Many years ago, as a young parent, I prayed for patience.
And then I stopped :).
Heavenly Father took my up on my prayer, and o, boy! The first thing you have to learn before you can actually learn something is to learn how much you don't know something. It was painful, and I wasn't sure I was up to it. In fact, I knew I wasn't.
However, Heavenly Father thought differently and slowly, over the years and through one painful experience after another (see the "exploding peaches" episode in this blog a few years back...painful!), I have come to realize I am becoming more patient. Not finished "patient" yet, but more patient :).
Well, fast forward to the present day.
The last two months have been truly the most painful emotional time that I can remember next to experiencing Isaak's death, and at times I have felt on par with the emotional depth I plunged to during that time of my life. It has been searing. It has been jarring. It has been beyond description.
I have felt lonely, isolated, and misunderstood. I have been hurt time and again by people dear to me. While I am fully aware that "hurt" is often a choice and a perception on my part, it still hurt and I struggled with understanding the underlying emotions and personal reasons for feeling hurt, seeking at first to cope and then to approach the individual situations in a positive light.
And I have failed again and again and again as I have felt tested and tried in these particularly sensitive personal situations.
Now my inability to cope emotionally currently may be due to pregnancy; I am fully aware of that "emotional complication." However, the issues that have surfaced have been ones I have dealt with and repressed or treated in an unhealthy fashion for years and I feel for some reason now that I just need to face them and find healthy mental pathways for dealing with them. I have been daily praying, singing hymns, reading or listening to scriptures and a conference talk as part of my personal devotional, seeking to have the spirit as literally a lifeline at times when my understanding is clouded, my emotional state stormy and I am literally emotionally sinking beneath the waves. The answer I have found over and over and over again in my study and prayer is: "charity." Charity, which never faileth. Charity, which seeketh not her own and is not easily provoked (tough ones). Charity, with believeth all things, hopeth all things, and endureth all things.
My rambling may not make sense but I do have a point :). This morning, as I lay in bed and my mind started down those well-trodden, unhealthy pathways, the recent reminder of "charity" again floated through my head and I cried out mentally, "But it is so hard!"
Then came the answer: "It is what you prayed for, my child."
It hit me. As a project for a youth group I was doing this last semester, I studied charity and prayed for it. I prayed for it! The prayers of that month came back distinctly to my mind and I realized what was happening. Just as when I had prayed for patience so many years ago, I had prayed for charity. And what is the first step to learning how to be something? Learning how far you have to go. Ouch.
This reminds me of President Eyring and the experience he shared in Conference in the last few years about the time he prayed for a trial and subsequently received the hardest trial of his life. It reminds me of shortly before Isaak's death, when I wondered why I wasn't worthy of receiving "big trials"...and then I had one and realized that "worthiness" had nothing to do with it and that some of the trials I had faced privately for years before that were themselves comparable "refiner's fires"...without the support.
God is listening. Perhaps like with answering our own children's questionsL we are ready for the answer when we are ready to ask the question, but oh! I have so far to go and it has been soooo painful so far. Part of me knows it is worth it and part of me quails at the price, knowing how hard it has already been. Ah, well. Forward and onward.
And then I stopped :).
Heavenly Father took my up on my prayer, and o, boy! The first thing you have to learn before you can actually learn something is to learn how much you don't know something. It was painful, and I wasn't sure I was up to it. In fact, I knew I wasn't.
However, Heavenly Father thought differently and slowly, over the years and through one painful experience after another (see the "exploding peaches" episode in this blog a few years back...painful!), I have come to realize I am becoming more patient. Not finished "patient" yet, but more patient :).
Well, fast forward to the present day.
The last two months have been truly the most painful emotional time that I can remember next to experiencing Isaak's death, and at times I have felt on par with the emotional depth I plunged to during that time of my life. It has been searing. It has been jarring. It has been beyond description.
I have felt lonely, isolated, and misunderstood. I have been hurt time and again by people dear to me. While I am fully aware that "hurt" is often a choice and a perception on my part, it still hurt and I struggled with understanding the underlying emotions and personal reasons for feeling hurt, seeking at first to cope and then to approach the individual situations in a positive light.
And I have failed again and again and again as I have felt tested and tried in these particularly sensitive personal situations.
Now my inability to cope emotionally currently may be due to pregnancy; I am fully aware of that "emotional complication." However, the issues that have surfaced have been ones I have dealt with and repressed or treated in an unhealthy fashion for years and I feel for some reason now that I just need to face them and find healthy mental pathways for dealing with them. I have been daily praying, singing hymns, reading or listening to scriptures and a conference talk as part of my personal devotional, seeking to have the spirit as literally a lifeline at times when my understanding is clouded, my emotional state stormy and I am literally emotionally sinking beneath the waves. The answer I have found over and over and over again in my study and prayer is: "charity." Charity, which never faileth. Charity, which seeketh not her own and is not easily provoked (tough ones). Charity, with believeth all things, hopeth all things, and endureth all things.
My rambling may not make sense but I do have a point :). This morning, as I lay in bed and my mind started down those well-trodden, unhealthy pathways, the recent reminder of "charity" again floated through my head and I cried out mentally, "But it is so hard!"
Then came the answer: "It is what you prayed for, my child."
It hit me. As a project for a youth group I was doing this last semester, I studied charity and prayed for it. I prayed for it! The prayers of that month came back distinctly to my mind and I realized what was happening. Just as when I had prayed for patience so many years ago, I had prayed for charity. And what is the first step to learning how to be something? Learning how far you have to go. Ouch.
This reminds me of President Eyring and the experience he shared in Conference in the last few years about the time he prayed for a trial and subsequently received the hardest trial of his life. It reminds me of shortly before Isaak's death, when I wondered why I wasn't worthy of receiving "big trials"...and then I had one and realized that "worthiness" had nothing to do with it and that some of the trials I had faced privately for years before that were themselves comparable "refiner's fires"...without the support.
God is listening. Perhaps like with answering our own children's questionsL we are ready for the answer when we are ready to ask the question, but oh! I have so far to go and it has been soooo painful so far. Part of me knows it is worth it and part of me quails at the price, knowing how hard it has already been. Ah, well. Forward and onward.
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