***excerpts from a talk I gave a few weeks ago****
My most recent and favorite
calling has been becoming a parent. Since
becoming a parent my understanding of heavenly fathers plan has greatly
increased. Now I often wonder how heavenly father feels when he sees his
children struggle, make bad decisions, experience pain, when they overcome a
great personal challenge, or when they become a loving parent. I also have gained more understanding as to
why he allows us to face challenges.
When Sienna was
two weeks old she had to have the PKU screening done. This involved Justin
holding our new little baby while the nurse made a small cut on her foot and
collected several samples of blood. Sienna with her limited understanding and I
being in my postpartum state were both emotional wrecks. Every fiber of my body
wanted to grab her and protect her from this pain. It also included a strong
desire to smack the nurse for hurting my baby. So why did I not do that? It was
because I understood the importance of the PKU test and its vital role in
protecting Sienna. The pain she experienced from the test is nothing compared
to the pain and heartache she would face if Phenylketonuria went undiagnosed. These few moments of pain were in essence
protecting her from suffering greater pain in the future.
Likewise, Heavenly father has
allowed us to face some challenges now in order to prevent us from facing
greater trials later. The word of wisdom may be difficult to follow especially,
when your peer group (at any age) is constantly tempting and tormenting you for
following it, but it is there to protect us. It protects us from the greater
trails, pain, and heartache that can be caused by substance abuse. The other
second type of trial involves strength.
Until recently
Sienna hated tummy time. She would scream bloody murder entire time. Why did I continue
to subject her to this if it made her upset and my ears ring in consequence? I
did it because she needed tummy time to build the strength and coordination
required to hold her head up, crawl, and eventually walk. She needs this to
build up her strength so she can progress, grow, and to experience greater
happiness.
There are times
when heavenly father gives us our “spiritual tummy time” to help us build our
spiritual strength and coordination required to return to him. As a result we
will eventually experience incomprehensible joy and happiness.
Like any parent
would do, when sienna experiences the pain I hold and kiss her, sometimes even
shed tears with her. When she is doing tummy time I lay on the ground next to
her trying to make to the experience more bearable for her, maybe even
enjoyable. Heavenly father does not
leave us leave us comfortless. He provided us with a perfect savior to comfort
and strengthen us.
Deuteronomy 4: 30 and 31 state:
When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come
upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the lord they god, and
shalt be obedient unto his voice.
(For
the lord thy God is a merciful god;) he will not forsake thee, nor destroy
thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers.
In a quote by Elder Bednar he
states:
The savior has suffered not just
for our iniquities but also for the inequality, the unfairness, the pain, the
anguish, and the emotional distresses that so frequently beset us. There is no
physical pain, no anguish of the soul, no suffering of the spirit, no infirmity
or weakness that you or I ever experience during our mortal journey that the
savior did not experience first. You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out,
“No one understands. No one knows.” No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son
of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before
we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, he
has perfect empathy and can extend to us his arm of mercy in so many phases of
our life. He can reach out, touch, succor,- literally run to us-and strengthen
us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never
do through relying upon only our own power.”
Sienna can
choose to accept the love and comfort I provide or reject it. We similarly can
choose to accept, ignore, or reject the saviors’ perfect love, comfort, and
strength.
While going through
trials we understandably think: “why me?” “Why my dad? He is so kind and
understanding. Why does he have to experience so much pain?” With our limited
view we don’t fully understand the “why’s.” Many times during our trials we
forget about the strengthening and enabling power of the savior. Often we pray
to have the trial to be removed instead of asking for the strength to endure
and learn from it or even the strength to change it ourselves.
Elder Bednar said,
“As you and I come to understand
and employ the enabling power of the Atonement in our personal lives, we will
pray and seek for the strength to change our circumstances rather than praying
to have our circumstances to be changed. We will become agents who act rather
than objects that are acted up.”
Mosiah 3:19 says,
“and
putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of
Christ the Lord, and Becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient,
full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to
inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Even though trials may rage
against us, the Saviors’ all-encompassing atonement will strengthen and enable
us to overcome and change it. The atonement will remind us that these trails
will be but a small ripple in the grand view of the ocean of eternal life.
In the words of our savior in
John 16:33
“These things I have spoken unto
you, that ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be
of good cheer; I have overcome the world”
If we turn to our savior we too
shall overcome. Faith through affliction is always pointed with hope toward the
future.
I know the savior will comfort,
sustain, and strengthen us during times of trial if we allow him too.
