Life was going well and I thought I had pretty much all I could have ever wanted. I spent some time in Southern Utah and was rushing home to shoot a bridal I had mis-scheduled. Upon my arrival and rush to the location, I crashed my car.
That crash became a turning point. It was that day I felt I lost it all. My car was on the verge of being totaled and that special person in my life was nowhere to be found. I didn't hear from him for days and I wondered what I did wrong. Then the next thing I know I am single again.
The year before I lost a wonderful job, my best friend and further made an idiot of myself ... The year before that I had a rise and fall. Gaining a wonderful job and losing a very important person in my life. And the year before that I was upside down in some other garbage with school.
As much as I love Christmas, I usually tend to destroy things around this time of year; and it usually involves important people of the male gender in my life. And sometimes, it involves my professional life ... It seems to be my RM curse ...
Last night I got lost in thinking "what if" and the past. It sent me into a tail-spin and it was all I could do to pull out the sewing machine and make a scarf, and then I moved on to make some rings. Before I knew it 1 a.m. rolled around and I was exhausted. But my mind was still racing.
Today, I had to teach and I felt the spirit but was still struggling to feel the spirit. We had some wonderful talks and I felt I spoke what I was supposed to in my lesson. But something needs to change. Stress and other garbage are inhibiting my ability to feel the Spirit on a consistent basis.
Yesterday as I was driving home I needed something more than the tunes on my phone, so I started listing to past CES talks. One of my favs is Lessons from Liberty Jail by Jeffery R. Holland. There were some things in there that I needed to hear again and I was grateful in that moment for technology.
"So in what sense could Liberty Jail be called a “temple,” and what does such a title tell us about God’s love and teachings, including where and when that love and those teachings are made manifest? In precisely this sense: that you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced.
"In one way or another, great or small, dramatic or incidental, every one of us is going to spend a little time in Liberty Jail—spiritually speaking. We will face things we do not want to face for reasons that may not be our fault. Indeed, we may face difficult circumstances for reasons that were absolutely right and proper, reasons that came because we were trying to keep the commandments of the Lord. We may face persecution, we may endure heartache and separation from loved ones, we may be hungry and cold and forlorn. Yes, before our lives are over we may all be given a little taste of what the prophets faced often in their lives.
"But the lessons of the winter of 1838–39 teach us that every experience can become a redemptive experience if we remain bonded to our Father in Heaven through it. These difficult lessons teach us that man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, and if we will be humble and faithful, if we will be believing and not curse God for our problems, He can turn the unfair and inhumane and debilitating prisons of our lives into temples—or at least into a circumstance that can bring comfort and revelation, divine companionship and peace.
... "The first lesson from Liberty Jail is inherent in what I’ve already mentioned—that everyone, including, and perhaps especially, the righteous, will be called upon to face trying times. When that happens we can sometimes fear that God has abandoned us, and we might be left, at least for a time, to wonder when our troubles will ever end. As individuals, as families, as communities, and as nations, probably everyone has had or will have an occasion to feel as Joseph Smith felt when he cried from the depth and discouragement of his confinement: “O God, where art thou? … How long shall thy hand be stayed … ? Yea, O Lord, how long shall [thy people] suffer … before … thy bowels be moved with compassion toward them?” (D&C 121:1–3)."
We will all have Liberty Jail experiences. The challenge is how we will deal with it ...
For me, I usually come out of it. I figure it out and I move on. But like Joseph during his time in jail, we must go through a small moment of suffering before the Lord will liberate us. Like Elder Holland said, God "can turn the unfair and inhumane and debilitating prisons of our lives into temples."
Perhaps next year I'll take the class for "credit" ;)
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