"As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten"

I'm sure that many people have experienced the feeling I am about to describe. It's a pretty natural one, after all. We choose goals in life, paths, if you will, to follow. Why do we do this? So that we don't bore ourselves to death with every day nothings. It also gives us something to look forward to... something to hope for. Since the ripe age of 5, my ideal has been the Performing Arts Company... PAC... Folk Dance. And last week, after years of hard work and disappointment, I received the final blow.

There are so many good things about folk dance besides just the dancing. There's the cultures you get to learn about and even more than that, the people you get to know in the program. Some of my best friends I met in folk dance. It has been my focus for the past three years. And now it's gone. Just like that. In the space of a few moments, my plans for the next two years went from being extremely busy to extremely... nothing.

So what do you do when our dream of 15 years is gone for good? You find a new dream. Thanks to a good friend I was led to this general conference article by D. Todd Christofferson. He recounts a story initially told by President Hugh B. Brown.

"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.’”

How lucky am I that He loves me that much, enough to hurt me, to take me from a path because He knows that there is something much better for me out there which has got to be pretty spectacular.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty broken right now and totally lost as to what to do next, but I know that He is watching out for me, ready to guide me to what is waiting for me and I'm excited for the adventure but devastated at what I leave behind. My dear dear friend Ari told me something once. She said that it will get easier as you thank Him for not doing putting you on PAC. She's a trooper and an angel and someone I always look up to. And I know she's right.

So enough depression for a moment. My whole point is not to get empathy points but merely to state that Heavenly Father has reasons for EVERYTHING. Things don't just happen, we each have a path that He designed specifically for us because He LOVES us. So incredibly much that He sent His Son to die for us. Not just die, but suffer so badly that he bled. Not from any old injury, but from His pores. From the glands in His skin. It was excruciating but He did it all for us. And He continues to watch out for us. Every moment of every day. So when we walk to the edge of all the light we have, and take that step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen-- there will be something solid for us to stand on, or God will teach us how to fly. So when something doesn't work out, it's because something muchbetter is waiting for you around the corner, you just have to pray for the patience and the guidance to wait for/find it. If I can do it, you definitely can! Until next time peeps... muah!