More than a decade ago I listened to the words of President
James E. Faust who said that he “felt great strength and power in the
presence of the Divine.” He
elaborated, saying, “A special, sacred feeling has been a sustaining influence and often a
close companion."
I often find myself studying the lives and examples of
apostles, and when I hear or read a statement like this, I can’t help but
wonder how I can achieve those same results.
I want to feel the great strength
and power that comes from being in the presence of the Divine. And I want to have a special, sacred feeling become a sustaining influence and close
companion in my life. The answer on
how to achieve this may be surprising.
When we back up and look at that complete statement in context, this is
what President Faust had to say,
“In the Gethsemanes of life which we all have, and often in my
present calling, I have gone to my knees
with a humble spirit to the only place I could for help. I often went in agony of spirit, earnestly pleading with God to sustain me in the
work I have come to appreciate more than life itself. I have, on occasion, felt a terrible aloneness of the wounds of the heart, of the sweet agony, the buffetings of Satan, and the encircling
warm comfort of the Spirit of the Master.
I have also felt the crushing burden, the self-doubts of inadequacy and unworthiness,
the fleeting feeling of being forsaken,
then of being reinforced an hundredfold.
I have climbed a spiritual Mount Sinai dozens of times, seeking to communicate and
to receive instructions. It has been as though I have struggled up an almost real Mount of Transfiguration and, upon
occasion, felt great strength and power
in the presence of the Divine. A special, sacred feeling has been a sustaining
influence and often a close companion."
Last April, President Eyring taught, “If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest
of times in life can be a blessing.”
President Faust clearly understood this principle. His life was not void of adversity, yet, as
he acted in faith, those moments of adversity actually served to bring him
closer to the Savior and helped him become more like our Father in Heaven.
President Eyring has been a favorite of mine for years, but
one thing I didn’t know about him was that he worked with a contractor building
footings and foundations when he was a young man. As he explained that process he said, “In a similar way, the ground must be
carefully prepared for our foundation of faith to withstand the storms that
will come into every life. That solid
basis for a foundation of faith is personal integrity.”
I don’t know about you, but I had never really thought of
integrity as being the solid basis that helped me through my adversities. But as he continued, I began to understand. He elaborated that personal integrity is
choosing the right consistently. He
said, “Our choosing the right
consistently whenever the choice is placed before us creates the solid ground
under our faith… Those choices, hundreds
in most days, prepare the solid ground on which our edifice of faith is built.”
As I ponder this in retrospect, I begin to see how the little
choices I make each day really have blessed me when facing difficulties in
life. My sister experienced a very
poignant example of this in her own life.
I was four or five months pregnant with my son Peter when my
sister suddenly announced that she was going to welcome a son into her home the
following month. She was surprising us
all with the news of an unexpected adoption.
She explained the circumstances of the adoption. She shared with us the questions and prayers -
the acting on faith that had led to this circumstance. She spoke of the hours she had spent in the
temple and the whisperings that had come to her over weeks and months. She was filled with faith, and as she shared
her wonderful news with us it was immediately accompanied by a spirit that
touched us all. We didn’t know this
unborn baby – we didn’t even know the birth mom of this child. But we felt an eternal connection that
radiated through our entire extended family.
My sister already had two daughters, so a son meant painting
the baby room blue, packing up all the pink clothes, and going shopping for
appropriate boy things. Preparations
were made in a whirlwind and we anxiously counted down the days to the due
date.
Then, my sister received a phone call. For a routine doctor visit, the birth mom had
gone to her appointment, and they were unable to find a heartbeat. The baby was delivered stillborn a few days
later.
It was a shocking an unexpected blow. Why had all these promptings come to follow a
path when it would end in such unfathomable heartache? My sister plunged into some of the darkest
moments of her life in the days that followed.
And many of us, though we didn’t despair to the same extent, felt keenly
the pain and suffering that she was experiencing.
And this is the part of the story, where choosing the right,
every day, little by little, made a difference for us. Nothing about the situation made any level of
sense. But the following weekend was
fast and testimony meeting and my mom, my sister and I all mentioned to each
other later, that in the midst of our questions and confusion, we had each had
the opportunity to share our testimonies of the love and goodness of God. In our
adversity, we fell back on the knowledge that we had gained through a lifetime
of personal integrity in following and trusting our Heavenly Father. And only that could sustain us.
I remember my sister talking about sitting on the chair in
the baby room freshly painted with blue walls.
She was rocking back and forth faithfully trying to understand what
miracle Heavenly Father was preparing her for.
Nothing could calm her troubled heart.
With good intentions, people all around her offered words of consolation
and counsel. But nothing eased the
intense pain she was experiencing. She
had faith that the Lord had raised people from the dead and really couldn’t see
anything short of that satisfying her aching heart or healing her from the agony
she was in.
And yet, she was healed.
This week
she sat in my living room, as we discussed the topic of my talk, and she
recounted what a strengthening experience that was for her. She expressed the understanding that trials
have since been easier as she has learned (and this is a direct quote from her)
“God knows the end from the
beginning and He, by His very nature, is a kind and loving father who
wants what is ultimately the very best for us - even when it doesn't seem like
the best thing to us, with our limited vision.”
As it turned out, that experience ultimately led to a
different adoption and brought her son into our family. In the midst of it, when people tried to
comfort her by saying that she could have another child, she mentally cried out
in anguish exclaiming that another child wouldn’t compensate for the loss of THIS child. It didn’t, and it never could. But the
atonement of Jesus Christ compensates for all loss in ways that cannot be
described, but must be experienced. Her
experience was that she has been healed from the pain. As my mom said to me this week, “Christ takes the sting out of adversity as
well as death. He will make it worth
your while.” We all wondered how it
would ever be possible to heal from such a difficult experience and yet now we
look back on it with gratitude.
After explaining that the hardest as well as the easiest
times in life can be a blessing, President Eyring went on to say, “In all conditions, we can choose the right
with the guidance of the Spirit. We have
the gospel of Jesus Christ to shape and guide our lives if we choose it. And with prophets revealing to us our place
in the plan of salvation, we can live with perfect hope and a feeling of
peace. We never need to feel that we are
alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never are. We can feel the love of God. The Savior has promised angels on our left
and our right to bear us up. And He
always keeps His word.”
There are different types of adversity. Some trials come as a result of our poor
choices and even sins. Some trials come
to us because of the sins of someone else.
Other trials seem to come by the hand of God. Some are even just a natural product of Earth
life. But regardless of the apparent
source of your trial, you can be strengthened to get through it, and more
importantly you can be healed from your heartache through the atonement of
Jesus Christ.
We all know
those famous words to Joseph Smith in response to his questions about why
certain difficulties had happened to him.
“Know though my son (or
daughter) that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for
thy good.”
And then,
“The Son of Man hath
descended below them all. Art thou
greater than He?”
I have had experiences that I really genuinely didn’t believe
could possibly be for my good. I just
didn’t. And one day I listened to a song
from Women at the Well where Mary and Martha sang to the Lord, “If though hadst
been here!” And they knew, like I knew,
that the Savior could have prevented their pain. But what they learned, and what it took me a
full year past that point to understand, was that the atonement is so powerful
that not only can it protect us from pains and sorrows, but it can heal us from
the most heart-wrenching and anguishing of experiences.
When I asked friends and family what thoughts they had about
adversity, my sister-in-law shared this quote by Elder Orson F. Whitney, “No pain that we suffer. . .is wasted. It
ministers to our education, to the development of patience, faith, fortitude,
and humility. All that we suffer. . .especially when we endure it patiently,
builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us
more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called Children of God. . .and it
is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the
education that we came here to acquire and which will make us more like our
Father and Mother in heaven."
I love the sweet story President Eyring told about words
spoken at his mother’s funeral. She had
died after a ten year battle with cancer.
President Kimball spoke at the funeral and said, “Some of you may have thought that Mildred suffered so long and so much
because of something she had done wrong that required the trials.” He then said, “No, it was that God just wanted her to be polished a little more.”
President Eyring said that his response to that statement was
simply to wonder, “If a woman that good
needed that much polishing, what is ahead for me?”
Likewise, as I have faced some of my greatest challenges in
life, I have looked around and realized I am not alone. “The Lord chastens those he loves.”
President Eyring said, “I
cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure you that your trials will
seem to you to be only for a moment. One
of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow
down and then appear almost to stop.”
He continued, “There
are reasons for that. Knowing those
reasons may not give much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of
patience. Those reasons come from this
one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly Father and the Savior want
you fitted to be with Them to live in families forever. Only those washed perfectly clean through the
Atonement of Jesus Christ can be there.”
In studying for and preparing this talk, I came to realize
that adversity is what gives us experience with the atonement so that we can
have confidence in its power when we need it to cleanse us from our sins. It really is through a perfect love and
understanding, that Heavenly Father allows us to experience all things – again,
with the promise that they will be for our good.
I have a testimony of these things. I know that Heavenly Father loves us beyond
our comprehension. I believe that all
experiences He allows us to have truly are for our good and given to us as a
great blessing. He will sustain each of
us even as we experience our own personal Gethsemanes of life.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.
