Sooo I was asked to give a talk in church. I thought I'd copy and paste it here for posterity!
At certain times
in my life, I have wondered why my prayers were seemingly not answered as
quickly as I thought they should be. After the passing of our first child, my
husband and I waited the requisite three months to try and conceive again. We
desperately wanted a child – not only to fill the holes in our hearts and empty
arms, but also simply because we yearned to be parents. This pursuit, we
reasoned, was a righteous one, and after the loss of our child certainly the
Lord would quickly grant our desire.
A month passed,
then another. Soon, my body stopped functioning the way I needed it to so we
could conceive. I became very discouraged. We had been faithful. We had
followed the Lord through one of the most difficult trials either of us had
faced, yet here we were, struggling to fulfill our righteous desires.
By the time we’d
reached three months post-partum, Charles and I were living in Plattsburg in a
home we were renting from an acquaintance of my brother. It was a cute little
house and we loved having our own place, but we soon realized why the house had
be sitting empty before we moved in. One
of those reasons: Mold. It was in the kitchen, around appliances, under carpets
which had been soaked over and over again from a leak in the back door, and
ohhhh that smell wafting up from the basement….
While we loved
the independence, we realized the living situation was anything but hygienic,
and Charles’s hours had become irregular and sporadic at work. We decided to
move. With all my focus on the move, I didn’t think much of the strange
symptoms I had begun to experience. It’s so easy to hope yourself into symptoms
that I’d decided to let my body do its thing and essentially ignore the signs
I’d been waiting for.
Long story
short: we’d conceived Charlotte. They say “hindsight is 20/20” and Charles and
I both believe the Lord was waiting for us to leave a potentially harmful
situation before blessing us with the little girl we so desperately desired. To
add to this, Charles lost his job shortly after we moved. Had we been living
where we were before, we would not have been able to meet our financial
obligations.
How often have
you noticed the wisdom of the Lord’s timing when looking in hindsight? How many
times have you thought “I’m glad this
certain thing didn’t happen at that
point because it did happen at
the best time possible”? I’m sure each one of us has an example of a time we
had planned to be somewhere and one thing or another prevented us from keeping
those plans. We then found out something would have happened if we’d been
there, or things turn out better for us in the alternate plans.
Let’s pretend
you were alive during 1912. You’re originally from Ireland, but seeking more
opportunities for you and your family. You scrimp, save, and sacrifice in order
to secure steerage tickets on a ship heading to America. When the day comes to
leave, you’re all packed and ready to go. You couldn’t be more excited. You
arrive early to drop off your bags – only something is wrong. Somehow, you’ve
misplaced one of the tickets and you need all of them to get your family onto
the ship. You’re devastated as, later that day, the ship you’d dreamt about
taking you to a better life leaves without you. Life proceeds as it had before
while you work on purchasing tickets for another voyage. Would you be tempted
to sink into despair? To question why the Lord had deserted you when you were
just trying to get a better life for your family?
What if I told
you the ship you were trying to go to America on didn’t make it. It hit an ice
burg and sank, killing over 1500 people. As a man, you had an 80% chance of
perishing in the accident. As a woman or child you would have had a better
chance of survival, but do you think any of those who missed being on the Titanic
felt upset they had missed it after hearing of the disaster which awaited the
passengers? Do you think they had more trust for the Lord and His plans when
they realized they may not have survived the trip they’d desperately wanted to
take?
Elder Neal A.
Maxwell said “Faith [in the Lord] includes trust in [his] timing.” We know the
Lord loves us. He has already demonstrated this. He wants the best for us and
has only asked us to ask Him and have
faith that He will provide. When we really want (or even feel we need)
something, do we trust that He will provide it when the time is right or do we
think we must have it this instant?
At risk of death
glares, I will share another personal example. I attended public school, and it
seemed there was always something my school had me bringing home which asked for
money. Money was always fairly tight growing up, and I remember my mother
frequently groaning and asking “When is the last day to turn in the money?” I
came to both expect and dread this question, but I would answer her
none-the-less and typically the requests were met with payment by the time it
was due. Even better, whatever benefit I gained from payment of the money was
always the same as those who had paid early – it didn’t matter that it’d come
“just in time.”
Our Lord does
something similar, only He doesn’t need to ask when you need something. He
knows what you need and exactly when you need it. Unfortunately, many people
fall prey to worry and anxiety, forgetting to recognize that if they truly need
something, the Lord will provide.
I have a dear
friend who recently offered me several bags of baby girl clothing she had been
saving for years in hopes of clothing her own little girl one day – a girl who
has yet to come to their family. Although she had been collecting this clothing
for years and likely had an emotional attachment to some of the pieces, she
freely offered her entire stash, saying, essentially, “If we end up needing
girl clothes in the future, we’ll come up with them. The Lord has always
provided for us. What we need may come just in the nick of time, but we always
have it when we need it.”
This struck me
because I’m a worrier of the worst kind. When I face an issue, especially those
I can’t control, I agonize over solutions. Where will the money we need come
from? When will we be able to be on our own? What is the best answer for this
or that? I want answers now, and if I can’t find them I tend to search and
search until I wear myself out.
When I was asked
to give this talk, I was told the topic was to be “waiting on the Lord.” As in,
waiting for His will to be done in your life. However, sometimes people tend to
interpret this as “waiting on the Lord to give me what I want.” I want to be able to provide nice things
for my family and not have to struggle with money. I want to be patient and kind, preferably without having to endure
the experiences it takes to become so. I want
to see my daughter again – like, now. I want
peace in the world, to know my Great-Grandmother and all sorts of worthy things….
But do I need them at this moment in my life? If someone we love passes away,
or something negative happens in the world, does that mean the Lord doesn’t
love me or care what I want?
My life has been
a process of learning to accept that the Lord knows what I want and what I
need. Many times, I have wanted something intensely, only to find the realization
of that goal would have kept me from even greater blessings in the future. The
Lord has said “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways.” He can see the past, the present, and the future all in one eternal
round. He knows what is best for me in my life; even if that means righteous
desires go unfulfilled. Sometimes even certain righteous desires, like having
children, a reunited family, health and strength, et cetera, are not what are
best for us in that moment or in our lives at all. We must learn to be grateful
for our Savior’s wisdom in blessing us with what we actually need instead of
focusing on what we might feel we have been denied.
Faith in our
Savior means accepting His timetables and the absolute fact that He wants you to have what you need. Those
who study their scriptures daily can attest that the Lord frequently answers
burning, current life questions through the words of long-deceased prophets -
but not a second before you start looking. Sacrament meetings have long heard
accounts of one thing or another coming in an hour of need from unclear
origins.
These examples
are often as simple as a home or visiting teacher calling to check on someone
when they feel moved to do so, or there suddenly being enough money in the bank
to cover all your bills when, just days or hours before, there seemed not to
be. Occasionally, what we actually need is patience and we are tasked with
waiting for answers; or humility and we must be willing to ask for or accept
help.
Do you have
faith in the Lord’s timing or do you - like I tend to do - agonize and worry away
moments in which we could be building our faith in the Savior and His infinite
ability to provide? Do you trust Him to guide your life in ways which benefit
you in the eternities better than you can imagine with your finite
understanding? I urge you, when you feel like giving up or like situations in
your life are hopeless, to instead get down on your knees and pray for an
increased measure of faith in the Lord’s timing and to be able to accept His
plans as your own because, in the end, maybe that’s actually what you needed
all along.
I submit that,
instead of “waiting on the Lord” to decide to bless us with something, He is
waiting on us – to learn an important lesson, grow our faith, increase our
patience, foster humility, or even just be humble enough to ask.
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