Holy Hell

I wish I could write about what's going on in my life right now. Maybe in a year when things aren't so fresh and so raw I can post a little bit about what's going on. Sometimes things are so bad that you don't realize until you're going through it that the other things that you've gone through recently that you thought were terrible, just aren't so awful when compared to that one thing.

I thought being heart-broken by a girl was the lowest I would be this year. And that happened a couple of times. I thought that having my cousin go through some drug issues was bad. It's so cliche and almost trite now, but things really can be worse. As bad as you think things might be, it really could be worse. I'm completely depending on that line of thinking these days to get me from one minute to the next. I have literally been on the brink of just feeling so completely broken for several days now, and I'm just depending on the verity of the principle that these things that I'm experiencing are entirely necessary for my salvation and exaltation, that these experiences are specifically catered for me and my reaching eternal glory.

I'll finish with a clip from the Elder Maxwell talk that I linked to not too long ago:

Most of our suffering, brothers and sisters, actually comes because of our sins and not because of our nobility. Isn't it marvelous that Jesus Christ, who did not have to endure that kind of suffering because he was sin-free, nevertheless took upon himself the sins of all of us and experienced an agony so exquisite we cannot comprehend it? I don't know how many people have lived on the earth for sure, but demographers say between 30 and 67 billion. If you were to collect the agony for your own sins and I for mine, and multiply it by that number, we can only shudder at what the sensitive, divine soul of Jesus must have experienced in taking upon himself the awful arithmetic of the sins of all of us--an act which he did selflessly and voluntarily. If it is also true (in some way we don't understand) that the cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy, how infinitely greater Jesus' capacity for joy, when he said, after his resurrection, "Behold, my joy is full." How very, very full, indeed, his joy must have been!...

If God chooses to teach us the things we most need to learn because he loves us, and if he seeks to tame our souls and gentle us in the way we most need to be tamed and most need to be gentled, it follows that he will customize the challenges he gives us and individualize them so that we will be prepared for life in a better world by his refusal to take us out of this world, even though we are not of it. In the eternal ecology of things we must pray, therefore, not that things be taken from us, but that God's will be accomplished through us. What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected pieces of tile will someday, when we look back, take form and pattern, and we will realize that God was making a mosaic. For there is in each of our lives this kind of divine design, this pattern, this purpose that is in the process of becoming, which is continually before the Lord but which for us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing.

It is so hard when you're in the midst of these things. It's so hard to stretch your vision and perspective passed the here and now. So hard. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

This last month I have been really feeling on top of my life spiritually. I felt like I was finally getting a grasp of everything that has been happening up until this point. And now God threw me a curveball. It's hard to adjust to the pitch when you're already swinging and maybe I foul this one off, but I really think that I can hit it. I have to. There's really no other option.