Sunday, July 18, 2010

Do I Trust God?

June 2010 1055
(continued from my blog post yesterday)

Yesterday I blogged about the experience I had in church a couple of months ago.  For a few minutes I felt flooded with a heightened understanding of how truly blessed we have been.

As I told Russ about the experience later I told him how it made me feel.  It made me afraid: afraid of what Heavenly Father was trying to prepare me for.

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 I’ve been working a lot this year on my relationship with Heavenly Father, particularly trying to understand why I have a hard time feeling His love.

In that moment in of telling Russ that I was afraid, I had a moment of clarity.

if I am afraid of God
if I mistrust his plan for me
and am afraid it will hurt me
How can I feel His love?

(I think that the initial reaction is to protest at first that of course we feel God’s love. 
 But truly—can we really feel loved by someone we are afraid will hurt us, or allow us to be hurt?)

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Having this whole experience was a real breakthrough for me.  In that moment I could see two possibilities.

My reaction: I am so afraid of what is coming and I am not sure how we will survive. 

Faithful reaction: It will be interesting to see what is coming and I am sure we will survive, learn, and grow.
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It is so easy to get wrapped up in my plan.  My Plan for My Life.  And then to be frustrated when things don’t go according to My Plan.  To wonder why Heavenly Father isn’t hearing my prayers and making things go the way I’ve Planned.  And to be afraid of what might happen.

It has been a lot easier this time.  As each new financial crisis has appeared I have been calm.  At a certain point I felt incredulous and amused—what are the chances that all these problems would happen in such a short period of time?!?

I have wondered how on earth we will get through this, and how long it will take us to pay everything off.  But never with a sense of anger, or frustration, or panic.

Always with a little reminder in the back of my mind that this life is a test, and we have been promised that “…all things work together for good to them that love God…”

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I’m hoping that as I work on trusting Heavenly Father more completely, I will also begin to be able to feel His love in a more meaningful way. 
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[I said to Russ after our conversation, “Do you think I think about weird things?”  And he said, “Well…I was just thinking about how green the grass was…”]

3 comments:

  1. Excellent points. And in the grand scheme of things, if given the choice, would we really choose the easy life of very little growth and progress over a difficult life that will shape us into who we need to be. It reminds me of my fifth grade English teacher (who was a DEAD ringer for Cher!) who let us choose the easy spelling list or a harder one- it was up to us. I always chose the hard one.

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  2. That Romans scripture is our ward's scripture of the month for July! What a beautiful way of putting your insights, and so fitting for our current state of limbo. The Lord has always taken care of us, so why do I worry about the future unknown details?! It reminds me of a past talk by Thomas S. Monson -- instead of asking 'Why me?' when faced with hard times, it's more helpful to ask 'What can I learn from this?'

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  3. Megan--I have thought about you guys again & again as we have been through this financial inconvenience. It has given me comfort to know that Heavenly Father is equally aware of your family and your needs. And great reminder of the Pres. Monson quote!!

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