BEAUTY FOR ASHES

 

“Some Church members feel weighed down with discouragement about the circumstances of their personal lives, even when they are making sustained and admirable efforts. Frequently, these feelings of self-disappointment come not from wrongdoing, but from stresses and troubles for which we may not be fully to blame.

“Atonement of Jesus Christ applies to these experiences because it applies to all of life. Saviour can wipe away all of our tears, after all we can do. In Luke 4:18, Jesus quotes part of a passage from Isaiah that describes the heart of His ministry. The Isaiah passage reads:

“The Spirit of the Lord….hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion….beauty for ashes.” (Isaiah 61:1,3)  The Saviour’s Atonement is thus portrayed as the healing power not only for sin, but also for carelessness, inadequacy, and all mortal bitterness.”  (Bruce C. Hafen, “Beauty for Ashes”, Ensign April 1990)

One of the hardest things in life can be the suffering of injustice. It is difficult to imagine and understand that the Atonement of Jesus Christ covers the sins and actions of those who hurt others. I remember some years ago listening to a sister in the Church of her experience with her now ex-husband who chose to leave her and their two sons because “he didn’t want the responsibility of a family anymore”.

This sister prayed in her darkest moments hoping to avert the disaster but the answer she got was not something she wished for. She was given to understand that even though Heavenly Father disapproved of her husband’s actions vehemently, He still loved her husband and had to respect his freedom of choice. Instead of becoming bitter, this sister understood that not even God can interfere in unjust treatment some of us get at the hands of another. This understanding set her on the path of forgiveness which gave her the power to survive.

This story is in stark contrast to the experience of another sister in the Church that I know who could not accept her divorce and who went around to different wards expounding her ex-husband’s faults. She was not looked at in a favourable light by others who found it distasteful and eventually she stopped coming to Church.

Justice comes to all of us for our wrongdoings but it certainly does not come in this life time. This time is the time for repentance and restitution to those we have put in the state of pain and hardship. This is a huge indication of the mercy of Christ. If we were all judged immediately after our wrongdoings without the chance of repentance, we would all be lost.

The beauty that rises from the ashes is one of repentance and saving grace for the perpetrator and one of developing the forgiving Christ-like nature for the victim. This proves unfathomable love of God for all his children who struggle with the weakness of mortality.

“Each of us will taste the bitter ashes of life, from sin and neglect to sorrow and disappointment. But the Atonement of Christ can lift us up in beauty, not only from our own ashes but also from the ashes of him who fathers the rebirth of our spirits. We then soar toward the sun on the wings of a sure promise of immortality and eternal life. Thus may we be lifted up, not only at the end of life but in each day of our lives.

“Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth….giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:28-29, 31) (ibid)

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Christ's Light by Land of Dreams)

POOR IN SPIRIT

 

“To be poor in spirit is to feel yourselves as the spiritually needy, even dependent upon the Lord for your clothes, your food, the air you breathe, your health, your life; realizing that no day should pass without fervent prayer of thanksgiving, for guidance and forgiveness and strength sufficient for each day’s need.

“It is indeed a sad thing for one, because of his wealth or learning or worldly position, to think himself independent of this spiritual need. Being spiritually dependent is the opposite of pride or self-conceit.

“Thus, if in your humility you sense your spiritual need, you are made ready for adoption into the ‘Church of the Firstborn’ and to become ‘the elect of God’.

-        President Harold B. Lee, Stand Ye In Holy Places, p 343-4

The greatest path in life to learning what it means to be poor in spirit seems to come through lack. This has certainly been the journey of my life. I have always felt a closeness to God and felt the need for spiritual nourishment which I sought and received through the Gospel, but when I experienced years of financial hardship as a single-mother I learnt what it means to be ‘poor in spirit’, in other words dependent upon the Lord.

I will recount three events in my life that taught me this. The first was when I was newly divorced and just beginning to understand what was ahead of me in the temporal sense. One particular week I needed money which I didn’t have, to fill my car with gas. I prayed one morning for $20 for this purpose. When lunch time came at work, my co-worker came to me and put $20 on my desk. When I asked why, he said he was coming back to work after lunch and saw $20 on his path. He picked up the bill and wondered what he should do with it and I came to his mind instantly.

The second time I needed help was when my household bills amounted to $1,000. Again, I prayed for help. The next day a friend and her business partner knocked on my door telling me that they had just reviewed their accounts for the month which showed a $1,000 surplus. They wanted to know if I could use that money.

The third time, when I was in need, taught me the greatest lesson in being reliant on God. I had to register my car and found myself $320 short. I felt embarrassed going to the Lord in prayer again asking for help so I opted to ask my friend and her husband for a loan. They too were having financial challenges but I felt strongly they were the only ones to ask.

When my friend came back to me after consulting with her husband, she told me that unbeknownst to her, he felt impressed some months prior to put aside all his loose change. He obeyed the impression and saved all his coins. When his wife approached him about my need, he immediately knew where the money for it was. Yes, the saved amount came to $320. They taught me a great lesson that day when they said I didn’t need to repay it because the money was from God and not from them.

I think of ‘the widow’s mite’ story when I think of being spiritually poor (Mark 12:41-44). This woman who had nothing gave all she had, and she knew who to give it to. Do you think she survived well?

How can I explain the lightness of my being,

When you lift me up on wings of faith?

My love for You knows no limits,

My honour, no bounds;

In need I reach for heaven's door,

To concede, in spirit, I am forever poor.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Window's Mite by James Christensen)

OUR MISERY

 

Whenever I study the Old Testament, I am astounded by the Saviour’s willingness to rescue and deliver the children of Israel from the effects of their continuous round of apostasy and repentance. He did this for one reason, because ‘his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel’….(Judges 10:16).

We are told The Atonement was performed for each person individually and not for God’s children collectively. I myself cannot fully comprehend that but I do wholeheartedly believe it. I know that the Saviour sorrows for our individual weakened state of mortality and that the healing effects of the Atonement are truly efficacious individually because I have witnessed this personally in my own life. There was a time following my divorce when I thought the pain I was going through was going to consume me. I knew that no person or healing method on earth could deliver me from it and that the Saviour of all mankind was my only hope. My daily, and sometimes hourly, petitions were carefully worded to include my complete faith and trust in His power of deliverance. Not only was I healed but I was given the power to forgive. To this day I cannot hold a grudge and am quick to forgive anyone who wrongs me in any way. I know that only the Saviour could have gifted me this power because forgiveness is central to the perfection of His character.

I testify to you that your faith can access the Saviour’s merciful power to heal you, give you strength to overcome, and lift you, because He ‘feels your misery’. Believe it, pray for it, and see it. He will come to those who believe He is the one true and living God who can sustain, empower and deliver. You have nothing to fear from the debilitating and crushing effects of mortality. You, who are of the elect House of Israel, are meant for greater things. You are meant to be lifted and exalted. You are special. You are loved. You are counted on. Be comforted and believe.

• Cathryne Allen

THIRST NO MORE

When Christ encountered the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well He told her that He can give her water far superior to the one she was constantly drawing to assuage the thirst of her household. (John 4:5-15).  The water he said was living water 'springing up into everlasting life' (John 4:14) as opposed to water that satisfies the body only which is destined to die thus making the well water 'dead water' with a used by date.

When I reflect on this incident of Christ's mortal ministry I feel it is significant that the person Christ told about the living water was a woman.  In performing its main object of springing up into everlasting life, the living water also heals.  It heals the broken hearted, spiritual wounds caused by sin, emotional suffering and defects of the mind.  Just before the Saviour returns, the scriptures inform us, "a new spring will appear at the temple in Jerusalem and its waters will flow eastward to the Dead Sea which will be healed of its dead and stagnant condition. The Dead Sea, or any other body of water which is stagnant, is so because of two reasons.  First, it has little or no inflow; and second, it has little or no outflow.  In its stagnant condition it becomes lifeless water.  Since it is not renewed with fresh water, it cannot in turn pass living water onto other streams and bodies of water, nor can it support life within itself". (Larry Keeler, Living Water or Dead Sea) The spring which will appear at the temple in Jerusalem is of course symbolic of Christ's power to heal anything that is dead, either spiritually or physically.

When I think of the Samaritan woman, I see through my 21st century view the Saviour sending a message to the women of my day and age, a message of healing and hope. A great number of women today feel fragmented and damaged  having been divorced, widowed, abandoned or simply ignored by the opposite sex.  Many women in the Church find it difficult to handle these feelings and leave the Church disillusioned and in search of a man that would make them feel whole somehow.  In the process of that search they become lost and end up believing the Church cannot meet their needs.  I also believed for many years that only those who have the Mormon ideal can truly be happy in the Church.  The rest of us just had to endure. I want to tell you that this is not so.

After my divorce I was left with several cracks that needed to be healed and a burning desire to be validated by a man.  When your marriage breaks down it affects your self-esteem to a huge extent.  It made me feel much less of a woman than I thought I was when I married.  I desperately wanted to belong to someone, have a man love me, make me feel worth while.  There was one thing standing in my way though, the deeply seated fear of being hurt again.  So I piled on a lot of weight to make myself sexually irrelevant and I hid behind my children making them the focal point of my life.  I rejected any notion of a social life for many years at the same time pining and suffering from lack of love.  But I did something incredibly positive for myself which I didn't realise would do so much for me.  I invested myself heavily into scriptures and studying the Gospel. Studying the word of God and feasting on the words of Christ not only gave me knowledge and brought the spirit into my life but it made the Saviour real to me.

The scriptures speak of Him, testify of Him and reveal Him so that we can know Him.  What does knowing him do for us?  It satisfies our thirst for spiritual sustenance, it heals all our spiritual and emotional wounds and it endows us with a desire to be like Him.  Becoming like Him being the most crucial part because it is this that grants us eternal life with God.

The more I studied over the years, the better I felt until one day I was discussing this need women have to be validated by men with someone close to me and I realised I was free of it.  As I reflected on it, the Saviour kept coming into my mind.  At that moment I knew why I was free of this validation need.  The Saviour had become very real to me over the years to the point where I have been feeling his presence and which spontaneously healed my need I had to have a man in my life.

It has been said that a marriage should be a union of two wholes and not two halves.  I believe that to be true.  It is a very tall order to expect another person to fill your cracks. We are all human and as such are liable to fall short of others' expectations.  Our sense of self worth should have its roots in our spiritual nature and our self-esteem should be based on our self-respect as we make right and positive choices in our lives. When you marry it should not be out of need but out of love which propels you to share yourself with another human being. A husband should be an icing on the cake, a bonus, rather than  fruit of one's desperation.  It is this desperation that drives many women to pursue an illusive dream, that of finding a perfect mate.  In the process of that pursuit they fall prey to many heartaches that leave them unhappy, lonely and empty.  This includes young women who have had to suffer the absence of fathers in their lives.  They believe there is a man out there that can provide a connection to the masculine presence they had missed out on in their childhood and youth and that this man can fix what years of abandonment and lack have wrought.

"...Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.
"Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark."
(2 Nephi 32:3,4)

There is only one source of healing, which no mortal man can give to any woman.  If you are not receiving it, then you are not asking and you are not knocking and you are suffering in darkness.  It does not have to be so.  You do not need to go hungry or thirsty.  You can be filled with what matters most, that which is lasting, that which will speak peace to the deepest recesses of your soul.  You can have happiness and love and a belief that you are worth while.  He can give all this to you if you make Him real in your life.  Be filled and thirst no more.

DIVORCED IN A MARRIED CHURCH

This week's Sunday School lesson is entitled "The Family is Ordained of God".  Whereas the Church lesson manual focuses solely on the importance of family, I know there will be a lot of discussion brought into the lesson about the evils of divorce.  I know because I have sat through many such lessons in the 18 years I have been alone.  It used to wreck me back in the beginning. Even though divorce offered me much needed relief back then, I am and always was deeply passionate about the plan of salvation and the importance of family.  All I ever wanted in life was to be married and to have children.  And I did get that but I also lost it.  That loss of that dream was excruciating and forced me to re-define my whole standing in the Church and to evaluate the strength of my testimony. 

I agree with everything that is said about the evils of divorce. Why? Because I have lived through those evils.  The repercussions and consequences  of that one event of my life have been enormous and ongoing for more years than I care to admit.  My divorce has had a devastating effect on me as a woman. It has created a sense of inadequacy when around other Church couples to the point that I have largely refrained from Church social life.  I have gone to great lengths to make myself irrelevant as a woman to the opposite sex so I do not run the risk of being hurt again. Raising two children alone and providing security for them when I had none for myself was a challenge I struggled with every day.  It was not just the emotional and financial security that at times seemed overwhelming but the physical one as well.  When my children were still little our home was broken into 4 times.  The third time my daughter found the intruder in her bedroom upon our arrival home.  The fourth time they came through the front door.  It was the most unnerving incident that stayed fresh in my mind all these years because this single event of my life taught me how much women need the protection of men and what it means to be without a husband. It's not what was taken from our home but it was the fear of no security that came with that broken door that paralysed me.  I called the real estate agent who told me that because it was Friday the door would not be fixed until the following Monday.  I called my Bishop who was also our home teacher and left a message for him explaining what had happened but he never called me back.  I called my sister and asked if my brother-in-law who was a very capable handy man could come over and help but he refused.  I so desperately needed to feel the presence of a man in the house at that moment even if he could not fix the door but that man was not to be found.  I felt so alone, uncared for and worthless during that experience.  I was too scared to sleep that weekend fearing the intruders would come back during the night through a poorly secured door of my making and I would be unable to protect my children.  It was one of the lowest points of my divorced life and there were many more. 

My daughters too have suffered greatly from my choice to divorce.  The absence of the father in the home is devastating to children and I believe all the statistics that come from the broken home surveys. My children are now adults but they are still resolving issues they inherited from their childhoods and lack of their father's involvement in their lives which I was largely responsible for.  The guilt I carried all those years for taking their father out of our home led me to overcompensate in ways that have led to complications I never imagined.  The list is long and too personal to recount.

I worry that the years of my solitude have made me tough, not needing a husband anymore.  I worry that I have in the process discovered and developed strengths that only a husband should provide in a marital union.  I worry that I have to attract a man now that I am in my middle age.  I worry that might never happen and I will journey through this life a wanderer belonging to no one and having no home. But most of all I worry about all the mistakes I have made during my imperfect mothering, that I haven't empowered my daughters enough, that out of guilt I have overcompensated and done too much for them sabotaging their growth.  I worry that I have made the most common mistake of single mothers by turning my children into my best friends and making them privy to too many of my hardships.  I worry that even though I have worked very hard to come to love and respect their father as a human being and to be on good terms with him, I have somehow lessened him in their eyes. I worry that my children's every problem dates back to the divorce and that I am responsible for it all.

It appears as if I am worrying all the time but it is not quite true.  The thoughts of failure in all these areas come to me from time to time but I am more and more learning to forgive my humanity and to be kinder to myself.  My intentions and the intents of my heart were always in the right place, even if my behaviour wasn't.  I hope for the Saviour's mercy because of that.  I believe I did what I could with who I was at the time.  I was told in a priesthood blessing following my divorce that the Lord would not have asked any more of me than what I had given in my marriage.  This gives me hope.  I know He knows my limitations and how much I am capable of so He will not hold me accountable for more. 

Now that I am middle aged and my children are grown, I have found myself in a really undesirable place.  I need to change everything.  At the age that most married women are starting to wind down and enjoy their grandchildren, I find that I have to re-invent myself and create a whole new life. Up to now I was so heavily invested in my children that now I have to find myself all over again.  I have no career, no financial security, no home of my own, no marriage prospects.  The task to rise above my circumstances seems overwhelming at times but rise I must.  I still have so much to do.  My mission is not complete and I want no regrets when I return home.

I am a big believer that something good always comes out of something bad, if you look for it and are willing to learn the lessons the bad situation offers.  The greatest blessing that has come to me from my divorce is that I have come to know God.  This painful situation led me to study about the Atonement and test its' power to heal us.  Even at the height of my emotional pain following the divorce, I didn't want to be a toxic ex-wife.  I had a desire to be free from resentment and blame and anger.  I wanted to be accepting of my ex-husband's new life.  I didn't want to run away and dodge him for the rest of my life.  The Atonement made this possible for me.  As I called upon its' power, it truly healed my broken heart and it took away all my negative feelings and replaced them with the ability to be the person I wanted to become because of this experience.

If I could shout from the rooftops, my message would be one of warning to all married couples to do all they can to save their marriage.  But what if you have done all that you could possibly do or you are a victim of an abusive situation or you had no choice in the matter?  Then you are unfortunately a statistic in the Church. But even statistics belong.  You just have to believe it. It might take you a while to stop feeling fractured. This feeling is more prevalent when you have little children and the absence of a father and husband is insanely evident.

It is never easy to be alone in the Church. You just have to value yourself enough so that others will too.  I have carved a place for myself in the Church where I believe people see my strengths more than my cracks which are still in the process of healing.  I found that place one day on my visit to the temple.  I used to attend with trepidation after my divorce but this one day I noticed something very significant in the temple - men and women sit separately.  They do not sit together like they do at Church projecting a picture of marriage and family.  I understood then, the temple is as much about individual salvation as it is about marriage and eternity.  The Church is about the individual as much as it is about marriage and family.  The gospel is as much about being a disciple of Jesus Christ as it is about finding someone to share your eternal destiny. The Saviour values you because he has died for you personally, irrespective of your marital status.  When he visited the Americas, He invited the multitude to come to Him one by one to feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet. (3 Nephi 11:14) Why?  Because he wanted them and us to know that the Atonement is personal and that He had atoned for each one of us individually and not for the humanity collectively.  His sheep are numbered and there is not one that is overlooked. We all belong in the fold.  There is a pew at Church with your name on it. Visualise it and own it.  You have the right to sit in it.