try again, ok?

in an attempt to change out of my whineypants i decided a visit to lds.org was in order.  forget the spoon full of sugar (gross), lds.org is all you need.

yesterday, while running, some inspiration, that should have hit me like a 2x4, came on.  it was one of my top favorite talks from the last year:  Waiting Upon the Lord: Thy Will be Done by Elder Robert D. Hales.  You may remember that i posted the video of this talk a few months ago.  (it's good, ok? : )

here are some highlights from the talk that has picked me up a few times before, and didn't fail to give me renewed courage, faith, and hope today:

"During the past few months, I have had the opportunity to study and learn more about the Savior’s atoning sacrifice and how He prepared Himself to make that eternal offering for each one of us.

His preparation began in the premortal life as He waited upon His Father, saying, “Thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.”¹ Beginning in that moment and continuing today, He exercises His agency to accept and carry out our Heavenly Father’s plan. The scriptures teach us that through His youth, He went “about [His] Father’s business”² and “waited upon the Lord for the time of his ministry to come.”³ At the age of 30, He suffered sore temptation yet chose to resist, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”⁴In Gethsemane, He trusted His Father, declaring, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done,”⁵ and then He exercised His agency to suffer for our sins. Through the humiliation of a public trial and the agony of crucifixion, He waited upon His Father, willing to be “wounded for our transgressions … [and] bruised for our iniquities.”⁶ Even as He cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”⁷ He waited upon His Father—exercising His agency to forgive His enemies,⁸ see that His mother was watched over,⁹ and endure to the end until His life and mortal mission were finished.¹⁰

I have often pondered, Why is it that the Son of God and His holy prophets and all the faithful Saints have trials and tribulations, even when they are trying to do Heavenly Father’s will? Why is it so hard, especially for them?"

"As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of our life on earth is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.”¹² Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”¹³

Does this mean we will always understand our challenges? Won’t all of us, sometime, have reason to ask, “O God, where art thou?”¹⁴ Yes! When a spouse dies, a companion will wonder. When financial hardship befalls a family, a father will ask. When children wander from the path, a mother and father will cry out in sorrow. Yes, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”¹⁵ Then, in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord, saying, “Thy will be done.”¹⁶

What, then, does it mean to wait upon the Lord? In the scriptures, the wordwait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end.

To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it “with great diligence, and … patience.”¹⁷

It means praying as the Savior did—to God, our Heavenly Father—saying: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.”¹⁸ It is a prayer we offer with our whole souls in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Waiting upon the Lord means pondering in our hearts and “receiv[ing] theHoly Ghost” so that we can know “all things what [we] should do.”¹⁹

As we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we discover that “tribulation worketh patience”²⁰ and we learn to “continue in patience until [we] are perfected.”²¹

Waiting upon the Lord means to “stand fast”²² and “press forward” in faith, “having a perfect brightness of hope.”²³

It means “relying alone upon the merits of Christ”²⁴ and “with [His] grace assisting [us, saying]: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.”²⁵

As we wait upon the Lord, we are “immovable in keeping the commandments,”²⁶ knowing that we will “one day rest from all [our] afflictions.”²⁷

And we “cast not away … [our] confidence”²⁸ that “all things wherewith [we] have been afflicted shall work together for [our] good.”^29"

"Even with the shining examples of Job, the prophets, and the Savior, we will still find it challenging to wait upon the Lord, especially when we cannot fully understand His plan and purposes for us. That understanding is most often given “line upon line, [and] precept upon precept.”³²

In my life I have learned that sometimes I do not receive an answer to a prayer because the Lord knows I am not ready. When He does answer, it is often “here a little and there a little”³³ because that is all that I can bear or all I am willing to do.

Too often we pray to have patience, but we want it right now! As a young man, President David O. McKay prayed for a witness of the truthfulness of the gospel. Many years later, while he was serving his mission in Scotland, that witness finally came. Later he wrote, “It was an assurance to me that sincere prayer is answered ‘sometime, somewhere.’”³⁴

We may not know when or how the Lord’s answers will be given, but in His time and His way, I testify, His answers will come. For some answers we may have to wait until the hereafter. This may be true for some promises in our patriarchal blessings and for some blessings for family members. Let us not give up on the Lord. His blessings are eternal, not temporary."

"Every one of us is more beloved to the Lord than we can possibly understand or imagine. Let us therefore be kinder to one another and kinder toward ourselves. Let us remember that as we wait upon the Lord, we are becoming “saint[s] through [His] atonement, … submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father.”^36"