I was raised to trust people, to help and serve them. While I had heard first-hand or read about many instances where evil people had preyed on the innocent and taken advantage of the less informed, I never wanted to believe that anyone within the circle of my influence, on the outskirts, or even those I had very little contact with would have hearts so filled with greed, avarice and inhumanity that they were even capable of being part of some diabolical plot to hurt others. But my experience of two weeks ago let me know that Satan's influence is alive and thriving in our world of deceit, anger and the war for men's souls.
Understanding the Savior's Atonement has been on my mind a great deal this year. I understood it on a certain level and just knowing that Christ died for my sins if I was willing to take advantage of the gifts of repentance and forgiveness was enough. But lately I have wanted to more fully understand what he went through so that each of God's children could return home to him if they truly chose to do so. To aid in my study and hopeful reawakening I was reading the book The Savior's Final Week by Andrew C. Skinner.
His insight and understanding awakened so many feeling in my heart as I read about our Savior's suffering that began in the Garden of Gethsemane and ended on the cross. To comprehend the magnitude and majesty of his suffering is impossible for the finite mind but as I found myself becoming more fully engaged in what he was going though, I felt my heart reach out to him in ways that seemed miraculous in comparison to previous experiences.
Christ knows and understands every trial, heartache, fear or sin I have ever encountered because he experienced them for me long before I ever went through them. He knew the pain I felt as my heart crumpled in tears of aloneness, torment, sorrow, disbelief and uncertainty and I knelt on my knees, often for what seemed like hours at a time, so overcome with grief and near despair that I was unable to utter anything more than, "Please Help Me".
It was during this time of spiritual renewal that I was tested in a way I had never imagined before--having someone steal through premeditated fraud all that I had been able to save for many years and put me in a place where I once again would be living paycheck to paycheck and having to reply solely on my heavenly Father in making it through whatever financial burdens arose. I had lived like that most of my of my life but during retirement had been able to squirrel away a little nest egg that allowed me to replace my roof and help my children when they were under financial difficulty.
Losing $7200, which may not seem like much to many people but was enormous to me since it was all I had in reserve, brought me to a very unrecognizable place I would not wish on anyone. But once I had met with my bankers, filled out police reports, had accounts frozen and new ones opened and basically remade as much of my life as I could after knowing that criminals had been able to dig up everything they needed about my life online to perpetrate a great injustice, my mind soon returned to a semblance of pervious calmness and I was able to put one foot in front of another again.
Not that it was easy. I couldn't swallow anything but water and a few sips of a protein drink at a time for over a week and lost ten pounds. I also become so weak, unsteady and dizzy I could barely stand on my own. I felt violated and afraid to move for fear someone else would attack me when I was more than vulnerable. I felt defeated, sick at heart and not sure I would ever be able to smile or look at others without fear again.
But I am finally beginning to see the experience as a lesson I needed to learn when it comes to truly understanding and accepting the Savior’s Atonement for me as an individual Daughter of God, not just one of the billions of persons who have to come earth and may be better or worse than I am. God could have intervened in what was happening but in answer to my very heartfelt prayers, allowed me to go through an experience--unlike anything I had ever been through before--to gain some of the understanding about the Atonement I had been praying for.
He let me experience firsthand some of the awful things Christ's Atonement had covered for me like fear, anger, remorse, self-blame, stress, heartache, embarrassment and worry to let me know that my becoming a victim of someone else’s greed and inhumanity did not lesson my importance to my Heavenly Father, regardless of what it might cost me monetarily or through loss of pride and self-esteem.
He allowed me access to a place where my heart was finally ready to refocus on what mattered most and provided comfort so I could sleep when circular thinking and self-recrimination would not ease. He allowed clarity of mind to return and gave me courage to take each unfamiliar step as I tried to reorder and reclaim my life. He assisted in the compilation of a list of all the companies I would have to inform and get protection put on my credit so the perpetrators would not be able to use any of the information they had on me again. He even helped me draw up a plan on how I could cut back on living expenses and start saving again while not getting behind on any of my bills.
I have finally come to understand that Satan knows exactly when, where and how to most successfully attack and has plenty of time to plan those attacks with precision, pleasure and perfect clarity because he has nothing to lose. He has already lost everything of value and has been cast into a pit where fire and brimstone will be his for eternity and wants every mortal he can get to join him.
His delight in the downfall of any mortal—who has far more than he will ever have—is purely diabolical because in his twisted sense of reality it means that one person, who chose the right side in the beginning, can still be influenced and brought within his evil power. That was part of the plan for our moral probation too. Satan would be given the chance to turn heavenly Father’s children away from him. That cunning, evil one knows our weak moments of loneliness, fear, uncertainty, confusion, vulnerability, unbecoming pride or any other chink in our spiritual armor.
Satan finds great pleasure in seeing us unhappy and gleefully goes about making sure that desperation, pain and feelings of abandonment or unworthiness continue as long as possible after any tragic or humiliating experience. Fear, desire, uncertainty, pain and every other strong emotion can stop our ability to think clearly, muddy our intellect and cause us to do very uncharacteristic and stupid things. And once he has us in his clutches he proceeds to inflict even more pain by telling us how weak, stupid, unworthy and horrible we are for not catching on sooner and allowing someone else to use, abuse or deceive us.
It is only when we turn to our Heavenly Father in earnest prayer, with a contrite heart and willingness to listen and accept responsibility for any part we may have played in even the worst situation, that we will find the help we truly need. That isn’t easy because our pride so often gets in the way. We may call it other things like shame, embarrassment or fear, but it is really just lack of faith and trust in God and not yet understanding the beauty and completeness of the Atonement.
If we fully understood the Atonement we would not fight so hard before laying our sorrows, guilt and pain at our Savior’s feet and giving our Heavenly Father access to every part of our heart and soul. Sometimes I think we forget that our Heavenly Father and our Savior already know all we have gone through, what we are going through now, and what we will yet have to face before our life is over. He just wants us to come to Him.
He will listen for as many hours as it takes to lay out all our troubles and will never say, “I told you so.” “That was stupid.” “You should have known better?” Or any of the hundreds of other things we may say about ourselves because in our perverted and limited reality we might actually believe that is true.
Heavenly Father will give us all the time we need to accept his calming influence, even if we go back to him through prayer a thousand times with the same request. But once we are ready to tell him that we are willing to take any stripes necessary in this life to return to the path that will lead us back to his presence, the light that has been obliterated by misdeeds and the cruel actions of others will return and we will feel comfort, help and peace.
Even the most horrific of tragedies do not last forever and there is always a way out of any bad situation—with the right kind of help. I suppose one of the most important things I have learned about the Atonement through this experience is that Christ's Atonement covers everyone, and I do mean everyone, and not just those who are trying to live like him. Even the vilest of sinners are covered and my responsibility is to forgive every man or woman of their trespasses—especially against me. Christ is the judge and all will be made right one day.
How can we ever think our heavenly Father and our Savior do not understand? God knew what each of his children would have to endure once they began their mortal journey. He also knew the needed experiences each child would have to go through that would bring him or her back to his presence. He knew which of his children would struggle the most and how much longer it would take some of them to learn the vital lessons that must be learned.
He gave us a Savior who would learn, through his own earthy experience, exactly what all the evils and sorrows of the word would hold. His suffering is unimaginable and when God’s spirit finally withdrew during his most difficult hour he was left to experience what true hell was all about. It was being with one of his own brothers, and all those who followed him, in a world of evil, anguish, gnashing of teeth and things few mortals will ever understand.
What we think of as living in hell because of sin, misdeeds or certain trials are nothing when compared to what he endured so each one of us would not have to go through the depth of deprivation he did. He suffered for everyone’s sins, heartaches and misdeeds if we would accept his priceless gift. He did for us something we could never do for ourselves. His gift gives us everlasting life. How we choose to spend that eternity is up to us.
Those are hard concepts for most of us to grasp. Our experiences here are so brief and not one of us wants to learn lessons the hard way. But sadly that is the only way some of us can get it and we should not condemn God or anyone else for giving us opportunities to gain knowledge, grow and understand.
If no challenges arose we would go blithely on our way enjoying life, doing what we wanted and never really thinking about the consequences our actions bring to both ourselves and others. We would give ourselves permission to spend our days and nights doing exactly what we wanted watching television, playing games, surfing the net or getting into all kinds of trouble—even if we are not aware of it at the time.
Because our mind was fixated on self-indulgence there would never be eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to feel any of the pain, stress or heartache of others. There would be no time for loving and serving family, friends or strangers, doing charitable acts of kindness or developing the gifts God gave to us that have to be discovered so they can be enjoyed and shared.
Perhaps our lives would still be filled with joy and we would feel complete, but we would have missed the point in being here. That is why Christianity is such a gift. Even though we do not understand everything, we know enough to see the connections between this life, the one that came before and the one that will come after. My heart actually aches for those who claim to be agnostics or atheists. What a truly unimportant and shallow existence it would be only believing that we are here by chance and when this experience is over—that’s it.
God’s beautiful plan that personally involves each one of us is glorious beyond belief because not a single thing has been left to chance. Agency is an amazing gift to be used for either food or ill. But even if misused, there is always a way back. Let me repeat that again. God will give us as many chances as we need to get things right, but if we refuse to take them then we will a price--the price Christ already paid for us had we been willing to embrace it.
All the moaning, blame, anger, retaliation or inability to let go will not change anything. Only God can heal our hearts, our minds, our emotions and our bodies and give us the help, comfort and courage to go on when life’s tragedies happen. And no matter how many things we do that are careless, hurtful or wrong, Christ’s Atonement covers each and every word or action. He knows exactly how we feel because he suffered it before we did.
How can we not turn to our loving, kind and Eternal Father whom we can contact any time we want to through prayer and receive the answers we need through the Gift of the Holy Ghost? And how can we turn our back on our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, who willingly paid the price for everything bad we would ever experience and still hold our hand or carry us through any difficulty life brings?
Tears fill my eyes because I am finally starting to see how everything in God’s plan fits so perfectly together. We are given the challenges needed at the time and in the way that we will be most receptive to what it is we need to learn. By nature some of us are a little hard-hearted, contentious, ungrateful, rebellious, prideful, uncommunicative, unforgiving and uncharitable, but those are only stumbling stones, not roadblocks, to the eternal blessings we want. They are meant to slow us down, help us see more clearly and set us back on the path we should be taking.
So while I still feel violated, unjustly abused and some of my security is gone, the blessings and understanding I have received during this unwanted time of trial cannot be discounted. We can lose everything of a monetary nature in a single moment but if our hearts are right with God and we trust in our Savior there is really nothing to fear.
Perhaps I needed this experience to get me ready for what is coming. The world is certainly in a pivotal stage with everything in the Middle East in such commotion. So far only our fuel prices have been involved but if some of the leaders in our own country do not have a true change of heart things will get so much worse. It's up to each one of us to be prepared and I thank heavenly Father each day for the blessing he sends, even in the way of trials, that helps me more fully understand.
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