Remember, this little series is not meant to represent every girl in my situation.
This is just the confessions of THIS girl.
Confession #2:When you stop praying for what your heart really wants,
your heart stops wanting what you weren't willing to pray for.
Several years ago, I found myself in an ended relationship with my little heart just hurting. It hadn't lasted long but I had let myself think that it might really be something. And I felt so foolish I had let my heart "go there" when it was all ended.
I might have been sitting on a coach shortly after with a woman whom I paid to listen to me talk (aka a really great therapist) and she said something I'll never forget:
"Don't be worried about letting yourself feel how much you wanted something so good. You should be worried when you stop feeling how much you want it."
It's no secret that I spent a lot of my life
struggling with the concept of FAITH. It was the basis of my 2011 TOFW message, "The Faith Experiment". Because of that struggle and the work I did to hear truth the Lord was waiting for me to understand, I've had no choice but to look at my life differently.
Or rather the way I've approached my life.
I believe that truths, when turned around are also truths.
For example...
"Wickedness never was happiness"
"Happiness never was wickedness"
"No unclean thing can enter in the kingdom of God"
"The kingdom of God has no unclean thing"
And ...
"Faithful desires kill doubt"
"Doubt kills faithful desires"
What? You've never heard that one before?
Well, what I have learned to be the process
of exercising faith in Alma 32, has also helped me understand the process of doubt
and what that can do to our little hearts.
We
learn in Alma 32 that "even if ye can no more than desire to believe",
that is enough for our faith. That desire creates belief.
That belief creates a willingness to experiment.
That experiment produces knowledge.
So what happens when you go the other way?
When the lack of knowledge or the lack of "evidence of things not seen" exists?
And you look around and feel like every attempt to "experiment upon the word" hasn't worked out?
And so you stop experimenting.
And then you stop believing.
And then you lose the desire to believe at all.
I spent too much time in my late 20s and early 30s NOT praying for what I really wanted. I had already experienced enough disappointments with my heart and enough failures with my body that false beliefs about myself, my life and God's plan for me took root. Those false beliefs snuffed out any desire I had to keep praying and hoping and wanting.
"I don't want to set God up to have the chance to disappoint me again. It's better if I just don't ask."
Simply put, I stopped praying for things to be different and because of that, I eventually stopped wanting them to be.
I lost my desire.
Or rather, I lost my desire for one thing and as a result actually started wanting something else.
No one wants to admit they like where they are when where they are isn't great.
But, that's the ugly truth of staying put.
I really believe that.
At least for me, it's time to acknowledge that all those years I spent living beneath who I was capable of being? I chose that. I stopped praying for what I wanted (marriage, children, a healthier body) and as I result I actually stopped wanting those things.
Doubt that anything would change took over.
And that doubt killed my desire to change anything.
I had a desire to change.
That desire created a belief that I could ("even if you have no more than a desire to believe").
That belief created a willingness to experiment (and oh what an experiment it was!).
That experiment produced knowledge that I really could become a different woman than I was.
And prayer was (and continues to be) a mighty force in that transformation.
But, I had to be willing to pray and tell the Lord exactly what I wanted...exactly what I needed.
And the same has been true for my heart.
And I've been learning that for the past couple of years as well.
It's oh so hard to let yourself want something that seems to have been proven time and time again to not be in the cards for you.
It's oh so hard to say it out loud, even to a loving Father in Heaven, and put it out there one more time.
It is so much easier to just stop asking for it.
But I really felt like this was the year I was supposed to give it everything I had and I really felt like I did. I came to the Lord with everything I had. So, last Spring when it seemed it was not in the cards for me yet again, I was just all out of faith. I was all out of belief. And then, frighteningly enough, there was one day when I could feel I was all out of desire.
Doubt had killed my faithful desires.
On that particularly difficult day last May, Tammy said something to me that stopped me in my tracks.
"God will not waste a miracle on a doubter."
My little heart was pricked with truth.
I felt a shiver come over me.
I knew she was right.
If I wanted a miracle in my life,
If I wanted all the things I've always wanted,
I had to be willing to believe and try again.
We cannot ever stop petitioning the Lord for the righteous desires of our heart.
When we stop petitioning, we run the risk of stop wanting.
And I believe that on so many levels, we really do get the life we want.
That doesn't mean we get everything we want.
I'm not naive enough to think that.
Promise.
But...it's a powerful thing to look at your life and think about what you really desire for your life.
I don't care if it's marriage or children or weight loss or a new job or a healed relationship.
Whatever it is...
Desire.
Believe.
Experiment.
Receive.
We just can't afford to stop wanting what we want if we really want it.
Because the tragedy isn't not getting what we want.
It's not wanting it anymore.
Posts
