Macbeth and Emotions

To be able to not only recognize emotions and pain but to acknowledge them openly and seek to identify what is really happening is a powerful skill...one I am still working on.

It is interesting how God works with us.  For the past few nights I have awakened for a 4 am feeding with the baby unable to sleep. Powerful thoughts and emotions course through my mind and body as I struggle with an ongoing situation in my life.  I am awake for a few hours, catch a little more sleep, but spend too much of my days in a daze as I wage this inner, emotional war seeking for truth and resolution.


Well, this particular morning after feeding my wee one, I went out into the family room to download all my emotions onto my personal journal pages--seeking in the process a little more clarity, refinement and understanding of the maelstrom within.  As I pulled up my gmail to log-in, I felt drawn to the most recent article by Stephen Palmer: "Man Up." (Click for the link...worth the read.)

This article reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Macbeth:  Macduff has just discovered that Macbeth, in retaliation against Macduff for fighting against him, has slaughtered everyone in Macduff's castle, including his wife and children.  Macduff is beside himself with grief and his new leader, Malcolm, basically says, "Buck up.  Be a man.  Let's go fight like men and be revenged." Move on, Malcolm is urging, and leave your womanly emotions behind!

Macduff's response touched me when I saw the performance on stage.

"I shall do so; But I must also FEEL it as a man."

Let me mourn, Macduff is pleading!  Let me feel these powerful emotions that course within me!  Let me identify them.  And in the process of acknowledging and identifying my pain, it will make me stronger to do what I must do.

The emotional warfare in my soul this morning is just beginning, but I hope it will be worth it.

--Da Vinci, "War"

NEVER underestimate the strength that comes with being able to acknowledge and deal with powerful emotions.

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(Here is the actual, cool Shakespearean version from "Macbeth" :)...)
ROSS    Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
    Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
    Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
    To add the death of you.
MALCOLM    Merciful heaven!
    What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
    Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
    Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.    210
MACDUFF    My children too?
ROSS    Wife, children, servants, all
    That could be found.
MACDUFF    And I must be from thence!
    My wife kill'd too?
ROSS    I have said.
MALCOLM    Be comforted:
    Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
    To cure this deadly grief.
MACDUFF    He has no children. (Love that line!  Amen!) All my pretty ones?
    Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
    What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
    At one fell swoop?
MALCOLM    Dispute it like a man.
MACDUFF    I shall do so;    220
    But I must also feel it as a man
--
ACT IV SCENE III Macbeth, Shakespeare

What the Lord has in store for us...

I love the scripture I just read in the Book of Mormon and wanted to share:

And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands. (Ether 2:7)

Sometimes the Lord doesn't let us stop because He knows there are incredible vistas ahead.  Keep building those barges.  Don't give up.

And here is an amazing follow-up quote I read soon after that scripture:

"With mortal eyes, we might be tempted to envision that a more fitting path for such a man and such a moment would be a path of greater ease, efficiency, and acclaim. In recognition of the earth-shattering events about to happen as a consequence of this boy entering this town at this time, could not the Lord, who so carefully orchestrated the placement of the golden plates over a millennia earlier, have provided a straighter, more comfortable and heralded path of arrival?

Yes, He surely could have, but He did not.

There was no prominent, prophetic anointing of Joseph in his childhood (see 1 Samuel 16:11–13). There was no directive dream pointing him to a promised land (see 1 Nephi 5:4–5). There was no curious Liahona to help his family avoid missteps along the way (see 1 Nephi 16:10; Alma 37:38). And there certainly was no open-air limousine traveling along a sunny, streamlined parade route with cheering masses providing a triumphant welcome.

Rather, for Joseph and his family, there was a wildly meandering trail of sorrow marked with bad luck, ill health, poor judgment, natural disaster, crushing pain, callous injustice, continuing obscurity, and unrelenting poverty. This is not to suggest that the Smith family lived in one continual round of abject misery; they did not. But the path to Palmyra was anything other than direct, prosperous, and publicly notable. Lame, limp, and bloodied, the Prophet literally had to be carried to his unparalleled rendezvous with destiny by a nameless stranger.

Remember this as perhaps the first lesson of Joseph’s life and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In spite of failure, mishap, and bitter opposition—and in many cases precisely because of those things—Joseph Smith got exactly where he needed to be to fulfill his mission. So, if now or on some future day, you look around and see that other perhaps less-devoted acquaintances are succeeding in their jobs when you just lost yours; if major illness puts you on your back just at the moment critical tasks of service seem to come calling; if a call to a prominent position goes to someone else; if a missionary companion seems to learn the language faster; if well-meaning efforts still somehow lead to disaster with a fellow ward member, a neighbor, or an investigator; if news from home brings word of financial setback or mortal tragedy you can do nothing about; or if, day after day, you simply feel like a bland and beaten background player in a gospel drama that really seems made for the happiness of others, just know this: many such things were the lot of Joseph Smith himself at the very moment he was being led to the stage of the single most transcendent thing to happen on this earth since the events of Golgotha and the Garden Tomb nearly 2,000 years earlier.

“But,” you may say, “my life and earthly destiny will never be like that of the Prophet Joseph.”

That probably is true. But it is also true that your lives do matter to God, and your eternal potential and that of every soul you will meet is no less grand and significant than that of the Prophet Joseph himself. Thus, just like our beloved Joseph, you must never give up, give in, or give out when life in general, or missionary work in particular, gets utterly painful, confusing, or dull. Rather, as Paul teaches, you must see that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28; emphasis added).

Just as He did with young Joseph Smith, God is shaping and directing you every single day to ends more glorious than you can know!"