Two days before I reported to return home from my missionary service, I experienced the only time ever as a missionary that someone asked us to return without our having to broach the subject. My companion grudgingly accompanied me to this apartment complex near where we did service in order to knock doors for what I think was the fourth time, and as before most of the apartments gave no answer at our arrival or rejected the invitation. One family, however, invited us in, listened intently, and then asked us when we could return in order to teach them more. I told them I was returning to America on Wednesday but that my companion would be happy to return. I don't know what happened with that family as Elder Gertge and I never really got along and never spoke again, but it reminded me that the race isn't over until it's actually over. The watermelon comes at the end; upgrades come later in life; God's promises, although not always swift, are always certain.
When my marriage fell apart nearly a decade ago, I felt very strongly that my life was over. For reasons I will mention elsewhere at another time, I felt I had failed at life and could/would never recover. I blamed myself, since I'm the only person whose behavior and choices I can actually change, and held myself to a degree of scorn and disproval of such degree that God chastised me for being so hard on myself, prompting me to write about allowing the atonement. Since then, although things have been rocky, shaky, and uncertain, I have seen His hand bringing me to better opportunities and places, and when problems arose at work in 2011, trusting Him brought me to a land of promise. In 2013, when something dear to me was taken from me, I wrote here and told Him elsewhere that I trusted Him then and was trusting Him now. I'm not making progress as quickly as I'd like, but in comparison to that dreadful day, I'm far better off than I ever have been, and I've never lost any of my Seven of Eight.
People often criticize me carte blanch for living in the past. The trouble with the past is that the past, unlike the future, consists of things that already are real. "History is not 'was'. It's 'is'," said William Faulkner, which is why there is truth in the past. The future largely enflames hope and fear, and the adversary of truth wants us to live there as much as possible instead of being grounded in truth, always afraid of what will or will not happen to us in the future rather than focusing on what we actually do. God, however, wants us to busy ourselves with what we do. The way we win matters. Virtuous means justify virtuous ends. Joseph Smith taught that if we do our duty, it will be with us as if all men accepted our message. The trouble for me is that the past seems much more interesting to me than my future. I had something going that I thought was amazing, and years later all I've seen is time pass without any indication of a replacement let alone an upgrade, and I'm not sure when God intends to change that. I'm afraid my happy ending will come at the ending, which makes me less jubilant about future prospects than I ought to be. If this is what my life consists of for the next 50 years, is that supposed to make me happy? At least Wesley had a wheelbarrow and cloak about which to get excited...
That's where the Atonement of Christ steps in and really heals men's souls. God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. What are you going to do today to make possible that future about which you ostensibly care? There is hope smiling brightly before us, and we know that deliverance is nigh. God brought Israel out of Egypt, led them across the Sinai desert, gave them a land of promise, protected them even in their sin, provided them a Savior, and promised to make all things rich unto them because they are a people of promise. Everyone has a Land of Promise- maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not until after your days on earth end and you enter into eternity. Sometimes, things must die to give way for better things, and just because the better things aren't there yet doesn't mean they will never be. You usually find things in the last place you look, and usually when you have reached the end of your options you turn to God and finally understand that He was there waiting to bless you until you were ready to receive it. Unlike the crackpot gardener, He only sows seeds when and where they can grow, so until you're ready for planting, He will keep plowing.
Only when you are at the end of your rope do you really begin to understand the width and breadth of the Atonement, that there is not only a future but hope IN the future and FOR YOUR future. I previously wrote that time does not heal wounds, but time does give us hope, which gives us power and reason to try again, love again, and live again, and so sometimes it just takes time. I am worried because I've already waited longer since 2013 to have a prospect for a better future than I did after I was divorced before a prospect appeared, and I've never had to wait this long before. Essentially, I'm in uncharted territory, and I'm nervous. As my last days as a missionary wound down and I remained bereft of anything to show for my efforts, and even when I got off the plane without any idea how any of those stories ended, I reached the end of my rope. However, I feel good about the fact that, over Elder Gertge's objections I continued to return to that complex to tract, because if we had gone elsewhere, we never would have met that family, and they would have had to wait longer for a season of perpetual hope.
I don't really know how this will end, and I don't know what form the end will take. I don't know how close I am to the end, but I know better than to give up now. Many people tell me to abandon my hopes, to leave my Faith, to give up on God, and to live it up, but this is who I am, and this is how I will stay. I saw God lead me to a better place, and although some fruits withered and died on the vine, I continue to improve my lot little by little, yard by yard, every year through His blessings and mercy. Yes, I attribute the blessings to Him because "against none is his anger so kindled as against those who confess not his hand in all things". People around you who talk about how you should trust and hope because they have seen it have reached their end, and that's why it's hard to listen to them. You don't really understand until you also arrive where they are, and they forget what it's like to be you because they reached the end of that trial and got to eat their watermelon. It took many miracles to establish my prior circumstances, and I expect it will take more to provide me with another opportunity, especially a better one. If you think that you're not worthy or whatever, that God will not bless you, especially if miracles are required to right your options, rest assured that God desires to bless us with the greatest of blessings; He understands that what we obtain easily we may esteem lightly. Consequently:
He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. 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 virtua 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 still 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.
At that point, where you still desire, still obey, still hope, because you don't obey unless you have at least some scintilla of hope, that is where you are beginning to see the end. Only after the trial of our faith do we see the end of our faith. Only after we plant the seed, nurture the seed, prune and dung and dig about it, can we actually hope to harvest. The Lord of the Harvest knows when the fruit is ready, what fruit we will enjoy, and how best to enjoy it. Only at the end will we understand as we look back how the loss and the struggle and pain we went through brought us to a better place. I'm not there yet. I may never be there in this life. I hope you do get there and get there soon, because I care about you and desire you to be happy and enjoy the blessings now. More than that, I desire what is best for you, for God, and for me. Only at the end will I understand how that really is the way it turns out to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment