Maybe we really don't understand that we can actually have a personal relationship with Him. I remember feeling Him near in my teenage years. But did I really get the kind of relationship that was possible? I mean you have to admit it seems impossible that He could know us all. Yet He can and does.
At the time I was coming to know Him I devoted a great deal of time to the effort. As I have mentioned I did not want to continue to live in such horrific pain. I also realized that life is a series of "tutorials" as Neal Maxwell calls them and I really wanted to learn this lesson now and only once. I did not ever want to feel this kind of pain again!!!!! I was determined to learn the lesson this adversity was to teach me and then get on with my life. I did not want to ever have to repeat such a painful learning experience. I think that if we don't learn the lesson we will (eeekkk) continue to suffer or have other adversities that will teach us. We are here to learn through our experiences.
I know the saying is trite but truly we are not human beings here to have a spiritual experience! We are His beloved sons and daughters, divine, loved, nobel. We are spiritual beings here to have human experiences. Yet so often we live in the humaness rather than the spirit. It's so easy to be distracted from our purpose! Especially when we hurt.
It's not that I haven't have severe trials since this huge one....I have. I have cried myself to sleep many a night over other challenges but through it all I have clung to the one major lesson I learned...that I can ALWAYS trust in my Father in Heaven and His plan for me. He is there... I do not walk alone. I have learned that I will not always understand the whys but I can trust that He is there and loves me and will teach me the hows. He is not as harsh and demanding that we sometimes think He is.
So in reflecting on what was different about my relationship with Him pre this "tutorial" and then during and post here's what I have come to understand.
You really have to focus on Him. You have to believe that you can literally, I mean literally feel His arms around you. You have to trust that He would really, really do that for you and then allow Him to. I would actually take time each day to imagine He could really love me. ME. Not us, as in all of us, His children, jointly but ME. All by myself. Did I explain the scriptural validation I found to support that this is possible? I will have to go back and see. Anyway, when the scriptures say to "ask, seek and knock" it is not a casual, superficial thing. It is real effort with real longing over time.
It doesn't require huge amounts of time, but I have to admit at the time I was really devoting a lot of time to this effort. I didn't have a calling and I was teaching school part-time. I couldn't really function in life so I did have the time to devote to this effort. And i found that when I was immersed in trying to understand and feel His love I actually felt better...for a moment at first and then for longer and longer periods of time.
Imagine that every day you spent 5 minutes telling yourself all of the reasons you are not worthy or loveable. Would that have an impact after a year? Pretty sure you would feel unloveable!
Suppose each day you spent 5 minutes imagining the Savior's arms around you. What kind of impact might that have on your life? I had spent time on this exercise. I had spent time practicing feeling happy. Sometimes I could only pull it off for only a few seconds but I kept at it.
Every time I had an impression that I thought might have come from Heavenly Father I chose to believe it did. I did not dismiss the feelings of love He sent me. I prayed as though He was in the room. I imagined He was with me everywhere I went. I looked at His children through the lens of His love. I came to know He was there...right by me. It makes all the difference to allow Him to love you. It makes all the difference to allow him to fill you with the love He feels for your spouse and others. It made all the difference in my life...and in my husband's life. He actually has a relationship with the Savior, but he doesn't always listen. He doesn't want to hear what he doesn't want to hear. Still, it's a start.
Service. When we serve and bless others we feel our Savior's love for us and for them because we are emulating Him.
Catherine Thomas said " It's a powerful act of faith to give something to someone else when we feel empty. Truly, giving when we are longing to have someone give to us seems to defy reason. But in spiritual terms it makes perfect sense. Giving out of what one feels are meager resources is like reaching into Elijah's nearly empty cornmeal barrel during a famine and coming up with a full cup every time. Giving to others the things we are most longing for ourselves follows the principles of godliness and results in an unexpected sense of fulness."
Why are we reluctant to give and bless those who hurt us? Are we afraid of what that would say about us? Are we afraid of what they might think we are saying about them? Perhaps if someone is choosing unrighteousness we fear that if we love them we are condoning their unrighteous behavior. Or at least they will take it as such. But we can give and serve and bless without condoning the unrighteous acts. Everyday I would tell my husband something good about himself. He had a hard time believing I was sincere since he knew what he was doing and I certainly had to look deep but I did look past the humaness into his soul. I told Him what I felt that Father saw there and what I hoped he might believe of himself someday so that he might be healed. I figured if he felt so bad about himself that he would do something so distructive to his life someone had to help him see in himself what he could not. But I never condoned his behavior.
None of this was possible without His love.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39
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