How Great Is our God?

Feb. 18^th, 2017

How great is our Heavenly Father?!

This week, so many miracles have occurred, and almost all of them have ties back to a times that I thought were slightly disastrous and frustrated my life. Little things pop into my head that I attribute to the spirit, and to me, the fact that heavenly Father cares about each of us so individually touches my heart. I just love him.

This week, I listened to a talk that meant a lot to me at the time it was given – President Henry B. Eyring’s talk, “Where two or three are gathered,” is from the April 2016 General Conference (give it a read or a listen-to!). It’s almost been a year since I was at that point in life, and looking at the things that lead me there, this talk was a turning point. I was curious to see just how exactly it had lead me to where I am now.

I realize that might not make a lot of sense, but It’s time to be very real here: I was in a very dark place almost a year ago, battling what felt like a losing battle with mental illness while on my mission. It lead to some major faith crises where I just felt like nothing and felt nothing. This talk led me to sob – Heavenly Father was everywhere, and while I was stuck doing what I could to draw nearer to him, I wasn’t feeling anything. I was my own worst enemy, attacking faith at every chance, while I was trying to preach to those around me the goodness of God! It was hard, but obviously a change needed to happen: and boy, did change come. I still struggled a lot with Heavenly Father, but at least I wasn’t completely abandoned as I strived to see the answers given to me. It’s still been a little difficult to find those answers, as I still work on recovering, but I couldn’t be more grateful for the ways I have changed and learned to recognize Heavenly Father’s hand in my life.

That leads me to fast forward to this point in life. On a seemingly unrelated note, I focused on the way that I prayed with Heavenly Father. I felt that my relationship wasn’t quite as strong as it should be, so I needed to step it up. I often lament that the medication I’m taking doesn’t allow me to feel things like the spirit, so I took a chance and followed the counsel of an apostle – I let my guard down a bit and gave Heavenly Father what I had through prayer. I just want to testify that He never abandons us, we just have to seek for Him. He and the Savior live, and they are doing all they can to ensure that we keep our ears pealed and our hearts open for the whisperings of the spirit. He will help us realize so much more about ourselves and about why the trials we go through help us grow. I’m only just starting to learn a few of those answers from what happened almost a year ago, but when we make the worship of Heavenly Father a central point in our lives, he takes what we have and runs with it.

So yes, He is very great indeed.

Link to Pres. Eyring's talk - https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/where-two-or-three-are-gathered?lang=eng

A Different Kind of Beautiful

Feb. 11, 2017

This week we had the lovely opportunity to study Isaiah. Honestly, my philosophy on Isaiah in the past was similar to what the late president Packer described the experience being like – to paraphrase, he says that just as you settle into the narrative of the Book of Mormon, you get to the writings of Isaiah, and honest to goodness, they’re boring and difficult to get through. And then he pleads us to keep moving on, hopefully gleaning occasional inspiration. Or, if you can only look at the words, just keep moving. I always felt comforted that an apostle of the Lord told me this, so I could just kind of…looked at the words. As was suggested. Because Isaiah was hard. Although, I did learn some pretty cool things about Isaiah this week in class though, which made him a lot more enjoyable to read. He was a Hebrew poet, and the conventions of his writing style makes it, well, make more sense. Honestly, you only really have to understand half of what’s happening because Hebrew poets are notorious for repeating analogies so that you get a better idea of it. That’s cool stuff right there.

However, I am not here to tell you about all the things I learned from Isaiah. To be frank, it’ll take a lot more than a few class periods to really gain a greater understanding of what the heck he’s saying. So, contrary to how I may have led you on, I had another interesting experience this week that somehow made another part of the gospel a reality for me.

As an art major, you have to experiment with a lot of different kinds of media, even if you have your own specialty. This semester, I’m fortunate enough to be in a 3D art class with a heavy emphasis on modern art (both of which I just don’t enjoy. At all). The crowning event of it all was having to fire a ceramic piece in the kiln – the odd geometric shapes I’d made had been glazed with a paint that somehow needed to be pulled out of the white-hot kiln and tossed into a barrel of flammable materials so that it would cool down in a manner where it wouldn’t explode. To some, that sounds fun, I’m sure, but this girl doesn’t need any more adult play-doh in her life for awhile. However, upon actually seeing the finished product, it turned into something kind of beautiful. While not my favorite thing, there was a certain beauty to it. In life, we aren’t always going to do the things we want or like to do. But sometimes those things serve a greater purpose – and to me this week, the greater purpose was appreciating a different kind of beauty. With both Isaiah and 3D art, I have my own personal struggles. That doesn’t mean that they are things that I should immediately discount. There’s layers to everything that will help us to understand how beautiful every individual truly is. And that’s part of our life here on earth – we grow and learn and understand people so that we can be more like the Savior, and it’s going to be a lifelong process!

I Couldn't Choose a Title ;)

Feb. 4, 2017

This week I got to think about making choices. Which is, quite frankly, one of my least favorite things to do.  It’s rough to choose things like what I’m gonna do on a daily basis, so making even bigger choices that impact far bigger things than my self-expression for a day are understandably more stressful. Earlier this week, making a game plan for future choices seemed to dominate my life (although I was sleep deprived and made it more stressful than it should have been – there’s my inner drama queen).  So of course I had quite the freak out.  However, as I’ve been told time and time again, the answers are in the scriptures.

My sweet dad came to my apartment at my request and helped me talk through things before he gave me a blessing; I’d had a stressful day (side note: the priesthood is great!). As we were talking, he walked me through the decision-making process, as outlined in Doctrine and Covenants 9:8 – “But behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.” Cool scripture, we’ve all heard it before. However, my dad pointed out to me that a step was missing – you can’t simply ask for an answer to a question that you have. You need to study out all of the options, THEN make a choice, and take that choice that you’ve made to our sweet Father in Heaven – essentially, the spirit is the final step that gives us a “yes” or “no” answer.

This is agency and the Plan of Salvation at it’s finest. Heavenly Father’s whole plan revolves around letting us make the choices for ourselves, which is one of the greatest acts of trust and love that I can somewhat fathom. We wouldn’t be exercising our agency fully if we didn’t believe that we had that power to choose. In a talk that I listened to this week, I was reminded that the whole Plan is to help us choose the better path so that we can be the happiest we can be in Heavenly Father’s presence. Diving into agency this week took a bit more of a gospel detour than I had originally intended, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it, but I understand the steps that Heavenly Father wants me to make – because all He does for me is so that I can be the happiest. To bring it all full circle, we even talked about the Fall in Book of Mormon class – “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). Adam fell and became a catalyst for the Plan, and we can make those choices and mistakes so that we can know what true happiness really is. As I put all of these scriptures into practice, I have clearer thoughts running through my head of pathways I should give a try. It really is marvelous.