Beloved, Think It Not Strange.

The most consuming piece of a trial is the loneliness that abides alongside it.  Even if you are enduring a specific tribulation with others linked to your side, they are still given and experienced independently.  I find it interesting to observe and discover the striking distinction a combined hardship has on each individual that encounters the same, or identically matched, adversity.  Their reactions, the depth of their sorrows, the length of their suffering is dissimilar, although their affliction is delivered by equivalent circumstances.  This is where the feelings of isolation embark. 

Although we are blessed with helping hands that are administering to our physical, emotional, or spiritual needs, we still have times of deep loneliness.  They come in the darkened moments of night when the anguish crushes our middle so strongly, we are astounded that our structured bones are able to withstand such a weight.  Or arise while attempting to manage the torture of emotions which have trapped themselves in our soul, so extensively, our tongue cannot pull them from their cavern, to reveal in words.  And if we are able to supply an expression to describe what we are enduring, it is cluttered, disorganized, and never matches the wretchedness of our state of existence.  Or perhaps they surface in unexpected moments, when our heart no longer tolerates its throbbing, so it seems to stop, and its absence tears you to your knees, trembling tears descend your cheeks, suffering its collapse.  These overpowering moments is where we normally meet feelings that make us convinced we’ve been forsaken.  It is a predictable destination, but our belief is faulty. 

These seconds, the ones in which we feel deserted, are times where we are unaccompanied by mortal companionship, but are enclosed in the sanctuary of our Savior’s presence.  Never are we closer to Him.  In fact, I believe that during these circumstances the veil dwindles like nothing we have ever experienced prior.  If this is the case, why do we feel so incredibly distant within these woeful moments?  It is because we have forgotten to turn the handle of the door, the one he anxiously knocks upon, where He stands aching to relieve the heartbreak that exists within us.  It’s not that we fail to open the door because we don’t want His succor, but more commonly because we have neglected the understanding that He cannot be permitted unless we ask it of Him.  He will never impede.  He will never overtake our gifted agency.  So He desirously waits, hoping that we will decide upon Him.  That we will turn our hearts over to His healing hands, where they will be restored, rehabilitated, and restructured in a way which will allow endurance throughout the continuation of the appointed adversity. Our responsibility is not difficult, but is frequently consigned to oblivion.  Not always because we defiantly direct it that way, but perhaps because we become entirely consumed in finding temporal resolutions, which make us leave behind the remembrance of our available spiritual solutions. 

My conviction of individualized sufferings has brought significant strength to my life and extensive power to my testimony.  Through my continually developing comprehension of this concept, I have come to know how unique and purposeful I am to my Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ, as well as what immense value my opportunity on earth is.  I have heard it described that trials are presented by a “grab bag” method.  As if by random, the Lord pulls a specified tribulation from his sack and then works it into our fate.  If this is the case, then it would starkly defile the belief that we are abiding individualized existences and given uniquely customized tests that will heighten our weaknesses within this mortal probation.  We would be sent here to survive an unmethodical and erratic series of events.  Nothing would have personalized purpose.  Perhaps some designated trials would be relatable to enhancing our defects, but others would have no motive besides persisting through them.  This absolutely cannot be so. 

I strongly believe that every, single trial that is established in our lives is provided from a devoted, loving, and all knowing Heavenly Father, that is laboring to refine us.  This includes our immense adversities, the ones that seek to claim our souls, down to the smaller trials that are experienced more frequently, but still serve purpose to teach and intensify our deficiencies.  If it was constructed in any other fashion it would desecrate the understanding that our Father and Savior are Omnipotent beings.  If they delivered tribulation in an arbitrary fashion, they would have no prior knowledge to what we would be given.  However, They do know all things.  They are prepared for all delivered circumstances in our life, because they have allowed and presented them for our specific areas of need.  They know our individual strengths, and are aware of our individual imperfections that need development before we can return to Them.  Our Heavenly Father and Savior’s ways are orderly.  All they do is in love.  Delivering trials to merely stack up experiences in life has never been their objective.  Our Father finds no joy in seeing His children suffer.  He provides trials for the purpose of magnification, leading to a state of perfection.  The very condition which is required to return home.  Nothing is done haphazardly, nothing is permitted without design, no hardship is presented without intention of purifying our blemished souls. 

I have a great deal of passion regarding this belief, because I have come to recognize the truthfulness of it by way of personal experience.  The commencement of my understanding began by looking backward.  As I reflected on overcome tribulations I was able to distinctly identify the specific reasons in which the trial was allowed, how persevering through it added great aid in my development, and how prominent the Lord’s hand was throughout my journey, for it was perpetually intertwined.  This is a common realization of reality by many that review prior adversities.  These moments of contemplation have added depth to my testimony, but solidification of this conviction arrived as I recognized His presence, the individuality of my given adversity, and was able to quickly acknowledge specific weaknesses that were being target by His purifying fire, in the very moment of their occurrence.  This experience is found within a tribulation that is still being abided in this very moment of my life.  This test seems to be a continual one, and is the type of trial where some days my heart creates misery so intense I feel pummeled by its force, and find that begging the Lord for intervention is my only option.  But its my individualized tribulation.  I have no doubt.  No, I don’t understand all the purposes of it yet, especially the pieces that seem unjust.  No, I don’t have perspective over each area of myself that it will improve, because hopefully it will produce advanced portions of who I am that I have not been able to discern up to this point in my life.  But because of my experiences I have faith that it was given to me with an objective, allowed with a divine and patterned purpose.

I recall months leading up to the arrival of my trial, my Heavenly Father supplied multiple preparations relating to it.  I would never call them warnings, because to warn entails informing someone of impending danger.  No, they were preparations, because He knew I needed to be spiritually assembled before it was presented.  The night before this test came, I was reading in 2 Peter in the New Testament.  I came across a verse that lit my heart on fire.  It read:

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. (2 Peter 4:12)

For a moment, I became crippled by the verse.  I remember not being able to do anything besides read it, first word to the last, and then back to the first.  It was as if the other phrases on the page fell away, and these twenty-two words were the only selection perceived by my eyes.  Never before have I so distinctly heard my Father speak to me.  I knew it was close.  The next day, it came.  As I have sought to withstand this complex and laborious tribulation, I find that this verse engulfs my mind.  This experience has given me such certitude that my Heavenly Father knows and understands exactly what I need to endure my trials.  He knew without a moments hesitancy that this adversity would be profound and in some moments completely  overpowering for me.  He knew that I would need a individualized reminder that He is aware of my suffering, but that with Him, I have the ability to overcome.  Because of the complexity and inequitable circumstances that form this tribulation, He knew that I would need a mental prompt that this adversity was given for a purpose.  That even in the heaviest of moments of despair, I could find faith in His words that this was not a strange series of events, but a customized test that would produce strength and purification for my soul.  Like always, He was right.  I did need it.  I do need.  Without it my resolve to push forward would be frail and debilitated by the force of the occurrences that continue to emerge. 

His personalization of my trial in such an unmistakable way has blessed my heart.  My core has been softened when it sought to stiffen, it has advanced when it desired to halt, and has been reinforced by His power, and released from the shackles of sorrow, when the circumstances become too oppressive.  I have such a testimony that this trial was not randomly chosen and pushed in my direction, neither has any other adversity I have endured.  They have been carefully constructed and deliberately provided that I may have opportunity of expansion.  My Heavenly Father, He knows me.  My Heavenly Father, He understands me.  My Heavenly Father, He recognizes my needs.  My Heavenly Father, the one who loves me in the way I crave to be adored, prepares me for my trials by satisfying my requirements, which strengthens me to withstand whatever may be presented.  When I reach the deepest, darkest, most fierce places within this journey, His words come rushing through the blackened night and flood my soul with hope.  Each time I find the courage to pick myself back up again and press onward. 

This trial has thrown me into moments of complete isolation.  I struggle explaining the under goings of my heart, even to those who are experiencing it with me.  I perceive feelings and events of this circumstance in an individualized way, so although it is a similar tribulation, those surrounding me cannot connect to my exact emotions and hardships, because they are suffering in a divergent way.  What I have come to realize is how imperative it is that I arrive to this lonesome state.  A place where I can turn to no one, except the Savior.  I must reach a point where He is the only one that exists beside me.  Where there is no one else, nor any other distraction to divert my heart.  These are the moments that I am utilizing the sacrifices my Savior made for me during His Atonement.  I am allowing Him to bear up my burdens, permitting Him to yoke Himself to my anguished side, and enabling Him to carry me when I become too frail to proceed.  This is where I learn.  This is where my humbled and broken heart is taught.  This is where I can grow, develop, and advance.  This is where my tribulation turns into soulful extension.  I have to arrive to this destination alone.  I cannot drag earthly companionship to these depths.  I must reach them unescorted, because my companion is awaiting.  I need Him.  I need only Him in these exhausted moments.  Because He is the only one who has an absolute knowledge of my sufferings, and just like every other experience, can perfectly succor my lonesome heart, because He, too, endured His own isolation.

I have never been more mistaken then when I believed that the Savior never existed without companionship of the Father.  Christ was more than a mortal man, and I frequently reflected on His closeness with Heavenly Father.  However, when Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the world, our sins, He became unclean, and was unfit to be in the Father’s presence.  The Father, only being able to abide in the presence of purity, had to depart from His suffering Son.  Our Savior, who never made an error, never sinned, never broke covenant nor command, was forsaken, left alone, because He so loved the world.  Because He so loved you and I.  He knows exactly how we feel when we arrive to Him, unaccompanied, struggling to sustain the torturous depths of our heartache.  Not because He has been told and educated on how it feels, but because He has experienced it Himself.  His perfect understanding by way of identical personal experience is the very reason why He waits so eagerly to come to our rescue.  Although as mortals we have similarities in the tribulations we meet, only He has experienced our individual circumstances equivalently.  He seeks to avail our sufferings because He perfectly remembers the way the agony busts our heart.

Our trials do not arrive by coincidence, nor are they produced by careless or unplanned strategies.  They are individually composed and enabled for our specific areas that stand in need of refinement.  The Lord knows us incomparably.  Some may ask, Why does it matter if we have testimony of such a thing?  I intensely believe our remembrance of the customization of our trials can bring fortitude and resilience during our moments of suffering.  As we ruminate on His personalized paths towards perfection we will never think it strange as our trials emerge.  Instead we will find bravery and endurance to withstand, because we know that we have received it for a specified purpose.  There is something, whether we are aware of it or not, that is incomplete within us, that will be made whole through the afflictions of our trial.  Our faith in this area also helps us recall His dedication to us as we abide our adversity.  He does not provide a trial and then watch from the distance to see how we will manage.  Instead he is fixed at our side holding us up when all we desire to do is collapse.  This does not mean that He mends or diminishes the blows of our tribulation, we must remember that. He allows them to proceed, not out of lack of love, but because of the depth of His love.  He permits us, even though it is burdensome to watch, to suffer that we be purified.

Just as the Lord provided me with preparation for my tribulation, He will supply each of us with exactly what we require to sustain.  However, these gifts are not presented in an ostentatious manner.  They are quiet, and if not searched for, may go unnoticed.  We must seek for spiritual discernment that we may hear His voice and recognize His hand.  With some trials these identifications are more easily perceived.  Others are much more difficult.  When we find a lack of proof of His presence, we must seek by way of prayer and study, to have our eyes opened to His encompassing protection and devotions.  I promise that the moment you fully open your heart to Him, you will find every evidence and verification of His existence in your life and notice how interweaved He is in your circumstances.  I know it to be true.  I promise it.

As our adversities rage forward, we must not become frightened by the loneliness that will appear.  Instead we must allow it to transport us to destinations of desolation.  It is there that we will find complete companionship and restoration from the One who knows precisely how we are suffering.  When we arrive to this place, we must not forget that we need to inquiringly open our mouths, allowing words of authorization to tumble outward.  As we do, He will defend, bear, carry, support, and love us through every inch of our trial.  With our heightened testimonies there is no depth we cannot overcome, no despair we cannot conquer, no heartache we cannot relieve, because the Almighty, the Unconquerable, He is our companion.  With faith in this truth, we will meet every tribulation that is delivered, and we will never, not ever, think it to be strange.