Practice makes progress; Jesus makes perfect.

One might wonder what today’s message has to do with Jesus making us perfect…but as I said a couple of weeks ago, it is necessary for us to try to remove any erroneous expectations we might have towards the Lord, in order that our faith in Christ and what He will do for us can be founded in the truth. :)

What man or woman could put the Lord in their debt? Can any of us rightfully say, ‘Lord, I kept this commandment, so You’ve got to come through for me on what I’m expecting!’ It’s true that Jesus has said: “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise” (D&C 82: 10). And He has also revealed through the Prophet Joseph: “…when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (D&C 130: 21). But what did He mean by this? Can we really bind the Lord in what we want and in the timeframe we expect it? Can we force His hand? To me, that sounds like we’re pushing our own agenda rather than His?

Now, I realize that the Lord has made specific promises to those who keep specific commandments, and I think that’s what gives us this mentality of expectation, and even entitlement. But do we really understand what those promises are? For instance, I think many of us have assumed that if we pay our tithing and keep the Sabbath holy we will be prospered in temporal ways; and if we keep the World of Wisdom, we will have healthy bodies. The promises attached to those commandments appear to have that interpretation. However, you don’t have to live very long to discover that there are many Latter-day Saints who have faithfully paid their tithing and yet have still experienced great financial setbacks—some have suffered the loss of savings and property, some have watched their homes burn to the ground, and others have struggled in ongoing poverty. There are faithful Saints who have never taken a sip of alcohol in their life who have died from liver disease. There are others who have never put a cigarette to their lips who have died from lung cancer. There are those among us who have kept the Lord’s law of health from their childhood who now run and are weary, and who walk and are faint. There have been those among us who have honored their father and mother and yet their days were not long upon the land, which the Lord their God gave them.

Maybe we really don’t understand our Lord’s promises, or the prophetic language in which they are delivered.

King Benjamin, trying to assure his people how much the Lord was blessing them, said, “he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you” (Mosiah 2: 22-24). Now, in my experience, this cannot mean what I initially thought it meant. “He doth immediately bless you” cannot universally mean that we immediately see those blessings. But certainly a record is kept in heaven of the deeds of every person. Perhaps God is immediately blessing us in His determining or resolving to bless us in eternity; there will assuredly be blessings waiting for us, as treasures in heaven. But I, like every man, have not immediately seen all the blessings the Lord has determined to give to me for the keeping of His laws. Look at some of our great examples in history…Nephi was harshly treated by his wicked brothers, but would not murmur against the Lord, and yet remained tied up for four extremely difficult and painful days during that terrible storm at sea. Joseph was sold into Egypt by his brothers; he stayed faithful to God, even when betrayed and thrown into prison; he demonstrated great patience in prison, and yet he remained in prison still…for years! Job, even after all his afflictions came upon him, chose to bless God’s name and refused to turn against Him; and yet Job remained for quite a long while afterwards in his broken and pitiful condition. So, God doth not “immediately” bless us in the ways that we think.

What do all of these things mean? They mean that the Lord’s ways are not our ways. And if we’re not careful, that can get us into trouble. In our assuming certain things we could end up making incorrect judgments, about ourselves and others. We might see someone’s terrible problems and, like Job’s friends of old, we could charge each other foolishly. I have a friend whose brother stopped church activity because of something that happened on his mission. Some years later, he got cancer, and his father wrote him a letter saying, “See son, if you hadn’t turned away from God, he might not have struck you with this.” We think we know so much, and yet we are so consistently fools before God. But one thing is certain. God keeps His promises. His word is sure. If He says that we will be blessed for our obedience, then nothing will stop that from happening. It just might not be how or when we expect.

Now, we’re not the only ones who might not see the blessings we thought we would see in this life. Speaking of Noah, Abraham, and others of the early saints, the Apostle Paul said, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11: 13). So we see that many promised blessings are coming later.

Jeffrey R. Holland said: “Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come” (Ensign, Nov. 1999).

Faith is not us thinking we can force the Lord’s hand. Faith is not making Him bless us. Faith is trusting that if He doesn’t bless us according to our request, that He still did the right thing for us. It’s trusting that whatever He does is right…and that His every choice is what is best for us as we are slowly, and surely being made perfect—transformed into Christ’s image.

(to be continued…)

These will be the last two stories in this series of posts regarding those who witnessed the Savior that I will share. Next week I will follow up with some concluding thoughts.

Young boy from Utah
This boy was born with a genetic condition causing the muscles of the body to gradually get weaker. Because of this he had never walked but had spent all of his life confined to a wheelchair and in constant pain and discomfort. His pain was not just physical, but emotional as well. He had a very hard time watching other children his age do things he could not do. He felt very left out and alone. Because of his condition he developed severe scoliosis and a surgery was performed to straighten his spine by putting rods in his back. These rods would then be lengthened every six months, as he grew, so that he could grow like other boys and his lungs could expand. Surgeries were also performed to cut the tendons in his hips and knees so that his legs would straighten. The down side to all of this was the constant pain of having rods in his back, daily physical therapy for his legs, and surgeries twice a year until his body was fully grown, at which time permanent rods would be inserted. He had a lot of bad days and sad days wondering why he was born and why he had to go through all of this pain. He always knew to whom he could turn and he developed a great love for his heavenly Father and Savior. Once, when he was about nine or ten-years-old, he had the following experience:

“I was having a bad day and I wanted to go and pray! When I was in bed I said my prayers and told Heavenly Father my feelings. A couple of hours later, I saw a huge bright light—it was so bright…the whole room lit up—and I knew that it was Jesus. He called me by name and said to me that it was okay and that I would be with them soon. He then told me that when I would die that I would see a bright light and I was to go to that light and that someone would be there to meet me. I felt happy and the Spirit was so strong. When He spoke to me I did not see His lips moving but I heard His voice in my mind and my heart. I felt his words. His voice felt soft, really comfortable in my heart. I felt so good. It was incredible!

“I remember being kind of confused at first. It’s a really slim chance that someone gets to meet Jesus in this life. It was fascinating that this slim chance had happened to me.”

Teenage boy from Arizona
“When I was growing up I did not have a good childhood. My father was quite abusive on many levels and there were many times I wanted out! I prayed often for relief, for an end to it all.

“I was a good kid but I wasn’t perfect. I tried to do what was right but I could have been better. I loved the Lord and loved learning about the gospel. But an experience I had changed me. One night, when I was about fifteen-years-old, as I slept I remember finding myself in a room that was pure white. There were others in the room besides me and all were dressed in white robes. I did not see their faces but we were all standing waiting for something. It was then that a being entered the room, and although I did not see His face, I knew instantly by the power of the Spirit that this was the Savior. His spirit was so strong that we all fell to our knees. I will never forget that feeling! As I knelt He came by me and, touching me on the shoulder, asked me to stand. I stood, His arm around my back with His hand on my right shoulder. He then asked me a question, a question I will never forget. It was so simple, and yet, so powerful, so profound. It has changed my life. He simply asked, in a kind, loving, and soft voice, ‘What have you done?’ It was asked in a voice filled with love…no anger, no judgment, no harshness, simply love. I felt how much He loved me. Everything I had done to that point filled my mind. All things, both good and bad. All of my life, to that point, passed before my eyes in one second. It was as if He was asking me to remember all the good and bad I had ever done or thought so that I could be better! No hint of condemnation, just love! It was then that I woke up. The spirit was so strong that I could not move for several minutes. I felt weak. I didn’t want to move for fear that the feeling would go away. After a few minutes I regained my strength but the power of His voice and the power of His question has never left me.

“This experience has had a profound impact on me. It has been a source of strength and comfort to me over the years because I know that the Savior lives. I know it. As I breathe I know it. And even though there have been many hard and difficult times in my life, times that I have wanted to quit and give up, I knew that I never could because I know, as the sun rises, that He lives. I cannot and will never forget the feel of His arm around me and the love I felt in a sacred place when I heard Him speak my name and when I felt of His love. When the scriptures say that ‘God is love,’ I testify that it is true.”

(to be concluded next week…)

JEFF OLSEN
On the drive home from an Easter weekend visit to his wife’s family, Jeff Olsen, his wife, Tamara, their seven-year-old son, Spencer, and their one-year-old baby son, Griffin, were in a single-car accident that killed Tamara and little Griffin. Jeff’s injuries were very severe, eventually resulting in, among other things, the loss of one of his legs, but he later explained, “No physical pain could even come close to the spiritual pain of knowing that half of my family had been killed. My mind was tortured with thoughts of it. I could not escape those thoughts, not even with all the morphine [they were giving me].” Immediately after the accident, and over the course of the ensuing weeks, Jeff had multiple near-death experiences that strengthened his soul, and helped him get through the months and years of recovery.

“As they wheeled me into the [second] hospital and began to make arrangements to lift me into another hospital bed, I could feel myself slipping. I could feel all that darkness closing in on me for a second time. I was blacking out, passing in and out of consciousness. I could hear my mother begging me to hang on. I heard my brother trying to get the nurse’s assistance. I began to vomit violently.

“It was almost as if I was watching the whole scene from another dimension. Then the grief of the emotional loss hit me again deeper than ever. It felt like pure panic, and I wanted in the worst way to get out from under it all. I’d had enough. At my core, I simply could not take any more. The despair felt like a lead blanket of blackness over my soul.

“How could God allow this to happen to me? How could a God whom I believed was a loving father put me, or anyone, through such an ordeal? I knew at some level that others had gone through worse things, but the sting of what I was experiencing was exquisite, and I could find no escape, no comfort. I had attempted to turn to God through silent prayers, but he didn’t appear to be home.

“My mind was in a constant argument between faith, knowing there must be purpose in this somehow, and blame—blaming myself for the crash that caused the death of two of my family members and maimed me beyond repair….

“I had always thought I was such a tough guy. I thought I had learned to handle pain: working on the farm, riding bucking horses, training with the wrestling team, and bearing the impact of football. But those pains were nothing compared to this. And the emotional grief was indescribable. They had buried my wife and baby, and I hadn’t even been there. I felt so empty, so alone….

“The room began to close in on me….and it was like I was looking at the whole scene through a thick, round, glass portal. I became tiny lying on the bed…. 

“I continued to rise above the scene as my body became smaller and smaller. It was as if I were high above the room, looking down on myself. Everything was dark except my quivering body on the bed….my convulsing physical form, which continued to become smaller and smaller as I rose….

“I heard a hissing sound, and I was suddenly swept away from the horror of looking at myself to a more peaceful place outside in the still night. I didn’t hurt anymore, but I found myself observing an even darker scene. It was like I had broken through a time barrier somehow and was now standing in a garden, but it was no heavenly place. I could feel despair coming from an isolated spot. There I saw another man shivering and convulsing in tremendous pain. I heard his pleas and whimpers as he asked for his cup to pass. I watched from a distance, but I could actually feel his anguish, and watched as he trembled and bled. I heard the words: ‘The Son of Man has descended beneath it all. Are you greater than He?’

“I knew the man’s sorrow and grief. I could hear it, taste it, and feel it in the core of my soul. I shuddered. I was standing there, actually watching and feeling something awful yet sacred. I wanted to rush to him….I witnessed the suffering of this soul and knew I was not separated from it. The feeling of being connected and one with everything and everyone rushed over me….

“My consciousness raced back to my hospital room and into my body. Immediately I began to vomit violently again. However, something about what I had seen gave me higher perspective. I now viewed my situation differently. I no longer felt so sorry for myself….I was willing to fight, I decided. I had been sent back, and the suffering I was experiencing was mine alone to bear. Somehow, peace filled my soul. I began to feel calm and comforted. I found renewed strength. A new courage filled my heart, a knowledge that Jesus himself understood what I was going through personally. I was not alone. He knew me and was totally familiar with my pain, in the body and in the spirit. He had hurt. He had lost. He had suffered. He begged to have the bitter cup pass from him, and yet he accepted his life and his experience with childlike meekness. I now had the perspective to do the same.

“What if God’s hand had played a part in this whole ordeal somehow? What if there was a purpose in this madness? What if this was what I came here to experience in some way? Would this refine me and teach me things I could learn in no other way? The reality hit me. I’d been sent back to learn something. I too must rise again, having been made more whole by all of it….

“I was suddenly embraced by calmness that felt like a warm, soft blanket wrapped around me. I lay there, still quivering with pain but calmer in my heart. I was going to live!” (I Knew Their Hearts, [Cedar Fort, Inc, 2012], pp. 41, 48-53)

(to be continued…)

Speaking of the Lord’s command to us to “Be ye perfect,” C. S. Lewis gives us two wonderful analogies that help us see into the Lord’s determined heart. He says:

“Some people seem to think this means ‘Unless you are perfect, I will not help you’….But I do not think He meant that. I think He meant ‘The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less; but I will give you nothing less.’

“Let me explain. When I was a child I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least, not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this. I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else. I knew she would take me to the dentist the next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from the pain: but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists; I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. They would not let sleeping dogs lie….

“Now, if I may put it that way, our Lord is like the dentists….Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of….Well, He will cure it all right; but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full treatment….

“The job will not be completed in this life; but He means to get us as far as possible before death….

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.  He intends to come and live in it Himself.

“The command Be ye perfect is not…a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine….The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.” 

(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1960, pp. 171-75.)

The Old Fisherman
(by Mary Bartels Bray)

“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger and ye took me in.
“Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.

One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. “Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,” I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus till morning.”

He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success. No one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face. I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me. “I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.”

I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper prepared. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. “No thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him for a few minutes. It didn’t take long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint. In fact, every other sentence was prefaced with a “thanks to God” for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, my husband set up a camp cot in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast. But just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair.”

He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”

I told him he was welcome to come again.

On his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.

During the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box with fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose customers by putting up such people!”

Maybe we did lose customers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their own illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family will always be grateful to have known him. From him, we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.

Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all—a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.

I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!” My friend changed my mind.

“I ran short of pots,” she explained,” and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, until I can put it out in the garden.”

She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small, misshapen body.”

But that was long ago—and now, in God’s garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.

For I was afraid and ye gave me peace. I was blind and ye led the way. My body was in prison and ye understood. I was slower than others, but ye waited for me. I was discouraged and ye brought me cheer. I was limited, but ye understood the message of my heart.

“Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

(Adapted, Guideposts, June 1965, pp. 24-25.)

What comes after Christmas has passed?

Helmut Thielicke, a beloved German Theologian of the last century, shared the following:

“…of all people it is the poets who have become the pastors of our time, who do not hand out [idealistic sentiments], fulfillments, and solutions to problems but rather cry out their dread, their nothingness, and their despair to the world. How else can we explain the fact that people reach out for the poems of Gottfried Benn? The ‘Song of the Passion’ says: Wounds must heal wounds. The wounded seek refuge with the wounded. There they are understood, and that by itself means a lot.

“Every year around Christmastime thoughts like these come to me. People strain themselves to the utmost to give themselves and others a few hours of joy. Wishes are fulfilled; we step out of the moment, in which ordinarily we are completely absorbed, and restore connection with our own childhood. We remember our mothers in whose protecting care we once lived, the mothers who told us about the Christ Child and Father Christmas. The hardest men sing touching little songs, and in the soft light of candles our hearts leap up….[But] then when the candles burn down, leaving only blackened stumps or nothing at all, there comes a secret feeling of uneasiness: we have to go back behind the counter again in the big store, back to our examinations, the flurry in the office, or a clattering machine. This quiet world around the candles is so different from our ordinary life that we cannot connect the two, and in a short time the brightness vanishes behind us–like the lights of the station when we pass the curve.

“But the intent of Christmas is something totally different. The Child in the crib….was homeless. He was shoved off into a stable. Shortly afterward his parents went out on the road as refugees in order to escape Herod’s massacre of the children. Then came the life-long hostility of men; the Child always remained, even after he grew up, a fugitive. His heart trembled under the impact of all the temptations, and fears that shake us too. And finally this life ended as it began. He was shoved out of the world; he died on a gallows that had the form of a cross. This Man who loved infinitely, and therefore suffered infinitely as he saw men running headlong to their own destruction–they had no use for him. Crib and cross–they are both of the same wood, they are a piece.

“And I believe that all this, with all its terror, is infinitely more comforting than the soft, sweet spirit we seek at Christmas, which afterward leaves only a hung-over, letdown feeling if it is the only thing there is in it. Jesus Christ did not remain at base headquarters in heaven, receiving reports of the world’s suffering from below and shouting a few encouraging words to us from a safe distance. No, he left the headquarters and came down to us in the front-line trenches, right down to where we live and worry about what [our enemies] may do, where we contend with our anxieties and the feeling of emptiness and futility, where we sin and suffer guilt, and where we must finally die. There is nothing that he did not endure with us. He understands everything.

“….He does not wear the disinterested face of those people who live in the village called “religion” far behind the mountains of the wicked world; he has the eyes of a person who knows his way about the ruins in our life. Wounds must heal wounds. He became one of the wounded because he wanted to be one of us. And therefore that Face does not vanish when the candles go out. For this Figure knows everything: of my loneliness, when I am alone or in the midst of my fellows, of the things in my life that I cannot handle, of the villain who is bedeviling me, of all my fears. For this Companion is with me in the front-line trenches. I can accept everything from his hand, for his hand knows and controls all things. And he lets down the drawbridge by which I can enter the fortress, long since forgotten, where I shall be secure.”

(Christ and the Meaning of Life, Sermons of Helmut Thielicke, edited and translated by John W. Doberstein, [Harper & Row, 1962], pp. 17-19)

Wishing you a most blessed 2013! :)

Thanksgiving…a time to reflect on blessings, such as: a testimony of Christ and His gospel; loving family and friends; a comfortable house to shelter us from the world; delicious food to eat; electricity; running water; a variety of wonderful music, art, and entertainment to enjoy; an income to pay for our needs and even some of our wants…

If any of these are blessings you possess, they are wonderful things to be thankful for! However, these are good things…pleasant, enjoyable things. It is natural that we might be grateful for them. And yet, have you ever noticed that even some good things aren’t cherished by us unless we’ve had to go without? The idea of “an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2: 11) is more fundamentally for our good than we might tend to want to believe.

For instance, Jesus promises us “rest” in the next world. Well, frankly, rest wouldn’t mean that much unless it was preceded by work, and the more exhaustive the work, the more delicious the rest becomes to us. If you just sit around and rest all day, without the work, then the rest becomes dull, boring, and even distasteful. And it’s that way with everything…the longer you go without food, the more you enjoy the flavor and satisfaction of eating; the colder you get outside in the winter, the more enjoyable to your body the warmth of your house becomes; and so on.

So now, the big question: Are you thankful for your opposition? Are you thankful for your struggle, adversity, sickness, loneliness, heartbreak, temptation, enemies, poverty, physical limitations, etc.? Are you reflecting on those this Thanksgiving…and doing so with a grateful heart? That’s a much harder thing to do. All of that opposition was unwanted, and even painful. We are usually quite glad to be past any of it. Why would we want to go back to it in our minds and be grateful for it?

Consider this: if Adam and Eve had not transgressed and partaken of the fruit that had been forbidden them, the scripture says, “they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (2 Nephi 2: 22-23). Perhaps we tend to think of innocence as being without sin, or untainted by the ugliness of the world. But here, in this scripture we see that innocence means experiencing no opposites. Therefore, if you think about it, a small child can’t be profoundly happy since it has never been excruciatingly sad. It can’t fully, like an adult, rejoice in the love it receives from the humans around it because its undeveloped mind can’t possibly fathom the horrendous heartache of neglect and abandonment.

We are taught and shaped by these opposites. We gain understanding, compassion for others, and a view of the world that puts us all on an equal plane…for all suffer, and all question, and all are without some answers. But as time passes, we come to truly appreciate all the light of our lives because it is opposite of the dark we have known. And God intends to get us through this life, and—if we let Him—give us an abundance of light. I mean…what are the opposites of struggle, adversity, sickness, loneliness, heartbreak, temptation, enemies, poverty, and physical limitations? The opposites are the great and perfect things that our Father and Savior offer us in their kingdom. But before they pour the fulness of these things into our laps, they give us a world full of the things that are opposite…and our souls evolve.

I am a different, more complete person today because of my opposites. And I need to thank my God for that.

Helen Keller said: “I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

To come to be grateful for that which in the past has brought you the greatest adversity, affliction, pain, and self-doubt, is to see the possibility that the magnitude of your current joys might be in direct correlation with your previous sorrows.

Are you grateful for your opposites? I know, I know…easier said than done…

Happy Thanksgiving! :)