Waiting on the Lord

I had a whole blog ready to write.  I thought it was perfect!  Then I decided to listen to one more conference talk by Elder Holland called "Waiting on the Lord" and everything changed.  As I listened to his talk, with what I was going to write in the back of my head, the answer "You still aren't understanding it" came.  

I don't get it!!  In my mortal and imperfect mind, I still think I can control situations and control the outcome.  I still think I can make things happen exactly the way I want with the least amount of pain and suffering.  I still want instantaneous solutions and miracles.  I still think faith means instant.  I still think righteousness means we don't have to suffer or suffer as badly.   

My former blog post was going to talk all about how sometimes the answers or healings don't come because we haven't opened ourselves to the Lord. I believed I had come up with the perfect step by step solution to always receive our answers without waiting. While this can sometimes happen, it's not truth!  

Since my wreck, I have struggled to serve because of my chronic health problems.  I accept callings, but I'm hesitant with them.  I'm very careful and I make sure everyone knows that sometimes I just wont be there.  I put all my limitations out there so I don't have to feel "guilty" if I can't do something.  And though I am serving and I believe the Lord has accepted my efforts, I do know I'm not all-in.  While listening to one of the inklings institute lessons, I was inspired that part of my healing will come when I finally open myself up to serve again. To serve all-in; holding nothing back. I had the impression that I had left myself waiting by the pool of Bethesda too long because I had shut my mind off to all-in service. I've recently been given an opportunity to serve again and it's scaring me.  My anxiety has been higher the last 2 weeks then it has been for years.  I have every good reason not to serve and I'm justified in my "whys".  But yet, the Lord is calling me.  And in that moment of the institute class, I knew my healing would finally come through all-in service.

But where I erred was that this is my personal answer, not a formula for everyone to follow.  There will still be waiting for my healing during my service, but my hope is that by opening my heart to something that scares me and I've been holding back from, I can finally allow the atonement to fully heal me.

The answers you are searching for in your life will always come, but in the Lord's time period, not ours.  There isn't an exact formula that we can do to receive what we are wanting instantaneously.  If there was we'd be missing out on so much of the learning that is to take place here in mortality.

In Elder Hollands October 2020 conference talk "Waiting on the Lord" he says, "The answer to such questions is 'Yes, God can provide miracles instantaneously, but sooner or later we learn that the times and seasons of our mortal journey are His and His alone to direct.' He administers that calendar to every one of us individually.  For every infirm man healed instantly as he waits to enter the Pool of Bethesda, someone else will spend 40 years in the desert waiting to enter the promised land...."   "The point?  The point is that faith means trusting God in good times and bad, even if that includes some suffering until we see His arm revealed in our behalf."

As I read this quote I thought of my daughter dealing with her injuries from gymnastics.  These injuries are holding her back from doing something good and something God has given her a talent in.  Aren't we supposed to improve our talents?  So why isn't she being healed instantaneously?  Why does it seem like she is having to walk the 40 years to enter the promised land?  And then the answer came at the end of Elder Hollands talk.

"The point? The point is that faith means trusting God in good times and bad, even if that includes some suffering until we see His arm revealed in our behalf.⁹ That can be difficult in our modern world when many have come to believe that the highest good in life is to avoid all suffering, that no one should ever anguish over anything.¹⁰ But that belief will never lead us to “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”¹¹

With apologies to Elder Neal A. Maxwell for daring to modify and enlarge something he once said, I too suggest that “one’s life … cannot be both faith-filled and stress-free.” It simply will not work “to glide naively through life,” saying as we sip another glass of lemonade, “Lord, give me all thy choicest virtues, but be certain not to give me grief, nor sorrow, nor pain, nor opposition. Please do not let anyone dislike me or betray me, and above all, do not ever let me feel forsaken by Thee or those I love. In fact, Lord, be careful to keep me from all the experiences that made Thee divine. And then, when the rough sledding by everyone else is over, please let me come and dwell with Thee, where I can boast about how similar our strengths and our characters are as I float along on my cloud of comfortable Christianity.”¹²

My beloved brothers and sisters, Christianity is comforting, but it is often not comfortable. The path to holiness and happiness here and hereafter is a long and sometimes rocky one. It takes time and tenacity to walk it. But, of course, the reward for doing so is monumental. This truth is taught clearly and persuasively in the 32nd chapter of Alma in the Book of Mormon. There this great high priest teaches that if the word of God is planted in our hearts as a mere seed, and if we care enough to water, weed, nourish, and encourage it, it will in the future bear fruit “which is most precious, … sweet above all that is sweet,” the consuming of which leads to a condition of no more thirst and no more hunger.¹³

Many lessons are taught in this remarkable chapter, but central to them all is the axiom that the seed has to be nourished and we must wait for it to mature; we “[look] forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof.”¹⁴ Our harvest, Alma says, comes “by and by.”¹⁵ Little wonder that he concludes his remarkable instruction by repeating three times a call for diligence and patience in nurturing the word of God in our hearts, “waiting,” as he says, with “long-suffering … for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you.”¹⁶

COVID and cancer, doubt and dismay, financial trouble and family trials. When will these burdens be lifted? The answer is “by and by.”¹⁷ And whether that be a short period or a long one is not always ours to say, but by the grace of God, the blessings will come to those who hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That issue was settled in a very private garden and on a very public hill in Jerusalem long ago.

As we now hear our beloved prophet close this conference, may we remember, as Russell Nelson has demonstrated all of his life, that those who “wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength [and] shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; … they shall walk, and not faint.”¹⁸ I pray that “by and by”—soon or late—those blessings will come to every one of you who seeks relief from your sorrow and freedom from your grief. I bear witness of God’s love and of the Restoration of His glorious gospel, which is, in one way or another, the answer to every issue we face in life. In the redeeming name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen."

If she was healed instantly right now, she'd miss out on such a wonderful experience with the Lord.  She would miss some important learning that only waiting on the Lord can bring.

If we want to rise to our a "fullness of Christ" we must patiently wait upon the Lord!!  Every one of us will have moments of instant answers and healings, but we will have more times of waiting.  These are the times that we will learn the most.  These are the times where we, with the smallest degree of mortal vision, can see what Christ's suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane really means personally to us.  These are the times where we learn about the power of grace and that it is an empowerment to us.  These are the moments are testimony becomes glued and sure!

Though I'm sure there will be moments when I fall back into my old mentality of if I control my actions, I can control the timing of the Lord; I hope that I will continue to have the moments of waiting on the Lord.  The waiting can be our most joyous moments of life!