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Normally, you wake up in the morning, and you know who you are, what your place in the world is, and what that world is like. The fact is, there are countless worlds, even within your neighborhood, and it’s up to you which one you choose to live in. There are countless realities, of infintely varying shades and hues, even within the very same home. How you choose to live, who you choose to be, what you choode to do with your life and time, and how you choose to do it. These all rest on a sense of identity and a confidence in your context. What if one day you woke up and began to question your context? Am I where I need to be? Am I living how the Lord wants me to live? Are these values and ideals His true values and ideals? Am I just fooling myself? Am I holding true, being “in the world but not of it,” or have I sold out to the world and man’s ways?

Some decisions we need have in place, already made, plain and simple–for there is neither enough time nor enough neurons te remake every single decision every day–big ones or small ones. This is why people buy one brand of crackers. (See “The Paradox of Choice”) Seriously, do you really need to decide between 375 varieties every time you go to the store? This is why there are housework systems like ‘FlyLady.’ Can you really, upon completing each task around your home, weigh all the relative merits, needs, and benefits of every bit of housework to be done and decide what to do next? Of course not. There is way more housework to be done in any given home than there are crackers on the shelves of the superest super market in the world, and to boot there are likely just as many tips, tricks, and techniques for eack of those individual tasks to be decided between, themselves.

You need some base decisions made, and made solidly so that you do not have to wade through the morass of choices every day, every moment–whether it be having a set housework routine or knowing which box of crackers to buy…or…what you are living for, your confidence in the social structure of the life context in which you have chosen to live, or even what earthly manifestations of eternal ideals you are seeking by your work in this life. When you find yourself questioning such foundational decisions as these, everything from cracker brands to housework is loosed from its moorings and you find your life, that had been so clear-cut, an unexpected shambles.

Do you force it all back down and refuse to look simply because the questions get in the way? Or, do you stay true to your conscience and live by the words we sing “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,” even if the direction in which you feel called is ‘too’ peculiar? If my direction, goals, concept of context, and ideals are set and not to change, then these questions and the stress they induce, the resources of time energy and effort that they consume are all a waste. And yet, I cannot bring myself to let sleeping dogs lie. I have forced these questions down in the past for lack of anything to do but spin my wheels about them.

I know what it feels like when the Spirit is playing upon my heart, and there is nothing so hard as to ignore it. When every ounce of mortal intelligcence and reason says to look the other way, to stop up my ears and refuse to listen, with that divine tug, I chose to ask the questions, and yes, they have unsettled me, and unseated me from my own life in a way. Is this life the right one? I do not know, but this much I do know, that I have done what I can for now. I have considered, I have made inquiry, and until I know more clearly what, if anything, else the Lord would have me do, I need to go back to doing my very best with the life that I have before me. That is an idea that changes not with context. I choose to do my best–whether I like where I’m doing it or not.

For, I cannot escape the feeling that the life I long for just simply will not be able to be had. I fear that I am not good enough. My husband says that that’s just my “worse than” box talking (see “Anatomy of Peace,” by The Arbinger Institute). I have to wonder if it is even what I dream and hope it to be. If it’s not, then I have to face the fact that I cannot change the world. I cannot change my existing context–at least not in the way I would have it changed if I could. I could choose a new context, but that ideal, I fear, may not be anywhere accessible to me. I just want to be free to be good–as naive and pollyanna as that may sound. I chafe so much under the ways in which I feel the requirements of social “normalcy” force me to compromise. There is so much nastiness in the world, so much unkindness, such a desperate lack of charity–even occasionally in the places wherein it should abound most freely.

Sometimes I feel that I simply cannot take this mortal sphere for one more minute in its fallen and awful state. Even in the church, with the fulness of the gospel at our fingertips, we fall so short. Sure, every civilization, every culture breaks down upon close enough scrutiny, and yet, is it not like Schroedinger’s cat where that very scrutiny could be the killing blow itself? Sure, they say that nobody’s perfect, but why don’t we all just try to really be as perfect as we can??? The natural man, our very selves, is our greatest obstacle and enemy. I do, I want to be good, but I don’t want to be the only one, and then suffer the very present human social ramifications of being an ‘idealist.’ Lonely and rejected don’t play well on me. Do I really crave earthly acceptance more than eternal??? I want to change society; I want us all to want to be good, thoroughly and truly good, to do it together, to support each other in it–to pull some of that eternal reward for righteous living into the temporal here and now.

Where is our Enoch? Where is the society of such sweetness and light? That would solve my quandary in a heartbeat.

I just want what is right, and sometimes, it is so hard to believe that this suburban paradigm of life is right–and yet, here I am. I need to do my best regardless of our circumstances. And so, at 1:45, knowing that morning time and ‘kids-up’ is coming, I will now return to my bed, having made peace with, and yes, even sense of, it all (at least, for me…), and sleep–for I have a lot to do tomorrow and my best to do with it.

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In the not-too-distant future, Naiahdot will be migrating. I have a spectacular designer working on a lovely new professional web portal for me, and I plan to roll my personal blog into that, at its new URL, along with writing samples, art & photo galleries, an updated bio, and other stuff. It just kind of pulls it all together into one place, and really it is absolutely gorgeous. His work is just amazing. I literally threw him a photo of a sketch on a whiteboard, tossed in a few words about the colors and feel that I wanted, and he shot back the most perfect mock up–even better than I had imagined (and I’m a preety creative, imaginative soul, myself…). So, if you’re looking for web design, drop me a line, and I’ll let you in on the secret.

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The topic I was given today to speak on comes from the title of a chapter of a book, “Infinite in Suffering,” from the book The Infinite Atonement, by Tad R. Callister. As I sat down to type up my talk, I wanted to put my own title across the top of the page. I wanted something more evocative than just “Infinite in Suffering.” So, I started typing:

Hmm, that was pretty flat. So, I tried again:

Only now, I’d left out the Atonement aspect of it. So, I came up with:

Uh, yeah. In the end, I came right back to the title that I had been given:

Funny how that works.

What is the Atonement?

As used in the scriptures, to atone is to suffer the penalty for sins, thereby removing the effects of sin from the repentant sinner and allowing him or her to be reconciled to God. Jesus Christ was the only one capable of carrying out the Atonement for all mankind. Because of His Atonement, all people will be resurrected, and those who obey His gospel will receive the gift of eternal life with God. (lds.org, Gospel Topics, Atonement)

It is no coincidence that we see the words “At One” in the word Atonement. The word was actually created by William Tyndale during his efforts to translate the 1526 English Bible directly from the earliest Greek versions, as our language had no existing word, other than reconcile (which from its roots means literally ‘to sit again with’), that came close. This word, ‘reconcile,’ lacked the essence of the original Hebrew word ‘kaper’ (think Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement), ‘kaper’ means ‘a cover.’ Tyndale needed a word that would imply both “the remission [or covering] of sin and reconciliation [to sit again with] of man to God” (wikipedia, Atonement, Etymology).

Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary says, among other things: “The meaning of the word is simply at-one-ment, i.e., the state of being at one.” In order for Christ’s sacrifice to hold sway as ransom for our sins in the eternities, he had to become one with us. As we will see, this was no passing, fleeting, random cosmic connection; Christ experienced every part of us, from our hunger and thirst for righteousness, to our darkest moments of sin and rebellion. Every ill, every weakness, every temptation, even every sin or thought of sin in our lives was felt by Him, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Events of the Atonement

The two events of Christ’s mortal life most often associated with the Atonement, are his suffering in Gethsemane, and his crucifixion on the cross at Golgatha. While these certainly represent the culmination or climax of His redeeming effort, they are not the whole of it. From His “Here am I, send me” in the premortal council, as recorded in Abr. 3:27, to His hand in the creation of our earthly home, to his godly words to the prophets of old, to all his mortal sojourn, from His humble birth to His merciful ministry, He has been acquainting Himself with the human condition, preparatory to when, as we read in Hebrews 2:16-17 “he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his bretheren.”

The Savior’s Suffering for Us

In my talk today, we will be focusing primarily on the Lord’s profound suffering during those agonizing hours in Gethsemane, when he suffered in, as it says in D&C 19:18, “both body and spirit.”

Quoting from The Infinite Atonement, by Tad R. Callister: “It was intense, prolonged anguish…It was physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional pain of the highest order…It was of such colossal magnitude that it caused [Callister is now quoting again from D&C 19:18] ‘even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore.’”

Can a God suffer so? [Callister again,] “True he may have fasted forty days—but inwardly was he hungry, did his body crave food, his lips thirst for water, his muscles quiver, and his body ache?…Some might contend that he went through the motions, but never internalized the hurt…Paul contemplated the question and issued the response [as we read above, from Hebrews 2:16-17] ‘he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his bretheren.’”

So, the answer is yes, a God can suffer, if He chooses it. All that we will read that Christ endured, He chose to endure.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote, “…our Lord voluntarily abased himself, or, rather, emptied himself of all his divine power, or enfeebled himself by relying upon his humanity and not his Godhood, so as to be as other men and thus be tested to the full by all the trials and torments of the flesh.” (quoted in TIE, p.119)

C.S. Lewis, now, “God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities.” (quoted in TIE, p.19)

Think on those sensibilities for a moment:

Compassion,

Mercy,

Love…

In Hebrews 4:15, Paul tells us that Jesus was “touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” and Isaiah prophesied that he would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3)

As He, there on His knees in Gethsemane, wandered through the wasteland of our mortal failings, we must realize that not only did He feel our pain as acutely as we do, it must have actually been all the greater for Him, as he experienced these things with an unveiled mind. Every sin, he saw in its eternal perspective. With full awareness of the love and joy that is life with our Father in Heaven, he had to drink of that bitter cup of sin.

In 3 Nephi 11:11, Jesus says: “I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world.”

All my life, I have taken that image of “the bitter cup,” and Christ’s cry as he fell on his face, beseeching the Father “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” (Matthew 26:39) to refer to the unpleasant task He had at hand, of offering up His tender mortal flesh to the smiters and the cross. As I was preparing this talk, I had a most sublime paradigm shift in regard to that phrase.

What is a cup, but a vessel from which we take something (a liquid) into our bodies? Christ did not take his persecutions, his torments, or tortures into His body, into himself. He took our sins. In His sinless and unveiled mind, it was our sins that were bitter to Him. It was our sins that he abhorred so. That is what He would have passed on if He could.

In Alma 45:16 and D&C 1:31, we are told that the Lord “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,” and yet, here He is, in mortal form, not just looking upon it in others, but taking it into Himself—our darkness being poured into a being of perfect light. Sin is the bitter cup.

What an example that is! Christ offers his physical body willingly, but balks at the taste of sin. So, too, must we cultivate a distaste for that which is sinful. Rather than dance in the gray areas and seek that which is titillating, or edgy, to the ends of what is proscribed we should mind the black and white of sin and innocence, and even find the gray distasteful. For, if we could see our mortality with eternal eyes, as did Jesus Christ, we would know that that is the bitter cup—sin.

President John Taylor evoked the intensity of the moment when he wrote, “There came upon Him the weight and agony of ages…Hence His profound grief, His indescribable anguish, His overpowering torture, all experienced in the submission to the eternal fiat of Jehovah and the requirements of an inexorable law…Groaning beneath this concentrated load, this intense, incomprehensible pressure, this terrible exaction of Divine justice, from which feeble humanity shrank, and through the agony thus experienced sweating great drops of blood, He was led to exclaim, ‘Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.’”

Frederik Farrar, as quoted by Callister “It is as natural to die as to be born…It was something far deadlier than death [which drew forth drops of blood from the Savior as he suffered]. It was the burden and the mystery of the world’s sin which lay heavy on His heart; it was the tasting, in the divine humanity of a sinless life, the bitter cup which sin had poisoned…It was the endurance, by the perfectly guiltless, of the worst malice which human hatred could devise; it was to experience in the bosom of perfect innocence and perfect love, all that was detestable in human ingratitude, all that was pestilent in human hypocrisy, all that was cruel in human rage. It was to brave the last triumph of Satanic spite and fury…the concentrated wrath of the rich and respectable, the yelling fury of the blind and brutal mob. It was to feel that His own, to whom He came, loved darkness rather than light—that the race of the chosen people could be wholly absorbed in one insane repulsion against infinite goodness and purity and love.” (TIE, p.127-128)

That’s us. His people. The children of men. Allowing our mortal minds to cling to the things of this world and reject those of the next. Even our ‘little’ sins, could they be visible, would be as unsightly as a crimson wine stain on a white tablecloth, or blood on the whitest wool. Our sin makes for His pain.

Truman Madsen gets at this same cause-effect relationship when He refers to what Christ endured as “the cumulative impact of our vicious thoughts, motives, and acts.” (TIE, p.134)

President Faust once said: “One cannot help wondering how many of those drops of precious blood each of us may be responsible for.” (TIE, p.132)

Let me repeat that, “One cannot help wondering how many of those drops of precious blood each of us may be responsible for.”

What pain we caused him then, by our choices we are making now. Though the blood is shed, it is not too late to choose aright, to free ourselves, and Him, of at least some of that added responsibility, some of that added pain.

So often when we sin, we excuse ourselves because of the circumstances. We could have been tired, exasperated, even persecuted in some way, and all too often, we allow ourselves to think that these weakening agents justify our sin. Again, our elder brother has set the example:

[Callister writes,] “With merciless fury Satan’s forces must have attacked the Savior on all fronts—frantically, diabolically, seeking a vulnerable spot, a weakness, an Achilles’ heel through which they might inflict a “mortal” wound, all in hopes they could halt the impending charge, but it was not to be. The Savior pressed forward in bold assault until every prisoner was freed from the tenacious tentacles of the Evil One…Every muscle of the Savior, every virtue, every spiritual reservoir that could be called upon would be summoned in the struggle. No doubt there was an exhaustion of all energies, a straining of all faculties, an exercise of all powers. Only then, when seemingly all had been spent, would the forces of evil abandon their posts and retreat in horrible defeat. Only then did Christ deliver ‘his saints from that awful monster the devil, and death, and hell’ (2Nephi 9:19).”

Even then, in the midst of such agony, bleeding from every pore, Christ withstood temptation. Let us not bring bitterness into our own souls, even when the adversary would tempt us to believe that we are at a moment of weakness and that our sin is justified. Just as Jesus did, we too can persevere until “the forces of evil abandon their posts and retreat in horrible defeat.”

What is justified? It means to be made right. Well, as I learned in studying the material of The Arbinger Institute, in order for something to need to be made right, it must be crooked in the first place. Just remember that the next time you find yourself justifying. If you’re having to justify it, you probably shouldn’t do it—no matter how tempting the justification. For if Christ, in the agony of all the suffering and setbacks and weaknesses, of not just one life, but of all our lives, can withstand Satan, then so, too, can we in our own trials.

We are never alone in those trials. Remember that. Every pain, every temptation, every weakness or want was already experienced by the Savior. It may seem fresh and poignant in the moment, but it has already been endured by Him, and He overcame it, as can we. We are never alone in these moments. Neither was Christ.

We know that Christ chose to face his Atoning duty as a man, and we see evidence of this weakness in that, as we see in Luke 22:43, “there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” Even Jesus Christ, our best and brightest, our elder brother and exemplar, needs a little help now and then, as do we.

Such was the trial in the garden.

As Christ chose to become one with us and take upon him the responsibility to suffer for our sins, so too, must we choose to become one with Him, and allow that precious Atonement, at-one-ment, to work in our lives in miraculous ways. As we ponder Jesus’ suffering and what it means for us it can:
-Bring us closer to Christ in our hearts because we know that we are understood, thoroughly, even in our failings
-Keep us from despair, for we know that we are not alone in what we are experiencing.
-Grow our faith, and ease obedience & change through gratitude to the Savior
-Help us bear our suffering.
-Inspire us to bear one anothers’ burdens, as Jesus bore ours
-Help us turn away from sin, by way of knowing the cost of our debt
-Inspire us, no matter what weakened state we may be in in a moment, to resist temptation, even as Christ did.

Testimony

[My testimony, as it came out in the moment, centered around my surety of the Savior’s love for each of us, how even if we are just one in 6 billion or one in 12 billion, we still matter to Him, to the point that he was willing to endure this for each of us. I also said soemthing about how preparing this talk really opened my eyes to just how much sin I ‘let slide’ in my life, and how even though this is heavy doctrine, it is also a source of joy.]

Close
I say [type] these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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The other day, while my daughter was off at the stables, my four-year-old son and I had sat down to lunch. Between bites of pbj, and gabbing about everything form legos to his bike, he very suddenly and very earnestly asked, “Mamma, why was Joseph in jail?”

His question caught me off guard, and so, just to be sure, I asked him, “Which Joseph?”

“Jospeh Smith”

The consternation was clearly visible on his face. In his developing sense of the how the world works, only bad guys go to jail, and I could see he was having a very hard time with the thought that the Prophet had been where bad guys go. I want my children to feel secure in the world, to trust that the justice system ‘works,’ that it will keep them safe, and so I hate to have to explain that the unfortunate characteristics of human nature, such as fallibility and the capability for dishonesty sometimes get in the way.

Children come to us in such a state of perfect innocence, and it breaks my heart when the world must begin to encroach on that perfect sweetness, as, for their own safety, we have to explain to them that there are ‘bad guys’ who do horrible things. I wish so much that I could counter that fact with a vision of a world where it’s all white hats and black hats, and the black hats invariably get rounded up by the sherriff and locked up for good. Unfortunately, the reality is far more perilous and far less obvious or clear-cut than that, and on this day I had to tell my son so.

“Some bad men lied to say that Jospeh did things to get him arrested.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“They wanted to get him arrested so that they could kill him.”

As my son’s feelings began to rise, it became touchingly obvious that it was those who lied, those who did the killing for whom he was feeling, and he said: “But he had good things for them! He had things of God. Why didn’t they listen???”

What a profound question–ages old. Why do men stone the prophets rather than listen to what will bring them to God? It’s a question that countless thinkers and theologians have asked through the ages. Even the great, learned Hugh Nibley, himself, had taken it on without truly answering it, and yet here is my four-year-old, in all sincerity, seeking his own understanding.

“Well, my love, I don’t know for sure. All I can think is that Satan pushed them to it. Do you know what Satan’s name means?”

Chewing on a nother bite of pbj, he shook his head “no.”

“I once learned in college that the word ’satan’ translated literally means ‘adversary,’ which means an opponent or enemy. Satan is Heavenly Father’s enemy, and sometimes he can have influence in the world and make people do things against Heavenly Father.”

I watched as that sank in, and it broke my heart to accept that my son has to understand the forces of danger, both spiritual and temporal, that are abroad in this world, but just as we have discussed ’stranger danger,’ for his safety, I need him to be aware that sometimes we can be driven by the very opposite of God. I just ache for wishing that he didn’t have to, that he and his sister could both lives lives of quiet peace, serving God, free from Satan’s flaming darts.

I know and see the wisdom in the doctrine that there must be an opposition in all things, but it breaks my heart so profoundly to consider the opposition that must face my children. How great must be the love that sent us to this life! How dire the need! How else could Heavenly Father have sent us here to face this???

I know that my children will be strengthened in the choosing, that the opposition will grow them in ways that nothing else can, but it does not make it any easier to let it happen. Be it bad guys on earth or that fallen son of the morning, I wish I could ‘build an hedge’ around my children’s lives to keep them all out. I know better, though, and I love them better than that.

Whether it’s a prophet imprisoned or any of the other paradoxical realities through which we will need to navigate, I can hold to the rod, and so can they. The world must encroach. The world is why we are here. I can only teach them as best I can, and then I just have to trust. The rest is up to them. I hope they always listen.

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If you look at the timestamp for this entry, you will see that I am typing it at just about 2:30 in the morning. One would think that I ought to be in bed at such an hour, and I am. I have been for hours. Here I am, though, in the middle of the night reeling and rejoicing in my blessed and unexpected random bit of insomnia that just saved our lives and home…

I came up to bed fairly early tonight, as my kind and sweet husband offered to put the kids down without me so that I could get a little extra project time. I set to and wrote up this week’s book review on A Prayer of Faith, had a great long chat on the phone with Michelle as we edited it together, took care of a few other sundries, had some sweet quiet time with my husband, and before I knew it it was midnight. Mind you, I’m quite the retire-to-thy-bed-early kind of girl, as I get up hours before my children in the morning so that I can have time for study, prayer, pondering, writing, [editing middle of the night blog entries like this, rife with typos,] and other tasks that require more headspace than can be found from kid-up to kid-down.

Regardless of my usual habits, there I was still wide awake. Midnight passed. One o’clock passed. One thirty. Finally my darling husband gave up waiting for my batteries to run out and quit hacking on his project. We turned out the lights, snuggled in, and while he was shortly asleep, I found myself remaining oddly alert. After 20 or 30 minutes, it became clear to me that my mind was moving no closer to sleep. I grabbed my next review book to dig in, thinking that reading would bring on the sandman. No luck. I finished the entire first section of the book, and just as I began the second section, I caught a whiff of something acrid on the air. I sniffed a couple of times thinking to clear it from my nose, but there it was again–and stronger.

I closed my book and slid out of bed to have a good bloodhound-style sniff around the room and see if I coudln’t figure out what it was. It was something burning, no doubt, but what? I sniffed over the vent in the floor that’s open to the downstairs, nothing. Sniffing along I moved over to the bathroom and ZINGO there it was. Only, as I passed into the bathroom, it faded away.

I came back out of the bathroom and caught the trail again, moving along the plane where it had been strongest following it to the other end of the room. Then, I saw it. A cardboard box, the one that our new blender had come in, had somehow been pushed up right against the electric heater in our bedroom wall. The shiny white background was just beginning to turn brown where it had been in contact with it. The flaps of the box reached right over to the bookshelf where the old sci-fi paperbacks are kept.

Holding the box, sniffing it, seeing it, feeling the sheer heat in it, an absolute wave of gratitude cascaded right over and through me. Usually, by two-something in the morning, I am deeply, soundly asleep, and my adorable husband, well, usually about all of thirty seconds after hitting his pillow is deeply asleep as well. We never would have known. As it is, though, I was mysteriously kept awake and alert until I needed to be. Upon discovering the box, I turned on the lights, and roused my ever-so-very unconscious husband to have a prayer with me. He offered it, in sweet, sincere, and humble thanks.

As an added blessing (as if this were not enough!), just as he ended the prayer, I was struck through with the knowledge that some months ago, the battery in our smoke detector had died and I did not recall having seen my husband change it. I mentioned it to him, and he immediately got up, pulled the old battery from the detector, grabbed a pack of 9-volts from his desk, and put a new one in. We had both forgotten. Now, though, as we remembered, we were doubly thankful for the Lord’s protecting hand this night.

Perhaps I should have saved this story for another Ensign article or for a book, but really, my joy, gratitude, humility, and rejoicing is such that I simply must share it now. Besides, I think I just read a very similar story in one of the chruch magazines–only it was a chimney pipe. So, they don’t need this one. Maybe one of you does.

Some people may laugh that the church is so full of such stories and experiences, but truly, they are a testimony to the true and living gospel! What joy, to know, amidst all the dangers of life, that we are protected–that because of a forgotten dead battery and a mislaid cardboard box, I would find myself still awake at three o’clock in the morning. Not surprisingly, though, as I find this written, I am suddenly quite sleepy.

I think I’ll sleep in until 7. Here’s a quick prayer that He will sustain me tomorrow on half a night of sleep just as He has preserved us tonight…

*Gratitude!*

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I wrote this the other day, and as my courage buckles here and there, I find myself coming back to it again and again:

I am such a flawed creature that sometimes I cannot help but feel that I have no right to write. Then again, though, I think that it is exactly because of my flawed nature that I should write. It is a strange calling I imagine for myself—to show my sisters that we are all fallible, flawed, and still so very loved, to see that our human imperfections are not insurmountable (no matter how much they may feel like it) and do not exclude us from the joy and peace available in the gospel. I, myself, have endured and overcome and become so much, and I do not need to have achieved some form of celestial perfection to know that I am moving in the right direction and to be able to motivate my sisters in that same direction.

I am finding it is a rough transition, going from “hoping to write someday” to “writing.” It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it is certainly not without its own buffetings. It seems that every doubt, insecurity, and fear that I have ever laid to rest have all conspired to begin a parade through my mind whenever I sit in front of my computer. I’m under attack from myself, and my only defense is to let it all go, and just do it. So far, I am meeting with only moderate success. I will persevere.

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I seek only to write what the Lord would have me write, but sometimes I wonder if I am a flawed receiver. Well, I guess I do not wonder it, I know it. We are all flawed; it’s part of being human. Sometimes, though, I allow myself to get too caught up in the things of my life and I allow that open channel to become cluttered, or obstructed, and it is in those times that I have trouble hearing what to say. I have trouble thinking about writing even. It is in these times of static that I begin to doubt myself. It’s all been done before, right? So, why bother? Wait! Such an apathetic attitude cannot be for good! Who would lead me to idleness when I have felt to work? Not the Lord. So I do my best to clear the channel, reach out, and to receive—only to find out that there is more to do before I can hear. It’s like some kind of spiritually dependant version of writer’s block. I usually deal with writer’s block by just writing, and so here I am. My mother-in-law calls it letting go of my inner critic, and I suppose that to a great degree that is true. Whether it’s telling a quick story from my life or just stomping off cobwebs like this, I am getting my words moving, getting that critical voice out of the way long enough to really get the pump primed and get the inspiration flowing. I suppose it’s a good way to deal with it, though sometimes, in the interest of time, I do wish I could just sit down and get to work. I find myself working within a structure of greater self-discipline on a day to day basis than I ever have (even including prep school). I find myself working to squeeze every possible extra minute from my day. This time is sacred, and now knowing that, believing and living that, I find it hard, uncomfortable even, to be idle—which makes moments like these, where I have set this time aside not just to write (which I am doing now), but to write that which is before me to write (which, unless in the Lord’s wisdom it is, I just do not see it here), so very difficult. I want to get to work, but the work in a way is not up to me to get to. Inspiration comes, it is not called upon. I was just listening to a talk by Hugh Nibley yesterday that’s about a similar idea, but about prophets. Prophets have nothing to do with the revelations they receive, they do not call them, or learn some art to receive them; there is no skill or will to it. They receive them when the Lord wills it. If a prophet must operate on the Lord’s time, then why not me? I’m certainly not a prophet, or even close to one, but if even they—the chosen of the Lord—have to wait, then so can I.

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We are always fiercest with others when it is ourselves with whom we are really upset.

This occurred to me just yesterday in one of those moments where the truth of some aspect of human nature just pops up to give you a quick slap in the face, where a pattern is finally evident and you crack just a little bit more of the code. (Is there anything so encrypted as human behaviors and motivations??!?)

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Having been converted and baptized just after President Hinckley became the prophet, he is the only head of the church whom I have known. Over the years, his leadership and counsel have built in me a strong testimony of his calling and office. In my mind, Gordon Bitner Hinckley was the prophet, and I feared for the day when he would pass away, for neither my mind nor my heart could imagine another in his stead.

That day came yesterday. Yes, the tears spilled forth from my eyes almost immediately, and I was selfishly sorry never to get to hear him speak again. In the midst of my quiet tears, though, I was reminded that he was an old, old man, who had given so many years of service, many of them after the passing of his beloved wife. It was his time to pass through the veil, and so my sorrow melted into a quiet happiness for him.

I also felt something unexpected, I felt a great level of comfort knowing that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was there, was sound, was at the helm and leading the church. I did not feel the uncertainty that I had feared once upon a time. With President Hinckley’s passing, I felt evermore that this is the Lord’s church, and that He can and does bestow its stewardship on all whom He has called and chosen in their time.

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In the comments to my last entry, a couple of people mentioned that their various trials and pains did not compare with mine, and I replied that I once learned that you can’t compare suffering. This is how:

About 5 years ago, there I was, three days into an ICU stay at Children’s Hospital for my daughter who had an asthma attack that just wouldn’t break.

Having spent all but a few hours at her bedside, I had finally hit the wall. I just couldn’t look at her with all those tubes and lines anymore.

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