Sabbath Devotional :: Lessons Learned

As this week marked the one-year anniversary of the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself reflecting on the experiences of the past year. It has been a strange year, surreal at times. It has been a difficult year. For many of us it has been an intensely painful year. But I have been reminded that intense pain often brings intense growth. I have been learning many lessons. I attempt to share just a few of them below.

Accepting Uncertainty

One thing that came up often for me over the last year was uncertainty. Uncertainty about the future: for myself, for my family, for my country. Uncertainty about what the next day would bring. But uncertainty was not a new experience for me — it is something I have grappled with and learned from throughout my life.

I have often heard people stand at the pulpit during a testimony meeting and say something like, “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt . . . .” There was a time when I would silently wonder what was wrong with me, because if I was honest, I saw lots of shadows and had lots of doubts. I was doing the very best I could, trying to give my whole heart to God, but my uncertainty caused me to feel as if my faith just must not be strong enough.

Over time, and through some significant personal experiences (1), I learned that my lack of certainty was not an indication of God’s disapproval or a sign of weak faith. I learned that faith is not knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt (2). Faith is taking a step forward even when you can’t see through the shadows. Faith is belief that holds on in the face of doubt.

In a church where we continually talk about the importance of seeking truth and where we believe that God will reveal truth to us personally (3), it can become easy to feel like there is something wrong with admitting uncertainty. But I have learned that there are gifts that can be found in uncertainty. My experience has been that the more I acknowledge my own questions, the more room I make for truth and light to enter in.

This is not to say that we can’t find certainty about anything or that we should throw up our hands in exasperation and decide that there is no way to know what is true. It means that when we do find ourselves in a place of confusion or uncertainty, there are blessings that can be found. In my experience, that place of uncertainty – that place where we are searching for truth, waiting for clarity, and exercising belief – this is the place where growth happens. It is the place where our roots can dig deep into the soil and our faith can stretch up toward the sun. It is a sacred space.

Uncertainty has helped me to cultivate humility. Understanding that there are many things that I don’t know or fully understand helps me to recognize my own limitations, exercise faith, put my trust in God, and continually seek for greater knowledge and truth. Even with my most deeply held beliefs and convictions, I recognize that my understanding is limited. Rather than believing I’ve found all the answers or have it all figured out, I recognize that there is always room for me to learn, expand, and grow.

Expanding My Vision of Truth

Over the last year, I have often felt baffled and overwhelmed by the alternate realities that people seem to be living in. I have observed as people have divided into opposing camps and held on to different versions of “truth.” It no longer seemed to be about differing opinions, but completely opposite versions of reality. How was it possible that so many people around me could believe in a reality that seemed to be the opposite of the reality that I was seeing? Was I going crazy?

As I continued to be troubled by these questions, I found myself in that sacred garden of uncertainty, where roots burrow deep and my reach extends towards heaven. In this place of digging and stretching, I made an important discovery. I realized that in my near-obsessive thoughts about truth, I was mostly thinking about truth in terms of things like science and pandemics, politics and elections. Those truths absolutely are important and should be sought after and spoken about. But I have been reminded that there are other truths that are even more important, truths that are easy to lose sight of in the chaos that sometimes surrounds us.

There is truth to discover about who I am, the potential and divinity that exists within me. And there are truths about the people around me — the people who see things very differently than I do — truths about who they are, and the divinity that exists within them. There is truth about God’s love for each of us.

There are truths about the much-bigger-picture of all these experiences that have been taking up so much of my vision in the last year — the politics, the pandemic, the injustice, the divisions. There are truths about God’s hands and God’s plans — truths that I can’t entirely see or comprehend right now. I will probably not understand all of these things in this life, but as I draw nearer to God, as I move closer to Christ, I feel myself learning to “zoom out” from the close-up view of my daily experiences, expand my vision, and trust that there is a much bigger picture I can’t yet see.

And then there are truths about this plan we signed up for, this messy mortal experience we are living, and the one thing that has the power to save us all: our Savior, Jesus Christ. There are essential truths there about how we can all come out of this messy mayhem and be healed and whole. There are truths there for me with my distorted ideas and unresolved issues. There are truths there for the people who live in a reality that is the opposite of mine. There are truths for the people who have been wounded, and for the people who have inflicted wounds. There are truths there for each of us – truths that can save all of us.

I cannot claim to perfectly understand all these truths right now. But just by being reminded that they are there — these truths that are much bigger than pandemics and politicians — I have felt a change in me. There has been a shift in my vision and a softening in my heart.

Inviting God to Meet Me Where I Am

A few months ago I opened up to a friend about some things I was struggling with. I quickly acknowledged that I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way, that I knew that I should be full of more love, building more relationships, doing more to serve. . . . She gently interrupted me and said, “But that’s not where you are right now.” Her words, so lovingly spoken, had a tremendous impact on me. I realized that I was expecting myself to be in a different place than the place I was actually in. And I realized that I believed that God was also expecting me to be somewhere I was not.

After that conversation, several pieces came together to teach me this life-altering lesson: that I need to invite God to meet me where I am. And that God wants to and will meet me where I am (4). For much of my life I have carried around the belief that I need to get myself to a certain place in order to really connect with God, and that place has often felt just out of my reach.

How do I invite God to meet me where I am? First, I acknowledge where I am. It may not be where I want to be. It may not be where I want to stay. But it’s where I am right now. As I have learned to acknowledge where I am, as I have opened myself up to God meeting me here in this space instead of believing that he is waiting for me to get to some other place first, I have felt a difference. Even when nothing about my circumstances has changed, I have felt a profound difference in my heart.

As I’ve continued to practice this exercise of acknowledging where I am and consciously inviting God to meet me here, I have continued to feel that difference in my heart. I have felt a softening. I have felt an opening. I have felt space for God to work with me, to change me. I have felt humility. Acknowledging that I cannot do it on my own, asking Him to do what I cannot do, handing myself over to Him – that has made a difference that I can feel inside of me even if nothing outside of me has changed.

Accepting uncertainty, “zooming out” to see a bigger picture when thinking about truth, and inviting God to meet me wherever I am – these are just a few of the valuable lessons I have been learning over the past year. What lessons have you been learning?