The more I experience and the older I get, the more I realize that most people struggle and that struggle is normal. Of course we don't always feel that way, especially when we watch other people, especially undeservedly, reap things we feel that we earned and that we know God promised us. It doesn't help that some people try to distract us from the pain by telling us that things will get better, because that's not necessarily true. I am concerned that some of these Polyannas do us a disservice by implying that it's all about attitude or simplicity or will power in order to be happy, to be whole, and to have peace. Sure, you can have serenity and choose to see things one way, but when the pain you feel in your heart, mind and sometimes body sears in a very real way, it's difficult to ignore and pretend that you were not hurt, that you did not lose, and that things vary a great deal from what other people or even God led you to expect. I could show you conversations I had with people that are no longer valid, promises they made that they never will probably keep, and even things they shared of personal revelation that they ignored that stymied my life because they chose a different path than the one they promised. In fact, almost everything I would change about my life comes from my action on either incomplete or inaccurate information, which is why I'm ok with what I did for my part. I might be ok, but I'm not fine at all. I don't appreciate cliches, especially from people who already achieved that which is currently denied me. I don't appreciate the blind optimist who compares me to non sequitors; yes, I know I'm not trapped in a mine in Chile, but I never would be because I'm not a miner and I've never been to Chile, so that's irrelevant. I don't appreciate that people who already have their happy ending when the path I tred and the level of difficulty I face makes theirs look paltry. God accommodates for the difficulty of the task, and He judges you based on what you do and not what happens to you while His children rack and stack you based on what you achieve even if you are lucky or privileged or both compared to others. Consequently, the rest of us are likely to ask what's wrong with us, what we did wrong, even if there is nothing wrong because those who imply there might be never have and never could actually walk in our shoes.
Most of the glib, trite, cliches are spoken by people in a position of strength. People like to think about and hope for happy endings because they are hoping it will be true for them. Some people do it for karma points, whereby they think that if they think enough "happy thoughts" or use "the secret" that good things will come into their lives. Some of them do it because they are in a better place and don't remember what it was like before they overcame the struggle you currently face. In the early days after I was divorced, the privations continued, mounted, and increased, and my best friend told me once "Well, at least it can't get any worse" except that IT DID. Now, the "Sunshine Affair" has closed with a positive outcome, but it took over a year to resolve itself and created some very tepid moments, but Thom walked back his notion to feed me cliches. Interested albeit unaffected individuals who don't know how to help you like to feed you trite aphorisms, share cliches and memes, and spout glib and shallow advice. I know they mean well; they are not intimately affected, and all too often they are not suffering from the same thing and maybe never have. I know better than to try to empathize with someone who loses a child, comes down with cancer, or injures themself severely. Praise God, none of those things have happened to me. I offer them my friendship, spend time with them, and reassure them that I care. When my friend Cody became a paraplegic after an automobile accident when I was a freshman in high school, I went over to visit him periodically until he died. His parents told me at his funeral how much they appreciated my feeble efforts because Cody lost all of his other friends. When was the last time someone told you to hang in there who was still suffering from the same thing as you? Most of the people who offer advice, lend comfort, and suggest action are people who already saw their way through, overcame the issue, and moved forward, because the rest of people know better than to blithely talk as if they have all the answers. More than three years after the perfect woman for me broke my heart, I still ache. I'm still not over her, I'm still not over it, and I'm still not ok. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do now, because although the reasonable period of mourning has officially passed more than a year past, I feel no better off or clear on the outcome than I did on 9 August 2013 when I got the news.
All too often in history, people spend most of their lives wandering around in the desert. Owing at least in part to the prevalance of social media whereupon people parade around the best parts of their lives in an advanced game of one-upmanship, we feel like everyone else is living the dream. Celebrities and actors and captains of industry festoon the covers of periodicals and occupy the seats in interviews and give the impression that if you're not living the good life or that if you're "boring" then you're a loser. If things aren't going well, you must have done something wrong. I read this week the opining of a former member of my Faith who ached because young but unaccomplished married people are held up as paragons and examples of "how things ought to be". If you look at MY life, it does indeed look like I'm doing everything wrong. However, Todd told me at church months back that I am one of the best members of the congregation because he knows I am there because I really believe. Well, if I didn't have a testimony I would have left the church a long time ago. Plenty of things came along that gave me cause, excuse, and impetus to conclude erroneously that God abandoned me and that this somehow gave me permission to abandon Him. Rather than do that and leave, I went to my Bishop and confessed my sins, and I have never left the LDS church, because it is true. The tribes of Israel wandered around in the Sinai desert for 40 years, and almost none of those who entered the desert ever actually got to enter the Land of Promise. Sometimes the trek to a better place takes a lot longer and comes with far more privation than we like. CS Lewis wrote in the Screwtape Letters that the Deceiver will attempt to convince us to abandon the utility of faith when we surpass what we feel is a "reasonable period of suffering" and quit just before victory and success was ours. It is difficult, when you thirst physically or spiritually to prime the pump of faith and take steps into the unknown. It is difficult to hold on week after week, month after month, year after year, when you feel like you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere quickly.
The happy ending sometimes doesn't come until the ending. Life has lots of ends, but in the end, there is an end to this phase of life just like there is to every story we know. When stories have happy endings, the good things only come when they can be enjoyed "happily ever after" which means that all the struggle, trial, and complication must first clear up. We never leave patients with open cuts and tell them that the surgery was a success so all is well, and we never walk away from a war after we win the first battle, because that may not be a safe place to leave things. However, all too often, people who reach THEIR end of THEIR trials act as if unless you act like they did in the same place that you're doing it incorrectly. Well, everyone has their very own personalized set of privations and tribulations, artisinally and organically fashioned to fit you, so nobody else's solutions or process or attitude may work for you. They had their own; you have yours. As I wrote years ago in lies about grief, people who don't want to relive their pain often hope to rush you through yours so they can ignore the memories or help you so they can pat themselves on the back for helping you "get to a better place". Well, I am not going to tell you that "I'm in a better place" or that "all the lessons make sense" or that "the blessings are better than I expected". I'm not to the top of the mountain yet. I haven't seen the reason why the hurt, the pain, the rejection, and the delay needed to be or were preferrable to the outcome I expected. I'm still climbing the mountain, and I'm still out of breathe, and my legs still ache, and I'm running out of Living Water, and I'm still baking in the sun. I haven't reached the top yet to see the sunrise or to see the beautiful view. I don't know what I was supposed to learn from this. I don't know if God will actually send something better. I hope He does. I don't know what people mean by "fixing" what they broke. Maybe some of the people for whom things turn around quickly are people who, if they were asked to suffer longer, would buckle and falter. Unless there is a harvest now, it would be bad for them physically, or if they are denied a harvest they will quit trying. God knows I will keep on keeping on, as well as I can for as long as I can, even if the promised harvest doesn't come because I've been doing it for a decade now trying to be ok after I was divorced, trying to be ok after my engagement fell apart, and trying to be ok while everyone around me moves forward with life and I go home alone to an empty house.
Maybe I'm just this way because I'm a practical man who insist on calling a spade a spade, but I do think that it's ok if you're not ok. I believe that's part of the Atonement of Christ we sometimes ignore, that Jesus suffered for all of our pains and tears and heartache and disappointment. He knew what it was like to be betrayed by those he loved, to be sold for 20 pieces of silver or be unfriended by Simon, to even be literally left alone by His Father God in Gethsemane to drink the bitter cup alone. If you're not ok, that's part of His mission too, and if you turn to Him, I testify that you will feel peace and comfort, even if it's just long enough for you to pass away into blissful and restful slumber for the night. You see, it's NORMAL that men suffer. On a statistical measure, most people today are still poor and sick and miserable, eking out a living each day and hoping to have enough to last them until tomorrow. In order for us to be who God wills us to be, He must take away His hand, and if even the will to walk is there He is pleased with our stumblings. Wrote CS Lewis:
He [God] will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
God never allows the blessed state to last long, because He is trying to help us grow. If we do not take tests, we do not study, and if we do not study, we do not learn, and if we do not learn, then the purpose of creation would be frustrated and God would cease to be God.
I intend to keep going as long and as well as I can, because I'm starting to believe that my life is not actually to be a dad and raise a family but to be an example to YOU so that you will know in your troubles that you are not alone, that it doesn't always work out to a happy ending, and that it's OK if you're not yet OK. For this reason, I think Elijah is my favorite prophet. You may remember that he lived alone in the desert, scared that the king would slay him if he were caught, and that at least once he thought he was the last person who listened to and cared about what God said. God fed him, kept him going, but not enough that Elijah felt confident enough to not ask God to kill him. Even after the miracles, Elijah still didn't see things turn around, and he spent his entire life as an outcast, in fear for his life, and mostly alone. If anyone empathizes with you about the suffering, about doing the right thing and having nothing to show, and about the spiritual struggle to keep it together and to stay true, Elijah does. If you didn't have to struggle and hope and have faith when things don't work out in the timing or the way you might hope, if everything came up roses, if everything you did created utopia, what need would you have for a Savior? The scriptures are rife with examples of chastisement for the people of God, not because He didn't love them, but because they were slow to remember Him and forgot that with Him they could do more and go further than they could alone. I don't walk in your shoes, and I don't walk in theirs. I don't have all the answers, and I'm not even really sure if the answers I have are correct or even meaningful. I don't know what my failed engagement was supposed to teach me; I'm not sure if there will be a replacement let alone an upgrade. I don't know if God has something better for me that is in the same category. Maybe it's "better" not to be married to someone better but to not be married at all. I do know that about a year ago, I felt impressed that I am right where He would have me be doing what He would have me do, and last month I felt impressed that teaching Sunday School to the teenagers in my congregation is more useful to Him than if I were consumed by infants of my own. I get that. Doesn't mean that I like it... I still do not know why these things must be, but I do know that God loves me, and He would not allow these things to happen if they were not somehow calculated to my best good eventually. God's promises like His love for us are certain. Their timing, details, and implications on your life are not necessarily going to be what you prefer. I'm doing the best I can. I think I'm doing OK even if I don't feel OK, and that's OK. You're not alone if you're not where you would like to be; you're right there with me, and that's normal.
"His success was that he continued in the absence of success." --John Taylor to Wilfred Woodruff in his exit interview when Wilfred returned from a mission in Japan
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