[title-less post]

I am going through so much. It seems almost impossible to bear when it all comes at once... But the Lord knows how much I can handle. Sometimes it's hard to remember that but I can't forget it otherwise it will be too easy to give up. 

I think these next few months will be the hardest months I have ever had to endure. The adversary is trying to utterly destroy me in hopes that I won't get baptized in September. I know that Heavenly Father is going to help me but He will also be testing me. 

I feel like I am stepping into a battlefield of open fire. No one knows exactly what I am feeling or why, and it's nothing I could ever completely explain to anyone. This feels like an endless path of pain and hurt. 

This is one of my favorite talks and I have already posted it before but it really helps me. I listen to it a lot when I am just laying in bed trying to get up the courage to face another day.

As Many as I Love, I Will Rebuke and Chasten by D. Todd Christofferson

Here is a segment of the talk that has really been pulling me through.

God uses another form of chastening or correction to guide us to a future we do not or cannot now envision but which He knows is the better way for us. President Hugh B. Brown, formerly a member of the Twelve and a counselor in the First Presidency, provided a personal experience. He told of purchasing a rundown farm in Canada many years ago. As he went about cleaning up and repairing his property, he came across a currant bush that had grown over six feet (1.8 m) high and was yielding no berries, so he pruned it back drastically, leaving only small stumps. Then he saw a drop like a tear on the top of each of these little stumps, as if the currant bush were crying, and thought he heard it say:

“How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. … And now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me. … How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”

President Brown replied, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”

Years later, President Brown was a field officer in the Canadian Army serving in England. When a superior officer became a battle casualty, President Brown was in line to be promoted to general, and he was summoned to London. But even though he was fully qualified for the promotion, it was denied him because he was a Mormon. The commanding general said in essence, “You deserve the appointment, but I cannot give it to you.” What President Brown had spent 10 years hoping, praying, and preparing for slipped through his fingers in that moment because of blatant discrimination. Continuing his story, President Brown remembered:

“I got on the train and started back … with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul. … When I got to my tent, … I threw my cap on the cot. I clenched my fists, and I shook them at heaven. I said, ‘How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?’ I was as bitter as gall.

“And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, ‘I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.’ The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness. …

“… And now, almost 50 years later, I look up to [God] and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”⁵

God knew what Hugh B. Brown was to become and what was needed for that to happen, and He redirected his course to prepare him for the holy apostleship.

I always get tears in my eyes when I read or hear "... thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me." He knows what I need to be and what I will become and I have to do my part to get there. At the moment it means to walk forward despite the blindness and fear. "I will go where You want me to go". I am afraid of the pain and the hurt but I have no reason to fear with God on my side.