When our nephew was 9, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Because we live nearby, we saw firsthand the turmoil this brought his family. Those first few days and weeks were filled with gut-wrenching shock and fear and a whole host of emotions we feel when our lives are spinning out of our control.
I was back and forth from the hospital, trying to be a support and knowing that my efforts were terribly inadequate to relieve any of their suffering. Several years earlier, my own daughter was in the NICU and I was driving back and forth in a similar manner, in the midst of my own crushing uncertainty and pain, so my empathy for them was substantial. As I walked back to my car on one of those trips, I had a momentary flash of a picture or a vision that was certainly not from my own mind. In it I saw (or felt) the Lord’s love for their family and saw that He was showering down every blessing possible to help them through this time. Although I know I was simply a conduit at that time for the message to get to them–it is so difficult to hear the Lord’s quiet assurances when our lives are in turmoil and our emotions are insistently loud–I have returned to that experience in my own extremity.
Mostly, I came to realize in an undeniable way, that although we are in the midst of adversity, we are not forgotten nor forsaken by the Lord. To the contrary, He is completely aware of us and is pouring down blessings upon us that can be largely unnoticed when our minds and hearts are consumed by our troubles and our pain. The clear impression I received was of the ‘pouring’ or ‘showering’ of blessings–not a meager token or a stingy offering, but an abundant, overwhelming giving. I somehow knew in that moment that their suffering would not be over quickly or taken away immediately, but that the outpouring from the Lord was real and present nevertheless. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1, emphasis added)
I am confident that the same is true in all of our adversity. The Lord is sincerely compassionate with our mortal emotion and extremity and is ever aware of us. “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.” (D&C 133:53) He is abundantly blessing us, even if our adversity lingers and our troubles are not taken away. Those blessings may be harder to see or comprehend when what we desperately want is release from our current anguish or uncertainty, but we can trust that He is constant in His care and will ever give us that which we most need to weather life’s storms and continue on our journey back to Him. It requires faith to keep going when we have difficulty seeing His hand in our circumstances and it requires consistent trust in His plan for us, especially when we are not getting what we want most. His promises, however, are sure. “If we are faithful in keeping our covenants, we too will one day arrive safely home and will bow before the Lord and shed tears of joy for the multitude of His tender mercies in our lives, including the sorrows that made space for more joy.” (L. Todd Budge, “Consistent and Resilient Trust,” Ensign, Nov. 2019, emphasis added) And at some point we will see that at all times He was pouring down blessings upon us.
*”Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Robert Robinson
