Timing and Seeing the Good

In my Relief Society lesson the other week we discussed the timing of miracles, why some of our yearned for miracles come right away, why some are delayed, and why some never seem to come at all. Today we walked about Seeing the Good in the trials in our lives.

What I wanted to share in class back then and today seemed too long to explain, so I decided to post about it.

I have a testimony of God’s wisdom in His timing – this goes for miracles and answers to prayer. Some of my yearnings have been answered very quickly, and some have taken decades. I will post at another time a miracle that happened very quickly. It will be labeled LOST. Today’s story covers decades of wondering when things would be made right. 

I was taught from a young age that God makes things right, that He’s aware of each sparrow, that ‘all things work together for good.’ When these teachings entered my heart as truth, I was both hopeful and hesitant. My first reaction was to question the HOW. It took more time for another truth to enter my heart: God’s ways are not my ways. I was too mortal and too incomplete to fathom how everything would come full circle. I saw life through ‘a glass darkly,’ my vision being blurred by my limited understanding and the ways of the world. I knew how to make things right in my own mind, and that path was not only impossible, it would not have been a good option. So I had to set this yearning on a shelf and let time sort it out.

At the tender age of seven, my mom moved me and my three sisters across two states, leaving my dad behind in California. There were no warning signs -- out of the blue they sat us down on a couch and laid out the plan. The divorce turned my tiny life upside down in so many ways, that I still consider it a miracle that I was able to gain sure footing. 

My dad had been the center of my world. He read to us at night, which took me to magical places and instilled a love of reading. He took us to parks, even the “cool” ones 45 minutes away. [I didn’t realize how far away our favorite park was until I was an adult]. When copiers were new, he took our storybooks to his office and copied pictures we’d dog-eared for us to color at home. He built wooden toys with us in the garage, after getting some random how-to book at the library. He shared his box of “Marines” treasures, lighting some smoke bombs out in front of our house. He built a realistic one-story playhouse for us at our first home, complete with a pitched and shingled roof. At our second house, he built us a two-story playhouse! But what cemented my Dad and I’s relationship the most, was the one-on-one time he spent with me in YMCA’s Indian Princess program. Once a week we met with other fathers and daughters and had activities together. Part of that program was spending a weekend at an organized camp in the mountains. There are 3 things I remember about that camp, (1) how terrified I was of wetting the bed and being in a separate cabin from my dad, (2) shooting BB guns and feeling quite pleased with my performance and (3) listening to the timbre of my dad’s voice as “Kumbaya” was sung on Sunday morning in the large outdoor amphitheater. It seems the media has always made fun of Kumbaya, but for me it has always held a special and sacred space in my heart, for that experience was the first time I felt stirrings of God. My dad was my rock and my anchor.

And then overnight that changed. I was thrust into a foreign place and space where I felt adrift at sea for many, many years.

We moved to Reno first, to get the divorce over more quickly. With the encouragement of who would become my new stepdad, we met with the missionaries a few times and he baptized us into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whether we wanted it or not. After the allotted “divorce time” passed, we then moved to Utah, where my mom immediately married her prior boss, and took off on a Hawaiian honeymoon, leaving us four girls with step relatives we did not know, and a new school year to start alone in a strange place.

Rarely had I entered a church prior to this time, so it was a new experience to enter a “Mormon” lifestyle. Dry, homemade wheat bread replaced our Wonder Bread, and cooked oatmeal replaced the Froot Loops that our palates were used to. Four step siblings were added to the package, along with Sundays that no longer included camping and boating and various amusement parks. And now it became a toss-up of who I feared the most, my mother or new step-dad.

Culture shock wasn’t the only kind of shock I went through at this period of time. Though I was unable to put it into words at the time, it must have felt like mini traumas stacked on top of each other. My emotional development took a huge hit that shaped future choices that weren’t necessarily choosing the right, but choosing safety, choosing acceptance and choosing belonging. I withdrew as much as I could and yearned for invisibility. Court-ordered time with my dad one week each summer could not even begin to fill the void, as he had married into another family that vied for his attention.

Attending church and Primary and Young Women’s out of fear didn’t foster a testimony. We were dutiful little soldiers who didn’t dare cross a line. But I did begin to hear the word of God and sing the word of God. Loving, surrogate mothers found in Young Women leaders pulled me from my invisibility and pulled me close. Their love and concern for me as a daughter of God has spanned over four decades. Surrogate fathers in the form of teachers, advisors and coaches entered my path as well. Their love and testimonies turned me to Christ and a loving Father in Heaven. I began my own journey pursuing these relationships and found another anchor and rock that steadied my feet in life’s storms and blew wind into my sails on sunny days.

I held onto God’s promises that all would be made right and that every loss would be made up. But how? How could any of this be “made right,” and what did that even mean? 

So I waited. As small witnesses stacked up in my life that God was aware of me, my trust and faith in Jesus Christ grew. And I waited some more. I married young, and unfortunately, my spouse had strong feelings against my stepmother, so contact was very limited with my dad while I was married for 29 years.

There are painful experiences in life that happen because of my choices, because of the choices of others, and because of the fallen and corrupt world we live in. In my longing to make sense of and to know why we bear the trials we do, I’ve come to the conclusion that some questions will have to sit on that proverbial “shelf” for a time. Because I don’t receive immediate answers and resolutions doesn’t mean my God is unloving. He doesn’t keep these things out of reach to tease or taunt. Instead, He wraps His arms around me and asks me to wait. When I ask for comfort and strength and direction, sometimes He gives line upon line, and other times there’s an unmeasured portion falling into my cup, “pressed down, shaken together, and running o’er.”

My mom separated us from my dad in 1976. In 2021, while my stepmother was in her last stages of a debilitating cancer, my dad announced his intentions to move to Utah after her passing to be closer to his girls. We were all shocked. In 2022 we moved him into my home, and I began living a miracle.

I can’t blithely say that this made up for the cruel injustice of our 46-year separation, but blessings are coming steadily.

My sisters and their spouses gather with us monthly to have dinner and play games. My sisters and I have never spent this amount of time together, and it’s been sweet. I feel this ritual will continue for many years. My children and grandchildren are coming to know another grandpa, and I love that my dad is getting to know them. I see his joy, especially in the little grandkids that shriek his name when they enter our home.

As for me personally, a healing has begun that I can't even explain. He’s still the same generous, loving, service-oriented person I had known. I have loved discovering the similarities we share in likes and dislikes, thought processes and opinions. We both have very quiet personalities and we live very quiet lives. Both of us find it difficult to verbally express those deep-felt emotions in our hearts, but I don’t need to be told. I feel his love, constant, flowing, sure and steady as the coastal tides. Of course there were the adjustments that needed to be made in the nitty-grittyness of two people living in close quarters, but I still wake up daily in gratitude for this miracle that came.

For me, living in the miracle has decreased my yearning to understand the timing. I know that Heavenly Father’s timing was purely for my benefit and learning. If He felt I needed 46 years, then that’s what I needed. I feel more at peace about this than I ever have.

There are more things on my waiting shelf, but through this experience I’ve learned to:

~ be more at peace with what I don’t know.

~ understand that there are certain aspects in this game of chess that we call “Life” that need to be prepared and readied. S. Michael Wilcox calls this “carving out a place in my heart.”

~ trust deeper in a darkened path ahead of me, for I walk with a Being of Light who can see what I cannot.

~ recognize the angelic people and rich experiences that intersected my journey and filled the void of great loneliness. 

Heavenly Father did not always give me the things I wanted, but He made sure I had the things I needed to travel this road.

What good can I see?

1. My introduction to the Church was unconventional and certainly not desirable. For a very long time it stood as a symbol of my parents' separation and my misery. But . . . the Truth heals broken hearts, it helps the "blind" see more clearly, and it raises dead things inside us. My membership and knowledge of God's plan will always be a good thing that came out of 'this'.

2. Surrogate mothers and fathers helped direct me and guide me. I was not left to wander. Angelic ministering paved my path, and I learned how crucial we are as God's instruments here on earth.

3. The road I traveled has given me the experience to be a support to others in this broken world. There is something comforting and reassuring when another person can honestly say, "I know...." and can acknowledge your depth of pain and loss.