Compassion and Suffering

I can't believe that I'm still awake, but I had to write this before I went to bed.  I have had an "ah ha" moment, and I just had to share it.

I was reading in "You are Here" by Tich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist Monk (No, I'm not becoming Buddhist).  I came upon this passage, which got me thinking.  It says:

"For me the Kingdom of God is where Mindfulness exists, and it is the kingdom where there is compassion.  The Kingdom of God, the Pure Land, is not a place where there is no suffering.  Many people aspire to go to a place where pain and suffering do not exist, a place where there is only happiness.  This is a rather dangerous idea, for compassion is not possible (emphasis added) without pain and suffering.  It is only when we enter into contact with suffering that understanding and compassion can be born.  Without suffering, we do not have the opportunity to cultivate compassion and understanding; and without understanding, there can be no true love."

This got me thinking.  First, it got me thinking about my Savior, Jesus Christ.  It got me thinking of Alma 17: 12 in the Book of Mormon:

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

He did not have to suffer the way that he suffered for me.  He was not forced to suffer.  He chose to suffer.  Why?  So that he could have compassion for us.  He did it so that he would know what it felt like to be us.  He did it so he would know, personally, how to reach out to each one of us and help us to find our way back home to him.

This passage also made me think of another scripture in the Book of Mormon.  "For it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things...If not so...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad….(2 Nephi 2: 10).”

I just thought of another book, this time from the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price.  (Sorry about all of the Mormon-centric scriptures.  I’m not familiar with corresponding verses in the Bible, or I would have happily used those.)  “Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should…have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”

“So,” you may be asking, “What is your point?”  Here’s my point, we need to suffer in order to be happy.  We need to understand just how much life can suck, in order to understand how great life can be.  We need to experience just how bad we have it, just to experience how good we really have it.  We need to embrace our suffering, look at it a little differently, and treat it as a little child.  Why?  Because suffering teaches us how to be happy.  We cannot have the good without the evil.  We cannot have the light from the dark.  We cannot have the yin without the yang.  We cannot experience joy and happiness without experiencing pain and sorrow.

Instead of trying to avoid our suffering, we need to embrace it.  We need to cradle it like we would cradle a little child.  We need to be grateful for it.  We need to treat it for what it is, an opportunity to be happy.  It is only when we do this that we upon ourselves up to receive the true gift that Heavenly Father is trying to give us, peace.  And we don’t have to wait until we die and go to heaven to have peace.  We can have peace here and now.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14: 27).”

I Know Now Why I Was Sent to BYU--Idaho

*NOTE* I began writing this at 4:09 AM on Dec 29th.  I finally finished writing it at 1:12 AM January 4th.  It's a little longer than I had planned it to be.  Please bear with me.  Also, I would appreciate your comments...

Mark

I had fully no intention of writing a posting this evening.  I was just intending on reading postings from my friend Bravon.  I was comments to his posting My little brother Donny when I felt inspired to write this posting.  I haven't posted anything for a long time.  I have the feeling that postings like this are going to be a regular occurrence.  I also feel, now more than ever, that the title of my blog is very fitting.  I thought that it was going to be about my experiences at BYU--Idaho.  I now know that they are going to be about so much more.

When I moved from Massachusetts to Florida in 2005 I thought that I was moving to a place where I would eventually call home.  In short, I thought that I would settle in FL, get married there, and live happily ever after.  It turns out that the Lord had other plans.  My independent business venture as a real estate agent flopped due to the decline in the real estate market.  After that I got a job that I hated; moved into an apartment that I couldn't afford; got a roommate that I couldn't afford; moved into an even bigger apartment that neither one of us could afford; left job that I hated under duress and spent some time as a pizza delivery boy until finding another job that I hated doing basically the same thing that I was doing in MA but for much less money; had 2 friends die; roommate moved out unexpectedly and left me holding the bag on a brand new lease on an apartment that I moved into just because he needed a place to stay (oh, did I mention that he owed me, and still owes me hundreds of dollars?); had to move into a very teeny-weeny studio apartment that I still couldn't afford; and had my car repossessed.  Did I forge to mention that during that time I managed to burn through a pretty substantial (for me) 401k while racking up thousands of dollars in credit card debt?  Gosh, just thinking about how much trouble I went thought makes my head spin.  I wonder how I even survived it.

I remember this one day; I was sitting at my desk.  I had just gotten off of the phone with a particularly nasty customer from India who had absolutely no people skills.  I hated talking to people on the phone.  I couldn't believe that I was doing it as a job yet again.  As I said, I got off of the phone and thought to myself, "I don't have to put up with this."  I hated my job.  I wasn’t making enough money, and my car was in the process of being repossessed.  I was facing the prospect of having a 40 minute round trip commute by car turn into a 6 hour round trip commute by bus, and that was to and from a job that I hated.  I also realized that I was sick of the kinds of jobs that I could qualify for without a degree. So I decided to go online to BYU.edu and apply to go to college at BYU in Provo.  I was directed to besmart.com where I began filling out the application.

During the application process I was told by a number of people that I should also apply to BYU—Idaho as a plan B because BYU in Provo was very selective.  But I did NOT want to go to Rexburg.  But I checked the box for BYUI “just in case.” 

I had already visited Rexburg once in late March/early April 2001, just before it made the transition from Ricks College to BYUI.  I flew from New Hampshire to Boise to visit friends.  Whereas it was still winter in NH, spring was in full swing in Boise.  The grass was growing, leaves were beginning to come out on the trees, and the flowers were beginning to bloom.  I thought to myself, “I can handle this.”  I then got in a rental car and drove from Boise, on the western side of the state, to Rexburg, on the eastern side of the state.  I expected the climate to be just about the same because Rexburg is really not that much farther north than Boise is.  Little did I know that the further east I went the higher up I was ascending.  When I arrived in Rexburg I was disappointed to find that it was NOT like Boise.  It was COLD!  It was still in the 30s and there was still snow on the ground.  It was then that I made up my mind that I NEVER wanted to ever live there…I would later learn one very strong lesson…never say never to the Lord.

So, needless to say when BYU in Provo told me that I was “not the kind of student [they] were looking for (exact quote),” I was crushed, and quite stressed. By this point my car was already gone, I had quit my job, and I had told my landlord that I was moving out of the little hell hole that he called an apartment, but I had not heard from BYUI yet.  When I got the email notification that they had admitted me I immediately went online and accepted their offer and declared psychology as my major.

Things in Rexburg started out tough.  I had to leave Florida a month before school started.  I spent that month bouncing from friend to friend.  Thankfully one of my friends from NH got his parents to let me stay with them for a while in their condo in South Jordan, UT. That was quite a blessing.  When I finally was able to start looking at housing options in Rexburg I was dismayed.  Because I was over 30 I was not allowed to live in on-campus housing.  Nor was I allowed to live in any university-affiliated off-campus housing.  Thanks to an ad that I had placed on the school’s website I was able to find a place to stay before classes started.  It was in a housing complex that normally rents to married students.  My roommate was a 19 year old who had not been admitted as a full-time student but was taking night classes.  He had rented a furnished one-bedroom apartment.  Unfortunately, the apartment only had one bed so I was stuck sleeping on the two-seater fold-out love seat in the living room.  With my bad back and wide girth, that was probably one of the most painful few months ever.  To make matters worse, my roommate and I didn’t communicate with each other.  I attempted to talk with him several times but could never start up a conversation.  I also noticed that I felt separate and apart from the majority of the people on campus.  It seemed as though almost nobody on campus said anything to me.  I felt very much alone.

Thankfully, before the end of the winter semester, the school changed the housing guidelines and I moved into a private room in the guy’s dorm.  I made some pretty good friends there and began to feel a little bit better about being here at BYUI.  The next semester I moved into off-campus housing.  I was pretty scared because I would have to share a room and didn’t know anybody that I was going to be living with.  The first one of my roommates that I met was named Josh (name changed).  The next roommate that I met was named Bob (name also changed).  Josh and Bob were supposed to be rooming together but there were no rooms with 2 open beds, so Josh moved in with me and Bob moved into the room opposite of us.  Josh and Bob would play pivotal roles in my development during the next few months.

Fall semester came and went and I still felt out of the loop.  I had imagined that my roommates and I would become great friends and that we would be there to support each other.  It was almost the exact opposite.  During our first semester Bob and I hardly talked.  We only talked while we were getting ready to go to bed.  Bob spent most of his time with two of our other roommates Eric and Ryan.  Josh and Bob would also go out once a week to play Dungeons & Dragons together.  Our other roommate spent most of his time outside the apartment with his friends and I was left alone.  Since I’m not naturally the most outgoing person in the world this was a little hard to handle.

Things started to improve at the beginning of our second semester together.  Ryan had to move out of our apartment and so Bob decided to move into his room.  This initially made me unhappy because I felt like he and I had just begun to be friends and now he was moving into the room with his “best friend.”  I felt that at least if we were living in the same room together then he and I would have an incentive to continue our friendship.  I brought this concern up to him and he promised to come back to talk to me from time to time.  To my surprise, he actually did this.  It wasn’t until later when I realized why Bob decided to move into the other room and why I got stuck with the new guy.  It turns out that the new guy (Paolo) and Eric already knew each other and didn’t really get along.  Actually, Eric really didn’t get along with anybody besides Bob and Ryan.  Through 2 entire semesters he only said about 100 words to me and only called me by name once.  When he did that I almost fainted due to surprise.  But I digress…Both Eric and Paolo had strong personalities and they would not have survived living in the same room together.  The atmosphere in the apartment was tense enough anyway; if they had been in the same room, it would have been even tenser.

Paolo and I got along for the most part but there were some minor irritations between us.  Ok, maybe some weren’t so minor, but I’m not writing about him.  This was summer semester of 2009.  Things were pretty tough for me.  I was taking 16 credits and I didn’t do a lot of socializing outside of the apartment so I spent most of my time in my bedroom.  There were other factors that contributed to me having a difficult semester, but I won’t go into those just yet. 

Towards the end of the semester I had a dream.  In the dream Josh, Bob, and I were in a convenience store.  I had gotten a soda (or is it pop? I can never tell these days) out of one of the coolers and had gone to pay for it.  When I got back to where Bob and Josh were sitting I realized that Josh had been eating a bunch of dried fruit and would soon be having digestive troubles because of it.  I started to laugh at him but then told him that it was too bad that he was graduating soon because I wanted to be there to make fun of him for it.  As soon as I said that I woke up and started crying.  I knew that Josh would be leaving soon and that there was a chance that I would never be able to see him again.  I knew that he was such an awesome person and that I felt that if I didn’t get to know him I would miss the opportunity forever.  I also knew that Heavenly Father didn’t want this to happen.  To rectify this I decided to invite him out for dinner.

I took Josh out to the local Thai restaurant.  We had a pleasant enough conversation, but that was where our friendship ended.  We didn’t talk much more than we normally did.  I did have the daily habit of going into Josh’s room everyday when I got home from school to say hi to him.  He was one of the most dependable people that I knew.  If I ever had a bad day all I had to do was go into his room and talk to him for five minutes and I knew that everything would be ok.  If Josh was there, then everything would be ok.  He was also one of the kindest, purest, and nicest people that I had ever met.  I told him that once.  It was on a Sunday in Church.  I noticed that he had chosen to not partake of the Sacrament.  I went up to him and politely asked him if I could ask him a personal question.  He said that I could.  I mentioned that I had noticed that he hadn’t partaken of the Sacrament and that in my opinion there were a lot of people in the Church who don’t partake of the Sacrament because they’re being too hard on themselves.  I told him that if he felt like he should not be partaking of the sacrament that half of the people in the room that day, including myself, should not have partaken of the sacrament as well because he was one of the nicest and purest people that I had ever met. I also encouraged him to talk to the bishop if there was a real reason for him to not be partaking of the sacrament and he told me that there was and thanked me for my concern.

In spite of our graduation dinner Josh and I didn’t talk much until the last night of the semester, the evening before graduation.  I had not gotten any sleep for the past few days that week because I had procrastinated working on assignments for a class that was a joke.  So I found myself with a lot of work to do.  When it came time for me to go to bed on that last day of the semester I was tired and irritable.  Paolo and I hadn’t been getting along that well either and he had his side of the bed room all torn apart because he was going to try to move out the following day.  I imagined myself going to bed, being woken up by Paolo as he tried to clear stuff off of his bed to go to sleep, and killing him.  Josh’s roommate had already moved out of his room so I texted him to see if he wouldn’t mind if I occupied the spare bed.  I even offered to play World of Warcraft with him, which he agreed to do. 

He came home that evening and had some other stuff to do on the game so by the time he and I started playing together it was pretty late.  So we decided to scrap the game and go to bed, but we didn’t go to sleep right away.  We started talking.  I was curious about how he felt about graduating so I asked him.  He said that he felt unstable at times but he was feeling ok now.  I asked him what he meant by unstable.  He said that he had been having feelings of taking his life from time to time but he wasn’t going to do it.  That didn’t surprise me because I had had those feelings from time to time too.  I asked him if his unstable feeling had anything to do with the reason that he hadn’t been partaking of the sacrament.  He said, “Kinda.”  I then said that I knew that there were only a few reasons why a bishop would tell someone to not partake of the Sacrament and the first one that I could think of was drugs and alcohol.  I said, “You’re not a junkie, are you?”  He said, “Nope, and I’ve never killed anyone either (chuckle).”  I said, “Well, there’s only one more reason why a bishop would tell someone to not partake of the Sacrament.  Does it have to do with sex and sexuality?”  He said, “Kinda…”   “Does it have to do with pornography and masturbation?”  “Kinda…”  At this time it was hard for me to control my emotions.  I knew that I had to pick my words carefully both so that he didn’t get scared and clam up and also so that I wouldn’t start bawling and not be able to finish the conversation.  “Is it same gender attraction?”  “Yup.”  The only thing that I could get out next were, “Me too…doesn’t it suck?”

That started what was up to that point one of the best, most fulfilling, and most rewarding conversations of my entire life.  I felt years of loneliness and despair wash away.  For once I was talking to someone who had the same problem as me.  For once I was talking to someone who could understand what I was going through because he was experiencing it himself.  During that conversation we both felt was it was like to connect with someone else on a spiritual level.  We both felt the pure love that can only come from a loving Father in Heaven.  We both grew to realize that being attracted to men was not a sin.  The sin was in what we chose to do with that attraction.  We both made a decision that we needed to do whatever we could to recover from our affliction and do whatever we could to help each other along the way.  For me, at least, it signified a new beginning…a new life.

Things haven’t been easy since then.  Josh and I had to go through a period of time where we did not communicate with each other.  We had to do so because we were getting too emotionally attached to each other.  Every day brings new challenges and new experiences.  I have been more willing to be open to people about my trials and struggles.  I have found that being willing to be open to people about what I am going through more often than not takes good relationships and makes them better.  I have found that it also helps other people to trust me so that they are more willing to come and talk to me when they need help.  I have also begun to be more accepting of myself and of others.  I have more friends now than I ever had in my entire life.  I feel more love and acceptance from both my Father in Heaven and the people around me.  I have learned more about myself than I ever thought possible.

Because of these experiences I also have a new sense of direction.  I have never been able to give anybody a concrete answer when they asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I had never picked out a job and said, “Man, I really want to do that.”  Now I know exactly what I want to do.  I want to be a counselor.  I want to counsel youth and young adults who struggle with the same things that I have struggled with in my life, pornography, masturbation, and same gender attraction.    

I am also not bitter about being at BYU—Idaho, at least not anymore.  I now know why I was sent here…which is the main topic of this posting after all.  Sorry that it took me so long to get to it.  Thank you for your patience.  I was sent here to begin working on my SSA.  I was sent here to be able to help others in their quest to work on it as well.  I was also sent here to be a visible example to people inside and outside of the Church.  I was sent here to show that it is possible to have same gender attraction, not give into it and still be a happy, productive member of society and the Church.  I was sent here to show that people who have SSA are not perverts, nor are they your typical “flamers” but that most of them are normal people who live normal lives, lives of quiet desperation.  I was sent here to that I could begin to show people who have SSA that they need not be ashamed of the attractions that they feel. I realize that I have an uphill challenge ahead of me but, “Is anything too hard for the lord (Gen 18:14)?”  I realize that this is going to require a lot of strength and faith on my part but I know that I am not alone.  I know that I have a loving Father in Heaven who will do anything that he can to help me.  I know that I also have a Big Brother named Jesus Christ who not only came to this earth to atone for my sins (which are many) but that he also came to this earth to help me overcome my challenges and trials.  I know that I have many friends who support me and love me for who I am, regardless of who I happen to be attracted to.  I hope that I will have the faith to stay the course but I know that “with God all things are possible (Matt 19: 26).”

I am Grateful to be a Member of My Church

I just got back from a nice long bike ride. While I out I passed by one of the most inspiring scenes that I had seen in a long time. I rode past a newly constructed Stake Center and off on the top of the hill in the distance was the lit up Rexburg, Idaho Temple. Here is an image of what the temple looks like. It is situated on the top of the the largest hill in town and it has a commanding view of all of the valley. You can see it for miles around as you approach the town either at night or during the day.

When I saw that view it hit me that those two things were two of the the most important things in my life. I have been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since October 15, 1994. I can honestly say that I have stuck with it longer than I have stuck with anything in my entire life (besides eating and breathing of course). It feels like I have been a student forever, but certainly not for fourteen years.

Although everything in my life seems to have shifted, my membership in the Church hasn't. It has remained steady and has helped me through some of the hardest times in my life. The only thing that has stuck with me longer and the only people who have been with me longer have been my family, who I love.

I'm just so grateful to be a member of this Church. If you would like to learn more, please visit http://www.mormon.org. Please also feel free to comment on this posting. It would be great to hear our opinion. Please keep any comments tasteful, though.

Mark

They Did Not Doubt Their Mothers Knew It (Orignially started on 12/23/07 Finished on 7/7/08)

Or

Always Listen to Your Mother

I woke up early Saturday morning in almost a cold sweat after having a horrible dream and feeling like I had been under a lot of pressure and stress for a long time. I began to wonder if I was doing the right thing. I began to wonder if it was right for me to be two thirds of a country away from all of my family and most of my friends. I began to wonder if going back to school full-time after all of these years was right and if I was right to quit my job like I did and move to Utah and eventually to Idaho. I began to feel like a strange man living in a strange land amongst a strange people.

Then, all of a sudden the words, "Remember Mom, Remember Mom," came into my head and I remembered how excited, almost uncharacteristically so, she was about me going back to school and getting my degree. And about how much she was encouraging me to go forward with it. I couldn't remember any other point in my life where she had given me such encouragement and was as excited about what I was doing. That made me feel a little better.

I then began to remember about a group of young men that I had read about in The Book of Mormon--Another Testament of Jesus Christ, about a group of young men who listened to their mothers and were protected in the face of grave danger. They were sons of the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. Their parents had been a wicked and murderous people. They were converted by a Nephite prophet called Ammon, were convinced of their wicked ways, covenanted with God to never shed blood of another human again. They had buried their swords and choose to lay down their lives rather than risk killing again and displeasing God. Because of this they were taken in and protected from their enemies by the Nephites who were in the middle of a vicious battle.

Because of the protection that the Nephites were providing them, these people desired to help them and were about to take up their swords again. Just before they took up their weapons they were stopped by their leader who did not want them to risk breaking their covenant and displeasing God. Because of this, 10,000 of their sons, who had not covenanted against going to war, decided to help out and go to war to defend their people. These were some of the strongest, most faithful soldiers to ever walk the earth. They were in many fierce and bloody battles and none of them were killed. They showed their faith by fighting alongside with their brethren even though they had never seen war before. They believed that because of the faith and prayers of their mothers that they would be protected and they were. They got their faith from their mothers.

"Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." (Alma 56: 47,48)

"Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them." (Alma 57: 21)

I am grateful for the influence and strength that my mother has had in my life. I started to write this in January when I was in between homes and school. I was temporarily living in South Jordan, Utah waiting to come up to Rexburg, Idaho to go to school. I am grateful for my mother's support during that time and for her continued support while I have been here in school. Knowing that she supports me in my decision really helps. I wish her and Don (my step-father) the best in San Antonio.

Clarification

Hi folks. I received a voicemail message this afternoon that bothered me a little bit and made me feel that I needed to clarify something. I apologize for not addressing the individual personally yet, but the time difference between here and the east coast makes it a little bit difficult.

The message that I got thanked me for the recent update and said that neither he nor his wife understood how destitute I had been prior to my move to Utah and shortly after. Although I have been short on material wealth, I feel that I have been far from destitute. This is definitely a learning situation for me. I feel that I am learning what it takes to truly be a disciple of Christ. At least I hope that I am.

I had another friend say that there were a lot of trials that I have been through that I did not have to go through. That is probably true, but everything that I have been through has been a learning experience. Unfortunately, we seem to learn the most when we experience the most adversity. I am not trying to purposefully seek out adversity either, but I am not going to run from it either. Hopefully I will emerge from the refiners fire a better, more grateful and more humble man.

I feel that I should also clarify a point that I made on a previous blog about it being difficult for me to find strenght to go forward. I am in no way considering not going forward. Quitting, in any way, shape, or fashion has not entered my mind. I desire to live "after the manner of happiness." And the only way for me to do that is to "Keep Moving Forward," as is the motto in my favorite move of all times, Walt Disney's Meet the Robinsons which ends in a fabulous quote from Walt Disney himself:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”–Walt Disney

Thank you all for your friendship, faith, prayers, and support. I hope to be able to return the favor some day.

Movin On Up

Thanks to a good night's sleep. I woke up to a new prospective. I now feel like George Jefferson.

Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.


Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin',
Just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues,
Gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
There ain't nothin wrong with that.


Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

The Law of Undulation

Forgive me if this entry is a little long. There are some feelings that I need to get out. I feel that I need to start with an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (1942, HarperCollins, New York, New York.) The Screwtape Letters consists of a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior devil to his young nephew Wormwood, who is just learning the art of tempting mortals. In this letter (pages 37-41) he discusses what he calls “The Law of Undulation.”

My Dear Wormwood,

So, you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? ...Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully, you would have seen this undulations in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (the Savior’s) efforts to get permanent possession of the soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us (demons) a human is primary food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours… But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least form their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is through such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…He cannot tempt to virtue…He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hands; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why hey has been forsaken, and still obeys. (Emphasis added)

I feel like I am going through a trough. I have had so many trials and heartache during the past few years that I am beginning to wonder when it is going to end. I am beginning to wonder how I am going to get the strength to go on. I know that school is only a month away, but it seems like that month might as well be a year.

There are several things that keep me going. One of them is a talk from Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entitled, Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence (BYU Devotional 3/19/1999), in which he quotes Hebrews 10: 35-36, 38-39:

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise…

…If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him…

…We are not of them who draw back unto perdition. (Emphasis added.)

I do not want to stop climbing the mountain just before I get to the top, even if it is obscured by fog. Although I do not look like it, I am familiar with weight lifting. I am aware of the theory that says that it is when the muscle has been worked so much that it can barely function, and a spotter is required, that the most growth occurs.

I know that with Jesus at my side I have the best spotter in the world. I also know that I am surrounded by a team of spotters who are my friends and family. I also know that I am meant to do most of the work. I am thankful for all of you who are spotting for me, praying for me, calling me, and encouraging me. Your support means the world to me and I could not do it without you. I will keep you posted of my progress.

Love,

Mark