The last few days have been pretty difficult for me. I've had some significant financial burdens weighing on me, and what has made it particularly hard is that some of those burdens have come from decisions I genuinely felt Heavenly Father was leading me to make.
I've prayed about these decisions. I've felt good about them. I've moved forward believing I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do. But somewhere along the way, the circumstances started looking a whole lot different than what I had expected. And I found myself questioning how I was going to make everything work.
I have a wife and children who depend on me. I take that responsibility very seriously. And when you're looking at obligations that have to be met, with people counting on you to figure things out, that weight can become pretty consuming. I spent several days going over the same numbers, thinking through every possible solution, and trying to find a way to make things come together. I wasn't sleeping well. My mind just wouldn't turn off.
Something I've been trying to do recently is read a chapter of the Book of Mormon every morning. I wanted to make sure I was starting my days with my mind focused on Heavenly Father, especially with everything going on.
This past week I was reading about Nephi and his brothers returning to Jerusalem to obtain the brass plates. They had been given a commandment from the Lord, and their first attempts had failed. Eventually, Nephi went forward on his own, being led by the Spirit, "not knowing beforehand the things which I should do."
I've read that scripture so many times throughout my life. But reading it this week felt different.
Nephi knew what the Lord had asked him to do. He had already tried to accomplish it and failed. He had every reason to be concerned about what might happen next, and he went anyway. He trusted that the Lord would provide a way, even though he had no idea what that way was going to look like.
I kept thinking about that in relation to what I was going through. I had felt prompted to move forward with something, and I had developed my own expectations of how it should work out. When those expectations weren't being met, I started struggling with the circumstances. I think sometimes I get so caught up in what I believe the outcome should be that I forget the Lord may be trying to accomplish something in me along the way.
And I started seeing some of that this week.
After another terrible night of sleep, I finally got up, went outside, cleared my head, and prayed. I told Heavenly Father what was weighing on me. I asked Him to help me see what I needed to do, and I tried to hand over some of the things I simply couldn't solve on my own.
As I began thinking through my responsibilities, I felt myself becoming much more aware of how I was using the blessings Heavenly Father has given me. My time, my resources, my opportunities, and the responsibilities that come with all of them.
I've been blessed tremendously throughout my life. I recognize that, and I'm grateful for it. But I also recognize how easy it can be to let my attention get spread across too many things, including things that may be perfectly fine on their own but don't deserve the time or attention I've been giving them.
I've felt that the Lord has been using some of these circumstances to refine my focus. To help me reconsider what deserves my attention, what I need to be more deliberate about, and how I can become a better steward of what He's entrusted to me.
And I think there's something beautiful about recognizing that. Sometimes the very circumstances we're asking Heavenly Father to help us through are also giving us an opportunity to become better.
I've also been thinking a lot about my patriarchal blessing. The words "be faithful" appear throughout it, nearly every paragraph. Those words have always meant a great deal to me, but they've been on my mind constantly this week.
Be faithful. Continue paying my tithing. Continue trying to keep my covenants. Be willing to repent and make adjustments where I need to. Do the work that's been placed in front of me, and trust Heavenly Father with the things beyond my ability to control.
Then something happened.
With a transaction I've been working on, an opportunity came together that I couldn't have arranged myself. The timing of it was something I couldn't ignore. I had been praying for help, struggling to find an answer, and by that afternoon something had happened that gave me a little room to breathe.
The circumstances haven't all been resolved. I still have obligations to meet and work that needs to be done. There are things about the way it has come together that aren't particularly pretty or convenient. But I felt an enormous amount of gratitude because I recognized the Lord's hand in what had happened.
And it made me think about something else.
I wonder how often the answers to our prayers involve other people who are praying for answers of their own.
There are people involved in this transaction who have their own lives, their own responsibilities, and their own things they're trying to accomplish. I have no idea what some of them may have been praying about or what circumstances brought them to the decisions they made. But I believe Heavenly Father is mindful of them too.
I believe He is capable of bringing people and circumstances together in ways that answer more than one prayer. And sometimes that means things have to happen in a certain order, at a certain time, for reasons we may never fully understand.
I can only see the little portion of it that involves me.
That's what I was thinking about when I wrote Be Faithful.
Sometimes I think we expect an answer to prayer to mean the whole problem gets solved. We pray for the burden to be taken away, and naturally that's what we hope will happen. But this week I was reminded that Heavenly Father can give us exactly what we need to keep going, even while the burden remains.
He gave me some room to breathe. And for what I was facing, that meant an awful lot.
I'm also grateful for what this experience has been teaching me about my own priorities. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to accomplish, what I've been entrusted with, and where my attention really needs to be. I can see ways I need to improve, and I'm grateful that Heavenly Father is willing to teach me through experiences that require me to exercise more faith.
I don't know how everything I'm working through is going to end. I have faith that Heavenly Father knows, and I'm going to keep doing my part.
There is a line in the song that says:
Be faithful, oh, be faithful. I'll be faithful unto thee. That's really what I want to say to Him.
I want to be faithful when things work out the way I hoped. I want to be faithful when they don't. And I want to become the kind of person who can be trusted with the blessings and responsibilities He gives me.
I know Heavenly Father is aware of me and my family. I know He hears my prayers. I've felt His care for me so many times throughout my life, and this week has given me another experience I don't want to forget.
I still have plenty to figure out.
But He helped me breathe again.
And I'm grateful for that.
