Growing up in the church, I was taught that complaining wasn’t what “good” Latter-day Saints did. Complaining was a weakness, while being grateful for your trials was an oft-praised virtue. In Primary, we sang about how we should be “willing and cheerful in all that we do” and that “no one likes a frowning face.”
There seemed to me a very clear message: if I wanted to be righteous, I needed to be happy no matter what I was going through. Yes, we talked about how “Jesus wept” (John 11:35), but we also talked about how our trials don’t compare to His, so “why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?” (Hymn 30).
For the most part, I did spend my childhood happy, blessed, and grateful. There were some hard times, of course, but I still managed to smile my way through them.
And then I went on my mission.
I was so excited to serve the Lord, so eager to do everything right, that blistered feet and being rejected didn’t dim my enthusiasm to preach the plan of happiness to anyone who would listen.
But when I was assigned to a particularly difficult companion, everything changed. Night after night, I went to bed silently weeping—partly because of the things she would say and do and partly because I felt so weak. I spent so much time on my knees, apologizing to God for being such a horrible missionary who couldn’t smile her way through things and who was complaining about her companion.
The Spirit finally broke through all my thoughts of guilt and shame with a single phrase that forever changed the way I go through trials and helped me better understand the truths I’d oversimplified as a child.
The Spirit said, “Abraham didn’t skip up the hill with Isaac.”
Faithfulness and Happiness Are Not the Same
When I picture Abraham taking Isaac up the hill, I imagine he went as slowly as possible, dreading what would have to happen in order to obey the Lord. I imagine he couldn’t bring himself to smile when Isaac asked, “but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7–8). Yet Abraham’s willingness to have faith, even if he didn’t have happiness, was rewarded with great blessings from God (Genesis 22:16–17).
Once I recognized that we can be sad about our current circumstances while simultaneously having faith that better times are coming, I began to notice other things that were not mutually exclusive like I’d previously thought: We can feel pain for losses we endure and also be grateful that through Christ, all losses are temporary. And we can complain about things while not sinning in the process. Sometimes, blessings even come not in spite of our complaints but as a direct result of them.
Complaining Can Bring Blessings
Take, for example, Emma Smith. Instead of considering it an honor to clean up the tobacco mess left behind by the priesthood holders in the school of the prophets or just suffering in silence, she complained to Joseph about the situation.
Brigham Young recalled, “ … the complaints of [Joseph’s] wife at having to clean so filthy a floor, made the Prophet think upon the matter, and he inquired of the Lord relating to the conduct of the Elders in using tobacco, and the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom was the result of his inquiry.”
At one point, Moses was struggling with his calling and having to do everything by himself. He complained to God, saying, “it is too heavy for me,” and even going so far as to tell God he would rather die than keep being the sole leader of the Israelites (Numbers 11:14–15).
God then established the First Quorum of the Seventy, promising Moses that “they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone” (Numbers 11:16–17).
And when Nephi and his brothers went back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates, their mother Sariah “truly … mourned” for she “supposed that [they] had perished in the wilderness,” and she went on to “complain against” Lehi (1 Nephi 5:1–3).
While she did falsely blame Lehi, he knew her well enough to see through those accusations to the real heart of her complaint—worry and grief. Instead of chastising her for complaining, he bore testimony to her, shared his faith and hope with her, and as a result, she was comforted (1 Nephi 5:4–6).
As for my mission, once I accepted that being unhappy wasn’t a weakness, I was able to take my complaints to my district leader, who then used the trainings in our district meetings to address certain issues that plagued my companionship. And only once I shared my struggles and complaints with the mission president was he able to offer insights into my companion’s background that gave me the patience and charity I needed, and gradually, things in my companionship improved.
God never expects us to suffer in silence. Whenever possible, we should take action to alleviate our circumstances, and righteous complaining is sometimes the best action we can take.
The Key to Righteous Complaining
What made those examples righteous complaints instead of murmuring complaints is that they weren’t done just for the sake of grumbling. They were done as petitions to someone the complainer hoped would be able to help them, and when help was given, the complainer accepted it. Moses obeyed God’s request to gather seventy elders and continued serving with their assistance. Sariah allowed herself to be comforted.
Our complaints can be righteous appeals for sympathy, encouragement, or assistance, but only if we are truly willing to be comforted and encouraged, to accept the assistance given, or to act on the advice provided.
If we complain for the sole purpose of spreading dissatisfaction, being unwilling to do anything other than complain, then we have crossed what Sister Chieko Okazaki called the “line of appropriateness between sharing your sorrow and broadcasting complaints.” (A broadcast only transmits a message; it does not receive.)
The Covenant of Complaining
The etymology of the word complain reveals the profound importance of complaining to God’s covenant people. Complain comes from the Latin complangere, with the prefix com- meaning “with or together,” and plangere meaning “to lament; to strike or beat the breast.”
Quite literally, a complaint is an invitation to “mourn with those that mourn” (Mosiah 18:9), something that we all covenanted to do at baptism.
When we praise someone for never complaining as if that were one of the highest virtues a person could attain, I can’t help but wonder how many opportunities we miss to mourn with and comfort those who are suffering.
Instead, let’s praise those who have the strength to be vulnerable and admit that they’re struggling. Let’s praise those who have the faith to ask for help. And let’s praise those who gift us the opportunity to put our covenants into action by letting us stand as witnesses and representatives of Christ who truly “lives to hear [our] soul’s complaint” (Hymn 136).
More articles for you:
▶ Can I be both faithful and a little fearful? What the scriptures say
▶ Elder Soares shares emotional story of losing his son, finding comfort in the gospel
▶ What Pres. Nelson said is ‘the most crucial question we each must answer’
