Patience and Timing.

Things I’ve learned in my short 27 years on earth:

1. I am almost never right.
2. God is always right.
3. Impatience makes me and everyone around me unhappy. Plus, it causes me to miss out on lots of really great experiences.
4. I am where I am for a reason.
5. Sometimes my life is not always about me and my needs; sometimes my life is about someone else’s needs.
6. Patience often requires respecting someone else’s agency.
7. “Hanging tight” is an answer to a prayer.
8. When I align my will with Heavenly Father’s, he does everything he can to bless me.
9. If I resolve to see God’s hand in my life daily, I will find it.

Timing and patience. Patience and timing. Why is this lesson such a difficult one to learn?

For months—really since graduation last year—I have been trying to determine my life's direction. After praying, fasting, planning, and searching, the constant feeling is to stay where I am, doing what I am doing. This answer has been less than satisfying. I have an advanced degree, some fairly good writing skills, and a desire to do something more, and yet here I remain, working in a job for which I am incredibly overqualified (not to mention in which I have no interest) with no forward momentum. I have tried to maintain a good attitude and set some goals to help make each day productive both intellectually and otherwise, but at the end of most days I wonder what exactly I contributed to the world I live in; I wonder what God could possibly hope to accomplish by asking me to stay in this job. My sister-in-law once aptly described this situation as being “stalled in an awful gear.” But as the months have gone on and I have thought more and more about this, I think that it can’t be true; no gear is truly “awful.” Harder than others, yes. But maybe that’s what real growth is, and it just hurts a lot more because I’m finally entering the big leagues.

I find my greatest challenge as I strive to work through this phase of my life is to be grateful. I feel that I have always been happy, grateful, optimistic, and actively pursuing worthy goals—I delight in life's joys, big and small. However, entering a stage of life where my progress is no longer marked by set milestones, graduations, or other measurements of progress has caused me to lose sight of some of these things; I have fallen into the bad habit of crying foul that “nothing is happening!” I have turned this fact into the single issue of my life, forgetting the many miracles I witness daily as I serve in Relief Society, as I interact with my family, and as I successfully wake up each day and make it out the door to run. I forget that there was a time in my life, not too many years ago, that I was not healthy enough to do that. And yet in spite of these things, I have felt fully justified in feeling frustrated and complaining about my lack of direction (which I define as a lack of moving forward in the direction I want to move, when I want to move; see also willfulness, pride, learned-thinking-they-are-wise).

These feelings prompted me to reread several journals, talk my parents to death on the topic, and revisit the time before graduate school to see where I came from and in what direction I was heading. Finally, information in hand, I turned to Heavenly Father to get righted, to make sense of it all. The answer? Something is happening. The answer to stay put is not a fun answer, but it is an answer, and I should give daily thanks for the ability to receive answers to my prayers instead of pitching a tantrum against Heavenly Father for not giving me my way.

I am being blessed. I am being refined. One day at a time. As such, I have set about trying to answer two very important questions.

How do I happily endure and learn through this refinement process?
1. Make God’s will my will. With a big, grateful, genuine smile on my face.
After a particularly crisis-filled weekend, one with a distressed “nothing is happening!” phone call home, my dad sent me an email. He said, in part:

The adversary failed because he wanted to take away risk and speed things up and because he felt he was so smart and had a better way. He wanted God’s power to enforce his will. This thinking can also be a temptation to us as well. I visualize that when you make this transition of self will to God’s will, and that it becomes desirable through disciplining your thinking as to why it is desirable from an eternal prospective, that the desires of your heart will, when it occurs, be natural and good without the feeling that “it is about time.” There will be so many other challenges in life when the feelings you are having now will occur again and again that when you learn what you are learning now, this experience will make you equal to all the things that are forecast in your patriarchal blessing.

My father is a wise man, and he was right.

Intellectually I get it. I will be happier if I make God’s will my will. But what happens when I feel like I am praying and praying, and fasting and fasting, and searching and searching to know what is God’s will and I am still not getting what I feel are answers?

Elder Scott’s seminal talk on prayer (April 2007 General Conference) gives some insight into this particular problem:

Some misunderstandings about prayer can be clarified by realizing that the scriptures define principles for effective prayer, but they do not assure when a response will be given. Actually, He will reply in one of three ways. First, you can feel the peace, comfort, and assurance that confirm that your decision is right. Or second, you can sense that unsettled feeling, the stupor of thought, indicating that your choice is wrong. Or third—and this is the difficult one—you can feel no response.

What do you do when you have prepared carefully, have prayed fervently, waited a reasonable time for a response, and still do not feel an answer? You may want to express thanks when that occurs, for it is an evidence of His trust. When you are living worthily and your choice is consistent with the Savior's teachings and you need to act, proceed with trust. As you are sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit, one of two things will certainly occur at the appropriate time: either the stupor of thought will come, indicating an improper choice, or the peace or the burning in the bosom will be felt, confirming that your choice was correct. When you are living righteously and are acting with trust, God will not let you proceed too far without a warning impression if you have made the wrong decision.

It is both interesting and encouraging to consider that sometimes our decisions do not matter to God. Not that they do not matter, but that sometimes it is just our choice. Daunting, but exciting! However, sometimes Heavenly Father does have a preference as to the path we take and if we will submit to His will, that path will open up, sometimes with a tap of the door, and sometimes with a gigantic shove! How do we know when resistance isn’t a big fat ‘no’? By the feelings of the Spirit that accompany it. That is where our experience with God and prayer and revelation comes in. If we really think about it, we know what it feels like when we are going in the right direction, no matter the resistance.

2. Learn that dark times do not necessarily mean I have been disobedient. If all is right in my life, I have to be willing to push through the darkness.
The scriptures are filled with examples of bad or hard things happening to righteous people, things that require their faith to push through. It is meant to stir us up into remembrance of God, but sometimes those experiences can make us question our standing before Him. Sometimes it even shakes our faith in His love for us. But at the end of the day, when we have put our lives in order and have affirmed through feelings of the Spirit that He does indeed love us and approve of us, we still have to address the trial and how to push through. Elder Maxwell described this struggle in his talk entitled, "Jesus, the Perfect Mentor":

Though our view of eternity is reasonably clear, it is often our view of the next mile which may be obscured! Hence the need for the constancy of the gift of the Holy Ghost. I think you will see this a number of times in your lives. You have cast your minds forward and are fixed on the things of eternity, and all of that is proper and good, but there is sometimes fog in the next hundred yards. You can make it through, but don't be surprised when it is the short-term obscurity through which you must pass as a result of your faith in the long-term things.

That fog, that darkness, is part of the refining process; it is the real test because in my heart of hearts I know things will work out. They always do. The issue is what to do daily to get there, how to make each day meaningful in the meantime, and realizing that my entire life is going to be “meantime.” Meaning, there will always be something I’m hoping for, striving for, waiting on. In order to be a wise steward over my time here on earth, I need to make the days count.

3. Use my power to do good: Be anxiously engaged in a good cause.

I was recently considering this concept of being a wise steward over my time when one Sunday I randomly looked down at the sacrament program. I do not usually read the scripture on the front cover, but for some reason I thought, “Someone goes to a lot of trouble to thoughtfully pick out a scripture. I should read it.” I have impeccable timing. Or, rather, the Spirit has impeccable timing. I just happened to be listening.

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves, And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.
(D&C 58:27-28)

As I said, impeccable timing.

The problem is I forget this principle. Regularly. God does not want to command me in all things. We have our agency for a reason, to see what we will do with it. It is the great test of this life and to forget it is to miss the point of why we are here. So, with the answer I have to stay put in my job, my house and my life, I need to continue being the best person I can be, magnify my calling and reach out to those around me. Engage myself in a good cause. Use my power for good. Reap the rewards.

Why is our patience tested so thoroughly throughout our entire lives?

Because I’m not “moving” anywhere, hitting any milestones, I oftentimes feel frustrated. (It must madden God to see me still feeling dissatisfied, or at the very least must make him shake his head at me.) Even during the process of studying for and writing this article, I struggled to internalize these principles, to find a good reason why I should not only smile and go along with it all but embrace it and give sincere thanks.

One day it all finally came to a head – the head; I had a very fervent heart-to-heart with Heavenly Father. It went something like this: “Heavenly Father, where are you? When will I get an answer I understand? Why the silence? This answer to stay put has been going on for a while now…is it still valid?” I will admit that this prayer was accompanied by a fair number of tears.

I woke up the next morning with a determination to adjust my attitude; I was going to show a little more faith. All day I was a better employee at work, tried to keep myself productively occupied, and was overall more pleasant. I thought, “Okay. Peace. That’s a good assurance that God is listening. I can deal with that for today.” I went to institute that night, reluctantly, tired from the emotional energy I had put into being “faithful,” but I knew I should go. Part of the lesson was on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego and their refusal to worship the golden image set up by Nebuchadnezzar. My mind had been wandering during most of the lesson, but I drifted back to attention as I realized we were spending more time than usual on a very familiar story. We were discussing their response to Nebuchadnezzar’s threat, which ended up being my answer – the answer:

O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

This response is incredible. These guys were not about to mince words; they were going to give it to the king straight. They proclaimed their faith in God’s power but did not deign to dictate His actions. They proclaimed their resolve to be obedient, even in the face of death. What courage, what trust, to say, “God has the power to save us but if it is not His will, if He chooses not to, we still will not betray him.” They proved themselves to be God’s friends in the face of their darkest hour. I imagined their thoughts as they were led to the furnace. Were they afraid? Of the pain, maybe. But did they doubt God’s love for them and power to deliver? Not at all.

The Spirit began to teach me over the course of the rest of the evening and the next day. This time in my life is a critical part of that great test. Will I remain God’s friend in the face of what feels like a very dark hour, or will I become angry with God? Will I use my time wisely, or will I spend my time crying foul? Will I be grateful for the time I have been given to freely develop my talents, or will I wander, waiting for my life to be planned out for me? I suddenly felt, acutely, the wasted energy spent on worry over the course of the past year. I resolved to be a better friend to God and a better steward over my agency.

Brigham Young said:

Let the will of man be brought into subjection to the law of Christ-to all the ordinances of the house of God. What, in his darkness and depression? Yes; for that is the time to prove whether one is a friend of God…. We should so live that our confidence and faith may increase in him. We must even go further than that. Let us so live that the faith and confidence of our Heavenly Father may increase towards us, until he shall know that we will be true to him under any and all circumstances and at all times. When in our darkness and temptation we are found faithful to our duty, that increases the confidence of our God in us. He sees that we will be his servants.
(Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe, p.45)

So this is growth: to discover, learn, and apply, always moving forward, trusting God and therefore proving myself to be a worthy friend.

What will I do? I will continue to ask for direction. If none is given, I will move forward until the Spirit says stop. Sometimes I am not sure which direction will make me happy, but I suppose that is part of the adventure of life: testing out our will and seeing where it will take us while patiently and actively waiting on the things in God’s timetable. It's kind of exciting.