Not My Will

"It seems no worthy accomplishment has ever come easily for me..." (Jeffrey R. Holland, The Inconvenient Messiah)


Have you ever had a prompting that called on you to do something hard for you?


I don't mean kind of hard for you.  I mean something that dissolves you into a puddle of tears when you think about it hard for you.  And what makes it harder is that it's not something that the Lord just hands to you.  Like when people are diagnosed out-of-the-blue with cancer or someone dies in an out-of-your-control event and you have to figure out how to get through it.  No, I'm talking about the Lord giving you the choice to follow what HE wants for your life instead of what you think you want.  Prompting you to do something that you don't want to do.  Asking for something that you really don't want to give....

....except that the Lord is the one doing the asking.  



A few months ago I received a very distinct prompting to do something that is very difficult for me to go through, to get pregnant. When I look back, I feel like I had been receiving the promptings for months, but my heart was too hard to hear it before then.  I wanted the Lord to change His mind and do things my way, even though I never would have admitted that even to myself.  And so I continued on my own path and wondered why I was struggling more and more with this question that seemed to have been decided, and why it kept coming to my mind over and over.  On the day that the can't-ignore-it-writing-in-the-sky prompting came, I received what I felt like were two pieces to the same prompting.  One was to get pregnant, and the other piece was a reassurance from the Lord that He would watch over me and protect me.  So I moved forward and found out two weeks later that I was indeed pregnant.  

I patted myself on the back for having listened and responded to the Lord's prompting. Go me.  Surely the Lord would ease my burden (my version of watching over and protecting) for doing what He asked instead of what I had planned. 

"If sometimes the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived." (Jeffrey R. Holland, The Inconvenient Messiah)
....And within days I was overwhelmed by the enormous task.  Pregnancy was everything that I had remembered and more.  I honestly felt abandoned by the Lord.  How could He promise that He would watch over and protect me if I did this, and then not do anything while I suffered?  And not just the suffering that I had gone through with my first two, but above and beyond that, and if that wasn't enough how about a few more potential problems/sufferings waiting in the wings perhaps ready to drop at any moment? (and I am readily admitting right now that my suffering is not what many women go through during pregnancy, but it is honestly one of the hardest things for me to do despite the fact that there are many others who have it worse).  

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, "It is not easy to go without—without physical gratifications, or spiritual assurances, or material possessions—but sometimes we must...We must work hard and do right, and sometime our chance will come." (The Inconvenient Messiah)

During this time, I was reminded of the story in Mosiah 24 of Alma and his people who are found by King Noah's priest whose name is Amulon.  Amulon and his people enslave Alma and his people.  Alma and his people cry to the Lord and Amulon puts guards over them to kill them if they pray, so they pray in their hearts.  And the Lord says to them "Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me...and I will also ease (not take away, at least not yet) the burdens...that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions." 

 It goes on to say that the Lord eases their burden in two ways, one by easing the actual burden so that it is lighter.  And the second is that He strengthens Alma and his people "...that they could bear up their burdens with ease..." And despite the fact that the Lord did not take the burdens away, or even promise at that point to do so, and despite the fact that he didn't just ease the burden, but rather he strengthened them (which required something of them because how do we gain strength? by exercising the muscle!) but because the Lord had done that for them, "...they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord." 

And there I was called to repentance (I seem to have that happen A LOT).  I had submitted to the Lord's will, at least the initial requirement of it, but I had not submitted to ALL the will of the Lord, and definitely not cheerfully or with patience.

And as always, I came right back to this simple truth that I have to learn and re-learn.  Life won't always be easy.  In fact it may end up being downright hard, but in the end, I always want to have said,
"Not my will, but thine, be done."