In His Hands

"What I originally viewed as a complete disaster ended up being a plan...

perfectly crafted and instrumented in the Hands of the Lord."

Serving a full-time mission for my Savior, Jesus Christ, has been

one of my most treasured experiences I have yet had in my life.

It was full of heartaches and sacrifices. It resulted in one of the most unique 

and personal tutoring curriculum's straight from my Heavenly Father to me. 

The mission was just the beginning of my mortal education. 

I have learned and will continue to learn that

He is so involved in our lives. 

Nothing that happens is random. 

We will make mistakes and we will fall short. 

   We will feel pain and we may have regrets.   

These things happen to fulfill our purpose of mortality, to grow 

and become stronger and come to know who we can always trust, 

who provides the 'healing balm' and whom we are to forever abide in.

Coming home was like walking into the Ghost town of your life before 

and you're not sure what to do with the broken pieces still around you,

while still trying to hang onto the memories of your mission.

One Sunday morning I realized the journal I used the last part of my mission was missing. That afternoon I was searching frantically for it for two hours.

It was devestating having doubts that the beauty of the mission 

happened at all and having the evidence of the end of it lost.

This occupied my mind and created a two hour set back for an intended trip an hour south to deliver a wedding present to a former boyfriend. 

Parking the car off the highway I walked the mile up his driveway, 

relishing in the memories that occured along that road and urging a smile thinking about the happy state that he was in now. There was strength beyond my own helping me make the earnest strides to my destination.

On the doorstep doubts filled my mind as I wondered 

'what on earth am I doing here?!' 

His parents answered with a similar look on their faces. 

They kindly invited me in and expressed how I had just missed him.

Handing over the gift, with a jab to the heart I was then overcome with peace and filled with awe that my Heavenly Father saw and understood things that I did not but he lead me to the perfect place at the perfect time.

I had been searching for understanding why my journal had to go missing. I needed to walk up that road with complete fearlessness and do the right thing as a disciple of Jesus Christ would. God had prepared my heart to be ready for the hardest thing but that wasn't the will of the Lord. I had received an answer to prayer asked for over two years ago, 'to be able to love more purely'

In the days following a man called saying he had seen my journal in an airport terminal and felt prompted to pick it up and take it home. He read through looking for contact information and was touched by the things he read. If I had found the journal any earlier I would have shown up two hours earlier and done more harm than good, God has perfect timing.

Through this experience I learned that God was well aware of me and the healing that my heart needed to experience. I felt emotionally stretched to my very limits but His strong, gentle hands came in and lovingly filled in the gaps. He knew I was capable of giving more than I thought I could. He knew my journal and the miraculous story of it being found could touch more lives than I had imagined.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, 

saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are 

my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts..."

-Isaiah 55:8-9

I have come to a new determination to trust in God more completely.

Answers to prayer don't always come when I want them to,  

But They Come.

I won't understand certain experiences of mortality,

But He Does.

 What are the reasons for pain in the past, confusion in the present and questions about the future...We are to go forward with faith in Jesus Christ 

“The acceptance of the reality that we are in the 

Lord's loving hands is only a recognition 

that we have never really been anywhere else.” 

-Elder Neal A. Maxwell