"My Kindness Shall Not Depart From Thee"

I'm feeling reflective today.

My second year at BYU was a very interesting year. I learned a ton!  That was the year I officially started my major and my two minors.  That was the year that I decided I wouldn't be invisible to the people in my ward.  That was the year I began being a peer mentor for Freshman Academy (now Freshman Mentoring).  That was a year that started off with a CES (Church Educational System) Devotional with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and got another dose of him with a second CES Devotional just three and a half months later.

The first talk was "Lessons From Liberty Jail" (you can read the text or get access to the video here).  Elder Holland went through the lessons Joseph Smith learned while unjustly imprisoned in Liberty Jail in 1838-9.  He made the comparison of the prison changing from just being a place of incarceration to becoming a prison-temple experience.  As Cody and I are reading the Sunday School lesson for this week, "O God, Where Art Thou?" it got me thinking about this talk.  New insight has come as I read through the first 40 or so verses in section 121 of the Doctrine and Covenants.  It has also turned my thoughts towards the 2008-2009 school year.

Little did I know on September 7, 2008 when this talk was given the impact that this devotional would have on me.  Not just the words and testimony that Elder Holland shared, but especially the closing song.  I'm not sure who actually performed in it (BYU combined choir, UVU choir, YSA stake choir?), but I loved it when I first heard it, and I loved it even more when I heard it again five months later on February 28, 2009, coming back from the temple with my friend Tara.  It had been a rough week for me. I had made some decisions that were pretty ginormous and my heart was sore about them, even though I knew the wisdom of making those decisions would be revealed to me in time.  Tara had this song on a CD and turned it on:

I can't even tell you how much this song helped buoy my spirit.  She made a copy of this song for me and I listened to it over and over and over for the next year (it was even my motivating song as I hiked the Y on my birthday that year--my birthday present to myself).

So that song has been humming around in my mind the past 12 hours since Cody and I read our scriptures together last night.  This song also brings to mind some of the scriptures that inspired this song--the parts that don't come from D&C sections 121 & 122--they are from Isaiah 54: 7-10, and it is actually in these verses where you can find the title for this hymn.

However, this isn't the only talk where Elder Holland helped me out in 2009.  He gave another CES Devotional Talk on January 13, 2009, "Remember Lot's Wife." I remember writing copious notes and feeling like he was speaking to me that cold, January Sabbath.  But then, again, I forgot about the talk as the months went on, as I found comfort in other talks and scripture.  But then Christmas 2009 rolled around.

My memory for dates can sometimes come back to me as a curse and it was doing so that December.  Dates and memories were assaulting my mind, dragging me back to questioning some of my decisions of the previous February, having me question some of the things that I knew were true about why I was still in Utah.  Late nights in Michigan that Christmas involved me searching online for relief and comfort to my soul. And that's when I stumbled across this talk again.

I remembered again that I should put my faith in my Savior and stop wondering: "Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester or a new major or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?" (from "Remember Lot's Wife") and instead take hold of Elder Holland's invitation to "'Remember Lot's Wife.' Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the 'high priest of good things to come.'"

These two incidents helped put focus into my life--through the words of a song, and the words of an Apostle--I put my trust in Heavenly Father that He would lead me, guide me, and that He was walking beside me.