What Do You Do?

What do you do when the answer to your many prayers is, "No."

How do you accept that you will not be healed, your family will continue to struggle, the job you want will not be forthcoming, the child you love will continue to make bad choices, the person who has hurt you will never apologize, the help you are seeking will not be provided, that your lot is to endure?

How do you endure when your heart is absolutely broken, your faith is stretched to the breaking point, you can barely convince yourself to keep breathing because even that feels like more than you can do?

I remember hard things coming my way in college, and making it. Somehow those things seem so miniscule now. Which means that someday what I am enduring now will seem so small.

But if I survived back then, I can survive now. So looking back, how did I do it?

I kept doing the things I knew were good and right, even when it seemed like I was simply going through the motions. I went to church, read my scriptures, served others- even when and especially when- I was dying inside.

I didn't give up on the notion that this was all in God's hands. There were many times I wondered if my prayers were reaching past the ceiling, but I would not stop calling on Him, hoping He was listening, waiting for His answers.

What do I do now? These very same things. Only this time more often than not, when I'm reading my scriptures I'm searching for those words that bring me peace, scrolling through for wisdom lurking in the spaces I have glossed over. Looking for wisdom in the white spaces. Waiting for breathings from the Spirit in the quiet loneliness.

I serve others a little more aware that their struggles are as real and painful as mine, so the service is little more sincere and a lot more from a place of compassion.

I refuse to believe this isn't all in His hands, but that doesn't mean I have gotten wise enough to let Him carry it. Unfortunately, I still have a lot of work in that area. I still struggle even knowing how to turn it all over to Him. I hear people say it, I hear it in songs, I just haven't figured out how exactly to do it right now. Instead I  tend to say, "I give up, I don't care anymore." Which is far from true.

I dig a bit deeper in holding onto trust that the Creator of this life knows what He is doing even when I don't and that all things will work together for my good. Trust that He is my adoring Father and wants to give me great things, in His own time. Trust that He will not let me go, even when I am wondering where He is.

I find myself spending more time trying to discover who He is and what He wants because that calls my attention away from myself. I'm finding that the more I try to discover Him, the less I worry about my own circumstances.

The Hunt

In the shadow of my mind’s eye, I vaguely see the trunks of gigantic trees dotting the soft green grass. Glints of bright color light up the grass in hundreds of places.  The chatter is all around me as hundreds of little kids stand there with baskets. I’m standing with my parents and grandparents not really understanding what is going on. A loud voice from somewhere announces that the little kids will go first when the sound is made, followed by another sound for the next group and so on. Then the seeking began. Holding our baskets we all toddled forward to the closest bit of color and picked it up. The eggs were pretty colors and attractive, but often disappeared under the hands of someone bigger or faster. As a very young child the wonder of having one of those brightly colored eggs was wonderful.

As an adult I have since watched other large volume Easter Egg hunts and have observed several things that seem especially poignant today. Have you seen the very small toddlers find one egg and being so enamored with the one, that they could care less about the treat inside?  Then there are those collecting as many as possible, but not really realizing anything is inside. There are the kids who know there is candy inside and are scooping up every egg they can find, even willing to take ones in front of someone else.  There are the older kids who realize they need to leave the obvious ones on the ground for the little kids and start seeking a bit. Many of the oldest head straight for the trees or high spots or start looking in the unusual places because they want the challenge.

As I was watching my kids hunt for eggs, and other kids hunting I thought about the kind of parent our Heavenly Father is. He very much wants us to find Him. At first, there are signs everywhere. If we are looking at all we can see His majesty in everything. Little kids tend to do this. They take the time to examine a flower up close or lay on the ground and watch the sky. Like the egg hunt, they likely don’t realize the treasure they found or where it came from, they are just enjoying this beautiful thing. In time, we learn to appreciate His gifts a bit more as we realize the “sweetness” in them. We learn that a flower may be more than beautiful, it may be able to scent a whole room. Or perhaps it can take a person to a special event in their memory.

We begin to look a little more for His gifts after a while. They may be a bit less appreciated as we have gotten accustomed to seeing them daily. But every now and then we catch a glimpse and realize He is there and still giving us good gifts.

Eventually we may have “matured” a bit and we can’t find the eggs so easily. They are there. They are still freely offered, but they are more elusive. We have to put more effort into finding them. Our amazing Father has never taken those sweet treats away, but He is expecting us to do a bit more work. Deuteronomy 4:29 states “But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.”

Our Father wants to be found. He wants to make Himself known to us. He glories in daily blessing us with His little treasures. And He knows that the seeking is part of the adventure, part of the fun, part of what makes the finding of His treasures exciting!  Just like looking for eggs as a kid, He gives us incremental steps for the finding. Easy and very visable at first, but in time knowing we need more of a challenge.

“Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.” 1 Chronicles 16:11.

How do we seek for the Lord?

How do we seek for a child? We think of their interests and where they like to be and look there.

Where does the Lord like to be? I find His handprint in His creations. When I take a close look at a sunset, a flower, a bird, a lizard or a mountain, I get to know Him better. I get to see Him as a diverse creator with an amazing imagination (seriously, think of a seahorse), I see him as a master artist (recall a beautiful sunset), an incredible scientist (think of the design of a bird’s wing).

Where is He? I see evidence of Him all around me. I see Him in people taking care of someone else, a mother drying a child’s tears, a father working endless hours to provide for his family, a son taking care of a sick parent, a child being kind to the new kid.

How can I get to know Him better? My answer to this is the scriptures. If you want to get to know a person, their autobiography is probably a good place to go. When I read the Old Testament, I see a God who would not give up on His people, even though they gave Him every reason to do so. The more I read, the better I understand what He wants to give His children, and how very much His children do not understand. When I read the New Testament, I see the evidence of an incomprehensible love. The giving of a beloved Son as the means for meeting the demands of justice and the unbelievable obedience of the most loving Son.

If we are struggling to see our Father and get to know Him, it may be time to look around at the little eggs of love He has left lying around. See them with fresh eyes, take the time to examine more closely what He has put right in front of us.  It may also be time to look around a little more at how He is blessing not only us but others through the gift of each person He put in our lives. We should also daily, be checking out His works in the scriptures. He has revealed Himself in them and we can get to know Him better if we are reading them regularly.

He wants us to get to know Him, He has put evidences all around us. But He won’t do the hunting for us! We have to do some of the work! And that work will be so worth the reward of the sweetest relationship we will ever know!