FOR TIMES OF TROUBLE

 FOR TIMES OF TROUBLE

There are many people who feel bad for my loss, but who feel that there is no help from God available for me.  I love this Psalm which teaches something different.  For those of us who have gone through deep depths of sorrow and have turned to God for help, we have learned a powerful truth.  He really is there, UNDENIABLY He is! Skeptics may say that it is all in our heads, that grief plays strange games with your mind. But I have been there, and I know no amount of self-talk would bring me out of the abyss, only a higher power has the ability to do that.

Psalm 3:2-5

2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah. 

3 But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. 

4 I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah. 

5 I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. 

"He knows better than I..." 

Verse 4:

"God hears our prayers and he always answers them"- (We may not hear His answers, or we may not recognize them, or in some cases we may not like them even though we say we trust in Him) In these moments we must remember... that He knows better than we do.

In the case where we do not like His answer we have to remember that God is a 'shield' for us, even against ourselves. So when you have to choose between His view and our own, "we must yield to His divine view and divine love." -Jeffery R Holland

Lifter of thy head

Verse 3: 

Every great cause requires vision. We have to see before we can achieve" - Holland.  Normally in the midst of a trial we lack vision.  We feel lost in a fog and have our heads down to the ground looking at our feel.  It is during those times that God can lift our heads if we turn to Him.  He can give us glimpses of hope, glimpses of the future.  He can put ideas in our head that can give us direction to guide us through the fog.  "God will be the lifter of thy head if we will allow Him." We must CHOOSE to keep our heads up.

Sometime we just have to sleep on it

Principle 11

Principle 11

Adversity is a necessary part of life and it accelerates our growth

The intent of your Father in Heaven is to lift you from where you are to where

 He knows you will have eternal purpose. 

He knows that we will grow more rapidly through challenge and trial

 than from a life of ease and serenity with no disturbing elements.

When faced squarely and lived fully without complaint,

 trials will raise you to glorious heights of accomplishment and service.

"Shake well before using"

Such shaking comes through stirring challenges and stretching tests. 

How these challenges are confronted is critically important to our happiness and personal growth now and forever.

Trials come from two sources:

1. The affects of our own transgressions

2. Testing needed to help us grow even when we are living a righteous life.

The First Source of Adversity:

Realize your full dependence upon the Lord, align your life with His teachings,

 repent and seek forgiveness

The Second Source of Adversity:

(challenges often seems to come in multiple does applied simultaneously)

When trials are not the consequences of disobedience, 

they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more

He gives us experiences that stimulate growth, understanding, 

and compassion which polish you for your everlasting benefit.

Where you are -> (stretching, discomfort and pain) -> Where He wants you

How to Deal with Adversity:

1. Pondering and prayer will help us understand what we are to learn from the challenges we are asked to overcome.
2. Trust Him, even when in eternal perspective it temporarily hurts very much.  
1. He may ask you to do things which are powerfully against your will. 
2. The path you are to walk through life may be very different than others.
3. Exercise faith and say, Let Thy will be done.
4. Have patience when you are asked to wait.
1. ***If all matters were immediately resolved at your first petition, you could not grow.

Such experiences, honorably met, prepare you and condition you for yet greater blessings. 

He desires to share with you all that He has.  

He desires to increase your capacity and continue your development.

***All TRIAL AND SUFFERING SERVE A PURPOSE AND ARE CRITICAL.***

He would have you suffer no consequence, face no challenge, endure no burden that is superfluous to your good.  He would not require you to experience a moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for your personal benefit or for that of those you love.

Christmas Letter 2013

  Christmas Letter 2013

                                                                                                         December 6, 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

As I sit down to write the annual recap my mind is drawn back to a year ago. Last December was a blur laced with emotional turmoil, despair and grief. Our family is in such a different place this December and for that I am truly grateful. Not only have we survived through the first year, but also I feel like there has been immense growth and strength developed in our family. Our faith in the Savior has made that possible. There is healing and understanding in His atonement. The sealing powers of the priesthood give us the promise of a glorious reunion with Scott someday. We hold fast to our covenants and have a renewed commitment to faithfully keep them.  This year we have truly learned what it means to trust in the Lord and to throw our burdens at His feet. We have watched as miracles have unfolded as He has watched over, directed, and taken care of our family. We feel so very blessed! We know that Scott is still very much a part of our family and feel his stewardship on a daily basis. I am grateful for the legacy he left our four children and me. We have much to accomplish and learn during this short stay in mortality. As we are learning to turn our will over to Him, His plan is becoming more and more apparent in our lives. It is not the path I would have expected, but I am learning that it is exactly what our family needs. It has been amazing to watch the refining process at work and I am excited to see the end results. This next year is sure to bring many new and exciting changes in our family. Sometimes those changes seem a bit daunting and scary, but we know "that in the strength of the Lord we can accomplish all things."

Here is a little recap of this past year. I would also like to encourage you to visit my blog at not4naught.blogspot.com. I have openly shared about many of our experiences and the things that I have learned. My hope is that by honestly sharing, my experiences can be of benefit to others who are going through trials and difficulties.

We are still in Springfield Missouri.

I've loved you for 1000 years and I'll love you for 1000 more: OUR LOVE STORY

I've Loved You for 1000 Years and I'll Love You for 1000 More

OUR LOVE STORY

So yes, I admit it.  I am a huge Twilight fan.  If your not... Don't stop reading... just bear with me for a minute because there is a great story to this song. 

 Indulge me for just a moment...  

When I first read the books (and yes, I have read them twice) I loved them because they reminded me of dating my husband.  You see, as I talked to friends reading the books and listened to their comments about how they wished their husbands were more like Edward I was thinking, my husband WAS exactly like Edward (minus the drinking blood drinking thing).  Scott treated me like I was the most special person on the planet.  I often caught him staring at me, he definitely over indulged me with lavish gifts, he loved how I smelled, he was so tender and protective, and in his own words, he could never get enough of me. Okay, so I know your gaging yourself right now, but as much as he was Edward, I was Bella.  So not confident of myself, uncomfortable with the extra attention, but totally and completely devoted to him.  Reading those books took me back to all of the reasons why I loved him.  It was great for our marriage.  So great that I even talked Scott into reading them to me.  He would kill me for writing that!

Okay, the Twilight part is over, now the story behind the song....

So I loved the song 1000 years when it came out.  Not just because of the movie, but because it was what we felt about our marriage.  You see, I fell in love with my husband in 3rd grade.  I knew I would marry him someday and wrote it in my journal repeatedly as I was growing up.  He taught me swimming lessons when I was 11 and he was 14.  When I was 14 and he was 17 I used to go to church dances only to see him.  I would wait for his beautiful, sophisticated, older girlfriend to go to the bathroom so I could ask him to dance.  I tried so hard to be grown up and Scott was always kind to me, but I knew that I was far too young to catch his eye.  I always had the plan that after his mission I would got to his homecoming talk, he would notice that I had grown up, ask me out, and we would fall madly in love and get married. And... that's almost exactly how it happened.  3 dates and less than two weeks after he got home we were engaged. Absolutely crazy, right?  Except that Scott has always thought  all those year when I was just a little girl... Someday when she grows up, I need to ask her out.    We both had know for a very long time that we were supposed to be together.  We felt that we were promised to each other in Heaven before we came down here and that our love for each other was so strong that our spirits couldn't help but remember it.  He called me his soulmate.  So that song said everything we believed about our love from before, and as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints our beliefs about eternal marriage said everything about what the future of our marriage would be.

About a month before Scott died, he caught me crawling out of bed to go running and pulled me back next to him.  He said,

Unleashing the Dormant Spirit

Here are some excerpts from this BYU Speech.  I also made a photo book of the thoughts he suggested. Included are the individual pictures that can be downloaded. I have also included the link for the original speech. 

Unleashing the Dormant Spirit

F. ENZIO BUSCHE 

And at that day, when I shall come in my glory, shall the parable be fulfilled which I spake concerning the ten virgins.

For they that are wise and have received the truth, and have taken the Holy Spirit for their guide, and have not been deceived—verily I say unto you, they shall not be hewn down and cast into the fire, but shall abide the day. [D&C 45:56–57]

Issue of not being Deceived:

Sometimes we avoid dealing with matters of a spiritual nature because of our insecurity in discerning the difference between the influence from the Spirit and the influence of the adversary.  We don’t trust ourselves.  When it comes as a subtle deception, Satan is the master of disguise.

A good help to avoid this dilemma was, for me always, to put myself through a test— a test that was actually defined by the Lord, as we read the words of the Lord, according to Luke 14:33: “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” Christ is literally cutting a knife into our soul, making it clear to us that there is no middle way and that we have always to ask ourselves where, exactly, we stand. When we can, in an honest reflection, say: “Yes, I am a disciple of Christ, I’m willing to sacrifice my own will, my habits, attitudes, and selfish desires, and endure the hurt and the pain that such reflections cause, and bring to him as a sacrifice a broken heart and a meek spirit,” he will baptize us “with fire and with the Holy Ghost,” and we will not be deceived (see 3 Nephi 9:20).

“Do we really understand the importance of Christ’s statement that absolutely nothing matters unless we take the Holy Spirit as our guide?”

None of us can afford to be without Them. None of us has enough wisdom, enough intelligence, enough knowledge, enough skills, or enough courage, by ourselves, to master our lives and even to succeed in life unless we learn what it means to surrender ourselves into the arms of the Lord and be filled with the Spirit. He wants to empower us with the gifts that he has promised to give to each of his disciples who has made sacred covenants with him.

The Blessings and Advantages of the Influences of the Spirit

This Spirit lets us develop the true potential of our intellectual capabilities and delivers even the motivation to use it. The influence of the Spirit, all uncomfortable things—such as hard work, getting up on time, going the extra mile, over- coming homesickness, overcoming flaws of character, and other things requiring sacrifice— are easy. It became clear that under the influence of the Spirit we act in wisdom. We see the complexity of a problem in its simple parts, and we see the possible solutions unfolding in front of our eyes—to our own surprise. In other words, our creativity is developed and multiplied. That which is a burden without it becomes a privilege when we are under the influence of the Holy Ghost.

Paul puts it all together beautifully in his letter to the Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentle- ness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance (Galatians 5:22–23).

In my humble understanding, we, as members of the Church, should not be satisfied to be one single moment of our waking hours without the insightful, powerful influence of the Spirit.

Many times in our life it happens that these gifts of the Spirit rest dormant in us.

His Grace Is Sufficient

His Grace Is Sufficient

This is a great discussion on grace, really the first explanation that I have heard that makes sense to me. I wish that someone would have explained it to me in this manner earlier in my life. I very much felt like the young girl in the beginning of this article that came to Brad Wilcox. 
She said, “I just don’t get grace. I know I need to do my best, and then Jesus does the rest, but I can’t even do my best.” I always felt there was more that I could do. I just didn't understand grace! I've pulled out some highlights below, but I encourage you to read the whole thing below. 

"Christ asks us to show faith in Him, repent, make and keep covenants, receive the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. By complying, we are not paying the demands of justice—not even the smallest part. Instead, we are showing appreciation for what Jesus Christ did by using it to live a life like His."

Grace Transforms Us

"Christ’s arrangement with us is similar to a mom providing music lessons for her child. Mom pays the piano teacher. Because Mom pays the debt in full, she can turn to her child and ask for something. What is it? Practice! Does the child’s practice pay the piano teacher? No. Does the child’s practice repay Mom for paying the piano teacher? No. Practicing is how the child shows appreciation for Mom’s incredible gift. It is how he takes advantage of the amazing opportunity Mom is giving him to live his life at a higher level. Mom’s joy is found not in getting repaid but in seeing her gift used—seeing her child improve. And so she continues to call for practice, practice, practice."

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said, “The repenting sinner must suffer for his sins, but this suffering has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is change” 

"The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed (see Romans . Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God (see Alma 40:26), but no unchanged thing will even want to."

Grace Helps Us

“But don’t you realize how hard it is to practice? I’m just not very good at the piano. I hit a lot of wrong notes. It takes me forever to get it right.” Now wait. Isn’t that all part of the learning process? When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven?"

"There should never be just two options: perfection or giving up. When learning the piano, are the only options performing at Carnegie Hall or quitting? No. Growth and development take time. Learning takes time. "

"Grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now."

"The grace of Christ is sufficient (see Ether 12:27; D&C 17:8)—sufficient to cover our debt, sufficient to transform us, and sufficient to help us for as long as that transformation process takes. "

http://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/09/his-grace-is-sufficient

A Trouble-free Life

A Trouble-free Life

Expecting a trouble free life because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. - Harold S Kushner

I remember a time in my life when I hoped desperately that I could avoid significant trials by being good. Honestly, I've never been a 'bad' person.  I don't think I really could be, even if I tried really hard.  I have always cared too much about what other people thought of me.  I always wanted to please my teachers and other adult leaders, and I NEVER wanted to get in trouble.  I remember once as a teenager,  my date had wanted to take a short cut across someone's lawn.  I tried to convince him to just take the long way with me because I was afraid that the owner would come out and yell at us. I did not succeed, and I found myself sheepishly following him across the yard.  Sure enough, the occupant opened the door and chastised us for being so thoughtless. I profusely apologized and was totally mortified.  My date just laughed at me.

I avoided big mistakes and bad choices that could cause undesirable consequences like the plague.  For the most part, my life was fairly trouble-free.  Sure, I had occasional pitfalls, but they were not earth shattering by any means.  After my husband finished residency and we settled into a 'real' job, I remember feeling really uneasy.  I worried that my perfect little world would somehow crumble.  I thought of ways that I could be better than just 'good.'  In my mind, I thought if I could be just a little better and a little closer to perfect, then I would continue to be blessed and ward off any significant setbacks.  However, no matter how much better I was, I found that there was always a way to do more.  Eventually, I began to feel overwhelmed at the never ending task.  I remember asking an older, trusted friend, "Do you think you could be righteous enough to avoid trials."  She just chuckled and said, "But we came here to experience trials.  You CAN"T avoid them."

Jeffery R Holland taught that when we lived with God prior to our birth, "we agreed to such a time of challenge and refinement. We were taught then that facing, resolving and enduring troublesome times was the price we would pay for progress.  And we were committed to progress eternally."

Eventually, I learned to accept this principle and to not fear the big trial that I felt was coming.  Not only did I not fear it, but I began to prepare myself and to resolve to face it head on and learn the lessons that I so definitely needed to learn.

Thomas Paine said, "I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and from brave by reflection.  It is the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death."

I intend to "grow brave by reflection," and "gather strength from my distress"  as  I "smile in trouble."  I have seen light come to me as I have done this.  I have seen joy come back into our home.  God loves us and he wants us "have joy" even in our times of trials.  I know that life can be difficult, but I also know from personal experience that God's care can get us through and help us prevail.