Chapter
2 - God Will Not be Pushed from Behind
“In
your patience possess ye your souls.”
Luke 21:19
I grew up with a dad that worked in the same job for 30+ years. Because they chose to have my Dad finish his degree and my mom stay home to raise their seven children, my dad always had about 3 jobs in order to make that work. But he had those jobs for decades. It doesn’t take science or data to see that paradigm evolving.
See for a hundred years or more, the
Saints were sequestered in a way, out here in the wide-open Western United
States. It made outsiders nervous. I can see how it would do that. We had
customs and practices that seemed odd and other-worldly to those “on the
outside.” It has taken a long time for us to be mainstreamed into the world.
I like to think of the church as
having four levels of practice: Formal policy and revelation, practiced
procedure, advice and information and finally, good ‘ole common sense. Some of
it comes across the pulpits twice a year at the formal General Conferences or
the weekly Sacrament Meetings. This vital information and/or inspiration is
addressed to the general population of the church from the leadership of the
church, the prophets, seers and revelators. Revelation is God-given. It is rare
and drives faith.
Practiced procedures are important
to a growing, international church to provide unity. The Lord is all about
unity and becoming “as one.”
The Lord’s prophets have always called for unity. The need
for that gift to be granted to us and the challenge to maintain it will grow
greater in the days ahead, in which we will be prepared as a people for our
glorious destiny.[1]
Advice and information come from
authorized church publicized media. However, I can see in my lifetime alone,
that the church would rather you get personal advice from God himself through
the Holy Ghost. When I was a pre-teen in the 70’s, I actually read an article
from a church magazine that said "women should do everything they can to
appear attractive to their husbands," and when a woman takes the sacrament
she shouldn’t throw her head back like a man does – it’s “uncomely.” Pretty
sure the Lord had nothing to do with that advice, but I remember as a young
girl wondering what it meant to “throw your head back.” It worried me weekly
until I figured it out. Strange that a little thing like that would matter so
much and stick with me for so long. But as a kid, I abided by any rule that
promised me a pay-off. Apparently, I thought that if you threw your head back
when you took the sacrament you would never get a husband. I still don’t throw
my head back. We would be hard-pressed to find an article like that these days.
Finally, a very wide and sometimes
abused form of practice in any community or religious group: common sense. This
category changes as rapidly as society changes. In most religions, we are often
conflicted with what is politically acceptable today and what is acceptable by
God. We tend to think that society is further ahead...in a modern way. There is
a constant feeling that God isn’t keeping up with the times.
Latter-Days Saints don’t even want
to be called Mormon anymore. We change too.... it just takes us a little
longer. We're faithfully on God's time. We believe that He is working hard to
answer our prayers, to fill in the blessings that we feel we are “owed” for
righteous living, but even God can’t alter man’s free will. Knowing that has
helped me take a breath through my trials, and apply some of that hard-earned
patience. I’ve learned to wait. I’ve learned to say how blessed I am that I
have the truth of the gospel and how it expands my patience, gives me true
purpose for living and has made the waiting tolerable. Whatever. It doesn't make it easier, but I've learned to say it.
I’m waiting for a few things to
happen in my life that I perceive will make me happy but waiting is horrible. I
get utterly depressed when those things don’t happen at the speed in which I
perceive it will take the depression away.
In a clichéd nutshell, if my trials and disappointments are not teaching
me something, what's their use? Why live through it? Why go on? Trust creates
endurance. It’s a vicious awful cycle of pain..er..education. I’m a fast
learner! Why does it seem like I have to repeat these lessons over and over?
Oh. Endurance...Enduring to the end…
a virtue above all other virtues.
And - hope. See, if every prayer we
uttered in our loneliness and impatience was answered the instant we asked,
there would be no need for hope. And I've needed hope in my life. Hope has
gotten me out of bed sometimes. Hope can give us those dreams and expectations.
In hope, we can have anticipation for happiness. We can truly say that “we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be
able to endure all things.[2]
It’s really tough to endure all
things until we learn to “be submissive
and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being
temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at
all times.[3] So we continue to hold onto the iron rod and
adjust our grip as we learn those things. Don’t let go, though. Believe me,
don’t let go.
It all goes back to time. Time is
relative, elusive and human. In fact, as I sit here, I can hear two different
clocks ticking away, reminding me that time is a human invention and what is
that old saying? We are not humans having a spiritual experience, we are
spiritual beings having a human experience. Sounds like something I
cross-stitched for my hope chest when I was in eighth grade.
Another cliché born out of the
truth.
Having true patience is knowing that
time is relative and that I need to relax and can wait without losing hope. I
CAN WAIT. I just don’t want to. It’s painful to see my dreams being fulfilled
by people around me...and not...me. I don’t have to rush myself, give up on my
eternal goals or push someone else (least of all God) to get to the things I
need or want.
Let me be clear: waiting is just
standing around. Waiting with patience
or what we call “waiting on the Lord” is patience by allowing God time to
perform His part too. We trust that by doing all that we can, God will
expand our effort and make it greater
than it could ever be if we attempted to go through this life by ourselves.
However hard we might want to push God from behind, trust that He is working as
fast as He can - hand in hand with US.
God isn’t just standing around. Can
you look back and see the hand of God working miracles and magic in your life?
It defies explanation to me sometimes - except that I have faith and I know
that it is because of His love for me that He wants me back there, with Him,
again. He is my F.A.T.H.E.R. He’s working hard! But only as hard as human time
and agency will allow.
Today in the LDS church, I believe
we are moving toward a modern sensibility, albeit slowly, and FAR too slowly
for some. The human clock moves at the speed of light today, however, God will
not be pushed from behind. The great Plan of Salvation is what it is. We work
through it individually and as couples. Therein also lies the great heartache
of my life and why I have needed hope, patience, submission and endurance.
In D. Todd Christofferson’s
conference talk called “Why Marriage, Why Family,” he explains the great and
eternal plan of happiness in a way that helped me understand my commission
toward it.
Elder Christofferson iterates a
letter that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German
theologian, wrote to his niece on her wedding day. He told her:
“Marriage is more than your love for each
other. … In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in
marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to
come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love
you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed
at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your
own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a
status, an office…”[4]
Prophets have revealed that when we
were first nothing more than intelligences, God looked around and wanted to
give us all an opportunity to advance as He had done. What a great dad! So he
created the great “Plan of Salvation” or “Plan of Happiness” as it is also
called. In order for it to work (everybody who chooses to follow it would have
eternal happiness), He set up the following pattern:
1. He
created a place where a mortal body could live - Earth
2. We
experience the condition of mortality - tested outside the presence of God
3. We
are redeemed from our sins by Jesus Christ on the condition of repentance
4. We
turn around and provide mortal bodies for other spirits to do the same
So it is in that
commission that we have, as Latter-day Saints been asked to create families. In
1976, President Kimball, seeing this tide coming, said, “Come home wives, to
your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and
(unembarrassed) help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal
souls who anxiously wait.” It seems old-fashioned, doesn’t
it? Yet - I understand it easily and
comfortably. I got a body, I have a uterus - I need to pay it forward. But the
world doesn’t always see it like that. The resistance would say that we are
putting women in a corner, and it gets stronger by the day. Even marriage seems
like an old-fashioned, out-dated paradigm today. Still, I have felt the ache to
nurture children all my life. It isn’t something I was brainwashed to do - I
was born with this predilection, this tendency, this propensity.
So after years and
years of waiting and working, it was on
March 11, 2006 that I knelt across an alter from my best friend, Andy Hunsaker
to be sealed to him “for time and all eternity.” The officiator admonished us,
as they do to all couples, to “finish the work of the Lord by multiplying and
replenishing the Earth.” There was nothing I wanted more than to create my own
tribe at that point and time was running out. But hurdle one? Done!
Silly me. I had already obtained my
bachelor's degree from the university of patience and I didn’t even know it.
Was I ready to do the rest “in God’s time too?”
Recipe for Chapter 2
Patience and
Long-Suffering Bread
3 cups of All Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp Active Dry Yeast - no more
than that. It can be “fast acting” too if you want.
1 ½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups hot water
Mix dry ingredients together in a
big bowl and add hot water. Dough will be sticky and shaggy. Leave it in the
bowl and seal the bowl off with plastic wrap. Leave the bowl on the counter for
3 - 8 hours. Patience!
Let’s say that you forgot about it
and left it there for eight hours - who cares! That’s okay. This bread will
have patience for you too.
Once the waiting is over and the
dough has risen to about double in size, turn your oven on to 450 degrees and
pre-heat a 6 quart cast iron dutch oven. Once the oven is ready gently roll the
dough out onto a well-floured surface. DO NOT KNEAD IT. The dough will be
loose, fluffy and bubbly. All you are going to do at this point is gently shape
it into a ball and then place the ball of dough on a piece of 11’ x 18”
parchment paper.
Carefully pull the corners of the
parchment paper up and lift the dough ball down into your pre-heated dutch oven. Seal the
lid on tight. You can let the paper stick out. Bake, covered for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 10 - 15
minutes until the top is golden to dark brown. Let it sit out the dutch oven, for about
5 minutes before you cut it.
Eat. It. All. With. Butter.
The pay-off is incredible. The best
things come to those who wait.
[2] Article of Faith #13
[3] Alma 7:23
[4] “Why Marriage,
Why Family,” Elder D.Todd Christofferson, Ensign, May 2015
Homework Assignment for Chapter 2
I know you're going to think I'm nuts, but read D. Todd Christofferson’s conference
talk (May, 2015) “Why Marriage, Why Children.”
- Write down how you feel about your role in the Plan of
Salvation:
