Can God speak, right in the very moment you’re asking?

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 3^rd 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.