Sacrament Meeting Talks

I keep forgetting to blog about this.... Tom and I had to speak in sacrament last month. Our second counselor had asked us to speak a few months ago, so we had plenty of time to be thinking about it. With the current economical situation that so many of us are facing, we joked that we'd probably be given the topic of adversity to speak on. Heh.... guess what our topic ended up being? :)

Here are some highlights from my talk.

Our youngest, Micah, is almost 9 months old. In the past month, he has been learning to crawl. He’s pretty good at it now, and can get where he wants to go. But in the beginning, he would try and try, then look up to us as if to ask: “Why won’t you pick me up?” There were many times that he would become frustrated, but learning to crawl was one of the milestones that he needed to reach. I think many of us may feel the same way as we go through our own trials. We can’t always be “picked up” and carried through our adversities. We need to work through them. But fortunately for us (and for Micah, as he was learning to crawl) we do have help. Our Heavenly Father is there for us, and we are never left alone. As part of Heavenly Father's plan of redemption, all people experience adversity during their lifetime. Trials, disappointments, sadness, sickness, and heartache are a difficult part of life, but with the help of the Lord they can lead to spiritual growth, refinement, and progress. Each person's success and happiness, both now and in the eternities, depend largely on his or her responses to the difficulties of life.

Right now, there are many people who are struggling financially. The economy has hurt many businesses and people. We are in the cabinetry business. Life has changed for us, personally and for our business. We have to watch our finances as never before. We have experienced many hardships because of this. But, we have also been blessed with many choice experiences.

Through all of this, Tom and I have found out how many people care about us and our family. We have seen the blessings of paying our tithing. We have felt very close to the Lord in these times of great trial for our family. There have been many lessons and experiences we have had, and there would be no other way for us to learn them unless we went through this trial. I can honestly say that I am grateful for this adversity and the opportunities it has given us.

In his talk, President Eyering said: “With all the differences in our lives, we have at least one challenge in common. We all must deal with adversity. There may be periods, sometimes long ones, when our lives seem to flow with little difficulty. But it is in the nature of our being human that comfort gives way to distress, periods of good health come to an end, and misfortunes arrive.”

He goes on to say that: “… when the comfortable times have gone on for a while, the arrival of suffering or the loss of material security can bring fear and sometimes even anger. The anger comes at least in part from a feeling that what is happening is unfair. During our time on earth, we experience misery and happiness, sickness and health, the sadness from sin and the joy of forgiveness. Distress during our trials can shake faith in the reality of a loving and all-powerful God. Such doubt can grow and spread until some may turn away from God, whom they charge with being indifferent or cruel. And if unchecked, those feelings can lead to loss of faith that there is a God at all.

Often, our challenges are obstacles that Satan throws in our path. Sometimes the adversity in our life is even caused by our actions and our own poor choices. We have been given free agency and sometimes we make wrong choices and then have to suffer the consequences. No matter which way our struggles come to us, we can face them the same way –by relying on the Lord for strength, guidance and direction.

President Eyering stated that his purpose of his talk was to assure us that our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity or us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. It is clear that for us to have that gift and to be given that trust, we must be transformed through making righteous choices where that is hard to do. We are prepared for so great a trust by passing through trying and testing experiences in mortality. That education can come only as we are subject to trials while serving God and others for Him.

I remember reading something a few years ago by the late Carlfred Broderick. He was a professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at USC and also a Stake President. He attended a YW program and was asked to add some additional comments at the end. He said: “Girls, this has been a beautiful program. I commend the gospel with all of its auxiliaries and the temple to you, but I do not want you to believe for one minute that if you keep all the commandments and live as close to the Lord as you can and do everything right and fight off the entire priests quorum one by one and wait chastely for your missionary to return and pay your tithing and attend your meetings, accept calls from the bishop, and have a temple marriage, I do not want you to believe that bad things will not happen to you. And when that happens, I do not want you to say that God was not true. Or, to say, ‘They promised me in Primary, they promised me when I was a Mia Maid, they promised me from the pulpit that if I was very, very good, I would be blessed. Sad things happen, we have children who are sick or developmentally handicapped, spouses who are not faithful, illnesses that can cripple, or violence, betrayals, hurts, deaths, losses, etc. And when those things happen, do not say God is not keeping his promises. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain, and when that pain comes (and it will come because we came here on earth to have pain among (other things), when it comes, rejoice that you have resource to deal with your pain.”

One of the prophets from my youth, Spencer W. Kimball, experienced many trials in his life. This was told by President James E Faust in a 1998 First Presidency message. He said: “Early in his life, President Spencer W. Kimball learned the necessity of work. He had many painful experiences in his early years preparatory to his great ministry. As a young boy he nearly drowned. He suffered from Bell’s palsy. His mother died when he was a youth, and while he was still a young man he lost his beloved sister Ruth. Shortly after marriage he contracted smallpox, and Sister Kimball counted over 100 pustules on his face. He learned early about financial reverses and lost some investments. Like Job, he suffered from boils, which continued for many years and on one occasion came on his nose and lips. On one occasion he suffered from 24 boils at one time; not long thereafter he began to suffer the excruciating pain of heart attacks, which continued for many years and finally resulted in open-heart surgery. He became bothered by a hoarseness of his voice, which was relieved through a blessing from the Brethren, only to return later, along with the boils. A serious cancer in the vocal cords required surgery and thereafter voice training and cobalt treatments. The Bell’s palsy returned, and skin cancers were removed.”

President Faust says that, “The result of this refiner’s fire was to be manifest in a refined spirit, sensitivity, an understanding heart, kindness, and humility.” President Kimball went through a lot in his long life; he lost loved ones, dealt with painful and humiliating illnesses, he also struggled with finances. However, he didn’t let these trials turn him into a bitter old man. He faced this adversity with prayer and humility. He turned to his loved ones and he turned to the Lord. Because he chose to face his adversity head first and rely on the Lord for strength and support he grew from his trials and tribulations. He would not have become one of the Lord’s beloved Prophets and the leader of our great Church if he had chosen to let the adversity in his life bring him down and overcome him.

Personally, I look at the challenges President Kimball faced and I am very thankful for my own challenges. About 3 years ago, when I was pregnant with Andrew, I developed a bad cold that I just could NOT recover from. I tried several rounds of antibiotics to clear up my breathing, but nothing worked. My doctor and I figured that it was due to swelling of the sinuses, and that once I had the baby, my breathing would return to normal. After Andrew was born, I waited a few months to see if things would get better, but there was no improvement. I ended up going to see a specialist who found out that I had a polyp in my sinuses as well as a deviated septum.
Both of these things were blocking the airflow and not allowing me to breathe normally. I felt great relief to know what the cause was. And I knew that, after a year, I was now finally on the road to feeling normal again. I soon found out though, that the next opening for surgery was several months away. I was quite upset, and the thought of waiting even longer to get some relief was almost more than I could take.

I had a couple of priesthood blessings during this time, and each blessing reaffirmed what I already knew: that I was supposed to learn something from this trial. But what was my lesson supposed to be? What was I lacking in my life that I could only gain through this trial? Through prayer and pondering, I came to realize that I needed to learn empathy, and be more sensitive particularly to those who suffer pain or discomfort on a daily basis. In the blessings I received, I was reminded that this trial would not last for ever, it would be a short span of my life. And looking back, it was 18 months, which seemed a like an eternity at the time, but now it seems like a blink of an eye. I’m grateful for that trial in my life, and for what I gained during that time. I hope I was able to learn what I needed to learn, because I know that I certainly DON’T want to go through it again. So I try to keep that lesson foremost in my mind and heart.

When I think about the challenges that we all face, I am reminded of Nephi, when he was told to return to Jerusalem and retrieve the golden plates from Laban. First Nephi Chapter 3 verse 7: And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth
them.

We are each given our own personal challenges that are unique to us. We probably won’t be commanded to sneak into a city and kill our cousin so that we can retrieve our genealogy. However, we are commanded to endure to the end. In Matthew chapter 24 verse13, Jesus said: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” The Lord gives us the commandment to endure to the end, and He also supplies us with the support and resources to achieve it. I know that the Lord knows us, and we each are given trials that we can handle. We will not be challenged with more than we can overcome, and the Gospel is there as a resource in our times of need.

I bear testimony that through our personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and our own efforts of faithfully enduring our trials, we will have a better quality of life and be generally happier in the face of adversity. He loves us, and He wants us to overcome our challenges, if we can look to Him for guidance.