My heart broke as I listened to someone dear to me sobbing with this question on her lips: “Why is this my life? I did not deserve this.” I could empathise. I have asked this question more than once myself. My life does not reflect in the least the picture I had of it in my mind when I joined the Church in my youth. I expected to have the ideal. We all yearn for the ideal. When we get married, we don’t expect to one day get divorced; when we have children, we don’t envisage their disobedience; when we commit to live the word of wisdom, we don’t expect to one day be undergoing chemotherapy. Sometimes the suffering of our reality becomes intensified because our expectations of this life are based on something that this life cannot deliver and that is perfection. In a fallen world where opposition in all things is a certainty, perfection cannot be found. Sometimes we suffer from the choices we make and sometimes we suffer because of the choices of others. One thing I know for sure is that the Saviour has atoned for them all and if we remain faithful He will in the end make all our suffering work for our highest good.
This is how I know that all our sorrows will be turned into joys. I will share with you something highly personal but which proves this point so perfectly that I cannot refrain. I was privileged to have a memory from my pre-existence some time ago in which I saw myself sitting with the Saviour and heard Him say to me: “I will save you and make up for everything”. Some years previously to this experience, I was given a priesthood blessing by my Bishop which told me that my life was planned for me in my pre-existence and that I agreed to that plan because of my great faith in Jesus Christ. No doubt my agreement was based on His assurance that He personally gave to me. I testify that I know now even as I knew then that He would atone for every tear, for every pain, for every injustice, for every sorrow, for every sin, for every difficulty, for every mortal imperfection.
Whatever your burdens in life, I wish you strength through the Atonement of our beloved Christ, to bear them upon your shoulders, even as He bore His cross, and to look with eagerness to the time when He shall come to ‘wipe away all tears’ (Revelation 21:4) and in the end bring us home rejoicing to be crowned with glory and be welcomed into His arms forever.
My mortality spreads before me day and night,
I wince at bearing this heavy load.
I stumble and I fall,
The darkness seeking to swallow me whole.
I know He waits at heaven’s gate
Till I have learnt to walk the rough domain;
I will hurry, I will run
I will grasp the heaven’s hand
That will lift me to His arms
Forever there to remain.
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