Years ago, I was hugely pregnant with twins. A friend of mine asked me how I was feeling, and I responded that I was a little “uncomfortable” (which was a rather delicate way to state things considering how painful it can be to have two humans’ worth of body parts ramming into every square inch of real estate south of your sternum).
“Uh oh, Bonnie, I hope you’re not complaining about being pregnant,” she said. Her response made my face flame with embarrassment because she knew I disliked it when women complained about their pregnancies (years of infertility will do that to you). She was calling me out. Was I complaining? Was I ungrateful?
I went home that day feeling like I had failed in some way. But as I mulled over her words, I came to realize that stating the truth—that the blessing of pregnancy includes unavoidable pain and difficulty—was not ungrateful and acknowledging that fact was not complaining. There are few blessings as incredible as growing another human being inside your body, but there are also few things as uncomfortable and exhausting.
It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned: just because a blessing is a blessing doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. Instead of beating ourselves up when these difficulties-in-blessings arise, we can learn to rely on the Savior’s grace for help, and learn to be gentle with ourselves in the process.
A Scripture Story about Hard Blessings
I often think of the Jaredites in the book of Ether, climbing nervously into their claustrophobia-inducing barges with a cacophony of small children and animals and setting sail toward the promised land.
Day one might have been exciting! The kids probably explored their cozy surroundings, the parents probably talked about the blessings awaiting them in the promised land, and the glow emitting from stones that God Himself had illuminated was probably new enough that it still felt miraculous.
But then the wind started blowing. And blowing. And blowing. They were covered by “mountain waves” and buried in “great and terrible tempests.”1 For what must have seemed like an interminable 344 days, “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land.”2
To be honest, by the time I get to that phrase—“the wind did never cease to blow”—I have to wonder if we’re missing a “Book of Mrs. Brother of Jared” that details 344 days of seasickness, the overwhelming smell of animals and excrement, and stir-crazy siblings fighting and perhaps threatening to toss the next person who loses their lunch out of the air hole to swim with the fishes.
Did the Jaredites recognize that the journey was a blessing and praise the Lord without ceasing? Yes!3
Was the journey also awful at times? It must have been! You can’t tell me that 344 days on a cramped, suffocating barge full of seasick children and animals was not incredibly, insanely hard.
The journey was a blessing. The wind was a blessing. But just because a blessing is a blessing doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.
Giving Ourselves Grace
Everyone has their own figurative winds blowing them toward the promised land. Like my experience with pregnancy, some of the winds you face may feel like blessings at times and wind at others (sending a child out on a mission, for example, or answering the call to serve in a capacity that makes you nervous). But others—health challenges, job losses, financial difficulties—may seem like nothing but roaring tempests. I think it’s possible to acknowledge stinging eyes and windburned cheeks without enrolling in the Laman and Lemuel School of Murmuring or giving the Children of Israel a run for their manna.
It’s important for us to take a page out of the Jaredites’ story and intentionally practice gratitude for our blessings.4 But we can also concede that “Everything to do with becoming more like the Savior is difficult,”5 and take comfort in this reminder from President Jeffrey R. Holland:
“Even if you cannot always see that silver lining on your clouds, God can, for He is the very source of the light you seek. He does love you, and He knows your fears. He hears your prayers. He is your Heavenly Father, and surely He matches with His own the tears His children shed.”6
Heavenly Father knows that sometimes blessings feel like seasickness and constant windstorms. Sometimes the only way we’ll be able to see them as blessings is to wait patiently for the sunlight to filter in.
In some cases, it may not be until you stumble onto the solid, dry earth of the promised land that you, like the Jaredites, will “shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over [you].”7
So it’s OK if, right now, you see the difficulty more than the blessing. The sunlight will come. The light will filter in. Someday, somewhere, the wind will cease.
Just keep your face turned toward the Son.
Other articles you might enjoy:
▶ A genius way to explain why dramatic experiences don’t make a testimony
▶ What Pres. Oaks said to his daughter that shaped her faith and life decisions
▶ Can I be both faithful and a little fearful? What the scriptures say
▶ The initiatory ordinance is beautifully relevant to daily life—here’s how
Notes
1. Ether 6:6.
2. Ether 6:8.
3. Ether 6:9.
4. Ibid.
5. Russell M. Nelson, quoted by Joy D. Jones in “An Especially Noble Calling,” Ensign, May 2020, 16.
6. Jeffrey R. Holland, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come” Ensign, November 1999, 36.
7. Ether 6:12.
