OK, I promise I’m not going to just keep quoting old letters in these updates that are of way more interest to me than anyone else. But bear with me for a few more here. I feel so grateful for my 18/19/20-year old self and the things I put down in writing, for the optimism and general enthusiasm for life I felt and shared at the time. (I truly wasn’t always this hyper/upbeat, but a decent amount! Also, Meal Train won’t let me use italics like I did in my original letters, so instead you have to get the startling ALL CAPS.)
“Kenny, I feel like I’m on fire and I want to run out and MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I just feel like my life has so much potential right now and there are so many things I’m anticipating and preparing for. In addition to enjoying, no LOVING, the right here and now. I wish I felt like this all of the time. Do I sound idealistic to you? Maybe I am, but that’s what being a teenager’s all about. If I’m not optimistic now, when will I be? And I think that’s what life’s supposed to be about. Wanting to be really GOOD, better than you are, and being excited to be living and for what life holds for you. Do you feel like that, too?”
I mean, how can I help but feel fondly for little, idealistic Suzanne? There were also life lessons I learned during that time that feel so applicable to me right now.
“Kenny, I do miss you. Of course I do. But I’m finding that there are some good things about not having you right here with me. I hadn’t realized just how much I depended on you emotionally, or to make things right for me all the time. This semester you haven’t been right there for me to turn to. Yes I have friends here and my family, but you know that it’s not the same. I’ve never really felt like I HAD to turn to the Lord or that I always had to rely on Him. I had you, so I didn’t need to. Does that make sense? I’ve always prayed, but my relationships with my Heavenly Father and my Savior weren’t as strong as I’m working to make them right now.”
Along the same lines, I’ve come across a religion paper I wrote during my freshman year of college and sent to Kenny while he was in the Missionary Training Center. (Actually wrote in one sitting at 3:00 in the morning – one thing I definitely was not always wise about in college was my sleeping habits…) Talk about a “voice from the dust” that really penetrated me when I reread this. I don’t know if these words will be of benefit to anyone else, but I’ve been printing out and saving my Meal Train posts for my kids to read someday, so I would like to include the text from that paper for them to have. It was certainly a declaration of my growing faith from that time, and still serves as a good reminder for me now.
REL 122 Final Paper
College has been a bombardment of new feelings and experiences, but there has been one lesson in particular this semester that the Lord has been trying to teach me. I have always known that I need to rely on my Savior and trust. In fact, my “adopted” (favorite) scripture for the Old Testament year in seminary was Proverbs 3:5-6, which states, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Even so, I have discovered that knowing the words of the scripture and actually being able to exercise that concept in my life have proven to be very different things.
Growing up I was always very quiet and somewhat reserved. Of course I would goof around with friends or act crazy when I was with my family, but I never really opened myself up to anyone. Perhaps this was a defense mechanism. With my father in the Army and my family moving around a lot, I learned very quickly that when I made close friends, they would not be permanent because my family would be moving away soon and long distance friendships in elementary school never stayed as close. Despite my reluctance to become too close to people because I knew it would hurt when I had to move on, I always had a long list of friends and acquaintances. I was used to being a confidante for my friends, but for some reason I never felt like I could share my own feelings or problems with other people. My place in the family added to this, too. As the oldest child I again was the one my siblings came to for help and advice. Sometimes it made me sad that I felt I had no one to open up to, but for the most part it was just the way I was. I knew I was private and reserved, but I could get along just fine relying on myself. Or so I always thought. It never dawned on me growing up to turn to the Lord.
The latter half of high school, however, I developed a very close friendship with someone. For the first time in my life, I had someone I felt comfortable completely opening up with. I am ashamed to say that I was an even better friend with him than I was with my own family. I learned that I did not have to keep everything in my life as private, to want to better and strengthen my own testimony, how to accept and deal with death, and mostly to trust in and rely on him. I did not feel that I needed to work especially hard on becoming more trusting with other friends because I had a best friend. It was not until this semester of college, when he left for a mission to Romania, that I realized just how dependent emotionally I was on our friendship. Without my best friend here anymore, I felt like I was completely on my own.
Reading one day in my Book of Mormon I came across the third verse in Alma 36. “And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore, I beseech of thee that thou wilt hear my words and learn of me; for I do know that whosoever shall PUT THEIR TRUST IN GOD shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.” It hit me that I did not really know what it meant to truly put my trust in God. I felt alone and even a bit lost, and it had taken me so long to even be able to fully put my trust in another person that the idea of learning how to put all of my trust in God was more than a little daunting. Even though I know that the Lord already knows and understands me better than I know myself, the thought of being willing to relinquish control of my life and rely solely on the Lord in some ways frightens me.
If the things we have been studying in the Book of Mormon this year are true, then there should never be a time that I feel completely on my own. The Lord will always be there for me. This topic is a hard one for me to write about because it is something that I do not feel is completely resolved yet in my life. Learning to trust in God is a lesson that I am working hard at right now to understand and apply in my life, but in first raising the question to myself and earnestly seeking to discover the answer I have learned a lot. I have been taught my entire life in Primary, Sunday School, Young Women’s, seminary, and Relief Society that the scriptures hold the answers to any question or problem I might have in my life. If there is one thing I have learned, however, it is that the Lord does not tend to just hand me the answers to my questions. I was not going to be able to merely open up my scriptures and just “happen” to have them fall open to the exact scripture I needed.
Normally, the first place to start when trying to define a gospel concept is the Bible Dictionary, but in this instance that did not help because the word trust in not in the Bible Dictionary at all. I remember the first time that I really discovered the Bible Dictionary, and ever since it has always been my quick, easy way to find out things that I wanted to know. However, looking up TRUST in the topics index of the hymnbook, while there are no entries under the topic of TRUST itself, it does say to look under the topic of FAITH. This was going to take longer than I had thought. Just how badly did I want to define this for myself? Faith is such a broad subject that there is no way I can find an easy definition for it in one sitting. Looking beyond time spent reading through some scriptures, I suppose that what the question actually came down to was, did I really want to give whatever it would take to learn to put my trust in the Lord? That would of course mean making some changes in my life.
It would seem, then, that the first step to learning to fully trust in the Lord would be to have faith in Him. This has been a recurring theme in the subject matter we have covered this semester in the Book of Mormon. Alma 32, especially, addresses the importance of faith and how powerful it can be. Coming across the scripture Alma 37:37 during my personal scripture reading, I was surprised by the advice to, “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.” This fit in exactly with own goal to discover how to have confidence in the Lord in all I do. I know how anxious my father here on earth is to hear about how things are going in my life and how much he wants to do everything in his power to help me with problems. Knowing that this is true, Heavenly Father’s desire to do the same must be multiplied more than tenfold. Trusting means accepting as a friend. Elder Malcolm S. Jeppsen instructs everyone to “Cultivate our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ as your friend above all. Being his friend will without exception lift your vision and bring you comfort, guidance, peace, and yes, even the companionship of other true friends.” For me, the biggest step to learning to love the Lord needs to be considering Him as a person who is there to listen to all of my trials and afflictions, but also to share the joyful things in my life with, too.
The Book of Mormon is full of classic examples of people trusting in and having faith in the Lord. We are given record of countless times when people were willing to surrender their wills to the will of the Lord, but one of my favorites is the account of Helaman and his two thousand stripling Ammonite sons. These righteous young men are the perfect models of persons who obviously trusted in and had faith in the Lord. They did not know that their lives would be spared in battle, but they did not doubt that fighting was the Lord’s will for them at that time. “Now this was the faith of these of whom I [Helaman] have spoken; they are young, and their minds are firm, and they do put their trust in God continually” (Alma 57:27). I want to be more like Nephi, relying on the Lord to find food in the wilderness or to build a boat; like the prophet Nephi (in 3 Nephi) and Christ’s followers at that time, believing completely that Samuel’s prophecies would be fulfilled by the Lord; like Mormon and Moroni, trusting that God could see a bigger plan regarding their people and the preservation of the gold plates; or like any of the other examples of true faith the Book of Mormon provides for us. Realizing that I need to rely on the Lord more than anyone here on earth, including myself, has been a hard lesson to learn.
One of the biggest problems I have had in my life has been trusting in “the arm of flesh” instead of turning to the Lord. By believing more in another imperfect human being, or even trusting in myself more than the Lord, I was doing exactly that which is warned against in the scriptures. “The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, NEITHER TRUST IN THE ARM OF FLESH” (D&C 1:19). Nothing that is worthwhile with the Lord is ever easy. Even after gaining a tentative understanding of how to better trust and rely on the Lord, it does not stop there. As with all righteous desires and efforts in life, obtaining this target goal is a lifelong challenge. The crucial concept of enduring to the end applies in this situation, too. That we could all be like the people of Zarahemla who were taught by Alma, for “…a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved” (Alma 5:13). I know that the Lord will love me to the end, regardless of what I do in this life. I have been blest by the Lord in so many ways, I do not see how I could ever want anything less than to stay faithful to Him until the end. I am excited that I am finally beginning to see how trusting in the Lord can play such an important factor in my life. There are things I can actively be doing to gain this dependence on the Lord.
Everything in this life depends upon the Lord, whether we realize it or not. Truly, “The Lord is my light, the Lord is my strength. I know in his might I’ll conquer at length. My weakness in mercy he covers with pow’r, And, walking by faith, I am blest ev’ry hour” (“The Lord Is My Light,” verse 3). Developing a friend relationship with the Lord and learning to fully trust in Him is not something that can be done overnight. Rather, it is a lifelong goal that I am just now beginning to understand. Looking to examples from the scriptures I know that I need to strengthen my own faith by being more humble. “And thou shalt do it with all humility, trusting in me…” (D&C 19:30). I am so thankful for the trials I have had in my life this semester that have humbled and led me to the Lord.
I know that was long, and there might not even be anyone else that made it here to the end. Perhaps, though, there was that one person who did gain something from my sharing that, or maybe the person who most needed the reminder of the importance of trusting in the Lord was ME. Either way, I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to rediscover these records from my past. (And can you believe that I used to be so private and reserved? I may have swung to the other end of the spectrum with all of this [over?]sharing I am clearly OK with now. Also, I now have many friends with whom I feel completely comfortable sharing my thoughts, feelings, and problems. I have so many amazing people in my life.)
