Ever since I was young I have had the idea of mission basically shoved down my throat. While this isn't a bad thing in and of itself, it has created a lot of internal strife that I didn't realize I was trying to deal with. Most of the women that surround me in my life have gone on missions. My mom and several of my aunts, half of my roommates, most of the girls in my current ward. Everywhere I turn there are examples of amazing women who have gone on missions and I love all of them. Even as a small child when we were learning how to pray, part of the nightly prayer was "and please help us to go on missions."
When I was a child it seemed like the greatest thing in the world and just something that would happen. As I grew older though I started to focus on other things, mainly boys. At the time I didn't understand a lot of the things that I do now and I made decisions that brought trials that in some people's eyes might have been better if they had been avoided. However, I learned something over the last couple weeks that has taught me a valuable lesson when it comes to trials in our lives.
We are all children of our Heavenly Father and as such each of us is unique. We all have our own ways of learning, growing, and loving. Even if we all had the exact same experiences in life, we would still react to and do things differently. That being said, my realization this week was that the Lord knows my strengths and the desires of my heart, but he also knows my weaknesses. In fact he knows them so well that he knows how to use them to make me a better person and make those weaknesses become my strengths. He knows me so well that he knows that I would make the wrong decision in certain circumstance that in the eyes of some might seem as though I was weak or vulnerable. What I have learned is that that is not who I am. I am a daughter of God who is seeking each and every day of my life with every decision that I make to follow the Lord and do those things that he would have me do.
Some may look at that and say "yeah but look where it made you end up and look how close you were to being in this bad situation." My answer to that is, yep, you are exactly right and I honestly believe that that is how the Lord intended it to be. Every decision that I made, I made based on what I felt was the right thing to do at the time. Those of you that are older might look at it and say "if only you had done this or that" or "if only you had understood this at the time." The reality of it is this. We have all had different experiences and we are all on different levels of learning. I make decisions based on the level of knowledge that I have gained up to that point and what I feel the Lord would have me do. That does not mean that I will always make the best decision, but it does mean that I am doing the best that I know how to do and that is what truly matters.
Every relationship that I have been in, every friendship that I have had, and every experience that I have been through has been part of a building project that the Lord has set in motion to be able to make me the person HE wants me to be. I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that everything that I have been through up to this point in my life has been for my good and betterment. While there may have been other ways that I could have learned some of the things that I did, the Lord allowed me to use my agency to make mistakes. But he also used those mistakes to build me up and make me the person I am today. Every one of the mistakes I have learned from and grown to be better. With out even one of them I would not have the strength and courage and understanding that I developed.
So what, you may ask, does this have to do with mission? Well, for so long I have felt that I "HAD" to go on a mission, like there wasn't a choice. With everyone around me going on missions and constantly hearing about it from parents, relatives, and friends I felt that I would be a disappointment to them if I didn't go. But that's not what the Lord has taught. Like it or not, the Lord has not commanded the sisters of the church to go on missions. I took a marriage and family class this term and it has helped me have a better perspective of how the Lord works. I decided it was finally time that I find out what it is that the LORD wants me to do and not what everyone around me keeps telling me. So that's what I did, I prayed and debated with myself and seriously considered all that options and consequences of going/not going on a mission. And ya know what, I still didn't get a clear definitive, "yes or no" answer from the Lord. I was still frustrated.
Then one day in my marriage and family class a quote was put up on the board by Richard G. Scott. Here is what it says:
"What do you do when you have prepared carefully, have prayed fervently, waited a reasonable time for a response, and still do not feel an answer? You may want to express thanks when that occurs, for it is an evidence of His trust. when you are living worthily and your choice is consistent with the Savior's teachings and you need to act, proceed with trust. As you are sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit, one of two things will certainly occur at the appropriate time: either the stupor of thought will come, indicating an improper choice, or the peace or the burning in the bosom will be felt, confirming that your choice was correct. When you are living righteously and are acting with trust, God will not let you proceed too far without a warning impression if you have made the wrong decision."
I realized several things at that point in time:
1) The decision I had made about going on a mission was still bothering me and I hadn't found peace about it yet.
2) I finally understood how it was that I had been able to go through all the experiences I had without going too far down the wrong path. I was acting in the manner that I honestly felt the Lord wanted me to and because my heart was where it should have been, the Lord didn't allow me to go too far without a slap in the face or big red flashing lights saying turn around.
3) I needed to make a new decision about going on a mission. I needed to look at it differently.
So that's what I did, I went back to the drawing board and looked at it through the eyes of the teachings of the prophets and that's when I started to feel greater peace and understanding. Going on a mission is not a priority for me right now. Some day I would love to go, but for now, my mission is to finish school, that is my priority. I finally understood that the frustration had been coming from a conflict of what the Lord wanted me to do and what those around me, though not always verbally stated, were expecting of me.
Each one of us has different desires, different goals, different opinions, and different understandings of things in life, but the one thing we have in common is that the Lord loves us unconditionally. He is always there, always willing to reach out and help, and wants nothing more than to help us succeed in every aspect of life. It is that knowledge of his relationship with me that gives me the courage and the strength to stand and say that I am a child of God and that I will do whatever it takes to do those things that he would have me do despite what the world or even family members and friends might think of me or the things that I do. Nothing can change my conviction of the truthfulness of the gospel and the Love of our Savior Jesus Christ who sacrificed literally everything so that we might have joy and happiness in this life and in the world to come. He is my redeemer and I have a burning desire to follow him and do those things that will allow me to become like him.
One of the other things that I learned from all this is how little we all really know about each other. Outward appearances can be very deceiving, and I don't just mean the clothes that one wears and how one does ones hair. We all make decisions every day of our life based on different things that we have experienced. How we make decisions will be different from the person next to us and we can't judge someone based on their decision because we have no idea what is in their heart and exactly why they made the choice they did. Someone can even make a good choice but for all the wrong reasons. I guess all I'm asking is this: Before you go jumping to conclusions about the decisions someone is making in his/her life, ask yourself this question... "If I were in her shoes and had experienced what she had, would I be making the same decision?"
