Talk a lot, pick a little more

Okay. So, this time, not in keeping with my usual method of preparing talks, I pretty much wrote out everything I was going to say beforehand. While the actual talk I gave was different in some ways from what you'll read below, (mainly due to time constraints), this is pretty much the original talk I came up with. If you'd like, go ahead and read it. For me, I think it was an appropriate exercise in reminding myself of things I personally need to hear again & again.

Which perhaps is the real point of talks after all.

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I’m going to talk a little bit today about some of the things I feel deeply, not in a desire to expose my soul to you to some uncomfortable degree, but in the hope that some of the things I relate will speak to the deep inner part of your own souls. Because I think we all tend to feel the same sorts of things.

Personally, I tend to feel discouraged rather a lot. This discouragement doesn’t always come on Sunday, but sometimes it does. I don’t feel it continuously, but I feel it often, usually when I’ve failed to live up to my expectations in some way, or the expectations of other people. It’s when I’ve ignored someone who needed help, or withheld the truth about something, or felt angry at someone, or have done one of the myriad of things which causes us to feel guilty and cut off from God. And so I distance myself from Him.

I think that’s how it starts.

And then I get a wedding invitation in the mail, or hear from an ex-boyfriend, or see that my sister has blogged about her wonderfully adorable children, and I begin to feel that I’m going to be alone and unloved forever and ever. And I try not to wonder, but I really do in my heart of hearts, how God can possibly love me if He hasn’t gotten a spouse for me yet. (Don’t deny it; you do it too.)

And that’s how it escalates. (And that’s also how chocolate binges begin.)

And then, naturally, I feel guilty about having such thoughts, and I distance myself from God a little bit more, because I don’t think He’d want to hear from such a disobedient, faithless daughter.

And I feel alone and sad, cut off and distant, my soul grated down and raw, sensitive and stinging.

Some of you may be feeling this way right now. I know I have, often, sitting where you’re sitting now, trying for all the world to appear normal and happy, but feeling this internal, unshakable darkness inside.

I wish I could reach in and pluck out of my insides this knowledge and feeling of the love God has for you, for each of us, and give it to you, whole and untranslated. I wish I could give it to myself a week from now, or in a month or 100 days, when I’ll need it again. And then again. And then again.

We so often forget the love God has for us, the infinite value He places on us. But God is merciful and will remind us again and again, each time we need it, if we can just get ourselves to the point where we can feel it, just hear the message that He’s trying to give us.

My mother loves to find pennies on the sidewalk. It’s not that she has a thing for copper; it’s not even that she loves to add to her change jar. She loves finding pennies because, to her, finding a penny on the ground is a little indicator that God loves her and wants to remind her of that. I love that. I know another woman from my home ward who loves finding feathers for the same reason. She says that she always seems to find a feather on the ground when she’s feeling particularly lonely or discouraged.

Pennies and feathers are certainly not the only way we can feel God’s love for us, but they show that Heavenly Father seeks to bless our lives often in small ways that we simply don’t see. Like the fact that you just barely caught the T that one time you were running late, or when the shape of that cloud caught your eye and you wondered at the great gift of being able to see beauty in the natural world, or you found that perfect red leaf on the ground, or your best friend emailed you to tell you how much she loves you, or when Elder Holland addressed in his talk something you’d been worrying about for some time.

Sometimes the reassurance of God’s love for us comes through the scriptures. The scriptures are littered with references of His love for all mankind.
-3 Nephi 17. Read it. And then reread it. And read it again.
-1 John 4. Let’s look specifically at verse 16: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
And sometimes His love is manifest to us in quiet, intensely personal moments of prayer, when we kneel before him with our broken souls open and vulnerable and aching and raw, and He pours into our wounded souls the conviction that He cares for us, that we are infinitely valuable to Him.

Why is it so important for us to feel God’s love for us? Why does it heal us when we finally feel it? I think, for myself, I tend to place too much value on the way other people see me. I worry that I’m too awkward or too ugly for anyone to love. And so, when my sense of awkwardness or unattractiveness feels confirmed by interactions I have with others, I then feel I don’t have value at all.

But when I feel, really feel Heavenly Father’s love for me, carried with it is also the conviction that if in all the world only God valued me, what value that would be! And is!

But does Heavenly Father want us to feel His love simply to make us feel better? In part, yes! He is our Father, which means that He. Is. Your. Father. You are His immediate descendant; He is not your grandfather, or your great-grandfather, or your uncle. He is your Father. And He loves you and wants you to be happy because you. Are. His. Child.

But I think the Love of God does serve another purpose: it motivates us, both to be better people and also to love others and seek to serve them.
-1 John 4:11 – “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
-Mosiah 4:21 – “And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.”

And I would even go on to say, “And if that God, who has shown you his great mercy, doth fill your soul with his love, to such an extent that you cannot feel the greatness and power of it, O then, how ye ought to love one another.”

Brothers and sisters, I guarantee that the same method that can fill our hearts with the love God has for us can also fill us with the love He has for others, that earnest prayer and longing will enable the Spirit to flow charity and compassion into your souls, as great and overwhelming as the flow of Heavenly Father’s love for you.

We are all equal in the sight of God.
-2 Nephi 26:33 – “For none of these iniquities [murder, stealing, whoredoms, etc.] come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”

It is my belief that as we come to feel the great love our Father in Heaven has for us, we will begin to see both ourselves and others as He sees us: as precious beings, each individual of infinite and eternal value.

I know I have only felt a small part of the infinite value and love God holds for me. And yet that small part overwhelms me.

I pray that I, that each of us, will feel His love more fully, both for ourselves and for all those around us; as we do, we will find ourselves becoming more and more as our Father would have us be: like Himself.