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Getting a serious diagnosis, such as for breast cancer, is not something you can truly imagine until it happens to you. Like having a baby or losing a loved one, you canât just squint your brain and imagine what it would be like.
Everyone reacts differently to serious news. Many retreat in quiet. Others become angry. Some stay in denial for a long time. For this piece of recent news, my first coping mechanism was humor, and much of that is contained in my most recent blog post.
Then I became pragmatic and began to say, âItâs all about usefulness. If God can use me more on this side of the veil, then Iâll stay. If he needs me more on the other side, Iâll go. Itâs really all up to him.â
And it was my wise daughter, Nicole (againâso wise! Where did she get this old soul?) who said, âMom, life is not about usefulness.â
And I was thunderstruck. Sure it is, I thought. We need to be useful servants to God. Temple work, Family History, Callings, Missionary Work, Ministeringâright? I am a task-driven list maker, a checker-offer, a disciplined Do-Bee (a Do-Bee, by the way, is a holdover from TVâs Romper Room, which urged children to do good things, obey the rules, and work hard.) When a guy in Hawaii once commented on how pale I was, I smiled, âThatâs a sign of productivity.â
âItâs about becoming more God-like,â Nicole said.
And my brain popped open for the first time in quite a while. What was this new information? It sounded familiar, but in an unfamiliar way. I felt goosebumps as I realized I was hearing inspired counsel.
âWe chose to come here for a higher purpose,â she said. âHe doesnât see us as useful tools, but as children learning who they are.â
Wait. What?
She explained. We arenât just little workers dashing around to do things God needs to have done. Letâs face it, he can do whatever he wants. When we say we are Godâs hands serving someone else, it isnât because heâs overwhelmed and needs an army of go-fers. Itâs that those tasks enrich us and teach us charity, making us more like him.
She reminded me of someone in our stake who served his mission in the very country, the very town, from which he was adopted as a baby. He found his birth mother there and she joined the church. However, God didnât need that specific young man to find her; God could have placed someone else there to baptize her. But the young man and his mother needed to grow through finding each other. It wasnât about usefulness.
âHe expects personal development, not task accomplishment,â Nicole said.
And I thought about Western Culture, maybe specifically the U.S., where we judge success by our completed duties. We revere the hard-working business owner, and we sometimes see power as an exchange: Commodities for services. We are, perhaps, too far on the works side of âfaith vs. works.â But God is not a businessman. He is not hoping weâll just be busy little employees.
For God it boils down to soul stretching. Angels who are âsilent notes takingâ are not writing down the stuff we did, but whom we are becoming. At a BYU Devotional, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once said, âGod doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.â
And so much of this learning and growing has to happen here in mortality, where we have the challenges of earthly life, and physical bodies. This life is where we develop by choosing righteousness in the midst of opposition. Our choices arenât âusefulâ to God; theyâre choices that refine us. When He said his work and his glory is âto bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of manâ (Moses 1:39) it wasnât about having man check off boxes for Him.
This principle is taught clearly in the short Presidency Message about tithing, by President Henry B. Eyring in the June 2011 Ensign Magazine. â⊠paying a full tithe in this life prepares us to feel what we need to feel to receive the gift of eternal life.â
When we learn to forgive someone, it isnât for that person. Itâs so we will feel more like God feels, and see his children more the way he does. He wants us to acquire all his attributes, not just a pile of accomplishments.
As Brad Wilcox said in a BYU Devotional address, âThe miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but thatâmiraculouslyâwe can feel at home there.â (âHis Grace is Sufficientâ) As he puts it, we need to be learning heaven. And we donât scurry around trying to âpay the debtâ; Christ has already paid it in full. Our task is to learn and grow.
This is why Jesus described the inadequacy of people who merely check the boxes and accumulate outward appearances when he said, âYe never knew me.â (Matt. 7:21-23, JST) Elder David A. Bednar explained this in a beautiful General Conference address in October of 2016 (âIf Ye Had Known Meâ) wherein he emphasizes the importance of whom we are becoming, not just what we are doing.
If you look up âGodâ on lds.org you will find this paragraph: âAlthough God created all things and is the ruler of the universe, being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent (through His Spirit), mankind has a special relationship to Him that differentiates man from all other created things: man is literally Godâs offspring, made in His image, whereas all other things are but the work of His hands (Acts 17:28â29).â The whole point is for us to progress and become, not just to fulfill robotic assignments.
So if I am to truly fulfill my earthly mission, I need to look way beyond usefulness. Will I become more like God with a physical body, choosing him here in this world of opposition, separated from his presence, or as a spirit in his presence? Does he need me to stay in this laboratory of learning to develop the traits Iâm going to need?
We sing a Sacrament hymn that answers this perfectly. Youâll recognize the third and fourth verses of With Humble Heart:
- To be like thee! I lift my eyes
From earth below toward heavân above,
That I may learn from vaulted skies
How I my worthiness can prove.
- As I walk daily here on earth,
Give me thy Spirit as I seek
A change of heart, another birth,
And grow, dear Lord, to be like thee.
Iâm optimistic. I know this diagnosis is a serious one, but I feel a certainty of purpose here, if only because I have so much more to learn! And, unless you are reading this through the veil, you are in this same school with me as we try to become just a bit more. Every one of us has challenges and if weâre smart, we look at the lessons they can teach us, and we use them in this refining process. Iâm also excited to remember that our accomplishments are good things, but theyâre even better things if they make us more like our Father in Heaven.
Hiltonâs new LDS novel, Golden, is available in paperback and on Kindle. All her books and YouTubeMom videos can be found on her website. She currently serves as an Interfaith Specialist for Public Affairs.
Ayse KOCHMay 21, 2018
Hi Joni, I'm sure you have no idea what an incredibly good influence you are in your wonderfully spiritually minded, candid, and humor filled articles. Thank you for them and thank you for sharing your warm soul with us readers. I pray that you will be able to continue to bless us with your charm, insight and love. xo Ayse
Mariam KitchenMay 12, 2018
Thank you, so much, for all the wisdom! I look forward to your insights. Wishing you well in your health challenges.