Pondering

Lately I feel like I have had a lot of time to ponder.  I love pondering.  I feel like so many answers come as I quietly sit and think with a prayer in my heart.  The topic I have been pondering about the most lately is that of loneliness.  We all experience loneliness at different times.  It always comes as a surprise to me that sometimes when I am surrounded by a lot of people I can feel the most lonely.  Different experiences and situations can cause us to feel lonely.  None of us are exempt from feeling lonely.  I have found that if I react positively to feelings of loneliness I am always brought back to the one who never leaves us alone-the Savior.  He knows more about loneliness than any of us will ever experience. On Sunday I came across this quote that is one of my favorites.  My roommate shared it with me my freshman year and it has been a great reminder many times since then.  I want to share it with you.  Maybe you are not feeling lonely now, but I can guarantee (although I do not wish it upon you) that there will come a day that you will feel lonely again.  I hope that you will remember that you are never alone and that those feelings of loneliness can be taken away-maybe in an hour, maybe in a day, maybe in a month, and maybe not until after this life-but they will come to an end.

Well, my dear sister, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt.  We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane.  It's our faith that he experienced everything-absolutely everything.  Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief.  We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family.  But we don't experience pain in generalities.  We experience it individually.  That means that he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer-how it was for your mother, how it still is for you.  He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election.  He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid.  He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia.  He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau.  He experienced Napalm in Vietnam.  He knows about drug addictions and alcoholism.  Let me go further. There is nothing that you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize.  On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy.  He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy.  He understands about rape and infertility and abortion.  His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."  He understands your mother-pain when your five year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down's syndrome.  He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two year-old, when someone gives your thirteen year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen year-old.  He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years.  He knows all that.  He's been there.  He's been lower than all that.  He's not waiting for us to be perfect.  Perfect people don't need a Savior.  He came to save his people in their imperfections.  He is the Lord of the living and the living make mistakes.  He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked.  He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief.  You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience very long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because somethings in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day.  Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light.  Jesus is the light of the world.  We know that this world is a dark place sometimes but we need not walk in darkness.  The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion.  We need him, and he is ready to come to us, if we'll open the door and let him.

Chieko N. Okazaki, Lighten Up!

 http://www.lds.org/media-library/video/mormon-messages?lang=eng&id=2009-04-14-none-were-with-him#2009-04-14-none-were-with-him