Becoming Like Him - Day 12 - Rest

For my 31 days of writing, I am linking up over at Heading Home and over at the Nester. There are several of us that are taking the 31 day writing challenge. Kate has suggested that we spend 31 days of Five minute writing. You can use the prompts or write about anything you would like, you just need to write.

I am sharing my journey for 31 days as I strive to become more like Him. My prayer is that you can find hope and peace in my words.

START

The Savior said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
"And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest".  (Exodus 33:14) 

Many of us are carrying burdens that seem too hard to bear.  Many are lost.  Many have stumbled.  Many have fallen away.  There are heartaches and heartbreaks.  There are trials of every kind.  Often, we feel alone and overwhelmed, and just plain tired.  It is times like these when I remember that the Savior did not promise that we would feel like this forever.  He actually promised us rest from our labour.  All we have to do is "Come unto Him".  
The scriptures contain many accounts of how the Savior helped those who were heavy laden.  He caused the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the lame to walk.  He healed the sick and raised the dead.  He fed the thousands and comforted the weary.  He taught of peace.  He taught of love.  He taught of kindness to both friends and strangers.  
He endured His own trials during His mortal ministry.  He was called names and beaten.  He was spit upon and mocked.  He was hung on a cross while a murderer went free.
Life is not, and never has been fair.  But I believe in Him and in His promise of rest.  The time will come when our burdens will be less sore and our hearts will be healed and our eyes shall see Him.  

STOP

Sabbath Day Scribblings - Not Perfect

God is fully aware

That you and I are 

Not Perfect.

Let me add,

God is also fully aware

That the people you think

Are perfect,

Are not.

And yet, we spend so much time and energy

comparing ourselves to others - usually comparing

our weaknesses to their strengths

...As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts

Because they seem to be less

Than what someone else does.

Deiter F. Uchtdorf

I hope today, that we each celebrate our own strengths.  Our own efforts.  Our own successes.  They are there within.  Our Heavenly Father did not send us to this earth without strengths.  He did not send us here to compete against everyone else.  The only person that we should ever compare ourselves to is the person that we were yesterday.  Honor your trials and your journey, and especially honor the overcoming of your difficulties.    

Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

Five Minute Friday - In-Between

It's Friday again, my favorite time of the week in more ways than one!  Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s make our words count.

Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not. Here are some simple rules to play along:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat, no stopping, no going back.
2. Link back over at Lisa Jo's place and invite others to join in.
3. Go leave some comments for the five minute artist who linked up before you.

It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week.

OK, are you ready? Let’s see your best five minutes for the prompt:

In between

GO

In between yesterday and today is an entire lifetime.  Moments filled with happiness and sadness, joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure.  Moments that become memories.  Moments of regret and moments of pure love.   In between then and now is an entire world of anguish and the overcoming of it.  In Between is where I seem to live most of the time.  In between one heartache, and the next, I learn to live.  I learn to hope.  I learn to have faith and I learn to trust.  I learn that there are great lessons to be had in the fragile moments that we call life.  I learn that with the bad, comes blessings I never thought I would find.  In between is so much love that I am in awe and in grace.  In between every moment, I find Him.  Often in the darkest places, shines forth the brightest light.  His Light, His life, His Redeeming Love.  Life breezes by so fast that soon the in between times are yesterday and I am zooming ahead into the future of His dreams for me.

STOP

OK, now it is your turn.  What can you share in your own five minutes?  
Don't forget to link back with the rest of us over at Lisa Jo's.  
Hope to see you there!

Adversity - Haunts me daily

"Adversity is the state in which man most easily 

becomes acquainted with himself, 

being especially free of admirers then."  

John Wooden

Can you remember a time when you were involved in a bad situation?  A time that was creating much adversity in your life?  I know that I have seen so many of those times in my own life.  During those times when life's problems confront me, I tend to start having feelings of self-doubt and loneliness.  I even start to question if I am loved and needed.  Sometimes, it seems as if my friends have left my side and I am all alone.    There does not seem to be anyone around me who can help me work out those difficult issues.
I have learned that it is not easy to face our weaknesses at any time, but I have come to know that the times I make the most changes and see things the most clearly are during those times of adversity that I hate so much.  As I learn to deal with my trials, my character becomes clear to me and I learn a little more about myself.  I literally come to know myself through my journey. 
I love the scripture that says:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.
Ether 12:27

I believe that it takes courage to look inside ourselves and recognize our weaknesses.  To finally be able to recognize them and to surrender them to a loving Heavenly Father is the start of changes in our own hearts.   Through Him, we will become strong.

Light The Way

"The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well."

Neal A. Maxwell, That my Family Should Partake, pg 86

I love this saying.  How wonderful to know that God is mindful of us.  That He has placed us exactly where we are for a purpose.  That that purpose is known.  I am reminded that all the things in my life have led me to this one point in time and to this one place in all the world.  

He knows my experiences, my heartaches, my overcoming, my despair, my needs, my reaching and my love.  He knows every single thing about me, and loves me in spite of myself.  Because of that, if I allow Him too, He will use me to help others who may need the compassion and comfort that I am uniquely able to give.  If I allow Him too, He will place me where and need to be.  

I am so very blessed, but sometimes, even with all those blessings, it can be hard to not feel discouragement and pain.  Sometimes it helps if I can just step back for a moment and look closer at the blessings instead of the trials.  Sometimes it helps to really look for things to be grateful for.  Sometimes it helps to acknowledge His hand in our lives.  

One of the greatest blessings that I have been given is that of prayer.  The opportunity to talk with our Heavenly Father, one on one, at any time of any day and at any moment.  It never ceases to amaze me how, with all the multitude of things going on in the world, Heavenly Father still has time to answer a small and simple prayer.  

The answer is not always yes.  Sometimes, it is not now.  Or it might even be not ever.  Sometimes the answer is No.  Sometimes the answer is yes.  But there is always an answer.  I am learning that part of having faith in my Heavenly Father is to simple have trust in His timing.  He has promised me that all of this will be worth it.   

Doctrine and Covenants 112:10 

Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers.

Three Strings

By Jack Riemer

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play. By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one.  But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left." What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings. So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

The Webs of Sin

Webs
by Patricia A Pitterle

The spider web
stretched between the front posts of the house,
almost invisible
in the shadow of the porch.
I, with my mind on other things,
took the shortcut to the door
and walked right through the middle
of the sticky threads.
They clung around my legs
and during my hurry to brush them off
I neglected to see the spider
still holding on,
and felt the sharp sting of it's bite
upon my arm.

Often, I have found
when trying to take shortcuts
in my life,
that Lucifer's webs
also lie somewhere in the shadows.
Invisible at times
to my heart and mind,
but still very, very real.
When I become entangled
in their stickiness,
they too,
are hard to remove
and in the process
I feel the sting and bite of Satan's touch.
How grateful I am that the Master's hand,
greater by far than teh healing
of our earthly physicians,
can cleanse the wound and ease the pain
and I find myself whole
once again
through faith, repentance,
and the greatest gift of all,
His eternal love.