President Marion G. Romney said in his 1973
Conference Address titled, Magnifying One’s
Calling in the Priesthood, that he had been challenged by the word ponder
and it’s frequent use of it in the Book of Mormon. The dictionary defines
ponder as ‘to weigh mentally, think deeply about, deliberate, meditate.’
President Romney added, “Pondering is, in my
feeling, a form of prayer. It has, at least, been an approach to the Spirit of
the Lord on many occasions.
In 3 Nephi 17:1-3 Jesus said to the multitude:
Behold, my time is at hand. I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot
understand all that my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto
you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things
which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand,
and prepare your mind for the morrow, and I come unto you again.”
Moroni closed his record by saying, “Behold, I would
exhort you that when ye shall read these things… that ye would remember how
merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men… and ponder it in your
hearts.” (Moroni 10:3)
1 Nephi 11:1 it reads “For it came to pass, after I
had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the
Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I
was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceeding high
mountain.”
When I first read President Romney’s words about how
he had been challenged by the word ponder, I got a warm fuzzy feeling, because
that was exactly how I felt as I read the word ponder in 3 Nephi 17:3. It was almost as if the word was just popping
out at me. It’s been fun reading all these other scriptures as I was getting
ready to write this blog post. They all give me the same feeling. I know that
most of these scriptures pertain to pondering more spiritual things, scripture
study, and the actual words of Christ. However, I have been working really hard
on being a more patient mother and really struggling with it. A friend
suggested that I needed to be more patient with myself and I really just let
that roll off my back without a second thought.
Then the craziest thing happened. Thursday nights before
class, a small group of us go out for Thai food. Everyone is always invited and
often more people come. We always have a great time. This week two of our usual
guys were going to be teaching following dinner. One of them locked his keys in
his car. Myself and another girl stayed and waiting ‘patiently’ while he tried
without any luck to break into his car with a very flimsy coat hanger.
Eventually we were able to get him to class in time to teach his portion. This
meant that we missed 45 minutes of our religion class. That happens to be the
class that is harder, as math comes naturally easy to me. I was feeling so
defeated and overwhelmed when we walked in as they were going around the room
reading off their answers to the group assignment. I gave up even trying to
figure out what in the world they were doing, and just listened to the
testimonies being shared. Which by the way were all fantastic … *Side note* I
LOVE my class and every single person in there is one of my favorite people in
the world and I learn so much from them each and every week. I am truly blessed.
Rant over; back to my story. The following morning,
I sat down to do my assignment but because it’s group work and I wasn’t there,
I had nothing. I really had no choice but to pick one and just do the
assignment on my own and hope to get full credit for it. The discussion topic
that I chose happened to be reading this block of scripture. And there it was
PONDER, staring at me boldly in the face. I read over this chapter several
times, with the same feeling about that word, but it wasn’t till the third or
forth time that it really clicked for me that I needed to be pondering what I
was ready. Confused still but what exactly I was supposed to be pondering, I
decided to just start where I was. And so I started with 3 Nephi 17.
The Lord really does have a sense of humor. I was
reading these passages to finish my other assignment, and now I was also
reading them to ponder them to answer a prompting that I had. The assignment
asked me to pick two of the Christ like attributes listed in this chapter and
work on them in my own life. I chose compassion and joy. It says in verse 7 “…I
have compassion upon you; my bowels are filled with mercy.” And then in verse
20 the Savior says to the multitude, “…Blessed are ye because of your faith. And
now behold, my joy is full.” I chose to work on being more compassionate toward
my children because I am already very compassionate toward others. Joy is a
hard one for me because I feel like others think it is so easy to just “choose
joy” but it’s not. I suffer from depression off and on, and so just making the
choice to choose joy doesn’t always pan out as planned. But I have learned that
the more I serve others and the more compassionate I am toward others and their
needs, the less time I have to indulge in a pity party. But really it’s not
even so much about the pity party, it’s about the fact that serving others
brings me so much joy that I don’t have place in my heart for the sadness. The
more joyful I am, the better mother I am. It all comes full circle.
Now, how does this relate to being more patient with
myself? If we had been on time to class, I would have done the group work and
never even looked at the other options given. I would have done that and been
done with it, never given the paper a second though. But that is not what
happened. I feel strongly that I was supposed to reread chapter 17 and really
ponder its words and my other assignment as well. I needed that extra reminder
to be more compassionate and to have more joy in my life. These are small
things that I can do that will in turn help me to be a more patient and loving
mother and person. I don’t believe that had I just read through these verses,
that I would have taken that away from it. I needed that different assignment
to help nudge me along. As well as the Digging Deeper video clips that we watch
to give me the insight to President Romney’s idea’s about pondering being a
form of prayer.
The moral of the story is, that just because things
don’t work out the first time like you want them too, doesn’t mean that maybe
something better is coming along. Also in these verses I read, “Behold your
little ones.” What He meant by that was to look at them closely. That was a
very tender mercy for me with the weeks of struggling I’ve been fighting so
hard to overcome. It took me back to verse 5 where Christ is telling the multitude
that he would be leaving in the morning. It says, “He cast His eyes round about
again on the multitude, and beheld they were in tears, and did look steadfastly
upon him as if they would ask him to tarry (stay) a little longer.” That verse
reminded me of another Digging Deeper video I watched by Sister Michaelene P.
Grassli called “Behold Your Little Ones.” She tells of how the multitude brought
their little ones to Christ to be taught and blessed and then asks the
question, “Do any of us ever consider serving children to be beneath us?” While
I certainly don’t feel like raising my children is beneath me, I never thought
of it as serving my children before. I actually read this amazing article last
week called Naked Love {LINK HERE} that gave me a whole new perspective on how
being a mother is serving Christ. Raising children is a service to our Lord. I
had never thought of it that way before. Or maybe I had, but just not in depth.
I never pondered it before.
I know that the Lord is so mindful of me and the way
that I learn. I know he is mindful that sometimes I have to be hit over the
head with an obvious stick before it sinks in, and this was one of those times.
I’m thankful that He didn’t give up on me, and that even though He took drastic
measures of keys getting locked in cars, I was finally able to ‘get it’ and do
all the extra work and extra reading and everything else just to have it click
that it’s all about serving my children, and being more patient with myself in
order to be more loving toward them.
I feel confident that this coming week is going to
go so much smoother, and I look forward to having a more joyful and
compassionate heart.
