When I step back and review this accomplishment, the important thing is not the words but that I spoke. I didn't let fear stop me from delivering the talk, but swallowed my pride and said things that hopefully touched another person. I put myself aside and gave the talk (even though I have limitations) because I hoped the words would reach someone.
I'm not comparing myself to Moses, but saying that it's important to be obedient when compelled to do something. We need to act not make excuses for why we don't. When we're obedient to promptings, God knows He can count on us. He uses us to convey messages that He wants people to hear. Perhaps the opportunity is lost when we don't act. I spoke even though I felt many insecurities. I hope that God knows he can count on me.
Here's the talk:
Afflictions
and Trials
I’m Hawaiian and in the Hawaiian language there is the word ‘Ohana’ which means family. In
families people express their love. I hope you will feel my love for you today
and that the Holy Ghost will teach you (through my words) what you need to
learn.
I
have been sick for four years. Before that time, I could stand and walk and
talk just like you. I have MS and some
of my symptoms have never gone away. I had a life before I got MS. I worked. I
made dinner for my family almost every day. I cleaned my house. I exercised. I
ran errands. I wrote in my journal. I played the piano. I sang and I served
at church.
After
I got sick, my life turned upside down. I became disabled. I had to quit my
job. I couldn't cook, clean, exercise, or shop any more. I
no longer had balance. My strength became weakness. I felt dizzy. My hands
wouldn't hold things correctly. Writing became difficult. My hands shook
whenever I attempted to play the piano; my fingers wouldn't stay on the keys of my favorite instrument; and, my playing
became slow and included lots of mistakes. This has been a great
learning experience for me. I always wanted to stay home and not work…but I didn’t mean and be sick too!
Anyway, my illness is a blessing because now I
get to talk to you about it. I can’t stand for very long (because
then I get hot and feel like I want to cry) so I’m
sitting while I talk to you, I hope you don’t
mind. My voice has been affected by my illness. I haven’t always sounded like this, so I hope you can understand
me.
Afflictions
and trials aren’t the same thing. Most trials
start out as afflictions but trials can be manmade, for example, when one
doesn't learn a certain lesson so they experience the same trial again.
Sometimes
people get afflictions to learn to live with them. When a person learns from
their afflictions, they receive the benefit of being improved. We learn through
the furnace of affliction. Isaiah records God saying: "Behold, I have
refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." (Isaiah 48:10)
We don’t learn from happiness but
from sorrow. God doesn’t teach us when we feel happy – He rejoices with us! God teaches us when we feel sad.
Afflictions
are a part of sanctification. Abraham recorded God saying: "And we will prove them
herewith, to
see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command
them." (Abraham 3:25) God wanted to know if we’d be obedient to his commandments. Essentially, He said: “Put your money where your mouth is.” He wanted to know if we’d
keep his commandments even when
afflicted.
Afflictions
are whatever the Lord determines we need to experience. A great prophet in the
Book of Mormon said: "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been
since the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the
enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a
saint through Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek,
humble, patient, full of love, willing
to submit to all things the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, as a child doth submit to
his father." (Mosiah 3:19)
Joseph
Smith suffered for months because bad people accused him of a crime he didn’t commit. He said that he’d
seen God, and because of that and other things, bad men locked him up.
He
sat in the Liberty Jail during one Missouri winter. (I’ve lived in Kansas for over 20 years and know how cold it
gets in the winter on the plains. Joseph Smith received the revelation that I’m about to quote from at the end of March - it’s still pretty cold then. Plus no glass covered the windows
of his cell. I’m sure it got pretty cold in
his jail room.) Joseph received a very touching answer when he prayed to God to
ask how long he and the saints had to suffer persecution before God intervened.
God answered him with this: “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be
but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee
on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. Thou art not yet as Job;
thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with
transgression, as they did Job.” (D&C 121:7-10) Then God
went on to say “…if thou shouldst be cast into
the pit, or into the hands of
murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if
fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the
elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide
after thee, know thou, my son, that all
these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou
greater than he? (D&C 122:7-8)
(I
cry because I consider that the things God said to Joseph He would also say to
me. God’s words comfort me and I
believe that everything I suffer will be for my good.)
God
told Joseph comforting things – the last thing is also a bit chastising. Joseph wanted to
know how long he had to wait for God to intervene, and God reassured him. God
also said in essence, I’ll intervene when it’s time, not when you want. He basically said: “Be patient.” Sometimes we need to
patiently endure our afflictions until God determines our endurance is enough.
I believe that Joseph would have been willing to have patience, but that he
really wanted the assurance that God would
intervene. I think the experience is in the scriptures to tell us to trust that
God will do the same for us. Trust is a hard thing for us to have because we’ve been let down. The thing to remember is that we’re trusting in God not a in a human. God won’t let us down.
We
know that Jesus suffered. It’s not as well known that he
suffered throughout his life. Paul told the Hebrews: "Though he were a
Son, yet he learned obedience by the things he suffered." (Hebrews 5:8)
Jesus thought higher than everyone else and even though He had friends He
basically went through His life alone because no one related to Him. In the
Garden of Gethsemene He sweat great drops of blood. On Calvary He got stabbed,
had nails driven through His hands and wrists, and got crucified on a cross. He
willingly suffered for me and I love Him. I thank Him. He had no sins - He was
a perfect person - and yet He paid a price for me with His life. His atonement
saved me from my imperfections. He is my savior and I will praise his name
forever. Jesus had many happy times, but He also suffered greatly.
We
learn through suffering - probably because in suffering we’re humble. God wants us to be humble, not proud, so He can
teach us. When I first got sick I kept thinking about the scripture about the
natural man. At the time, I also thought of this story about a crab. (Please
visualize the images as I tell you my story.)
"I'm brave. I'm fine. I
can handle my problems" said the little crab.
"I have a shell and I'm
tough. Nothing can break me", it continued.
The wise old crab asked the
little crab to take off its shell.
"If I take off my shell,
I'll be weak. I could be crushed" said the little crab.
"Take off your
shell" said the wise old crab.
"Trust me. I have a
reason for asking you to do this", he said.
The little crab took off its
shell.
It saw the wise old crab and
felt deflated.
"I'm exposed. I'm vulnerable.
I'm not pretty without my shell," said the little crab.
"I can't hide. Everyone
can see me for who I really am, and I'm just a crab" it continued.
The wise old crab saw the
little crab without its shell.
The little crab is beautiful,
he thought.
Other crabs saw the little
crab.
"It doesn't have a
shell" they whispered and thought of him as brave.
"I took off my shell like
you asked" said the little crab.
It frowned and said "Now
I'm not pretty. Everyone can see my problems. I'm not tough and I don't feel
happy."
"That doesn't
matter" said the wise old crab.
"One day you'll feel
happy. Here, take my shell." he said.
The little crab crawled in the
wise old crab's bigger and stronger shell.
"This new shell is
good" the little crab said as he crawled into the shell and it fit just right.
The little crab realized that
he had outgrown his old shell.
He felt grateful that the wise
old crab had seen something in him that he hadn't seen in himself.
The little crab had taken off
his shell and received a bigger and stronger one.
The little crab felt happy.
After
I thought of that story, I wondered how God could comfort or teach a person
when they had their shell on. It occurred to me that God wanted His people to
be exposed and vulnerable so He could come to them. In my story, the crab's
shell represented pride – tough and hard to crack. In my own life, I had replaced my Savior by thinking I'm tough, I can
handle my own problems.
I didn’t have humble thinking - but didn't consider myself arrogant and prideful. God wanted to be with me,
comfort me, and tell me how to solve my problems, but when I thought I could handle my problems on my own, I wouldn’t let him help me and faced them alone.
Recently,
I read a book where the author also talked about a crab. He said that a crab
had to walk backward to move forward because its front claws were too heavy. He
related going backward to us becoming like a child. He quoted King Benjamin
when he said that to live with God again we had to become like children. King
Benjamin didn’t mean that we had to be children but that we needed to be like children…to have child-like qualities. He listed a bunch of
qualities and basically said we needed to be willing to learn…which is a child-like quality.
Children
don’t have egos that can get hurt
or offended. They honestly acknowledge what they don’t know, then do what it takes to find out. They are
positive and optimistic. They make friends without judgment. They include
people. They have fun and don’t stay down in the dumps.
Those are some the qualities that King Benjamin meant that we needed to have in
order to have eternal life. He basically said that we needed to develop Godly
qualities in order to live with God.
When
I got sick, I had served in this ward for two years as the Young Women's President. I felt spiritual and did things like listen to good music and read
my scriptures. I refrained from things that would make the spirit leave because
I liked feeling His presence. Sometimes, I had spiritual experiences that
caused my heart to swell. I'd been taught to be self-reliant and take care of
myself and my family and that's what I did. I cooked. I cleaned. I ran errands and I tended to my children's and my husband's needs.
One
day, right after I got sick, I sat in my living room wondering how I would
endure sitting there for one hour, let alone for the entire day. I had always
kept myself busy and felt torture doing nothing. As I sat there, I could feel
no warm feelings in my home. On the contrary, my home felt empty, and, in a
way, cold. I thought I’d
rather be at work.
In
speaking about our personal lives, we just did the motions at my home. We acted
like a happy family, but everyone did their own thing and we were slowly
drifting apart. Today, I shudder to think what my family would be like if I
hadn’t gotten sick. Isn’t it strange to hear me say that my family would be worse
off, if I hadn’t gotten sick? Even though my
illness caused us to suffer, I consider it a blessing in that we’re close.
I’ve cried many times when I’ve
thought of my limitations, but then the Lord has taught me something that has
resulted in me feeling grateful to him. Whatever I’ve wanted to know I’ve learned, and then the thing
has taught to me. I think of the quote: “Leap, and the net will appear.” That’s quote speaks the truth. I’ve taken the leap of faith many times throughout my life.
Sometimes the net has been a book, and sometimes it has been a song. Other
times it has been something someone said, or something I’ve seen.
In
all of those cases however, it has been up to me to learn. If the net appeared
to teach me something, but I didn’t learn it because I didn’t want to listen or hear, then it would re-appear until I
learned its lesson. That scenario reminds me of the scripture in the D&C
that says: “For what doth it profit a man
if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift?” (D&C 88:33)
What
good does it do if we take a leap of faith but don’t learn from the experience? We won’t become a better person but will stay the same. Some
people think well, I don’t
want that lesson!
They want to control their life instead of let the net be in control. They don’t get to determine the lesson – they only get to reap the reward or pay the consequence.
Another
quote that I love is this: “When the student is ready, the
teacher appears.” I believe that God puts
inspired teachers in our life to teach us something. Again, sometimes it’s a book, a song, a person, a scene, or many other things.
We pray and ask God for help then, when He gives it, we say: “No! Not that!” and don’t accept it. We’d be better off to accept His
help, trust Him, and remember that he knows what we need better than we do. Let’s remember and believe what He said to Joseph Smith and
apply it to ourselves - He said the experience would be for our good.
I’m thankful that I got to tell you this and that I got to
spend some time with you. I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and wants us
to have successful lives. Sometimes we are thick-skulled and won’t learn the things. He wants to teach us but if we won’t learn His lesson, we get to experience the thing again.
If we experience something and don’t learn from it, it can become
a trial in our life.
Let’s let Heavenly Father be in charge. Let’s trust him. We can spend our entire life focusing on
things that don’t matter – things that build our pride –
and ignore the things that do matter and that make us better people. Let’s be willing to learn what God wants to teach us. Sometimes
we have to go backward to go forward. Remember the crab and that we need to be
teachable and like a child in order to be taught. The only things we possess,
that we can give to Heavenly Father, are our wills and our actions. Let’s take the leap of
faith required to learn. And, let’s believe the lesson will help
us become the person Heavenly Father knows we can be.
Not
all the things we suffer are bad. Remember that our goal is to have eternal
life. When we step back from the things we suffer and remember what we want,
somehow the things we need to endure seem worth it. Sometimes all our faith
needs in order to regain perspective is for us to step back, look at the big
picture, and remember our goal. We want to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus
Christ again. That’s a good goal to have. They
also want to be in our lives right now. Jesus taught that he stands at the door
of our heart and knocks. (Revelation 3:20) It’s
up to us to let Him in. He won’t just open the door and walk
in, we have to open the door and invite him in. Opening the door and inviting
him in is taking a leap of faith to let God make our life better than we
imagined.
Heavenly
Father has made my life great as I've put my trust in Him. He's turned my
sorrows into joys. My life may not be what I imagined, but like Nephi, I know
in whom I put my trust. The Book of Mormon is the word of God. Thomas S. Monson
is the prophet today. God is my friend and will be with me throughout my life.
I love him and will praise His name forever. He is my rock and my everlasting
God. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
