Re-Commitment

The past month has been...interesting, to say the least.  The rollercoaster of life and its emotions has continued, which has made for an eventful ride.  All of these ups and down, loops and corkscrews have left me more confused than ever.  While I can say that the events and changes that started this rollercoaster happened for the best, that knowledge doesn't make it easy to deal with the aftermath or consequences of decisions I have made.

Today during Relief Society (to which I walked in very late), I had a sort of epiphany.  The teacher was talking about faith: faith in an outcome versus faith in Christ.  She focused on having the faith to change our will to align with the Lord's, to have the faith to follow His plan for us rather than ours.  She related various examples from her life that were surprisingly similar to trials I've been going through the past few months.  One of the things she highlighted really hit home: her desires were righteous and she felt she had done everything in her power to see her worthy will be done; however, the Lord had a different plan.  Only after realizing that while her plan was good,  the Lord's plan was better (no matter how temporarily painful the outcome of that plan was) could she truly see the purpose of His plan.

After my hour-long stint at church was over, I came home to catch up on some blog reading I had missed while on vacation in California.  A very good friend of mine, who I look up to and admire in the greatest of ways, wrote a post a few days about timing: our timing versus the Lord's timing.  She relayed this talk by Elder Oaks specifically on that topic.  One of my favorite lines reads "we cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s timing."  Not only do we need to have faith in the Lord's plan over ours, we also need to have faith in His timing--that every righteous blessing we desire will be ours when He sees fit.

What's the moral of the story?  Again, Elder Oaks states it perfectly: "Anchor your life to eternal principles, and act upon those principles whatever the circumstances and whatever the actions of others. Then you can await the Lord’s timing and be sure of the outcome in eternity...If we have faith in God and if we are committed to the fundamentals of keeping His commandments and putting Him first in our lives, we do not need to plan every single event—even every important event—and we should not feel rejected or depressed if some things—even some very important things—do not happen at the time we had planned or hoped or prayed."

So here I am, to re-commit myself to doing the Lord's will and trusting in His plan and His timing.  How grateful I am to know that if I have the faith required to follow His plan, act on that faith, and remain worthy I will receive every blessing I desire...and deserve.