Episode #234 - Bad Days

We all face bad days and troubling moments.  That is no secret.  But do we understand their purpose in the celestial realms and trials.

Transcript

Episode #234 – Bad Days.  I am your host Damon Socha.  Before we get too far along today, I wanted to thank those of you who comment on the podcast and who send me your emails.  I assure you that I read everyone carefully and respond when I can.  The comment section doesn’t always allow for me to provide comments back.  I appreciate your willingness to share.  I also want to thank those who listen regularly.  The podcast statistics only provide the city and country from which the person downloaded the episode but I see similar cities again and again.  So many of you listen and keep me writing and healing.  Truly this has been some of the best therapy I have had over the many years of my illness.  Your willingness to listen has allowed me to share and hopefully in turn help you in some small way.  I may not know you fully, but I do feel and understand your pain and suffering.

Over the last seven weeks I have been suffering the effects of autoimmune disease and COVID.  Somewhere between my chronic illness and the virus, I have found a hell that I didn’t know existed.  I admit it has tested almost every fiber of my being.  I have literally been sleeping for the last seven weeks due to exhaustion and inflammation. Naturally this has caused a serious increase in my mental health symptoms and so between the illness and the mental health, the valley of the shadow of death has become all too real.  No I am not going to die, although at times I have wished for such a relief.  And no I am not suicidal.  Just struggling with the weight that comes upon the soul when bad days descend and relief doesn’t appear.  

When bad days come and we know that they will, we can find ourselves struggling with more than the simple questions of life.  Surrounded by pain, exhaustion, depression, anxiety and everything that causes suffering, we reach out to the Father crying as Joseph did and the Savior. “Oh God where are thou.”  And, “Let this cut pass from me.”  These are phases we know well from the scriptures.  We ask for, bargain, demand, plead, beg and hope for mercy.  Sometimes we receive those comforting words and feelings and other times it appears that we like Savior and Joseph Smith we must drink the bitter cup we have been given.  We often talk about the Savior always coming to our rescue and him binding wounds and healing trauma.  What we don’t often talk about are the moments when like the angel in the garden he can only be with us as we suffer but he must allow us to suffer.  We don’t talk about how difficult the endurance can be.  How profound the struggle and the questions.  Minutes pass like hours and hours like days when we seek that healing balm.  Yet we will suffer and at times the Lord must withhold his hand.  He must allow the pain to occur, the long-term illness continue long term.  He must allow for as much as we are able to endure.  I know that this seems counterintuitive to the idea that “Man is that he might have joy.”

But true joy seems to have a deep connection with understanding pain and suffering.  Charity the true love of God also appears to have connected community with understanding the sorrows and pains of life.  Although when we suffer, we do not see it as expanding our joy, but in essence that is one of the purposes.  If the Savior rescued us every time we stubbed our toe or suffered a debilitating illness, he would be more like a pharmacy than a Savior.  We would be tied to him through miracles and we would be dependent upon those miracles to continue.  Our relationship would be nothing more than transactional and perhaps not much of a relationship.  We would quickly wain away and look to other sources when our quota of miracles ran out. 

I often think about the pool of Bethsaida where the crippled man was healed who had been cripped for far too many years.  I, more often think about those individuals who were left at the water after the Savior had healed this man.  They witness a beautiful miracle, a man leaping for joy, a short commotion and then everything returned to the way it was.  At that moment there was no miracle for them.  I am certain that this moment was extremely disappointing for them.  Up to that point in time, they had never seen a miracle of this nature.  Rumor and superstition had caused them to believe in a miracle moving of the water and yet through their own eyes they witnessed one who had the power to remove their infirmity and then he was gone.

How disappointing that must have been to them.  How troubling that they were not healed.  So many questions must have tortured their minds.  Were they not worthy?  Were they not suffering the same as this man who was healed?  Did not this man love them as well?  I think that we have all been there asking similar questions.  Where is my healing?  Where is my reward for living the covenants?   Where is my Savior and my miracle?

I have truly come to better understand these individuals who were left behind, who continued to suffer, who struggled to understand the why.  Were they not worthy?  Were they not suffering?  Did he not have the power to heal them?  I think that I have asked these questions far more than I am willing to admit today.  It is difficult to awake after a difficult night of sleep due to continuous pain and exhaustion and realize that today is unlikely to be any better than yesterday.  It is difficult to understand that the harder we try to live the gospel the harder it gets.  It is difficult to see through the mists of darkness and wonder when our day will come.  A trial is so much easier when we can see the end of the suffering.  When we have a defined point in time and the light reaches our mind and heart.  When we see nothing but darkness, pain and suffering time seems to elongate and lengthen.

About eight to ten weeks ago, the Lord through several revelatory methods told me that I would need to trust him.  Now I thought I had a fairly good level of trust in the Lord.  He and I have been working through this illness for some time now and I thought that my trust in him had progressed quite well.  I naturally stated that I trusted him and that I would trust him no matter what he decided.  And so my illness progressed into the state that I now find myself.  To say that my trust has been tested is an understatement and perhaps a statement of how much more I needed to learn.  And yes the Lord has rearranged my life again.  I will have a new job shortly where I can work remotely and he had provided for a long term accommodation for my illness.  I still believe and have promises of healing but for now the Lord has put me through a difficult trust exercise.  And I must state that the testing and fortification of my trust and love for the Lord has most certainly spilled over and inundated my family.  That is a natural consequence of our illness and these trust exercises from the Lord.  It will always affect others and be a part of their lives.  Our learning will be their learning.

From what I can tell in the scriptures and my own experience, bad days are a required element of person spiritual growth.  They are the catalyst to true understanding of the Lord and his purposes for us as individuals and as families.  It seems we cannot grow unless we are brought to ask the question, “Oh God, were art thou.”  This appears to be the process to exaltation.  “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” was not just a requirement for the Savior.  It seems that under the right circumstances and with the correct preparation, the Lord allows for us to be placed under difficult illnesses and circumstances so that he can tutor us.  We often ask why me when these circumstances come to us.  We also look around and ask why just me.  Why must my problems be so difficult?  Why must I suffer so deeply.  Why are not others so blessed?

Several reasons exist for why but I think that it is important to understand that the major portion of the why is sacred to the individual.  This type of trial is not punishment, although it may feel like it.  The Lord sees you as worthy to suffer.  I know that wording seems strange.  We would like it to read worthy to be blessed.  And perhaps those two statements are similar.  Worthy to suffer means that we are spiritually prepared for the celestial trials in our lives.  The Lord sees that we are ready to take upon us true discipleship and master the qualities of celestial life.  Strangely many of these qualities can only be taught under extreme pressures of difficult trials.  I have come to learn that when those pressures come upon us and we cry out for mercy, we become sufficiently humble ourselves so that our hearts may be changed.  Suffering when allowed under the right conditions leads us to greater charity and love.  Why did the Savior need to be a man of sorrows?  The answer is simple.  It taught him compassion and love.  Didn’t the Savior already have a perfect love for everyone?  Yes but experiential love and understanding can not be taught in books but must be experienced.  While the Savior was perfect, he needed experiential understanding of mortality.  Now he could have become a God without the need of mortality but he chose to experience it so that he could compassionately allow us to suffer through our own celestial trials.

While the Savior did not need these trials for his sake.  We do.  I don’t believe that celestial life is attainable without these deeply refining experiences in our lives.  Until we turn ourselves over to the Savior and allow for these trials to pass through us and give us experience and ultimately change our hearts and nature, we will not be allowed to enter that hallowed space.  

We are going to have bad days.  We are likely to have many of them.  What we do with them will be up to each of us.  No amount of suffering under the right spiritual circumstances is ever wasted.  One day the Lord will give us a perspective of our growth from his eyes.  And we will fall down at his feet.  Until then we must rely upon our faith and trust in the Lord.  One thing I have noticed throughout my difficulties is that when I accept the Lord’s will concerning my suffering, it eases my pains.  When we fight against the Lord and his will things are just more difficult.  This doesn’t mean that we won’t ask the why questions and ponder what the Lord desires.  This doesn’t mean that we won’t be healed.  What it does mean is that the Lord walks with us and supports us when things get far too difficult for our mortal minds.  When we truly accept the Lord’s will, we will find ourselves in a strange place where we can suffer with joy.  I admit to finding a piece of this joy during this current difficulty.  While I have struggled deeply and have endured serious pain, I have felt the joy of a loving Savior beside me.  He has encouraged me, pushed me and allowed me to be a peace with the outcome of the trials.  Somehow in some strange way, I have experienced a joy that I really didn’t think was possible.  I have found joy in the trial.  Perhaps this is one of the many things we are to learn about joy.  That it is truly possible under any circumstance if we allow ourselves to accept and learn the will of the Lord.  

I truly hope that your bad days turn into celestial experiences and that you find that strange joy in the midst of deep suffering.  Until next week do your part so that the Lord can do his.