Recently a friend was telling me of her latest trial and what she was doing to get through it. I was surprised by some of my reactions, not to her and her situation in particular but to the thoughts about how we get answers and know what to do and how to figure life out.
We are taught about inspiration and divine guidance. I definitely believe in these things. I come from a highly intuitive family and know that if I'm worried about someone, I better make sure they are okay because there probably is a reason they are on my mind.
But sometimes lately I question the reality that lies in our minds. It seems that what is really out there is often SO different than the feelings and thoughts in here.
As I read scriptures and conference talks lately, I'm almost shocked that I keep seeing the message that God doesn't do things FOR us, He gives us the power and strength to do them ourselves. Perhaps that sounds silly. I know He doesn't just come down and solve all our problems. I've just always given credit for any and all success to divine intervention. I've never really felt that my problems were "given" to me in a tailor made way, but I have felt led through them and sometimes even better off for them. So it does surprise me a bit to think that .... what? I'm not sure of my point yet...
I have felt a lot of prayers lately have been answered with what I would call a heavy dose of reality. I keep praying about things that I absolutely KNOW I have no strength, knowledge or ability to do on my own, knowing that I really NEED the help, only to feel that the situation gets worse instead of better. For example, praying that the baby will sleep better at night because I just cannot do another hard night only to be faced with several worse nights than ever. I don't really get that.
And yet, perhaps another situation will illustrate what I'm talking about here. I was really praying about something that I just did not have means, mental or monetary, to deal with. I really felt sure that God could fix the situation and save me from this and in this case it would be totally acceptable for Him to do so- my own little miracle. But, as I mentioned, the situation got worse rather than better. As I sat crying and feeling myself giving up and feeling completely overcome by an outside force of life as if fate or something was conspiring against me, deciding that I just had to play the hand I was dealt, I DID feel something inside me say "no! I will not have it this way. It IS up to me and I will just have to raise to the challenge and take care of it."
In that moment, it didn't matter what parents, husband, or, in some way not to be blasphemous, God had to say. This is MY life and MY home and MY family and I WILL take care of this upset.
It was a strange feeling for me to have. I don't know that I've ever felt like that before. I think I've always felt like I had to deal with what life gave me, wait for the time to be right or inspiration to strike or at least to have some sort of confirmation to move forward in my own thinking.
When I was quite young I had a very personal, spiritual experience that influenced choices for a very long time to come. It was something I thought I had been told to do, something to wait for in a way. Well, this something never happened that way. I still don't understand. Perhaps I made up the experience or gave too much reality to it or something. But even now, knowing how my life all turned out, I can't say I didn't, at that time, KNOW something. So I don't get it. Was it not real? Did life just change it's mind?... My question really is just how do we know when it's real and what's real? And perhaps we are left to our own thinking more than we want to realize?
I've also been thinking about a conversation my brother and I had when we were in high school or just out. The thinking was something like this: Perhaps I grew up wanting to be a cheerleader only to get to high school and realize I would never be one. I was too shy, too big, and too afraid of heights. If I thought I really wanted this or was supposed to be this, I might be critical of those things in myself. But as an adult, I was learning to like me and I knew that it just wasn't who I was and that was okay.
My brother gave the example of wanting to be class president. He said you picture what's in your head almost like a movie montage; the music plays, you see snippets of doing things and laughing and being happy etc. What you don't see is the hard work it took to get there, the challenges, the hardships. And perhaps you think you want it, but when it comes to actually doing it and facing the hard things, you realize you don't because they just aren't worth it to you.
I guess what I'm saying with this is that even in what we think we are or what we want for ourselves, sometimes the reality on the outside is different than what's on the inside. Our very selves and desires are yet to be figured out by living it in cold hard person. It's like the physical, concrete part of life actually playing out is such a necessary, big thing. Perhaps that's why we had to experience earth life?
I don't know if I'm really making any sense. I feel a great big question mark looming over me and yet I feel closer to knowing something than ever.
