Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock; and it shall be opened unto you. Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you...
I've always really liked the "ask and knock" scriptures. I'm always reminded of the painting where the Savior is knocking on the door waiting for someone to answer it... and there's no handle on the outside, but the reason I like this scripture is because of the last part of verse 64: "that is expedient for you." I didn't understand until about 15 months ago what this really meant. I always thought that if it something was a righteous desire and if I had enough faith that Heavenly Father would bless me with it -- and that's still true, but sometimes I think that we don't exactly know what we're praying for until we think that Heavenly Father hasn't answered our prayers.
See, about two years ago the mama and I started praying for her health. I firmly believed that Heavenly Father could bless her to have better quality of life and the health care she needed to feel better and that it was a righteous desire to want those things for her... not that she'd be cured exactly, but that she wouldn't keep deteriorating, that the doctors would know the right treatments and that she'd be able to enjoy life again.
Not even a month later she was in the hospital and a couple weeks after that she was diagnosed with cancer and then came hospice. I really wondered why this had happened. What about my prayer? What about her prayers? Hadn't she suffered enough? I was really confused. One day about three months after she passed it hit me that my prayer had been answered -- that what I had prayed so earnestly for had come to pass, just not in the way that I had intended. It was a far better way. Heavenly Father always knows the best way to answer our prayers -- the most expedient way.
Mom did more than get better -- she became free. She does enjoy life now. And while I would never, ever say that my life is better with her gone because that's just impossible, great blessings have come into my life in the last 18 months, some of which would not have been possible had Mom's health continued on the path it was on. He couldn't make her better; that wasn't the plan, BUT he could set her free and that's miraculous.
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