God’s Purposes

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways... Isaiah 55:8

This personal revelation/following the Holy Ghost thing is not as straightforward as I used to think. For many years I believed that following a prompting of the Spirit meant there were certain guarantees.  This was a problem for me since I knew people that clearly thought they were following the Spirit when they made important decisions and yet those decisions caused difficulty and even heartache in their lives.  I usually decided that they must have been wrong in their understanding of what the Spirit told them to do.  (Sorry—I know that is so arrogant of me to decide that for someone else, but I didn’t know how else to think about it!)  Then one day someone said to me “Just because the Spirit guides us to do something doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out easy or even well—it may be that the Spirit is guiding us to an experience that will test us and provide needed growth—and those situations are often difficult.”

This conversation marked a real turning point in my understanding of how the Spirit works in my life.  I assumed that I understood.  Enough. (ahhh….how dumb can I be, and how often???) Lately, though, I think I’ve been having little lessons showing me that that scripture from Isaiah is more true than I have understood.

 

In October I suddenly was motivated (above and beyond my own human ability to be motivated) to paint my kitchen cabinets.  When Russ found out 4 days later that he was being laid off I immediately jumped to the conclusion that God was giving me a head start to get my house ready to sell.  The next week I found out that because I had been so busy working on my kitchen I had been protected from being involved in an emotionally difficult situation the day before the layoff—one that would surely have impacted my ability to be calm and loving (and calm) for Russ the next day.  When I realized that I thought hooray!  Maybe we don’t have to sell our house after all!  But as the weeks have passed it has seemed clear that getting our house ready and putting it on the market is the right thing to do.  It seems possible that the motivation/inspiration to work on the cabinets actually had at least two purposes.

 

I blogged last week about getting an answer to an almost random prayer for help in figuring out how to use two different fabrics to make the girls’ Christmas pajamas.  The next day (after blogging about it) I started cutting out the rest of the fabric, only to realize that I did not have enough of the new flannel.  “Heavenly Father,” I thought, “how can this be?  You did not mention that I should be really careful cutting out those pj pants.  You did not suggest that I would have to go and buy more fabric.”  I was really bothered by this for a couple of days.  Clearly my revelation was incomplete! 

But as I thought this through more I saw it a bit differently.  I realized—the Spirit didn’t need to tell me that there wasn’t enough fabric—because that was something I was going to learn on my own.  The Spirit didn’t need to tell me to go buy more fabric, because that was something I was going to figure out just as soon as I realized there wasn’t enough fabric.  The Spirit gave me the information I didn’t have and couldn’t figure out on my own.  No more than that.

 

This last example is the most perplexing to me, because I have no answers for it right now.  As I mentioned before, two weeks ago I dropped my computer.  Which I had randomly had Russ back up the day before.  I was so grateful for the prompting to back the computer up.  When the new hard drive arrived a few days later we found that things were not as they had seemed.  Russ had backed up my computer, but we learned that for the last couple of months (since I switched over to Jason’s computer with Windows 7) the backup had been incomplete.  It had not backed up any new pictures this fall.  Additionally, since Russ assumed that everything was backed up he tried fixing the computer differently, and these differences ensured that he would not be able to recover anything from the dropped hard drive—which he might have otherwise. 

My original assumptions seem to be all wrong.  I wasn’t protected from losing any of my pictures.  In fact, the thought that I was protected may have resulted in a greater loss.  The only benefit that I can see is that I wasn’t at all stressed in those few days while we waited for the new hard drive to come. But at the same time, I can’t question the timing of the thought to back up the computer—I still believe that it was a prompting from the Spirit. 

I don’t have any answers for this one, other than to say that maybe someday I’ll understand better.  And that I can see that my understanding of the complexity of personal revelation has increased a little.  And that that scripture in Isaiah is making a little more sense…

 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my way... 
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9

 

 

PS—It seemed important to blog about this.  Writing everything out usually clarifies and solidifies things for me.  And since this blog is a record of what is happening in my life and what I’m thinking about, this certainly qualifies.  Additionally, I realized that it’s probably important for me to leave these thoughts for my kids too.  So that one day when they have an experience with the Spirit and they immediately think it means X, and later find out it means Y, or that they can’t even figure out a meaning at all, they’ll remember that I had those moments too. 

PPS—I just read this aloud to Russ.  I do that sometimes when I’ve written something that I’m not sure about.  That way I get his opinion and proofread it better too.  When I was done reading I asked, “Does it make sense? Is it ok??”  And he said that yes, he thought it was good.  And then I said, “But it’s not one of those things that is all neat and tidy—I can’t wrap it up all pretty with a bow on top.”  And he got this really funny look on his face, and he said “That’s life!  When have you ever been able to wrap things up and put a bow on top?”  Um, good point…

PPPS—the new hinges have arrived for the cabinets, but installing them will have to wait until after the holidays.  Don’t worry, I will post lots of kitchen pics when it’s all done!