**Disclaimer: I didn't properly cite my sources (my past English teachers would be horrified), but the talk I mentioned multiple times can be found here...and I'm aware there are a frightful amount of run-on sentences**
I was surprised when the call came to speak on the principle
taught in the Savior’s words, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from
me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done,” because I've actually
thought about this particular scripture a great deal over the last few years
and it is a source of comfort.
Robb and I planned on starting our family after I finished
college (I didn't think I could handle morning sickness and nursing clinicals),
but that wasn't in Heavenly Father’s plan for us. In the next year I had two miscarriages both
at six weeks and the experience was really hard on me. After the first, I felt depressed. I told all
of our siblings and our parents about the pregnancy and it was difficult to tell
them things had changed, but I was still hopeful. Miscarriages are pretty common, after all. After the second, I was devastated. I feared we would never have children of our
own and I started to wonder if my faith was the reason our prayers and fasting
weren’t working. Prophets of old could
move mountains when it was the Lord’s will that they be pushed aside, but what
do you do when you don’t know if your mountain, even if it’s for a good and
noble cause, is meant to be moved? Not
all prayers will be answered the way we expect and I think the greatest thing I
learned through my experience, besides a powerful reaffirmation that my Savior loves
me, is that it is possible to submit your will to the Father while still praying
for that blessing you feel in need of.
I've looked back on this experience frequently since the
birth of our son, Colby, and I've wondered how I could have handled things
better because I’m almost certain this isn't the only trial Robb and I will
face and then I heard an amazing talk by Elder Bednar entitled, That We Might “Not Shrink” and all these
thoughts and feelings I had were suddenly clear. He begins by relating an experience he had
when Elder Maxwell came to deliver a devotional to the BYU-Idaho campus. While visiting together, Elder Bednar asked
what lessons Elder Maxwell had learned from fighting leukemia, his response, “Dave,”
he said, “I have learned that not shrinking is more important than
surviving.”
In his talk, “Applying the Atoning Blood of Christ,” Elder
Maxwell elaborates that thought, “As we confront our own … trials and
tribulations, we too can plead with the Father, just as Jesus did, that we
‘might not … shrink’—meaning to retreat or to recoil. Not shrinking is much more important than
surviving! Moreover, partaking of a bitter cup without becoming bitter is
likewise part of the emulation of Jesus”.
I love this idea, of not shrinking, and it doesn't just apply to trials. If
you turn to 1 Nephi 4:10 it reads “And it came to pass that I was constrained by
the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time
have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay
him.” Sometimes following the will of the Lord requires us to take an action we
inwardly “shrink” from. I appreciate
Nephi’s honesty in writing this and take comfort that even such a great man as
he was struggled at times to submit his will to the Lord’s. But He overcame his moment of weakness, obeyed,
and it was a turning point in his life.
He went from a stalwart youth and became the man who saw the Tree of
Life and calmed a storm with prayer.
Elder Bednar told of the story of a newly married couple,
John and Heather, who learned three weeks after their sealing that John had
bone cancer which had metastasized or moved into his lungs. He relates his experience with them as
follows:
“Two days following the operation, I visited John and
Heather in the hospital. We talked about the first time I met John in the
mission field, about their marriage, about the cancer, and about the eternally
important lessons we learn through the trials of mortality. As we concluded our
time together, John asked if I would give him a priesthood blessing. I
responded that I gladly would give such a blessing, but I first needed to ask
some questions.”
“I then posed questions I had not planned to ask and had never
previously considered: “[John,] do you have the faith not to be healed? If it
is the will of our Heavenly Father that you are transferred by death in your
youth to the spirit world to continue your ministry, do you have the faith to
submit to His will and not be healed?”
“I frankly was surprised by the questions I felt prompted to
ask this particular couple. Frequently in the scriptures, the Savior or His
servants exercised the spiritual gift of healing and perceived that an
individual had the faith to be healed. But as John and Heather and I counseled
together and wrestled with these questions, we increasingly understood that if
God’s will were for this good young man to be healed, then that blessing could
only be received if this valiant couple first had the faith not to be healed.
In other words, John and Heather needed to overcome, through the Atonement of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the “natural man” tendency in all of us to demand
impatiently and insist incessantly on the blessings we want and believe we
deserve.”
Submitting our will to the Father is an opportunity for our
faith to grow in a way that seemed counter-intuitive to me at first. Through the power of prayer and the
reassurances of the Spirit we learn to trust all things are possible in the Lord. Whether the miracle will be the strength to
endure or the blessing we seek, it is His decision and will ultimately be for
our good. Elder Orson F. Whitney said, “No pain that we suffer,
no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the
development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All
that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure patiently,
builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us
more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and
it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the
education that we come here to acquire”
As always, our Savior is the perfect example of submitting
to the will of the Father. “Father, if
thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine,
be done.” During my trial, when this scripture came to mean so much to me, I
realized for the first time that Christ was surprised by how hard the Atonement
was. In Mark we read that he “began to
be sore amazed and very heavy” as he experienced the emotional, mental, and
physical anguish for us. Even our
Savior, with all His power and wisdom, was unprepared for what he had to go
through and wanted the suffering to end.
In Jesus the Christ James E. Talmage wrote, “Though
in the dark tribulation of that fearful hour He had pleaded that the bitter cup
be removed from His lips, the request, however oft repeated was always conditional; the accomplishment
of the Father's will was never lost sight of as the object of the Son's supreme
desire."
Submitting your will doesn't mean you can't still hope and
pray things will turn out a certain way, it means you will accept whatever
Heavenly Father has in store for you and your life. Elder Bednar said, “Righteousness and faith
certainly are instrumental in moving mountains—if moving mountains accomplishes
God’s purposes and is in accordance with His will. Righteousness and faith
certainly are instrumental in healing the sick, deaf, or lame—if such healing
accomplishes God’s purposes and is in accordance with His will. Thus, even with
strong faith, many mountains will not be moved. And not all of the sick and
infirm will be healed. If all opposition were curtailed, if all maladies were
removed, then the primary purposes of the Father’s plan would be frustrated.”
As you seek to make your will one with the Father your
prayers will change. You will be led to
ask for courage, strength, increased faith, and comfort and you will be blessed
with those things you stand in need of to overcome trials and your burdens will
be made light. I have felt the peace
that only comes from turning our heartaches and pain over to the Lord and I
testify that it is available to all who seek it.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
