"That I May Write The Things Of God"

I have tried to write this two or three times because I know there is something important I need to say. It is hard to express in words.

Life moves on.

Time passes

People come and go, in and out, and sometimes I wonder, will I ever know what becomes of them?

I used to wonder all the time what other people thought of me. I worried relentlessly about being anything less than perfect, about messing up or hurting someone. I had a sincere desire to do the right thing, but in a way, it went too far. I cared so much about what these people thought of me that I forgot what God thought of me.

I graduated high school and went to college, where I made many new friends, yet the old worries still came.

I submitted my papers for a mission.

I waited.

The breakdown came the day before my mission call arrived in the mail. I was so afraid to go and to talk to these people. What will they think of me? I worried what people would say or do and how I could possibly handle it all. I cried for a long time and I hid.

A good friend told me all I had to do was love the people. That was it. And then I would be okay.

So I did. I spent eighteen months in the Pacific Northwest loving the people, fighting my demons, and most importantly, I grew closer to God.

Then something interesting happened.

I realized I didn't really care what people thought anymore. I cared about them, instead of caring about how they felt about me. I realized that I am a daughter of God and that His opinion is all that matters. And I realized that in His eyes, I am special and divine and unique. I have a role to play in His plan. I realized that this was unchanging. That He was always by my side and that He always had been, even in the darkest and loneliest of nights.

Now, those people I used to worry about have all seemed to fade away. High school is a distant memory. None of that lasted for very long. After all, it's only been a little less than three years.

I have watched lives move forward and people change. I have seen how my perceptions from long ago were wrong. I realized how much I needed my Heavenly Father and my Savior, and how much I could rely on them. They have never let me down- and they never will.

Once, in a district meeting, the question was asked, "How would you define humility?" And I said "Confidence in God."

That is the truest thing I know. That is what I hold on to. I have confidence that in the end, everything will fall into place because He promised that it will. I have confidence in myself and my potential because He told me who I am. I know myself the importance of having a determined heart, and following Him is a choice I make every day. I can have confidence because of Him. My strength is in Him. He is everything, and He will never fail.

Once upon a time, I would have scoffed at that. I would have been cynical. I "believed" but didn't have faith because I thought I was too flawed to be fixed.

Now I know better.

So I am grateful every day for my mission. I am grateful for the opportunity to be, uninterrupted, with the Spirit, to learn and grow while facing some of the toughest adversity I've faced yet. I am grateful that I learned about the Atonement and that I can change. I don't have to be who I was. Today does not have to be like yesterday, because of Him. I am grateful for the friends I made, especially in my Heavenly Father and Savior. I am grateful for words. Even though they are not perfect, they have become my vehicle to understanding the world. I am grateful that now my foundation is built on solid ground. I am grateful to be able to move forward.

The deepest desire of my heart is to look at His face on that final day and to hear Him say my name with pride. The deepest desire of my heart is to be welcomed into His presence, to hear the words "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

And now I believe that I can make it there.

Sunday Series: Peace

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." (John 14:27)

"Peace: (1) a state of tranquility or quiet...(2) freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions" (Merriam-Webster)

Is there only one kind of peace? The world seems to say there is. When I think of peace, my first thought is stillness and tranquility, quiet and gentle. This is what we are taught. I don't believe, however, that there is only one type of peace for all humanity. I believe peace comes differently to all of us. After all, we are all unique individuals. Our minds interpret it differently

In the scripture above, the Lord is speaking about His peace, which we can receive.He includes only two qualifiers for this peace: that our hearts are not troubled, and that we are not afraid. I find this interesting. Peace can be very different from what the mainstream identifies it as. I believe peace is not just quiet and stillness. It is not just a state of tranquility, though that is still peaceful.

Peace can be movement. It can be bright and energetic. I would define peace as security and confidence, in all that is occurring in your life. Peace is, as the Lord said, not being upset or afraid. My peace often comes when I am busy, but not so busy that it's hard to handle. It comes with energy and strength to make it through each day, as well as happiness and confidence. I find myself standing taller, smiling brighter, and mumbling less when I feel "at peace." I find myself saying "Everything will work out." At these times, I feel safe in the knowledge that the Lord has my back.

We can find the truest peace through the Lord. He will deliver it to us in our times of need, if we are willing to lean on Him. His peace will free us to live our lives as who we are, without worldly concerns holding us down. All we must do is follow the path He has set- a path that is not restricting, that leads to being the best that we can be.

Prayer is key to finding this peace. Without prayer, our need is in vain. We must humble ourselves and ask for His help, and be willing to accept it however it may come. Sometimes help comes from others, and sometimes it is simply strength to keep pushing on. The Lord will give us what we need. Peace is knowing that, and knowing that our Father will take care of us.

We must all find our own peace in Him.

Sunday Series: He Has No Sin

How can a Savior who never sinned truly understand the pain of one who has sinned? He never had to repent or experience a change of heart....right?

Wrong. He did experience it. More than any of us, he knows how it feels. He did not sin or repent for Himself, that is true. But that was so He could atone for us. He knows exactly how it feels in our hearts when we sin, and when we repent, because He has felt our hearts. He has experienced all the pain the world ever offered to anyone, and He came through it, glorious, to redeem us all. Because of Him, we can get up after we fall, and heal, as if the fall had never happened. The only evidence is our own memory of it. 

The visiting teaching message for this month is titled "The Attributes of Jesus Christ: Without Sin." The message's focus is on how this attribute of Christ can guide us. It says that "Understanding that Jesus Christ was without sin can help us increase our faith in Him and strive to keep His commandments, repent, and become pure."

How do we do this? We are imperfect mortals, with a tendency to regress. Elder D Todd Christofferson said that "As we endeavor day by day and week by week to follow the path of Christ, our spirit asserts its preeminence, the battle within subsides, and temptations cease to trouble." How do we "endeavor?" 

Mosiah 5:2 reads "And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually."

This change is also a promise, to do our best to live the Lord's way. Yet it is not a one-time promise. We are imperfect mortals and so we constantly sin, and regress. So we must make this promise over and over again. We recommit every day to living how the Lord wants us to. And when we fall, He can help us get back up, so that it was like we never fell in the first place.

I heard a valuable insight while visiting teaching today. One of the girls I teach referenced a talk that spoke on how sometimes the Sacrament prayer has to be redone. Perhaps a word is out of place, or the phrases were mixed up. Yet, even though it had to be blessed again, once it is right, it is just as perfect as if it had only been done once. Even though we messed up, if we repent, it is as if we never fell. And if we change, truly, to Christ it becomes as if we were never the way we were before, but for the memories that we have. 

Christ was without sin because we are sinners. Christ was without sin because He is our Savior. He lived a life without sin in order to save us. He lived the way He did so that we could live better. Christ is our constant. He sacrificed Himself for us, so that when we repent, it is as if we never sinned. All that remains is the memory of it, and that memory holds no weight in the eternities. 

Christ knows and loves us just the way we are, and He will guide us to be better.

Sunday Series: To Proclaim Liberty To The Captives

There is a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah that touches a chord in my heart. It is found in Isaiah 61 , and there are two phrases in particular that stick out to me. I believe I have written about one of them before- "beauty for ashes." It is the second phrase, though, that made a point in Sunday School yesterday.

As you might have inferred, the phrase is "to proclaim liberty to the captives."

In Sunday School, we specifically discussed what it might mean, and I wish that I had raised my hand and said what I was thinking. Because of course, it does mean the literal freeing of captives, of Israel and the Jews, but I wondered if it might mean something more. If it might mean, say, the freeing of a cripple from a body that cannot walk. The freeing of the blind from a life without sight. The freeing of the disabled, bringing their minds in true harmony with their bodies, bringing them to their full potential. The freeing of the depressed to happiness, the freeing of the down-trod to hope. I wondered if "proclaiming freedom" was more than literal.

In addition, this freedom is a freeing from sin. Christ is the Mediator, the forgiver of sins. He knows our hearts, and through His Atonement, He brought freedom to our spirits, from sin, and also from death.

There is support for this idea- did not Jesus live His life healing the sick and mending the broken? His life was full of  miracles such as this. There is a famous story in Luke about a paralytic who was confined to his bed. This man's friends carried him before Christ, who proceeded to free this man in two ways, both from sin and from his bed. With the simple words, "Rise up and walk," Christ brought a new freedom into this man's life- a freedom of movement.

Christ can free us from everything that holds us captive. He can free us from fear, from doubt, from pain and loss. He can free us from heartbreak or longing. He has freed us from sin and death. He can free us from all that binds us, and keeps us from living to our full potential, if we just choose to follow Him.

Sunday Series: Be Perfected (Puzzles and Perfection)

"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." (Moroni 10:32)

I love this scripture, and not just because it was my last theme as a youth. It's a wonderful scripture with a good message, and I wish we shared the full thing more often, rather than just the beginning. My visiting teaching companion and I actually shared it as part of our message for the month and I loved the thoughts that we had.

My companion said that this scripture is wonderful because it illustrates a process. The transformation we go through from imperfect beings, from the natural man to a godlike being and a joyous, perfect creation, is not instant. It does not happen in a moment or in the twinkling of an eye. Rather, it occurs over years and years of striving. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of mistakes. We fall and we stumble, but if we get back up and keep moving, we can make it someday. By God's grace, we can make it.

While she was speaking, I was thinking, and what crossed my mind was the relationship between "perfect" and "complete." In the scriptures, as I've heard many times in Sunday School, "perfect" means "complete" more than it does "without flaw." I love that meaning and relationship. God just wants us to become complete. And Christ can complete us- we can "be perfect in Christ" as the scripture says.

This brought to mind the idea of a puzzle. I imagine that each of us have one- our own puzzle, with a unique image that illustrates our lives. We are given the pieces when we are born, and all our lives, we try to solve them. Most days, we put pieces in place. Others, we knock them out, or lose them, and then we have to get on our hands and knees and search. But as we work to become better people, as we live and grow, our puzzles gradually take shape.

Yet, at the end of our lives, when we look at this puzzle, we will find that it is still incomplete.

There are pieces missing! Vital ones to the final picture. They just barely obscure the image. We may have a vague idea of what the picture could be, but we cannot see it. The pieces are missing. So we get down and we search everywhere. We look under tables, between couch cushions, around corners, in vents, in cupboards and down drains. We look everywhere. But they are nowhere to be found, and the puzzle has to be finished. Time is running out.

When we have searched as long and as hard as we can, we finally slump down to the floor, burying our heads in our arms. We have done all we can and there is nothing else we can do- we have fallen short. This is when we feel a gentle hand on our shoulder and a question. "Is this what you were looking for?"

We look up to find our older brother there. His face is kind and filled with love and sympathy. His hand is outstretched, and in it, we see our missing pieces, the ones we could not find. He gives them to us, and we cry tears of gratitude. Now the puzzle is complete, right on time. And the picture is beautiful.

Christ has the pieces that we do not. Once we have done all we can, searched everywhere we can look, placed every piece we have, then He comes and fills in the gaps in our puzzles. In the hymn "Where Can I Turn For Peace," in the third verse, there is the line "reaches my reaching." This is exactly what He does. We reach as far as we can, straining for just another inch. Once we can go no further, He extends His arm and takes our hands.

So we reach out! We come unto Christ, we area perfected in Him. He reaches our reaching, completes our puzzles, and makes us whole.

The other beauty of this is that this too is not an instant transformation right before judgment. In truth, He is right beside us as we work on our puzzles. He guides us, and helps us when we don't know what to do next. He is beside us throughout our life, and guides us to perfection, to completion.

And we now "can in nowise deny the power of God" for we have seen it! We have lived with it beside us every day. He has guided us in our trials and our joy, redeemed our sorrows and our sin, and all we need to do is reach just as far as we can, and He will do the rest.