How I learned to overcome adversary by avoiding topical guided personal study on the subject

How I learned to overcome adversary by AVOIDING topical guided personal study.

 

 

In the past four or five years I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am my Grandma Ida's granddaughter. Through the help of my grandma Joyce, I learned that this means I am not vanilla flavor and not everyone is going to like me or what I say.

 

I am very direct, straight forward and matter of fact. This directness is not easy for some to receive because most people fall and want to land on a soft cloud bed with lovely smelling rose petals. But that never helped anyone learn anything from WHY they fell in the first place. So I prefer the "give it to me straight" approach. Don't butter me up. Won't learn anything like that.

 

So it isn't often I feel I have something poignant to share that is "soft" enough to be received well by large groups of people. But today, I think I have learned something that might benefit many. And so I would like to share.

 

For whatever reason, the Lord has seen fit that I should experience tremendous grief in my life through the form of death and illness of family and friends. Since I was 13 I have experienced the death of a loved one once a year, sometimes two or tree times in a year. There has not been a year free of this specific tragedy in my young life. And 13 and the rest of the adolescent years is too young to deal with such things. I have felt angry, frustrated, sad, bitter, confused and the worst feeling of all, in my opinion, is that I have felt nothing. Indifference.

 

I have also had the great fortune to deal with illness and betrayal in my life. Each of these experiences has brought with it doubt, fear, frustration, pain, hurt, etc. There were times when I didn't want a family for fear of losing them to death or illness and fear that I wouldn't be able to handle that. There have been times when I didn't want to be sealed for eternity to my family because of feelings of betrayal (to be clear and fair to my husband, it was not anything on his part, just in case your mind started wandering. He has been a true and faithful spouse and partner to me). There have been times, and still are times, when sitting through a talk or lesson in church on families being together forever is more than I can handle because my poor earthly brain cannot understand the beauty that is to come in the after life. In all of this grief and pain I did distance myself from the church and from my Savior because it felt easier to deal with. But in all of my grief, one thing was always certain in my mind: I knew that it would be far more challenging to return to the church when I got out of my funk than if I just attended in body. So I continued to go to church. After sacrament meeting I'd go find a nice cozy little corner in the mother's lounge and try my darndest to think positively.

 

See, the struggle for me was in the dealing of these feelings and how I went about it. I thought it would be a good idea to seek the counsel of my bishop. He did offer great counsel and solutions, but I have since found that this method wasn't for me. He referred me to several conference talks on the subject of families and the afterlife and also forgiveness. As I studied these things I found that I was able to connect with the counsel offered and found the words helpful. But it caused me to dwell on the issues more and more. As the thoughts started to enter in my head early in the day I would try to recall the counsel I had read in the talks. But that still was focusing on what had happened in my life. Then I would result to praying about the subject and asking for further help from the Lord. But again, that was devoting that time to that particular subject. Then I'd wait for my answers by either meditating or playing hymns on the piano. But I found myself playing the same hymns over and over: "I need thee every hour," "Abide with me, 'tis eventide," and others that just sent me into a sobbing blubbery mess as I was so consumed in this subject I was trying to deal with.

 

This would happen over and over again daily until I couldn't even function anymore. Every prayer offered, every book read, every thought produced in my head was focused around how to NOT think about what I was feeling anymore. When I finally got to the point where these things were eating away at my soul, I realized I had to take action. And my initial instinct was to go about my life as if these events in my life hadn't taken place. So I started by thinking about what my life was like on the "good days" or before these things had happened. And all I could think of was how devoted I was to daily prayer and scripture study. I decided I needed to continue doing that without focusing on what I was thinking about that day.

 

I just started at the beginning. 1 Nephi, chapter 1 and then the monthly Ensign magazine. This is always a good place to start because you start to find things you are interested in and you find topics that you are interested in learning more about that enrich your life and your family. Doing this made me stronger as I was, once again, developing a relationship with my Savior through learning more about Him, his life and his counsel. This strength that I was developing helped me on my "bad days." No matter how strong you are, though, the bad days always come. The wind still blows the strongest tree.

 

Of course, the sadness in my life did not go away and I still have to deal with it. And it does come up in topics in my personal study. But when it comes up naturally in my study and not because I sought it out, I have found I am more able to soak up the guidance I am receiving and apply it more affectively to my life. See, when I am in a blubbering stupor and throwing a temper tantrum while trying to receive answers while dealing with grief,  it is very difficult, even impossible, to receive any kind of spiritual promptings while feeling that way. But when the subject of death, betrayal and forgiveness came up naturally as just the next topic in study, my mind was not so consumed with the subject and my mind was healthy and able to take in and accept the messages I was reading.

 

To sum things up, I think I would just say that I think the most important thing we can do to remain strong when dealing with the adversary is to continue nurturing a relationship with the Lord through personal study. Don't just seek out the counsel you need when you are in the moment. If you devote time each day to personal study, you will learn a great deal over time and when the moment comes when you have to deal with thoughts, feelings and events, you will already be prepared because you already learned and obtained the tools necessary to deal with those things while you were in your right mind and in a healthy place.

 

 I think the most important thing we can do to help us overcome our funks and be masters of our own minds is to just continue to study and learn. It doesn't matter the topic. If we are devoting time to study on a daily basis, those topics that you do need to focus on receiving guidance for WILL come up and you will be given those opportunities to learn and grow. But if you're in a bad place right now, just read about anything.

 

I found that in reading about the Savior's life in the midst of my deepest moments, my problems seemed small and insignificant. But when I focused my study time on the subject that was causing my grief, it made it seem like that issue was the only thing in the world. So focus your time on something else and you will soon see that the thing that consumed your every moment and being is nothing but a little blemish on your life's complexion. And then you will be able to deal with it. 

 

As a side note, one time in high school I was so sad about the passing of a friend from cancer. I was just so sad and couldn't think about anything else. And my brother told me to imagine a piece of string going around the earth. Large piece of string, right? Then he said that that string represents our entire lives and if he made a little pen mark on that string, that would represent my time here on earth. And these things that make us sad will be so insignificant when we continue our lives hereafter. So we need to not be consumed by it here so we can make it to that next step in our lives.

 

 Just go read and study anything. Not what you are sad about today. But something.

As a wise fish once said, "Just keep swimming."