“As the heavens
are higher than the earth, God’s work in your life is bigger than the story you’d
like that life to tell. His life is bigger than your plans, goals or fears. To
save your life, you’ll have to lay down your stories and, minute by minute, day
by day, give your life back to him.” (Adam
S. Miller, “Letters to a Young Mormon” (2014), p 17-18)
Following
my divorce 30 years ago, I felt like my life was a pile of ashes. I was more
than certain that the marriage I went into was appointed by God and yet there I
was eleven years later, a single mother with two children, carrying an enormous
feeling of failure on my back.
I had
joined the Church to have the Mormon ideal…an eternal family. I followed all
the rules and acted on what I felt was spiritual guidance. I knew beyond a
shadow of a doubt that I should marry the person I had chosen. In fact, I felt
driven to do it. Consequently, I went through excruciating pain of betrayal by
God. If He knew what I was going to suffer, why did He lead me that situation?
I confided my
feelings of doom to my Bishop soon after the divorce and he offered to give me
a blessing the following Sunday. That blessing told me something I did not
expect. I was told that God did not expect of me any more than I had given in
my marriage and then this……that my life was planned for me before I was born
and that I agreed to that plan because of my great faith in Jesus Christ.
Thirty
years later questions still arise in my mind in regards to my divorce
experience. I don’t dwell on it but I have a reflective mind and often assess
the events of my life. Just recently I had a revelation during such reflection
where I was told again that my life was planned in my pre-mortal life by the
Father and the Saviour. This time I was told that the Father’s part was the plan
and the Saviour’s was the atoning part for all my pain.
I stand
amazed at the personal God that we worship. There are so many of us yet the
Father and the Son are invested in each of us as if we are the only ones that
exist and that matter. Often we think the Atonement was performed for the
entire humanity en masse. This is clearly not true:
“Since the
Saviour, as a God, has the capacity to simultaneously entertain multiple
thoughts, perhaps it was not impossible for the mortal Jesus to contemplate
each of our names and transgressions in concomitant fashion as the Atonement
progressed, without ever sacrificing personal attention for any of us. His
suffering need never lose its personal nature. While such suffering had both
macro and micro dimensions, the Atonement was ultimately offered for each one
of us.” (Elder Tad R. Callister, “Infinite Atonement”, p 147-8)
Elder
Callister cites Moses’ experience on Mt Sinai where he was shown all the
inhabitants of the earth and there was not one of us he did not see, ‘because
he discerned us by the spirit of God’ (Moses 2: 28). This is how the Father
sees us, individually, personally, lovingly….
And this is
how the Saviour atoned for us….”No one, ‘not a soul’, was forgotten or slighted
or neglected in the redeeming process. It was personal, focused, intimate, one-on-one
sacrificing and caring for you and me.” (ibid)
I think of
all the trials I have been through…..and I know it is because of the Saviour’s willingness
to support the Father’s plan for my life, to suffer for all I have been
through, to lift me higher than I can ever hope to lift myself…..to one day take
me home.
I wish I could tell you
How deep the pain I am asked to bear,
Even though You already know,
Because you cradled me
In your loving arms through
The Garden’s gate and beyond.
Was I heavy to carry up Calvary’s hill
When your strength was all but gone?
I wept for you at the foot of the cross
As you ached for my broken soul
So desperately forsaken and all alone.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Christ the Redeemer by Greg Collins)
