The Come Follow Me lessons suggest that we apply the scriptures to ourselves. Here are some of the thoughts I had when applying the following scripture to me:
Mary to the Angel Gabriel: "Be it unto me according to thy word [will]."
When I contemplated how I could apply this scripture to myself, the Spirit taught me a powerful lesson: as mortals we need to accept the difficult circumstances of our lives as being the Lord's will.
I thought of the blessing it was to me the day my mother died, that I as I listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's rendition of The Lord's Prayer, the words "Thy will be done on earth" were impressed upon my mind and I was able to accept mother's passing as being the Lord's will, thus feeling assured that He would bless us to make everything work out. That simple faith was a key to my happiness in the years to come.
In the same way, I realized other hard circumstances in my past were the way it was always going to be. It was always going to be that Michel and I would marry, but that our marriage would end in divorce. It was never going to be that I would have married another person and so would have been spared the divorce. It was never going to be that somehow things would be different in our marriage and we would not have been divorced. It was never going to be that we wouldn't have had all our children, etc., etc..
The Lord always knew exactly what was going to happen, He knew our strengths and our weaknesses perfectly and how they would interact to bring about the circumstances of our relationship. It's even possible that all of that was part of His plan for us so that we would have the perfecting experiences that we needed to have in mortality. He didn't save us from the experiences, but He was there to bless us through them.
We don't need to "kick against the pricks" when faced with difficult challenges. Instead, we can say with Mary, "Be it unto me according to thy [will].
For some reason that is a comforting thought. Thanks for sharing mom.
ReplyDeleteI really like this thought too, Mom. It helps me to know that the hard things that happen in our lives are not just random, luck of the draw, type things but something that Heavenly Father has given me personally so I can learn and grow from it. I struggled for years to understand why we had to go through infertility for two years before having Abbie but now I can see some of the benefits of having to wait, for my marriage and in parenting, and it's made me much more appreciative of all my kids and that I was able to have healthy pregnancies and births. But when I was in the middle of this trial, it consumed my life and I couldn't see a purpose or an end to it. Now it helps me have more patience in my current trials because I know someday I will see the bigger picture and a reason for it all.
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