What We Do For Each Other

I have learned some interesting things in the past 24 hours! I have several friends that are suffering through some of the hardest trials I have ever seen up close and personally. They are having experiences that take my breath away, (like gettting the wind knocked out of you.) The pain they are going through seems to compair quite a bit with what Christ must have suffered on the cross and in Gethsemane. One of my friends was told in a blessing that this is what she was experiencing and that she needed to be grateful for these experiences because they would bring her closer to the Savior.

Heavenly Father allowed Abraham to experience the idea of sacrificing his son just as He would literally do many thousand years later. Abraham could then understand to a small degree what the Father would go through because he suffered it too. We are told that we will have to suffer even as the prophets suffered if we are to qualify for the same glory they recieve. This is what my good friends are going through now! This is what many go through in the last years of their lives when they can't die, but can't live without pain. My husbands grandma is suffering extreme pain from shingles and now another nerve disease that is painful and cronic. I remember my Grandma Thatcher lived too long (in her mind), and only wanted to die because she was so miserable. I have wondered why many times this is so.

Why do we have to suffer so much? Couldn't we appreciate the gift and sacrifice we have been given by just watching it?

We are told in the Bible that even the Savior "learned obedience by the things he suffered". I don't completely understand this. He was perfect, how much more obedient could he learn to be through suffering? but He did, so why do I think that I am above suffering when I must go through hard things now?

If Christ learned through suffering, and my friends have to learn through suffering, and I have learned through suffering, and even old, dying people learn through suffering, then all this suffering must lead us in some way back to the Savior, to His sacrifice and His love or we would not go through it.

As I sit with my friends and try and comfort them and love them, I am reminded of the feelings of deep remorse for what my part of the Saviors load was and is. I remember wanting to comfort and support and love Him while He was suffering on the cross and in the Garden. I felt immense gratitude for what He did for me. I remember hoping that somehow I had been allowed to send my love to Him during those hours of pain and agony. I am not sure that was possible then, or even if I understood pain and suffering in that perfect home on High, but I do know that I can do something now for others when they are suffering, and maybe, just maybe it will lift some of what the Savior carried in those hours of His deepest trial.

Always the statement: "When you have done it unto one of the least of these my breathren, ye have done it unto me" goes through my mind. Time is one eternal round and who is to say that what we do now for others didn't have an effect then? I know Christ suffered then for the sins I commit now. I don't know, but I hope that I can better "mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort". It makes sense to me now how this is part of the baptismal covenant and why it is what our desire will be when we have been converted. When we truely accept the Atonement and the suffering of the Savior as payment for our sins and the sins of others against us, we will want to do something for Him, and knowing there is nothing that equals His sacrifice, we look for someone else to serve as He served us. It seems it is all that we have, so we give it ALL hoping that it eases the pain and burden we caused Him.

I wonder if when we do these things we are in essence supporting the Savior in His darkest hour and upholding Him in His pain and suffering. We are saying that we appreciate what he did for us and what others are experiencing to be able to understand better what He suffered. Just like Abraham did when he offered to sacrifice Issac on the alter. Abraham didnt' have to go through with the sacrifice of Issac, and we can't go through what Christ did for us, but we can to a small degree understand what He suffered, so we can appreciate the sacrifice that really was performed for us by the greatest of us all; Jesus Christ!

So when my family and friends supported me through my pain and suffering, they were supporting the Savior too. Thank You! I hope that I can do the same for them and others. It is something that must be experienced to be understood, and if we try and keep all our pain to ourselves and suffer alone, we deny others the opportunity to support and love the Savior as He loves us.

All Moved In!!

Well, we're all moved in and mostly out of boxes! It feels so good to be able to find things in cupboards and drawers again. We are loving our new place, I'm excited to be moving on. I have to say that I am loving the small spaces again. I forgot how nice it is to rush through your whole house and have it cleaned in a half hour. Or how easy it is to stay organized when the place to put something is only a few feet away. These things are simple and beautiful things that I had forgotten in my huge house on the hill.

True the view is not as nice and the noise seems much closer and louder, but the over-all result is great! I love our new home and our new lifestyle. A house really does engender a lifestyle. If it takes more time to clean it than to do all the other important things on your list of things to do for the day then maybe it's not worth it.

I must admitt though that it did help teach my kids how to work! I always said "if you don't have a farm, a big house will do!" And it was true they all have a great work ethic because of that big house and that was a wonderful blessing. I think they have decided they have died and gone to heaven because the chores are so easy now and mom does most of them, but I figure that will change when the novelty wears off. We will just have to find places to go and people to serve that are out of the house now, and that seems like a worthy quest for all the time they now have on their hands. I hope they are prepared, but something tells me they aren't. Oh well, nothing like a suprise to shake things up!