A Heartfelt Letter: Gratitude is Spiritual Work that links us to Heaven

To my missionaries, mission prep students and my hurting friend,

I always want to bring you closer to Christ. The constant question is how?  I am a pretty authentic person and don’t mind sharing what has happened in my life and what it has taught me.  I hope you don’t mind me re-sharing and re-posting some personal things that has brought learning and growth into my life in hopes that it will bring you closer to Christ. So much of my heart is contained in this letter.   This is Thanksgiving week so I hope you can invite gratitude everyday into your heart and mind, and see what happens.

I feel gratitude is a form of repentance and brings patience into our lives.  I have to admit that the last 5 years has forced me to learn this because of all the hard things that Brother Mullen and I have gone through. The things that happened to us surrounding our mission and after coming home have been my continual teacher. 

It all started on our mission when so many hard things were happening with our family that I couldn’t see blessings. I felt our family and finances were falling apart.  Every one of our children were struggling and our twin sons, Nathan and Jordan, had very difficult trials and turned away from God and the Church, all while we served full time.  I thought our family would be blessed, we had been promised God would take care of our children if we would take care of the missionaries.  By the third year of our mission I was devastated and in so much pain.  I literally felt God had forgotten us and I couldn’t see one blessing in my life.  I settled into a fog of confusion as we realized our beautiful, bright son was addicted to meth and both of our twin boys were turning against us a parents and their relationship toward us became brutal. 

At this time all I could do is pray all day long, “Please let me see the blessings”, constantly. It was a continual thought over and over, because I was in so much pain and I was so confused.  We served all day long, every day- other people’s children who were growing in the gospel, having amazing spiritual experiences, yet our boys were hitting rock bottom.  I remember one weekend when we had really been trying to get Nathan to go to a rehab facility and he came up missing.  For 3 days we had no idea where he was and he wasn’t answering his phone.  It was Zone Conference week for us and we were speaking, training, feeding and talking to missionaries that whole week.  It was surreal as I helped clean up after lunch on a Friday, hadn’t heard from Nathan in days, and thought my son could be dead in a ditch somewhere and here I am cleaning up lunch, getting ready to speak to missionaries.  (He had been set up; given some bad drugs so someone could steal his computer and phone. Thankfully some good Samaritan took him to the emergency room.  A taxi brought him home Sunday morning from the hospital.)

Again, I tried to focus on the blessings, it was an exercise of my mind to express gratitude and not think of the hard thing that was causing pain or stress.  As I expressed gratitude for blessings I always felt like it was a conduit to heaven.  The minute I started to place myself in a state of thanks I would immediately feel instant heaven.  It taught me a lot.  I was amazed at what gratitude could do to help me feel instantly changed.  This was God’s beginning tutorial for me on how gratitude can change everything.

Coming home from our mission seemed to continue the pattern.  My mother passed away, Don got Parkinson’s, we moved twice, took over the care of my ailing father, lost our “job”, and had to face how to recover financially when we had no job prospects, started serving in a demanding calling at the MTC, and I fell into a deep depression from the trauma of it all-all within weeks of us coming home.

At this time I just survived.  I felt like I was drowning and barely keeping my nose above water to breathe.  But as I kept praying to see blessings, and focused on the words God was speaking to my mind about holding on and staying with Him, I started to see the blessings in the midst of the trials:

My mother died, but I had prayed that she would stay alive until I got home and I could have a chance to care for her for a while.  That was exactly what happened, God preserved her life until I got home and I was able to care for her for 3 weeks.  It was sacred and I came to see He had answered my prayer, exactly.  I had to have a change of heart to see the truth of that.

Don developed Parkinson’s.  It was devastating.  But I came to see he is still doing well.  And I came to understand that God blessed us with great health our entire mission.  He didn’t strike Don with Parkinson’s, He withheld the Parkinson’s until we finished our work in the mission field.

  I wanted Don to get a job or a real estate project right away when we got home.  I was in a panic and I wanted to solve the problem quick.  A quick job did not happen.  A project didn’t happen for two years, but we saw unexplained miracles with our finances.

Nathan was addicted to drugs, but we got him into rehab and our relationship with him became wonderful again.  (He relapsed for two years, but he is in rehab again now which is another blessing.)

We had to remodel and sale our dream home, but we miraculously had the energy to do the work and found the money to do it.  Then found an amazing home that miraculously appeared on the market just two weeks before we had to move. ETC!

This may sound easy to you as you read these words on this paper.  But none of these, “But’s” were easy.  They reflect spiritual work to see something in a spiritual way, way different than what my natural, instinctive person's experience was.

I now understand that God has given us agency.  He has to respect that agency.  This plan of life includes death, failing health, mistakes, and natural consequences from living in a fallen world.  The plan must continue on and we must go through it.  It is going to be painful.  It is an exercise of faith to stay with Him, keep trusting Him and loving Him. 

I came to know God better at this time.  He couldn’t give me everything I wanted, but if I was willing to be soft and open I could see that he was still very aware of me and blessing my life.  I was in a world of hurt, so much I couldn’t even hold on to the hope He was trying to give me, but gradually healing happened and I could start trying to see, feel and understand. 

I felt I could relate to Moroni’s account of Alma’s experience, when they were put under bondage in the wilderness.  Here Alma is going against King Noah and all the other wicked priests and following after Abinadi. He is trying to do what is right, he is sacrificing his safety and comfort to bring others closer to Christ.  You would think God would make it easy and they would be blessed.  But instead they are found and put in bondage. 

Moroni says in Mos 23: 21-23 about Alma’s situation; the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and faith…..yet-whosoever putteth his trust in him the same shall be lifted up at the last day….for they were brought into bondage and none could deliver them but the Lord….

It tells me that trials are a very specific tool used to help us see and know God.  Think about it.  If everything was easy in our lives, we would never feel the need for a Savior, the gospel, or the need to turn to our Heavenly Father in prayer.  Trials put us in a state of vulnerability which makes us a little more tender and open; seeking and searching for understanding, comfort and strength.  It drives us to our knees with more intention and purpose; seeking our Heavenly Fathers assistance.

Times like these give our God a chance to show himself.  We come to know God in our extremities.

In the next chapter Alma himself talks about what God promised them, “…….I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me here after, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.”  He is saying, “You will have trials, and if you will stay with me through it, you’ll come out knowing me better and being able to witness of me.

Because of my own experience I KNOW THIS IS TRUE!  I can’t say enough, years later and looking back, that God will be with you, even in the middle of devastating pain, when you feel you can’t hold on to any hope, when you are just a sieve, (when anything that may help just runs through you)-that God was there the whole time, patient, kind, merciful, trying to heal the entire way through it.  If you stay with Him.

It’s the same way with Ammon.  In Alma 26:35, Ammon is expressing his profound gratitude to God for all those trials and sacrifice they went through on their 15 year mission, “we have suffered all manner of afflictions that we might be the means of saving some souls….” 

Ammon says perfectly what happened to them because they stuck with God, had faith in Him through it all, and were able to see the blessings even though they suffered and everything didn’t make perfect sense; Alma 26:35, now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my god; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name.

What I see in that verse is amazing.  They had these trials, they suffered, God saw fit to try their patience, and some of their people even died.  And because of it they came to know their God profoundly; intimately.  So much so that they described him as – “all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being even unto salvation……” but,

It takes humility and repentance to come to that kind of knowledge.

The very same sentence he adds, “….to those who will repent and believe on his name.”

I think it is hard to be humble.  That may just be me, but my experience has been I have to work at being soft and open when I’m in the middle of pain from a trial I don’t understand.  But it is the answer that will solve problems, it brings the ability to hear the answers God is communicating and the willingness to believe and follow those answers.

This is the important part.  Repentance comes from the Greek words: meta=change of form, and noval=mind, knowledge, spirit, breath, (meaning life). Basically, change our mind.   When we change our form to be in a state of gratitude we are actually repenting.  The natural man is never grateful!  The natural man is an enemy to God.  He can’t feel the spirit in his state of seeking the will of his flesh, his way and his expectations.

Gratitude as a state of repentance means change from the natural way.  It is not easy amidst pain, doubt, confusion, and hurt to repent! To be grateful!  Yet what God promises is that if we will be humble and repent he will show His power to us and we will come to know him.  This knowledge isn’t free.  There is a price to know God.

What I know is that this is true.  I have been hearing God say for years, “Hold on I’ll get you there.”

What I know now better, is that He is all power, all wisdom, all understanding and merciful.  He knows a lot more than I do.   And I also know he is very, very patient.  I’m sad he has had to exercise so much patience with me and it has taken me such a long time to stop asking why, and just decide it doesn’t matter.  Gratitude is the step that has gotten me through the pain to the other side. 

I choose faith and trust.  With all my heart I choose God.  When I feel a question forming, I just lay it aside and think, it doesn’t matter, I choose God, I want to live by faith and I don’t care about anything else. 

One more scripture that I feel is perfect when talking about gratitude is,  Alma 26, 29…..if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another--- I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another-I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

I know this was long.  If you made it through, thank you for reading.  As you face the struggle of life, school, family, friends, health, etc., what I want you to know is no matter how much confusion, darkness or trial there is in life, if you will be humble and create a grateful heart inside, you will be closer to heaven, see more clearly, recognize the miracles and realize you an are unprofitable servant as you become more intimately acquainted with God and realize how much He has done for you.  Depending on what you go through it may take time to get there, but it's the best feeling in the world to stay with God and let Him do His work in your life.

I love you and I know God loves you too, Happy Thanksgiving,

Sister Mullen