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Faith,Life

Waiting for Promises

posted on : June 28, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have been fascinated with the prophet Abraham for a while.  Even in the midst of evil, and some of his family members were not doing good things, he chose to stay on the path, to be obedient and keep the commandments.  He received from Jehovah great promises, especially the promise that his seed or children would be as the sands of the sea or the stars in heaven.  In the book of Genesis it says that he was 75 years old when he first received this promise.  Since he was 100 years old when Isaac, the son of the promise, was born I have been thinking about how long he had to wait for the promise to begin to be fulfilled. Did he begin to wonder if he had heard right or misunderstood the Lord?  As he and Sarah aged, did he doubt?  Did he have great faith and never doubted but waited for the promises from Jehovah to be fulfilled? And then, he only had one child of promise, and was asked to sacrifice that child.  Abraham was an extraordinary man who was given great promises, but then I have been given great promises too, not only as his descendant but also as a daughter of God and a woman of covenants.  Sometimes, when I don’t see some of these promises happening very fast and I wonder if it’s because I’m not faithful enough, or misunderstood something or some other vague thing.  Mostly I think I just need to continue to be faithful and patient, and watch for the hand of God in my life.  Neal A. Maxwell said that when we are unduly impatient we are suggesting that we know more than God and we are questioning God’s omniscience. I try to remember this because sometimes it is hard to wait with hope when I see people who I love making wrong choices or when I am in the midst of another terrible migraine, or life isn’t going the way I think it should.  I think that part of my schooling in this life is to develop faith and patience, and to learn to trust God, and Neal A. Maxwell said that patience and faith are closely related.  Patience denotes faith and you can’t have faith without patience, they go hand-in-hand. When not yet fulfilled promises don’t seem to be even on the horizon, I am stretched and my faith and patience grows as I look to God and trust Him. Even in hard times, in the back of my mind, I know God’s promises are sure and He will always keep His promises.

Faith,Lessons Learned

Diligence

posted on : April 12, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have a 16-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome.  She is an amazing person who was born with faith and when I tell her something, she believes me.  She loves going to church and participating in Sunday School and Young Women’s classes, and she takes seminary classes through her high school.  She always reminds me to do family scriptures and prayer and I know she reads her scriptures on her own and says her prayers each night, and she always remembers to ask for a blessing on her food- even in a restaurant.  Sometimes after she gets home from school when she’s had seminary or after a Sunday School class I will ask her what the lesson was about or something that she learned.  Her reply is always said with a little frustration “I don’t know.”  I can ask her several questions to try to prompt her memory but she genuinely doesn’t know what was talked about.  In some ways it’s even more remarkable that she persists in doing these righteous behaviors since she doesn’t remember what she’s taught or read. I have thought about her diligence in attending these classes and doing her own personal reading and remember the scripture in the Bible from John 14:26 which says in part “…the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance…”  The knowledge is in there and some day, because of her diligence, she will have all things brought to her remembrance through the Holy Ghost.

Church,Faith,Life

Tithing

posted on : February 17, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

When I was a young child my mother was a stay-at-home mom, and she was an active member of our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).  She wanted to follow the commandment to pay tithing but my dad was dead set against it.  When they had married she didn’t even know he was actually a member of the church which means he was obviously very inactive.  She had later met the missionaries when they were going door-to-door and was almost instantly converted.  She would have loved for my dad to have become active but he was totally against the church.  In those days men often controlled the money and gave their wives a set amount from which to run the family and household, and in my family’s case this is what happened.  She wanted to be obedient to the commandment and she also wanted the blessings that come from paying tithing so unbeknownst to my dad, she paid it on the household money he gave her. Later, after they were divorced and she was only earning minimum wage to support her kids while going to school (they didn’t have the deadbeat parent laws then and for some reason my dad didn’t feel it was necessary to pay child support), she often said that the only reason we made it was because she paid her tithing.  President Gordon B. Hinckley said “Tithing is a matter of faith, not finance” and my mom believed this was a true principle because on the very little money she earned to support a family of six she still paid her tithing faithfully. In my life I have also seen the blessings that come from paying tithing, especially when I was a very poor student at BYU.  I had very little money but I always had what I needed and I believe it was because I paid my tithing.  Tithing is a matter of faith, not finance!

Life

My Mother-in-law, addendum

posted on : January 19, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

My dear, faithful mother-in-law died on Christmas morning.  This patient, long-suffering woman finally got to go home to be with her beloved husband and parents.  She so wanted to die and we wanted her to be relieved of her suffering so much so that it was hard to be sad at her passing and yet she has left a giant hole in our family.  We pass by her bedroom door and feel the pang of her absence.  We walk into the house and automatically think to check on her.  It’s lunch time and I have to remind myself that she not here to fix lunch for.  It’s not just her physical absence but also her example of cheerfully enduring her situation and rising above her circumstances by deciding to be pleasant no matter what.  We never left her room without receiving a thank you. When people visited her she focused on them, and she sang songs with my youngest every night.  We miss her optimism, her implicit faith and prayers in our behalf, I guess…we just miss her.