It’s no secret that I’ve struggled greatly for most of the last year and a half.  Depression has gotten the better of me for a lot of that time and pains, difficulties, setbacks, and heartache that would have only been a mild irritant under normal circumstances have stacked up and thrown me well off balance — leaving me unstable.

Last Sunday, I was sitting in fast and testimony meeting listening to the traditional flow of shared testimony and experience with no intention of taking part in more than a strictly passive sense.  Sundays, in particular, have been very hard for me, and last Sunday was no exception.  All I wanted was to crawl in a hole and sleep until Monday.  The last thing on my mind was sharing anything with anyone.  However, what I want rarely had any bearing on what actually occurs, and this was no exception.  I spent several minutes convincing myself that the promoting I received was authentic, and a few more trying to rationalize ignoring it.  Ultimately, I submitted.

Generally speaking, I like talking to an audience, and have no issues sharing a message.  However, what I was prompted to say was something I didn’t want to share.  I didn’t want to air my feelings and struggles in public, but that was exactly what I was being directed to do.   Standing there in front of a ward full of strangers who knew me as nothing more than Liz’s husband who left his wife and family alone for seven months immediately after moving in, I was called on to admit how I felt and what I’d been through — even if in an abbreviated form.

However, I was not there to complain.  The details of my struggles remain my own.  However, the part I needed to share depended on what bit of struggling I did share.  This year has taught me to be empathetic to those who decide it’s easier to believe that the answer to the question “why” is that there is no God, and that it is all just random chance.  It would seem be easier to give up everything rather than believe in a God who could inflict such pain on one who he nominally loves.  Standing in front of that congregation as an emotional wreck, I testified that this view was very short sighted.  While I can understand how one could reach that conclusion, and how it could be appealing to just give up faith in exchange for not wondering why anymore, I couldn’t bring myself to take that step.  As much as it might temporarily ease some pain, I am perfectly confident that it is wrong.  While I don’t understand the purpose in pain, I do have hope that there are several, and that they are all worth it.  Even seemingly pointless suffering has a purpose, and I testified that I was certain we would see and understand that in it’s fullness in the end.  I declared that I have faith in the Lord’s timing, unbounded love, and deliberate purpose.

I didn’t know it at the time, but there were many more there beyond myself who needed to hear that.  One of my young men had been admitted to the hospital with what was reportedly a minor bug, but I found out later that the situation was very serious and the family was struggling.  Another thanked me for reminding them their fight with an aggressive cancer had a point.  The most poignant example took a week to evolve.  A friend confided in me that his wife’s health had been rough lately, and that she had been diagnosed with a heart condition just recently.  He was confident that it was treatable, but was obviously weighed down by the reality of his present.  I shared with him a little of my experience when Liz got sick, and we parted ways.

Yesterday morning Liz got a phone call telling her that our friend had died that night of her heart condition.  Her husband had been out of town.  This fantastic 31 year old wife and mother was called home to heaven and her husband now faces the full anguish that I only contemplated several years ago.  My heart aches for him and his children.  I doubt anything I said will help him.  Logic and reason cannot penetrate that kind of sorrow, but I think that above all else I needed the reminder.  Grief and pain exist in a very real way, and cannot be compared between sufferers, and much of what happens makes no sense given our mortal perspective, but I do believe there is another, more perfect, perspective where all this makes sense.