Dost Thou Hearest Me Yet?

My maternal grandparents on their wedding day

 

July 16, 2016

During this, my final semester in the Pathway program, we have been studying:  “?The Family – A Proclamation to the World.” Through the weeks of study and discussion and reading – oh, so MUCH reading – my understanding of the nature of human beings and our place in the world created by our Father in Heaven hasn’t just grown but also matured.

When I was a little girl, our family was solicited by some adults from a nearby church, looking for children the parents might wish to attend the church. My parents agreed, and each Sunday I would be picked up by a bus and taken to the church to attend. This both gratifies and horrifies at the same time! I am grateful because this gave me an early introduction to God and led to a lifelong study of Him and His Son, Jesus Christ. I expect I’ll live for many more decades, because I have only scratched the surface.

About half a dozen years later, living in a smaller town by then, I was introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My family’s learning about the Church opened my world exponentially. Suddenly I had structure and guidelines in my life that made me feel very comfortable and safe. I also had direction. I knew who I wanted to be and who I wanted to marry (well, I had the idea of him in my mind). I was a little muddled on what I wanted to study if allowed the opportunity to go to college.

Unfortunately, my plans didn’t even come close to gelling as I grew older. It seems it’s been an agonizing uphill battle since, and I wonder many times a day why it is so hard and how I let it end up this way.

And then came the third semester of Pathway. Step by step I have studied the Proclamation and felt my testimony grow. I have been learning the “whys” of all the things I now believe. I feel as though those answers have given solid foundation to my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Almost 20 years ago I met a man who was every bit as imperfect as I, and maybe more so than I realized, what with the stars in my eyes those first few months. Despite our best intentions, we ended up hitching ourselves to the same star and purposefully stepping out on what we hoped would be a wonderful, healing journey.

I will forever be grateful for the concept of Eternal families. While my faith in this concept caused me to hang on longer than I should in a dismal marriage that was never good, it has also helped me to hold onto to the precious treasure I now have in my husband and our marriage, despite the fact that all life around us conspired to pull us apart.

The Proclamation teaches that men and women were created and later born to be just that:  Men and women! Accepting myself with all my imperfections includes accepting that I am me, and that me is a woman. I am grateful to never have been saddled with the burden of questioning my gender identity because I know there is really no question in my Father’s eyes. 

Another thing we are taught by the Proclamation is that men and women have equal but different roles in the very worthy goal of marrying and raising a family. It has been a hard thing for me to study the Proclamation at a time where I can look back on a life of regret, but I find courage in knowing that I am not alone in my struggles.

Thursday we attended the wedding festivities for my sister-in-law, who had waited and prepared for many years before finally meeting someone who was worthy of her. In those few days, I was able to see in them the knowledge that our Father in Heaven knows them, loves them, and wants them to a righteous husband and wife. For them, this is truly the very beginning of lifetimes of opportunity and joy. As any “old” married couple, my husband and I were reminded of our commitments to one another and to that same Father in Heaven as well as His to us. There is peace in that knowledge.