Roses from Ashes, Part 2

I first started keeping a journal when I was about thirteen. Mostly it was a lot of slurpy stuff about boys; I wrote pages and pages while listening to Chicago play "Color My World" and Donny Osmond sing "When I Fall in Love" in his new deep voice. I also wrote about how good I wanted to be when I grew up. I would always have fresh lemonade in the refrigerator and watch sports with my husband. I wouldn't gossip or criticize and I would always help the poor. I would have ten children who would come home from school to warm cookies and cold milk and a tender, involved, loving mother.

Then after I was married, the entries tapered off. Something about the contrast between sweet idealism and bitter reality silenced my voice. About ten years ago, however, I started writing again. This time, my entries are powerful and sharply focused. Their literary value is deeper.

My life had turned to ashes.

This isn't the time to recount painful details. In fact, I barely remember them, which is exactly the point. Looking back, almost every entry for about a year and a half tells the story of a miracle. A family is rescued, a life remade. And through it, an undeniable witness of God's love.

I want to write about the subject of suffering, not to recount my own story (which is neither unique nor extreme), but to add my few drops of understanding about why we suffer. It's simply the only way most of us learn to trust in God with all our might. It's simply the only way most of us learn the value of a human soul. It's simply the only way most of us distill the vital from the trivial. It's simply the only way most of us learn how much Jesus Christ loves us.

My Christmas reading has been from Tad Callister's The Infinite Atonement. He quotes Ezra Taft Benson, who taught: "There is no human condition--be it suffering, incapacity, inadequacy, mental deficiency, or sin--which He cannot comprehend or for which His love will not reach out to the individual." Then Callister elaborates: "This is a staggering thought...when calculating the hurt of innumerable patients in countless hospitals...the loneliness of the elderly...the hurt of hungry children, the suffering caused by famine, drought, and pestilence. Pile on the heartache of parents who tearfully plead on a daily basis for a wayward son or daughter to come back home. Factor in the trauma of every divorce and the tragedy of every abortion. Add the remorse that comes with each child lost in the dawn of life, each spouse taken in the prime of marriage. Compound that with the misery of overflowing prisons, bulging halfway houses and institutions for the mentally disadvantaged. Multiply all this by century after century of history, and creation after creation without end. Such is but an awful glimpse of the Savior's load." (p. 105)

My favorite scripture, from Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, ...to comfort all that mourn....to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness..."
--Isaiah 61: 1-3

Last week I watched as Erica lifted the box holding her mother's ashes. I've never been so close to death as when our little family buried their mother and grandmother. I'm glad for the beauty that awaits because of our Savior's Love. Beauty from ashes. Roses from ashes. Jesus is the ultimate solution. Being with Him is my ultimate resolution.

So when it gets distressing it's a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes! Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.
--from "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang"