I feel I have been on a journey of starts, then stops, steep
ascents, dull and tiresome trails, dark and unseen way’s, summits and vista’s as
a metaphor of my life. I really feel I
am the poster child for change. I look
back and feel an amazing wonder at the metamorphose human beings can go through
based on my own experience. My last post
about gratitude contains, in a very unskilled expression, one journey I have
been on for years of, “Learning Gratitude amid Trials.” I didn’t include many of the nitty, gritty,
specifics of that painful journey, but I woke up this morning and felt I should
share one of the specific experiences that really was a turning point for
me. This “vista” that really helped me
on my journey came about two years ago while I was walking with my soul sister friend,
Shiree.
One morning we were walking in the canyon and Shiree was
telling me about the miracle she had experienced with her foot. She had been having tremendous pain that was
really impairing her ability to function and walk. She had been to the doctor and worked with a
physical therapist for months and had been doing all they said, but her foot
was still limiting her to a painful degree.
Her adult son, Stanford, had called and wanted her to go on a camping
trip with him for 5 days. Now how many
son’s out there want to go camping with their mom’s? I know!
It was amazing he would ask, and even though she doesn’t like camping
she really wanted to create a memory with him they would both never
forget. The problem was she couldn’t
walk.
She also had a family cruise scheduled she and Stanford
would be driving to after the camping trip, where she would also be expected to
be on her foot for another 5 days. All
of this made her very nervous, she really didn’t know if she could do it.
She exercised faith, told him she could go, and asked her
husband, Kim for a blessing. He blessed
her that she would be fine and that she should go. Two days before the time to depart for
camping, her foot started to feel Okay.
She was fine the entire 10 days of hiking and walking during her camping
and cruise activities. It was a
miracle. She had been in so much pain
for so long and then she was healed during the time she had prayed for. Afterward her foot gradually started hurting
again and the pain returned. It was a
miracle. God had intervened on her
behalf and literally took the pain away for exactly the time she needed and she
was able to make some great memories with her son and family.
As she was talking the thought came into my mind, “The Lord
wouldn’t bless me like that.” “The Lord
wouldn’t do that for me.” This thought
coming into my heart at this time was sickening to me and devastating. Here is a little background as to why:
It’s the thought I struggled with so much the 3rd
year of our mission and pretty much the whole first year we were home. The thought was like a sickness. Every time the thought popped into my head I
felt what amounted to drinking poison to my soul. It literally felt like every time I thought, “The
Lord won’t bless us, The Lord isn’t blessing us,” I was killing myself spiritually.
During those two years I was always trying to pop it out of
my head, talk myself out of it, ignore it, push it away and yet it was still
always there, for years. How could such
a simple, little thought kill me spiritually?
You can’t trust, love, and believe in a God that you think doesn’t
really care about you, won’t work for you, doesn’t know the pain you’re in or
isn’t paying enough attention to do anything about it. That is what that little thought connoted to
me. This was why I was constantly praying to see
blessings I wrote about in my last post.
I felt I was spiritually hanging on by sheer will power as my whole life
and expectations were being ripped from me, and I couldn’t see a blessing in
sight.
Back to the present day walk with Shiree. I had been home for two years and at this
point I had done a lot of spiritual work to get rid of these feelings. I felt like I was on a balance beam of what I
would allow my brain to go too. I knew
what thoughts killed me and what thoughts helped me function in a good
place. So when Shiree was telling me
about her miracle and those old thoughts popped into my head it was
particularly devastating to me that I would have some of that feeling still
left inside of me when I had done so much work internally to get rid of it.
But there it was. A
belief that God wasn’t helping, blessing, or concerned about me.
This thought led to me having a horrible few days. I felt like I was right back in that dark
place I had worked so hard to get out of.
I was amazed at how fast I could fall back to all of that bleak and
dismal emptiness.
I have learned that blessings come in many shapes and
sizes. Some blessings are so obvious and
things just fall into place amazingly and you hear people talk about how the
Lord blessed them and everyone can see. I just love that kind of blessing! They are so easy and it’s so great to say, “The
Lord really blessed me.” Or “It was so perfect!” Or “It all just fell into
place.” UGG!
Other blessings are not so visual, they are not so easy to
see or understand. Sometimes they can
only be devined through perspective of what would be worse. You have to look to, “have eyes to see”, to
find these blessings.
The spiritual work I had been doing was to see my blessings,
they weren’t obvious, it wasn’t easy, I had to change to see these kind of
blessings, maybe because of who I was and what my expectations were. But the spiritual work I had to do was to see
that we were blessed as I let go of my life expectations and became accustom to
our new normal. And so I became ok, as I
balanced on the balance beam of life and controlled where I let my mind
go.
Back to my story. So,
I was having a few terrible days as I kind of lost my footing, and I was right
back to longing for obvious blessings. I
was tired of having to look and change my perspective to see. I felt devastated at the darkness of life and
the pain of loss of everything I had wanted for my family.
So that one thought, “The Lord won’t bless me like that”, kind
of brought my life crashing down, as it brought up this residual pain and fear
that I had been hoping was gone. I was disappointed
in myself.
That Friday, I went to the temple with a prayer in my heart,
wanting to receive some kind of answer, help or inspiration about it. I hesitated in asking the Lord for more,
because I felt He had already given me so much; so many amazing spiritual experiences
in the temple, whisperings of the spirit, trying to help me see things differently. Could there be more He could do for me, or
had my quota of help been given and there was nothing more he could do?
But, I went praying anyway, asking and hoping for something,
not even sure what.
I was doing initiatory’s that night. I was listening. And I had this amazing knowledge fill my mind
of what God’s view of blessings are. It
was like light entered my mind and I understood God for a moment. The light and
knowledge was this:
God’s view of the best blessings He could ever possibly give
are spiritual in nature. Temporal
blessings and trials alike are to bring us to a spiritual knowledge of some
kind. Easy and hard are both God’s way
of teaching and changing us spiritually.
He loves us and He knows what is really important.
Integrity, Virtue, Peace, Love, Forgiveness, Compassion, Understanding,
Hope, Strength, Kindness, Patience, Humility, Knowledge, Gratitude, Charity, etc.
are the spiritual blessings that are more divine and crucial as blessings than good
grades, college education, financial security, marriage, children, physical
health, attention, security, safety, power, convenience, popularity, etc. Whatever worldly blessing you want there is a
spiritual blessing God can give you that would be better.
In this moment I realized how true, “Man cannot comprehend all
that the Lord can comprehend”, is. I am
a fallen individual. I don’t see how God
see’s. But I also felt profoundly in this moment how
much God loves us, we are known by Him, He is doing everything He can to bring
us to the BEST spiritual blessings that can be given.
Blessings started running through my mind I take for granted
like: knowing good from evil, sensing what direction God wants me to take,
feelings of the spirit, being healed and cleaned, etc.
As I was reviewing this in my mind I said a prayer that
somehow I could really put these thoughts in my heart so I wouldn’t just know
this in my mind for a minute, but really change and have this knowledge stay
with me in my heart, so that I could really know God was aware of me, loving me
and truly blessing me. But what could
God do that could help me with this?
What happened next was a miracle, just like the miracle
Shiree had experienced with her foot.
I’m continuing on with the temple work I’m doing while I’m
praying that something could really help me know this; not just as knowledge in
my mind but in my heart and become a part of me. It was time for a shift change and a new
woman came in to where I was. It was the
first time I had seen her, she said her part and then literally stopped and
looked at me. She said in a very
inquisitive way, “Can you hear that?” I
was kind of surprised, workers don’t usually talk personally to you. Then she said, like she was answering a
question I had asked, “These are your blessings”. She had spoken personally as if she had heard
what I was asking for in my mind. Then
she repeated what she said again. “Can
you hear it, these are your blessings?”
It was the oddest thing to say, but it absolutely answered my prayer as
if I was talking out loud. But, I hadn’t
said anything out loud. I was so taken
aback. The words she was speaking were
exactly answering my prayer. I felt God
had directly answered my prayer, like He was talking to me! I knew He had. He had reached out and touched
me.
This spiritual experience was the turning point for me where
I didn’t have to control my thoughts, hide or push or ignore what was going on inside
of me so I could spiritually survive my life
experiences. Instead, understanding was given that brought
true change into my heart and mind and I didn’t need to push, hide or ignore
anymore. I knew God was blessing
me. God was not absent, not aware or not
caring. He was blessing me with what was
important to His infinite knowledge of the best blessings. I knew God was in my struggle. He was there.
I know when life hits we can trust the Lord. He always wants what is best for us. He always knows how we need to change. Our
life experiences may not be caused by Him, but whatever it is that we go
through He will work with it to bring us to the thing we need that will be the
BEST blessing. He can make our lives be
perfect for the light and knowledge we need to learn or gain.
