So anyone who knows me really well knows that something that I talk about a lot is trusting in the Lord. Trust in the Lord is what keeps me functioning. Trust in the Lord is what helps me to not (completely) freak out when I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. It's what gives me the strength to press forward.
Everyone knows 1 Nephi 3:7:
“I will go and do the things that the Lord hath commanded, for I
know that the Lord giveth no commandment unto the children of men save he shall
prepare a way for them that they accomplish the thing which he commanded them.”
Great! So God is going to make a way for me and leave a completely
clear path for me with detailed instructions on what to do. Right?
Some of my favorite verses that are sadly frequently overlooked are actually in the very next chapter. It is found after Laman has tried to obtain the
plates and failed. After they bring
their worldly possessions before Laban. It didn’t really seem like Heavenly
Father had spelled a plan out for them. But Nephi wasn’t swayed. He was there to
“go and do” and gosh darnnit he was going to go and do… something. So here it is:
1 Nephi 4:6-7:
"And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the
things which I should do. Nevertheless I went forth."
(Freaking YES!)
So basically he decided to act with complete faith and with trust
that God really would guide him in the moment. There’s a quote from a John
Bytheway DVD that I love called Standards Night Live where he says
that “Nephi said I will GO and DO. Not I will SIT and STEW.” Nephi didn’t wait
until the path was made clear. He started walking the path in front of him with
the faith that Heavenly Father would not lead him astray.
Think about it. Nephi had already tried twice to do what the Lord asked him to do and had failed both times. By that point anyone else would have turned back, which is exactly what his brothers wanted to do. But Nephi knew that somehow, some way, they would get the plates. And so his plan for the third attempt was to not have one. He decided to just go and do without a clue. He had no plan as to what he was going and doing. He trusted so completely in the Lord that even though he didn't know "the things which [he] should do... [he] went forth" anyway.
Now let me tell you, that is SO hard to do. I have had so many experiences in my short 23 years where I have had no idea what to do and felt utterly hopeless. I have spent many, many nights on my knees sobbing where all I could get out for my nightly prayer was a choked out "please, please please." Please take this away. Please make it easier. Please make things work out. Please help me to figure this out.
Please, please, please.
Let me tell you a story.
When I was in high school I applied to BYU. I didn't know what I was going to study but I knew that that's where I was going to go. My mom went there, my sister went there, and I was going to go there.
But I didn't get in. And I had never sobbed harder in my life as I did that day.
I was accepted into BYU-Idaho and begrudgingly acknowledged that that's where I would be going instead.
So I waited for my track assignment.
When it finally came in I was dismayed to see Winter/Spring. Great. Now all of my friends would be heading off to college in the Fall and I would just be stuck at home doing nothing. Not only was I not going to the school that I wanted to, but now I wasn't even going when everyone else was!
Blessedly, my amazing sister invited me to go live with her and her husband in Utah for the Fall semester time period. After some convincing, my mom agreed and I was able to set off to Utah soon after my brother's wedding in August.
I loved living in Utah. I had a job, I made some friends, and I finally felt like an "adult" (silly 18 year-old me).
Then in October something happened that turned my world upside down.
The age change announcement.
For those of you who might not know what I'm talking about, this was the announcement to members of the LDS church around the world that boys could now serve full-time missions at 18 instead of 19 and girls could serve at 19 instead of 21.
I hadn't really been planning on serving a mission. I mean, I loved the gospel, and I loved missionaries, and I loved sharing the gospel with my friends at home, but when it came to a full time mission, I never really felt like it was for me. So I eventually decided to just see where my life was when I turned 21 and then go from there.
But then all of a sudden I could go at 19 if I wanted to. I was turning 19 in just five months.
My brain stopped. I literally could not even pay attention to the rest of conference. I felt like all of a sudden I needed to make this huge decision and I had to make it right then and there. Between sessions I went into the guest bedroom of my aunt's house and prayed and cried and prayed some more.
By the end of that very same day my thoughts had changed from "What the heck? What in the world am I supposed to do?" to "You need to go on a mission and you need to go right now." So I numbly announced to the world (AKA Facebook) that I was going to go on a mission when I turned 19. (I got a "shouldn't you talk to your parents about this first?" from Mom, but it didn't matter. I knew what I was supposed to do).
I had no idea how to go about going on a mission. I'm only the third missionary in my entire family and my sister was at college when she did her papers. So I met with my bishop and we had the discussion of whether I was going to go ahead and complete a semester of school or not before I went since I was already enrolled.
A big part of me longed to stay out here. I longed to be in school like everyone else was. But I knew that that wouldn't work for two main reasons. One, if I went to school that semester, all of my money would be going to tuition and I wouldn't have any left over for a mission. And two, I had medical problems that we'd been trying to figure out for years that were the kind of issues that would prevent me from serving.
A switch went off in my brain that day that the age change announcement happened. And so I made the easiest, most difficult decision of my life. Easy because I knew that it needed to happen, but hard because I had just "escaped."
I decided to go back home.
The moment things finally seemed to be working out even a little bit for me, I had to decide to go back. And I go back I did. On a Greyhound bus that lost my luggage (thankfully I got it back the next day).
From the get-go I was fairly miserable. I felt so bad when my mom picked me up at the bus station because she was so excited to see me, but I had been dreading going back ever since I decided to do it.
I had it in my head that since the prompting that I had received was to "go now," then I would get home, miraculously figure out my medical problems, and thus have my papers in by my birthday in February.
No dice.
I spent about 8 months working at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and doing medical tests. Every single test continued to come back negative, as they always had before. I grew increasingly frustrated. I had dropped everything that I wanted in life to serve the Lord. I just wanted to get back out of Pennsylvania and start moving on with my life. I was so bitter about every Facebook post that went up about my friends in college or about a mission call arriving.
Through it all, I was not angry at God. I was angry at my situation, but I didn't blame Him. But even so, I had never felt that I was in a darker, lonelier place than I was then. It was during this time that almost every single prayer was in sobs.
Heavenly Father, please. My birthday passed months ago and we're still no closer to getting me out on my mission. Heavenly Father, why does this have to be so hard? You told me to go now and I'm trying to. But right now passed months ago. I'm not going to quit. I will keep working at BB&B and doing medical tests for the rest of my life because I know that I'm supposed to serve a mission. But everyone says that You won't give me more than I can handle. So if I refuse to quit, if I don't have a breaking point, then is this just going to keep going on forever?
Night after night this is what I would say to Him. I felt like it would never, ever end. I was going to swallow cameras and pee in cups and have IVs shoved in my arms for the rest of my life with absolutely no results. Yet I refused to give up. It would have been oh so easy to do so. I could have decided to go to school after all. I could have decided that I must have misunderstood my Father when He spoke to me.
But I knew that I hadn't.
What I did NOT know was how this was all going to pan out. Because clearly it hadn't gone the way that I originally thought that it would.
Literally all I had to keep me going was this surety that God was there. That He really was listening. That He really did love me. Even though it didn't feel like it.
I plead for comfort day in and day out. Some sort of relief, peace, anything. But all I felt was anguish. I felt alone. I felt pathetic. But I knew what I could not feel. I couldn't tell you why I never wavered. Why I believed so strongly that Heavenly Father was there and that He wouldn't make me live with my parents and do medical tests for the rest of my life. But I did. I just knew it. My head knew it even though my heart didn't feel it. That's how it's tends to be for me.
Eventually we actually did figure the medical crap out and I (FINALLY) turned my papers in.
I had moved back to PA in November of 2012 and wasn't able to turn my papers in until June of 2013. I went to the MTC in September and immediately got extremely ill. I was sent to the ER in Provo TWICE over the 12 days that I was at the MTC. I missed almost every single class during that time. I had so been relying on the MTC to teach me how to be a missionary and to help me to understand the gospel better. But I was sick in bed all day every day. And I was terrified that after everything that I'd been through to get there, I would be sent home before I even made it to the field.
That didn't happen.
I served a full mission despite almost being sent home a couple of different times while in CA because of my health. Even after all that I went through to get my health in order, I got to CA and everything just went wrong again. But I was able to stay. I didn't have to go home early. (Not that there is anything at all shameful about having to return early for medical reasons, it's just that I had gone through so freaking much to get there that I couldn't even begin to comprehend the thought of having to go back to PA once more and do more medical tests).
The point of all of this is that those 8 months were honestly the hardest of my life. And my testimony wasn't what it is now, yet I clung to Heavenly Father. He was what kept me going. I had no clue what was happening in my life. I hadn't the slightest idea of when the suffering would end. But I trusted in God. I trusted that this couldn't possibly be what Heavenly Father had planned for the rest of my life. There was no way that I would actually be stuck in PA forever, even if that's how it felt every single day.
The trial that I have faced this year has been my hardest, but I still felt even more hopeless during those 8 months than I do now.
And the thing is, if I hadn't gone through what I did then, and if I hadn't served a mission and come so much closer to Christ than I ever had before, then I honestly don't think that I would be able to handle my life right now. (Let's be honest, I'm hardly handling it as it is).
If things had gone the way that I planned, if I had gone to BYU and never served a mission, then I wouldn't be the type of person that could handle a trial like the one that I'm facing now.
Every single hardship that I've ever suffered and every single lesson learned on my mission has prepared me to go through what I'm going through at this exact moment. Because those 8 months taught me something so important.
They taught me that even when I feel like I have nothing else, I have God. Even when things don't work out the way that I planned, He is there and is guiding me towards the things that will work out and that will be better for me than anything that I could have come up with. I learned that Heavenly Father really does know what is best for me and that if I don't ever give up on Him, then He assuredly will never, ever give up on me. And even if I do give up He will still be there pulling for me.
Serving a mission changed my life. It changed who I am completely. You could ask my younger brother, and my best friend, and my sister and brother-in-law and they would tell you that I was a totally different person when I got home than I was before. Pre-mission Anna was basically a miserable little pile of sadness. She wasn't super fun to be around much and only saw the negative in her life. But now, even when my life is truly excruciating at times, I am able to see SO much good in it.
And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that things ARE going to get better. I know that because they always have. They ALWAYS do! What chance do my trials have when faced with the Almighty God? A God who loves me- really, truly loves me -and wants the absolute best for me? A God who is guiding my life so that I can have the absolute MOST possible joy in the long run that I can?
Zero.
My trials really are nothing in the grand scheme of things. They sure don't feel like nothing now, but I know that it will all be worth it in the end.
And so no, I don't have a single blessed clue what to do with my life right now. And no I don't know when I'll stop crying, or when I'll stop feeling sick all of the time from the PTSD and IBS, or when I'll be able to handle more than just a couple of classes and actually focus, or when I'll be able to eat and sleep normally again.
I don't know any of those things.
But you can bet your butt that I'm going to keep living my life the best that I know how to even if I have to take everything just one day at a time. And yes I'm constantly frustrated with my situation and yes I'm hard on myself and constantly ask myself why I can't just improve, and heal, and move on already, but yes, I also know that it will get better.
I keep going even though I don't know where I'm going. Even though I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm doing right now. I keep going because I don't have to know. I know that HE knows where I'm going, and sometimes all I can do is just keep walking blindly with the knowledge that He won't ever lead me astray.
I am being led, day by day, hour by hour, by the Spirit, not knowing at this time the things which I should do. Nevertheless, I am going forth.
I am continuing because I know that God is at the helm and that He won't take me into waters that He won't also help me traverse. I am putting one foot in front of the other with the faith that He won't let me fall farther than He can catch me. Because as long as I keep walking with God, things will always get better. Because they always do. And they always will.
And that's what keeps me going.
So if you are in a spot in your life where you simply do not know what to do, turn to your Father. He loves you and He knows what you need. I needed to go through the hardships that I went through to prepare me for this one. To teach me that things really do get better someday. I am being molded into the very best me that I can be. And you are being molded into the very best you that you can be. But that only works if you allow the Master to shape you and trust that He knows all that you can be.
Life is so hard. The unknown is so scary. Those moments when you feel that your life is hopeless freaking suck. But I promise you that this too shall pass. I promise you that you have the capacity to not only get through this, but that your capacity to continue will grow. You will become stronger because of this. You will be able to help people because of this.
My friend told me today that I have helped her to get through this semester because, even before we were friends, she told herself that "If Anna can go to class and get through her day with everything that she has going on, then so can you." I feel so weak, so helpless. And i have helped her not only despite that, but because of that. Because I've shown her that you can be weak, you can feel helpless, and still keep going.
So it's okay to not know what the heck you're doing right now because God does. Your job is simply to continue. Continue in faith. Continue trying to figure out what to do but don't beat yourself up if you don't know yet. Because as long as you remain close to Him, then I can promise you that it will all be okay. It always is when you trust in God and just continue.
PS- You should read this talk.
But really though. Read it.
Now let me tell you, that is SO hard to do. I have had so many experiences in my short 23 years where I have had no idea what to do and felt utterly hopeless. I have spent many, many nights on my knees sobbing where all I could get out for my nightly prayer was a choked out "please, please please." Please take this away. Please make it easier. Please make things work out. Please help me to figure this out.
Please, please, please.
Let me tell you a story.
When I was in high school I applied to BYU. I didn't know what I was going to study but I knew that that's where I was going to go. My mom went there, my sister went there, and I was going to go there.
But I didn't get in. And I had never sobbed harder in my life as I did that day.
I was accepted into BYU-Idaho and begrudgingly acknowledged that that's where I would be going instead.
So I waited for my track assignment.
When it finally came in I was dismayed to see Winter/Spring. Great. Now all of my friends would be heading off to college in the Fall and I would just be stuck at home doing nothing. Not only was I not going to the school that I wanted to, but now I wasn't even going when everyone else was!
Blessedly, my amazing sister invited me to go live with her and her husband in Utah for the Fall semester time period. After some convincing, my mom agreed and I was able to set off to Utah soon after my brother's wedding in August.
I loved living in Utah. I had a job, I made some friends, and I finally felt like an "adult" (silly 18 year-old me).
Then in October something happened that turned my world upside down.
The age change announcement.
For those of you who might not know what I'm talking about, this was the announcement to members of the LDS church around the world that boys could now serve full-time missions at 18 instead of 19 and girls could serve at 19 instead of 21.
I hadn't really been planning on serving a mission. I mean, I loved the gospel, and I loved missionaries, and I loved sharing the gospel with my friends at home, but when it came to a full time mission, I never really felt like it was for me. So I eventually decided to just see where my life was when I turned 21 and then go from there.
But then all of a sudden I could go at 19 if I wanted to. I was turning 19 in just five months.
My brain stopped. I literally could not even pay attention to the rest of conference. I felt like all of a sudden I needed to make this huge decision and I had to make it right then and there. Between sessions I went into the guest bedroom of my aunt's house and prayed and cried and prayed some more.
By the end of that very same day my thoughts had changed from "What the heck? What in the world am I supposed to do?" to "You need to go on a mission and you need to go right now." So I numbly announced to the world (AKA Facebook) that I was going to go on a mission when I turned 19. (I got a "shouldn't you talk to your parents about this first?" from Mom, but it didn't matter. I knew what I was supposed to do).
I had no idea how to go about going on a mission. I'm only the third missionary in my entire family and my sister was at college when she did her papers. So I met with my bishop and we had the discussion of whether I was going to go ahead and complete a semester of school or not before I went since I was already enrolled.
A big part of me longed to stay out here. I longed to be in school like everyone else was. But I knew that that wouldn't work for two main reasons. One, if I went to school that semester, all of my money would be going to tuition and I wouldn't have any left over for a mission. And two, I had medical problems that we'd been trying to figure out for years that were the kind of issues that would prevent me from serving.
A switch went off in my brain that day that the age change announcement happened. And so I made the easiest, most difficult decision of my life. Easy because I knew that it needed to happen, but hard because I had just "escaped."
I decided to go back home.
The moment things finally seemed to be working out even a little bit for me, I had to decide to go back. And I go back I did. On a Greyhound bus that lost my luggage (thankfully I got it back the next day).
From the get-go I was fairly miserable. I felt so bad when my mom picked me up at the bus station because she was so excited to see me, but I had been dreading going back ever since I decided to do it.
I had it in my head that since the prompting that I had received was to "go now," then I would get home, miraculously figure out my medical problems, and thus have my papers in by my birthday in February.
No dice.
I spent about 8 months working at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and doing medical tests. Every single test continued to come back negative, as they always had before. I grew increasingly frustrated. I had dropped everything that I wanted in life to serve the Lord. I just wanted to get back out of Pennsylvania and start moving on with my life. I was so bitter about every Facebook post that went up about my friends in college or about a mission call arriving.
Through it all, I was not angry at God. I was angry at my situation, but I didn't blame Him. But even so, I had never felt that I was in a darker, lonelier place than I was then. It was during this time that almost every single prayer was in sobs.
Heavenly Father, please. My birthday passed months ago and we're still no closer to getting me out on my mission. Heavenly Father, why does this have to be so hard? You told me to go now and I'm trying to. But right now passed months ago. I'm not going to quit. I will keep working at BB&B and doing medical tests for the rest of my life because I know that I'm supposed to serve a mission. But everyone says that You won't give me more than I can handle. So if I refuse to quit, if I don't have a breaking point, then is this just going to keep going on forever?
Night after night this is what I would say to Him. I felt like it would never, ever end. I was going to swallow cameras and pee in cups and have IVs shoved in my arms for the rest of my life with absolutely no results. Yet I refused to give up. It would have been oh so easy to do so. I could have decided to go to school after all. I could have decided that I must have misunderstood my Father when He spoke to me.
But I knew that I hadn't.
What I did NOT know was how this was all going to pan out. Because clearly it hadn't gone the way that I originally thought that it would.
Literally all I had to keep me going was this surety that God was there. That He really was listening. That He really did love me. Even though it didn't feel like it.
I plead for comfort day in and day out. Some sort of relief, peace, anything. But all I felt was anguish. I felt alone. I felt pathetic. But I knew what I could not feel. I couldn't tell you why I never wavered. Why I believed so strongly that Heavenly Father was there and that He wouldn't make me live with my parents and do medical tests for the rest of my life. But I did. I just knew it. My head knew it even though my heart didn't feel it. That's how it's tends to be for me.
Eventually we actually did figure the medical crap out and I (FINALLY) turned my papers in.
I had moved back to PA in November of 2012 and wasn't able to turn my papers in until June of 2013. I went to the MTC in September and immediately got extremely ill. I was sent to the ER in Provo TWICE over the 12 days that I was at the MTC. I missed almost every single class during that time. I had so been relying on the MTC to teach me how to be a missionary and to help me to understand the gospel better. But I was sick in bed all day every day. And I was terrified that after everything that I'd been through to get there, I would be sent home before I even made it to the field.
That didn't happen.
I served a full mission despite almost being sent home a couple of different times while in CA because of my health. Even after all that I went through to get my health in order, I got to CA and everything just went wrong again. But I was able to stay. I didn't have to go home early. (Not that there is anything at all shameful about having to return early for medical reasons, it's just that I had gone through so freaking much to get there that I couldn't even begin to comprehend the thought of having to go back to PA once more and do more medical tests).
The point of all of this is that those 8 months were honestly the hardest of my life. And my testimony wasn't what it is now, yet I clung to Heavenly Father. He was what kept me going. I had no clue what was happening in my life. I hadn't the slightest idea of when the suffering would end. But I trusted in God. I trusted that this couldn't possibly be what Heavenly Father had planned for the rest of my life. There was no way that I would actually be stuck in PA forever, even if that's how it felt every single day.
The trial that I have faced this year has been my hardest, but I still felt even more hopeless during those 8 months than I do now.
And the thing is, if I hadn't gone through what I did then, and if I hadn't served a mission and come so much closer to Christ than I ever had before, then I honestly don't think that I would be able to handle my life right now. (Let's be honest, I'm hardly handling it as it is).
If things had gone the way that I planned, if I had gone to BYU and never served a mission, then I wouldn't be the type of person that could handle a trial like the one that I'm facing now.
Every single hardship that I've ever suffered and every single lesson learned on my mission has prepared me to go through what I'm going through at this exact moment. Because those 8 months taught me something so important.
They taught me that even when I feel like I have nothing else, I have God. Even when things don't work out the way that I planned, He is there and is guiding me towards the things that will work out and that will be better for me than anything that I could have come up with. I learned that Heavenly Father really does know what is best for me and that if I don't ever give up on Him, then He assuredly will never, ever give up on me. And even if I do give up He will still be there pulling for me.
Serving a mission changed my life. It changed who I am completely. You could ask my younger brother, and my best friend, and my sister and brother-in-law and they would tell you that I was a totally different person when I got home than I was before. Pre-mission Anna was basically a miserable little pile of sadness. She wasn't super fun to be around much and only saw the negative in her life. But now, even when my life is truly excruciating at times, I am able to see SO much good in it.
And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that things ARE going to get better. I know that because they always have. They ALWAYS do! What chance do my trials have when faced with the Almighty God? A God who loves me- really, truly loves me -and wants the absolute best for me? A God who is guiding my life so that I can have the absolute MOST possible joy in the long run that I can?
Zero.
My trials really are nothing in the grand scheme of things. They sure don't feel like nothing now, but I know that it will all be worth it in the end.
And so no, I don't have a single blessed clue what to do with my life right now. And no I don't know when I'll stop crying, or when I'll stop feeling sick all of the time from the PTSD and IBS, or when I'll be able to handle more than just a couple of classes and actually focus, or when I'll be able to eat and sleep normally again.
I don't know any of those things.
But you can bet your butt that I'm going to keep living my life the best that I know how to even if I have to take everything just one day at a time. And yes I'm constantly frustrated with my situation and yes I'm hard on myself and constantly ask myself why I can't just improve, and heal, and move on already, but yes, I also know that it will get better.
I keep going even though I don't know where I'm going. Even though I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm doing right now. I keep going because I don't have to know. I know that HE knows where I'm going, and sometimes all I can do is just keep walking blindly with the knowledge that He won't ever lead me astray.
I am being led, day by day, hour by hour, by the Spirit, not knowing at this time the things which I should do. Nevertheless, I am going forth.
I am continuing because I know that God is at the helm and that He won't take me into waters that He won't also help me traverse. I am putting one foot in front of the other with the faith that He won't let me fall farther than He can catch me. Because as long as I keep walking with God, things will always get better. Because they always do. And they always will.
And that's what keeps me going.
So if you are in a spot in your life where you simply do not know what to do, turn to your Father. He loves you and He knows what you need. I needed to go through the hardships that I went through to prepare me for this one. To teach me that things really do get better someday. I am being molded into the very best me that I can be. And you are being molded into the very best you that you can be. But that only works if you allow the Master to shape you and trust that He knows all that you can be.
Life is so hard. The unknown is so scary. Those moments when you feel that your life is hopeless freaking suck. But I promise you that this too shall pass. I promise you that you have the capacity to not only get through this, but that your capacity to continue will grow. You will become stronger because of this. You will be able to help people because of this.
My friend told me today that I have helped her to get through this semester because, even before we were friends, she told herself that "If Anna can go to class and get through her day with everything that she has going on, then so can you." I feel so weak, so helpless. And i have helped her not only despite that, but because of that. Because I've shown her that you can be weak, you can feel helpless, and still keep going.
So it's okay to not know what the heck you're doing right now because God does. Your job is simply to continue. Continue in faith. Continue trying to figure out what to do but don't beat yourself up if you don't know yet. Because as long as you remain close to Him, then I can promise you that it will all be okay. It always is when you trust in God and just continue.
PS- You should read this talk.
But really though. Read it.
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