, deepens happiness, focuses action, and offers hope for peace.

How does patience relate to understanding, happiness, action, and peace? I was trying to think of some ways. I suppose patience could "refine understanding" because sometimes it takes a long time and lots of reflection to understand something, and patience gives you that time. Or sometimes you have to not have a thing to understand either that you don’t need it, or that you do actually want it, and patience would allow you to come to those realizations. 

Patience could "deepen happiness" because you might appreciate something more after waiting and hoping for it. Or because you learn to be happy even without it. It could "focuses action" because when you're patient, you have time to think deeply about what to do next, and—because you can’t just do everything all at once—maybe you learn to pick the most essential faith-filled actions and double down on those.

Patience could "offer hope for peace" because when we are denied something, we learn what we are capable of without having it. In waiting, we learn more sincere prayer or more fervent faith. And maybe because of that personal growth, we have a better chance of actually peacefully accepting what we don’t have or what we can’t do. Our increased trust in God lets us qualify for more of his blessings.

Another quote that interested me was this:

I learned that patience was far more than simply waiting for something to happen—patience required actively working toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results didn’t appear instantly or without effort.

I've long wondered how one is ever supposed to tell if "unanswered prayers" (for lack of a better word—I know God always answers them but sometimes the answer is unrecognizable to us) are unanswered because they are not God's will, or simply because the timing is not yet right. When is it "hanging onto my own will" to keep asking and waiting and waiting and asking—and when is it proper and patient diligence? I don't really know, but I guess there are some things we long for that we know are God's will—like for our children and loved ones to have a covenant relationship with God, to know Jesus Christ, and to feel God's love. I'm assuming those are the kind of hopes that can most benefit from the "active patience" Elder Uchtdorf is talking about, and that most require us to "not get discouraged when results don't appear instantly or without effort."

Other posts in this series:

Counsel from the First Presidency—by Rozy

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