Week 36

John and I have not had our most exciting time this week since our flu bug made an  unwelcome and lengthy visit for the entire time! The memories we will hold onto, however, are those of the kindness from missionaries around us who kindly shopped for us, hauled out our garbage, brought us soup, flowers, berries—natural “Vit C”—and just stopped by to tell us we were missed. We have felt wrapped up in love and kindness. At one point we had so many bouquets of flowers John and I laughed about having taken up residency in a funeral parlor—fitting for how we felt! Then yesterday President Husz and Jim Chidester showed up at our door from the temple in their whites to give us both blessings.

 

Desiring to learn more of the process of “exercising faith” that we might claim the promised healing led us to spend our Sabbath on a joint study, which we found so worthwhile it was worth the week of misery. 

Since we have little else to report I thought I’d share a thought or two from our study. If not interested in spiritual meanderings, feel free to skip to the end and catch us next week.

In our blessings great things were promised each of us, but what was our role in reaping those promised blessings (so often given according to the faith of the recipient)?

Desiring to claim the blessings promised me, in the misery I still was feeling, I struggled to understand just how to go about “exercising my faith” to bring about those blessings. I focused on that principle of faith and ideas began to come.

 

In the early hours of the morning, my attention was captured by the words “faith without works is dead.” Through the night I had been repeatedly seized by uncontrollable coughing fits, making it necessary to sit up in order to get any sleep—despite my receiving a blessing to be healed!

What role did this scripture play, “faith with out works is dead” in the process of my being healed? Where was my faith in the Lord’s servants who had used His priesthood power to anoint and bless me? What was the “work” I was to do?

I decided my work was to act on my faith in the Savior’s power to heal even by returning to bed, lying down, and concentrating my thoughts on the healing commanded in the blessing, all the while holding the idea in my mind that I was doing the work of faith. I felt that if I could just stay focused and not doubt, not allowing thoughts like “Oh no, I’m still coughing, and I can’t seem to shake it, no matter what," the blessing could literally be fulfilled now.

Instead I came to view each coughing spell (already diminishing as I did so) as only part of the last vestiges of the flu, and I said to each one that surfaced, “Okay, there you go; you are out of here; good riddance! I’m through with you now.”

What was the result of my baby steps of exercising a particle of faith? I stopped coughing almost completely and I began to feel I was being healed from within.

I have learned a lesson from this little event. Most of the time when I receive blessings, the elders go home and I am left passively waiting for promised healing to arrive. But, I recognize that I have not always done my part of the work. Work, is an active verb. Passively waiting for miracles to occur has little to do with faith, I think. Passive trust, even in the Lord Jesus Christ, is not faith, nor will it qualify us for promised blessings. I don’t think it meets the criteria as exercising active faith in Him.

This view has application to blessings we have received in the past as well. President Packer’s blessing, for instance, just prior to John’s spinal cord surgery, included a mandate that we “savor every day,” yet somehow, we haven’t always recognized that we had to do something to realize that gift. Savor is also an active verb and suggests that we must choose to "savor," not just wait for some savory appetizer to be handed to us on a silver platter. So as the challenges come, and the going is sometimes tough, what is there for us to savor?

So very much, for we are greatly blessed! Our glass is nearly full, not almost empty as we can sometimes childishly think.

This week, as she faces challenges I can’t comprehend we received the following in an email from a precious loved one that made us very conscious of our own need to be ever more grateful. 

I have been thinking about how blessed I am. I have never had a single day in my life when I went hungry, or was without a nice place to live. I have never been cold or without clothes and a nice car to drive.  I have never been all alone. I have always had family that loves me and cares about me.  I have never been without the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life.  I have always known who I was and why I am here and where I want to go.  I have always been so blessed.  

George Durrant has it right when he says, no matter what he’s facing, “This is my best day.” That’s the crux of savoring every day. It’s choice, not fate. The marvelous additional blessing that comes to us as we so choose is that we not only feel happier, more blessed, more grateful—even in the face of life’s hard things—helping us become even more capable of happily accepting the commandment to “thank the Lord . . . in all things.”

And if our difficulties go on longer than we might think they ought to, maybe we can come to, in faith, accept the Lord’s timing and look to him and say, “I understand; I just require a little more polishing.” Well here’s to polishing.

Through this week in just a tiny way we have had reaffirmed to us that "all these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good." (D&C 122:7) 

Enjoy your week of being "polished" in whatever way He knows you need!