I had a friend recently share a vulnerable post, as she put it. I appreciated and learned from her candor and courage. I hope that what I share will be similar for any others who may be struggling with the same thing.
I kept this letter to Kel in it's entirety. I am not sure why I felt I should send it to him, or why I feel I should post it now. I guess I will take it down later if it turns out to be a bad idea. Sometimes the right thing to do is not clear...and sometimes we need to just make choices without being led by the hand every step of the way :S.
"
Morning, son :).
Yes, check out the hour. Another crazy middle of the night episode for the mom-ster. It sure can be funny things that get us out of bed.
I felt that I should share something with you. Hope it is inspiration.
It has been an interesting last couple of days. I have had a couple of things thrown my way, things that I have experienced, that have led to a chain of thoughts that I was lying awake musing about this morning. And felt I should write about.
I think the experiences themselves are of little note in themselves but my thoughts have been different, challenging. I have felt something of a silence from the heavens off and on for a little while and it has bothered me. If not silence, it has felt like a lessening of the Spirit off and on for some time. Last night, Lily shared some feelings she had been having about being afraid to pray, feeling like she wasn't getting answers, feeling the Spirit. I wonder if I have been experiencing these things so that I would ask the right questions. You know, if you don't have things that make you ask questions or challenge your way of thinking, you would never be thinking about the answers to those questions when someone else comes to you with that same question. I thought the timing was...interesting.
Anyway, (my gift is not one for using few words...I will try), as I have been thinking about this silence from the heavens, I have briefly wondered about why:
-personal lack of worthiness: hmmm...maybe. I am not perfect, but I have a desire and I am sincere, so I am not sure that this is it.
-maybe God really isn't there? I, too, have thought of this...really thought about this because a silence can mean many things. It has been interesting to walk in the darkness for a while and have to candidly look back on my life and personal experiences and ask: was it God all those times or just my imagination? Ironically, in the past 24 hours, things/experiences have come up where times in my past where I have known God is there (crazy, miraculous things) and I have had the opportunity to not only reflect on them but to share them with others...they have flowed in as part of our conversation.
It has made me think about, again, why this silence? I think it was no coincidence that Dad asked Drew to give a FHE lesson on prayer last night and Drew said that God always answers our questions...just sometimes we have to wait until after we are dead. While we all laughed about that, it hit me. I really have been thinking about it.
Faith:
21 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
So not hearing God's voice or Spirit doesn't mean I don't have faith. In fact, faith by definition is to hope for things that are not seen (or felt) but are true. My empirical evidence in my life and experience points unequivocally to an existence of God. So if that is the case, again, why this silence...
In the last days, it is said that even the elect shall fall. I see it happening all around me. Brother Moore shared something he heard from our stake recently. The Stake President felt inspired to issue a prophetic statement of sorts at a recent meeting. He said that if we were not reading the Book of Mormon that even the very elect, the "highest" among us would fall. Shortly thereafter a bishop from our Stake left the church. Left his office. Dad said he knew exactly who the man was. He had been attending the trainings once a month and the last couple times he saw him, Dad could tell that something was wrong. Interesting. I have had some dear friends who quote scripture and the confirmation of divine direction as they stop coming to church. I pray that I am like the figurative friend on the wall watching Nephi slay Laban counter to everything I have been taught and try not to judge and just hope.
I have been thinking in the last few hours about Job: he suffered for a great while without answers and was still able to testify, "yet I know that there is a God." Gideon, the prophet, exercised faith despite his doubts (check out that story! Pretty crazy). I thought about experiences that people had in the scriptures where they struggled in prayer. There are so many! Joseph Smith's first "answer" to his prayer was an attack of darkness. Enos prayed all day before he got an answer. The Bible Dictionary says that prayer is a form of work.
The final image that I cannot seem to get out of my mind is the vision of the tree of life. The mist of darkness are real. What does darkness look like? Well, quite frankly, what I have been experiencing lately. It doesn't say that light pierces the darkness while we are blindly grasping that iron rod, that word of God. We are told that the word of God is the scriptures, not necessarily the Spirit. I thought it interesting how strong the message from President Monson was to read the Book of Mormon daily. So I have been. Even when I don't feel the Spirit with it. Lily mentioned this same conundrum. Acting in faith isn't always logical. I guess I am still hoping.
Will God always answer? I guess, like Drew said, yes...but sometimes we have to wait for the answer until after we die.
But why?
Then I thought about what the purpose of this life was. It is not to have happy feelings of peace and joy the entire ride through. Sure, it is that we might have joy, but having joy isn't guaranteend immediately. In fact, looking at any prophet's life, it doesn't come for a while sometimes. I have experienced both peace and joy. I cannot deny it.
This life is a test. How can it be a test if the teacher is always there, giving you the answer right when you ask for it? How can our desires truly be tested if we always get what we want? Is it my desire to be like God that keeps me going or my desire to be fed with immediate blessings?
I thought it again, no coincidence, that Brother Roberts was asked to speak yesterday, the same day I have these questions, challenges (doubts?) going through my mind. As I was listening to him (remember him? Soft-spoken old country gentleman with a gentle smile?), he told some interesting stories.
The first was a joke he ran across in an Reader's Digest many years ago. He said, "It is a joke, but I take it very seriously."
Jesus, Moses, and an old bearded guy were playing golf. On the first tee, Moses shanked his ball into a lake. He parted the water and hit his ball onto the green.
Jesus teed off, hitting his ball into another water hazard. But he walked on water and stroked his ball just short of the cup.
Then the old man with the beard stepped up for his tee shot. He hit the ball with tremendous force, but hooked it badly. The ball bounced off the clubhouse roof, hit the cart path, and rolled down a hill into a pond, coming to rest on a lily pad. A frog hopped over and picked up the ball, then an eagle swooped down, snatched the frog, and flew over the green. The frog dropped the ball, and it rolled into the cup for a hole in one.
Moses turned to Jesus and said, "I hate playing golf with your dad."
He was in tears as he shared the part of how God got a hole in one.
This gentle man concluded: "I am the frog with the golf ball in its mouth and I am still waiting for the eagle."
He then shared the plot line for a story called "Born Free," about a lion that was raised in captivity, got used to it and grew to 400/600 lbs (I can't remember which). Anyway. Huge. Too big for the people to keep caring for. So they decided it needed to learn how to survive on its own. They left it by itself for varying lengths of time and would always step in when the lion showed signs of suffering or hardship.
Then they decided that they truly wanted this lion to learn how to be free, knowing that they were doing it no favor by keeping it from it's heritage, what it was born to do.
They left it alone for over a year. As they saw the lion off and on at first, it was obviously struggling, starving...suffering. They knew that for this lion to truly fulfill the measure of its creation it needed to become a lion, not a spoiled 400 lb house cat.
One night, a lion walked into their camp. It was their lion, followed by 4 little lion cubs. Their lion had discovered its strength, its purpose.
As I was listening to this story, tears streamed down my face as Brother Roberts pointed out that we have a measure of our creation to fulfill and the truth of the silence hit me. God has given me a good life, led me along, fed me. What are the desires of my heart? Is it truly to know God and be like Him? What price am I willing to pay? Am I willing to walk through the darkness?
Mother Theresa experienced a similar darkness that she relates in her autobiography, a time when she set out to do what she knew God wanted her to do...and then He wasn't there! She struggled with it and then determined that she knew it was a good and right thing that she was doing and that she would continue on. I feel like my silence is the same.
I have felt confirmation for years that having the children I do, living the life I live, believing the things I do are good and right. The confirmation has always come relatively quickly if I earnestly work and seek it out...sometimes a little more quickly. So why this silence? Maybe God is stepping back, helping me see that I do have a choice, that I do have my freedom and am not just dutifully following directions. Maybe He is letting me feel that this is my own choice, made freely and independent of external rewards that have been so immediate in the past.
Will I continue to hold to the rod in this mist of darkness? Yes. I have seen no better answer out there. I have seen blessings that come from obedience, even if, as it says in D&C 59 that God blesses the righteous with more commandments. (Read that the first time and went...ouch! Really??) And have seen it in my life. Commandments are truly gates that open up more blessing and opportunities for us. But sometimes we are only shown how important obedience to a specific law is after we have shown obedience to simpler laws. Interesting.
Well, I can feel that I am rambling now. Maybe I can go back to sleep now that I have shared this with you.
I love you for who you are. Make whatever choices you want to and you will always have that love. I appreciate our experiences together to know that. Know that you have a choice, whatever situation you are in. And, again, that I will always love you, my son.
Sok szeretettel,
Anyuci"
