Tag Archives: trusting God

Just a Little Chipmunk in God’s Big Forest

I recently had a giant spiritual and intellectual breakthrough. Reading my New Testament study materials unearthed some classic quotes by Stephen Robinson in his book, Believing Christ.

Here’s one: Not only must we believe that he is who he says he is, we must also believe that he can do what he says he can do. We must not only believe in Christ, we must also believe Christ when he says he can clean us up and make us celestial. He says that through his atoning blood, all mankind may be saved—and “all mankind” must logically include you and me. So until we accept the real possibility of our own exaltation in the kingdom of God, we do not yet have faith in Christ; we do not yet believe.  (Stephen E. Robinson, Believing Christ, p. 9-10)   

I had heard this thought several times before but this time it hit me where I live – on a deeply emotional level. My struggles with faith in God’s love for me, and my difficulty trusting that my experience in God’s Kingdom would be any different from my mortal, social experience, got a gigantic boost.

Then I remembered part of a priesthood blessing my Mother once received from her Bishop. Paraphrasing, he said that “her life had been the most perfect life she could have been given for her personal growth and spiritual development.” Her life was filled with a custom mix of great adversity and great blessings. While my Mother was a very talented portrait artist, she wasn’t really any different than the rest of us. So if that was true for her and God is a just God and “no respecter of persons” (New Testament, Acts 10:34-5), it must also be true for absolutely every one of us!

Suddenly I pictured the world as this enormous, pulsating, 3D tapestry – throbbing with energy, color, light and dark – as all us mortals bumping up against each other and our circumstances. Our freedom to choose drives all our actions, but consequences we can’t dictate are our ultimate teachers.

Tapestry of Life on Earth

So what are Christ’s promises that I’ve struggled to trust?

I know Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ want the highest and best for us eternally: to “raise us up at the last day, to dwell with them in glory” forever. Therefore, we can rejoice and absolutely trust that all our good choices will actually get us somewhere far grander than we can possibly imagine.

On a personal level: Years ago, my landlord let me tend our mutual front garden. I edged it with used brick, planted flowers, ferns, and installed stepping stones. As I dug in the dirt, I also dug out some old hurts and watered the ground with my tears. It helped to express them. It also helped to feel sorrow for the ways I had hurt others and strengthen my resolve to do better. I experienced both emotional healing and the Lord’s forgiveness – truly a time when my Savior “did not leave me comfortless.”

Then an image popped into my mind of the playful chipmunks I grew up seeing in our yard – alive and carefree – trusting that their lives would unfold as they were supposed to. This not only took a burden off my shoulders, but off my future as well, bringing a whole new meaning to “living in the moment” and trusting God with the rest!

Just a Chipmunk in God’s Forest

Speak Friend and Enter

Do you remember the neighbor who knocked on my door two weeks ago, right after I gave my financial concerns back to God? It’s in my post, The Prayer of Relinquishment. Well, here’s the update: She listed her town home with me that week, I sent out a blanket email to my whole brokerage, we launched on the MLS, and we received two strong offers within 24 hours! A nice gift to my very deserving seller, and a nice message to me of providential care from above.

But there were still those two offers to juggle properly. My seller and I stayed in close touch and I knew we were considering all options, but I still didn’t feel completely at peace. Then I remembered prayer. After 40 years of being a Christian, you’d think adjourning to my knees would occur to me sooner!  As soon as I said a mental prayer, the uncertain feeling went away and my mind cleared up. I added a mental prayer each time we navigated the next step – the options before us soon resolved into a clear, single way forward. The end result left my seller dazed and very happy, and it left me wiser and very grateful.

And what about the other desire I relinquished, for a husband? First, I just lost myself in discerning and then following God’s will. Happiness and contentment showed up, and showed up abundantly, with many high moments. A scripture came to mind more than once: The laborer is worthy of his hire. I found several versions on lds.org. Here’s my favorite:

And devote his whole time to this high and holy calling, which I now give unto him,
seeking diligently the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness,
and all things necessary shall be added thereunto; for the laborer is worthy of his hire.
(LDS Doctrine & Covenants 106:3, see also 1 Timothy 5:18 and Luke 10:7)

Additionally men just showed up! A clerk at Home Depot joked with me while making extra keys, a man at the Post Office started a conversation, three men came up to me to discuss my Healthy Food class a week later. I had actually put men out of my mind because the Lord had kept me quite busy, so all this not only took me by surprise but was a real departure from past experience.

Who knows where all this will go? Oddly, I don’t care as much as before. I trust that God knows best and that He isn’t capriciously toying with me. And most importantly, I found I really did want God more than a human male companion – something that will anchor my life forevermore and help put me on that proverbial pedestal women seemed design to inhabit. (That’s a whole other discussion….)

What did I learn from all this?

* Remember to pray, sooner rather than later, and trust the answers. They may be subtle or require us to change a preconceived expectation, but answers will be there, and they always bring peace and clarity.
* Let God be God and do His job. Don’t try to do it for Him by second guessing circumstances and what we think should happen or even worse, watching anxiously for it to arrive.

There’s an analogy embedded in The Lord of the Rings that I recall frequently. Remember when Frodo and friends tried to find the entrance to the Mines of Moria? They faced only sheer granite walls with no sign of a door. Then as the moon came out from behind the clouds, they saw iridescent lines defining the doorway, with these words above it: Speak Friend and Enter. Gandalf, thinking the word Friend was a form of greeting, tried every magic incantation he knew and none worked. Then Frodo had a paradigm shift and asked, What’s the elvish word for Friend? Of course, that worked, once they decided that the word “Friend” was the password.

I think prayer is like that too. We have to remember to pray in the first place, then we have to ask the right prayer, and finally we have to be willing to follow the answer. I hope when you face your own blank walls that you can remember a way will always appear if you ask the right question, truly wanting to follow the answer.

The Door to the Mines of Moria Used Under Fair Use Copyright Provision, from Pinterest Post

The Door to the Mines of Moria
Used Under Fair Use Copyright Provision, from Pinterest Post

 

Just “Bozos on the Bus”

Lately, I let anxiety about the future creep into my thoughts – in spite of much preparation and reassurance from God that I’ll be cared for. Additionally, I was worried for my family.  It was a lot like the old saying, “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”  In this case, I consciously thought I was exercising faith and feeling serenity but actually I wasn’t watching worries build up in my subconscious until they spilled over to overwhelm that faith and my daily effectiveness.

After days of trying to exert my own mental powers and failing to change course, I decided – duh! – to ask for a priesthood blessing from my home teachers.  They patiently listened to my concerns, then proceeded to lay their hands on my head and give me inspired counsel:  I would be cared for, be physically and spiritually safe, and my family’s spiritual path was safely in His hands – I could let go and trust Him.  It felt like unseen fingers reached into my brain and rearranged my thoughts, like the direction to “correct the seasoning” at the end of many recipes.  It was gentle, deep, and very reassuring.

The next day I remembered a saying:

 “We are all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.”

I looked it up and found that Wavy Gravy said it at Woodstock in 1969, then Elizabeth Lesser commented on it in her book Broken Open which is where I originally read it.  That made me think of The Muppet Movie which is on my list of favorites – goofy guys bumping along the road of life. I needed to be more like them, more childlike:

 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.  (Matthew 18:2-3)

To drive the point home, Heavenly Father sent the following experience.  Monday night was a lovely balmy evening and I was sitting in my living room with the windows open, reading.  I suddenly became aware of the echoing of bird song through the trees, the scent of my newly picked lilacs, and an intense recollection of being a child exploring my grandparents’ yard and the ravine beyond it.  I loved exploring the lush greenery.  There were lilies of the valley in the shade along the garage wall and masses of phlox along the edge of the yard.  The ravine hid many other treasures:  lacy ferns, dainty white anemone, and the mysterious Jack-in-the-Pulpit shyly hiding in the shade. Owls and toads lived there.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit Courtesy Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Courtesy Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

This was more than a memory, I actually re-experienced being a carefree child.  Shrunk to child height, I felt the original wonder of first seeing these treasures, with their haunting fragrance, and enjoyed again my grandparents sleeping porch, listening to the owls in their towering oak trees. What a wonderful way to bring home the advice given in my blessing.  It lasted about an hour and sealed this lesson in my soul.

Now when I go out for walks, I notice the plants and birds more, and my own thoughts less.  I don’t know one iota more about the future than I did, but since I’ve done all I can to prepare, I don’t need to know. I’m too busy enjoying the present.