Trust vs. Fear turning to Faith

It's been just over 3 years since severe, nonstop, pain entered my life. I've learned a lot over the years.  When something happens and you don't understand why or what the purpose of it is it can be very unsettling and make you a little fearful for what's coming next. There's a favorite scripture of mine:
2 Timothy 1:7-8 "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord..."

I was thinking about this today and I believe fear is the opposite of trust. There are many different ways and levels of trusting someone but some off are: Trusting with your feelings, to keep a secret, to be honest, to do what they say they will do, with your possessions, with your heart, that they have your best intentions in mind, that they won't judge you, etc. I have a lot of really great people in my life that I do trust with all of this and more. For me though, the one person I've learned to trust more than anyone else, and with everything, is our Savior Jesus Christ.

So what does that mean for me? It means that even though I have trials that are not a lot of fun to go through I have complete trust in The Lord that there is a reason for these trials and that if I continue to put my trust in Him they will all work out to my benefit in the end. That has led me to increased faith. I have had a multitude of blessings as a result and that has only strengthened my faith more.

Going back to the scripture; if God isn't the one that has given us the spirit of fear than who has? What are we afraid of? That list will be different for everyone and can include things such as: The fear to change, the fear to try something hard, the fear to swallow your pride and do what you know you should, the fear to stand up for yourself, your family, your God. The fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of death, fear of being alone, fear of embarrassment. What good things are we not doing because of fear? What blessing are we missing out on because we haven't done something?

He has given us power, love, and a sound mind. Maybe not all those things at once and maybe not all those things in the way which we envision them. I don’t believe power here means power over others but power over our selves. Power to master our weaknesses, our fears, our minds.

Love, true love comes from one source – God.  We have the power, and commandment, to show love for others. Love doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything they say and do, love means loving them in spite of the choices they make. Love means being respectful towards them.  Remembering that we are all brothers and sisters. Love means loving oneself; possibly the hardest kind of love to have for some people. Love means being kind, being patient, being forgiving, towards others and selves. 

I've read this scripture every day for several years (it's at the top of my staircase). I love how you can receive new insights to the scriptures at various times in your life. A good reason to continue to read them. You never know what new gems you're going to receive.

Give it all to me - I can take it.

I had physical therapy the other day. My physical therapist, Elise, had to do some work on me that was very painful. She told me it would hurt and that I’d probably feel bruised, and might even have bruises from it. Both turned out to be correct. I trusted her enough to know that she wouldn’t put me through pain that wasn’t necessary in order for me to heal in the long run. Right after she did the therapy she was taping me up in order to engage different muscles to work. Knowing how much pain my arm was in at that point, from what she had just done, she had me rest my arm on her shoulder to take the burden off of me from holding it up while she did the taping. After I put it on her shoulder she said to let it relax not just set it there. I said I didn’t want to put the pressure on her. I did relax it a bit but she still sensed I was holding back and said “give it all to me – I can take it”. 

As I’ve thought about that over the past couple of days I’ve thought about how the Atonement works and that Jesus is always right there waiting for us to give him our burdens. He is truly saying “give it all to me – I can take it”. Like my physical therapist, we have to have trust that the Savior is really allowing us to go through certain things in order for us to learn and to heal. He would not want us to suffer needlessly. He can also sense when we’re not giving him all of our burdens. I wasn’t even consciously holding back when I rested my arm on Elise. I wonder how many times I’m not consciously holding back on the Savior too. He always knows. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of our “burdens” as we think we should be able to hold ourselves up. But if we can learn to truly give our burdens up to the Lord they can become lighter. You may still be a little sore and bruised but the burdens will seem light.

The storm before the calm?

Some of you may be wondering if the title was a typo or if I was medicated when I typed it. The answer is no and yes. J I know the normal phrase is “the calm before the storm”, and while I have experienced that many times in my life, I also believe there often times are a storm before the calm. Think about your own experiences. Have you ever had to endure a trial or hardship in order to receive a blessing? It could even be something you’ve worked hard for: schooling (the storm) to get your degree (the calm), childbirth to have a child, training for an athletic event to reach the finish line? There are many instances in the scriptures where trials have come before the peace, or in other words the calm. In a literal sense you don’t have to look past Noah to come up with one example. It rained 40 days before he, and those with him, got the calm. Then, even after the storm was over, they still had to wait for a while through the “calm” before the waters receded and they got on dry land once again. Well what do you do when you feel like the storm isn’t going to stop? Is it possible to just have a long non-stop storm? Or while one is dying down another one starts? Probably, but I do believe there are times when despite the storm the blue sky does break through if even for a moment to let you know things will be ok. You might find that the storm is raging but all the beating of you it’s doing is actually making you stronger and better able to withstand the other storms that are thrown at you. There’s a purpose in rain, it is a cleanser and it also makes things grow. I think the same can be true of our own personal storms if we let them. I do believe you have to let them and even take an active role in allowing them to help you be cleansed and grow. 

There’s a country song out right now by Gary Allen that has a verse “every storm runs out of rain just like every dark night turns into day”. I love that song! So true! I’m still waiting for my storm to run out of rain but I know it will, whether in this life or the next, I’ll at some point have those blue skies! Looking forward to that day!

Mountains

Mountains have been on my mind lately. In the scriptures there are references to removing mountains. In the Bible we find references to being able to remove mountains with faith: Matthew 17:20 and 21:21. The Book of Mormon also gives reference to this in Jacob 4:6. That got me thinking, how many of us have actual need to remove mountains? I don’t think the scriptures talk about that so that people can go around just moving mountains according to their own will and pleasure. Like everything spiritual, there needs to be a purpose for something to take place.  So why would we need to move a mountain? There may be times, or have been times, when there has been a need for someone to remove a physical mountain; but I’ve been thinking about other mountains we have. They could be spiritual, emotional, physical challenges, etc. Like so many things in the scriptures I think that these passages may have been talking about different types of mountains. 

Some mountains we can just look at and enjoy the beauty of, or feel accomplished for having climbed and conquered it. Others can seem so big and immovable we don’t have any idea how to get over it, through it, or around it. I think those are the times when we especially need to turn to the Lord for help in “moving that mountain”. Maybe we’ll have some mountains that will be immediately removed but often times I think we have to go through the back breaking struggle of moving our mountains one shovel-full at a time. That can be a time of great strengthening and learning of endurance for us, it can also sometimes wear us down to the point we feel like we can’t move it on our own. The great thing is that none of us have to move those mountains alone! With the help of Heavenly Father, who so often works through others, we can have someone or several someone’s right beside us shoveling away and helping us push those heavy boulders out of the way. We have to be willing to accept the help though and sometimes that can be one of the heaviest boulders to move.

I have dealt with my own physical limitation mountains lately. I have watched friends and family members deal with their “mountains” of different sorts a lot lately as well. I’ve felt the help of others in helping me “shovel” and I hope I’ve been of help in “shoveling” others mountains too. 

In the words of Rascal Flatts “walking’s easy when the road is flat, those danged old hills will get you every time. The good Lord gave us mountains so we could learn how to climb.” I hope to be better at looking at my mountains as an opportunity to learn how to climb or be strengthened by shoveling.