My mind was cluttered in the evening after the children and I came back from our dinner at the Medan Selera. It was going worse when I think of Alvin was not in the home as according to him, went for outstation.
All of the negative thoughts, all the doubts were flushing into my mind and heart like a brown rushing water. Where would he be? Is he really there as what he had told us? Is there another woman or the same woman again this time?…
After taking my bath, I could not stand but I talked to Issac what I felt inside my mind and heart when he was sitting at the study desk looking at his hand phone. He just looked at me with the puzzle and helpless impression, and keep quiet listening to his mum murmuring.
I sat down on the floor, taken both my small pocket notebook and my action book, browsing through the talk yesterday about Alma and Alma the younger. Suddenly Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk ‘Remember Lot’s Wife’ came to my mind. I just look it up in the YouTube Channel, thus just play the video.
I listened to the talk while trying to read through yesterday talk, but Elder Holland’s humour way indeed attracted me all the time and I started to put down the things I was doing and listened carefully to his address.
Issac was sitting next to me, and both of us were enjoying Elder Holland’s talk. When both of us listen till this point of the the talk,
“That happens in marriages, too, and in other relationships we have. I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counselled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.”
Issac stopped the YouTube, he smiled and looked at me and said, “Mum, you know, every time when you tell me all these stuffs, my heart will thinking like… here we go again.”
He pointed his finger to my hand phone which he paused the YouTube, “Now, you should learned from this talk, it is already pass and it is ancient wound you know?” Issac winked at me.
I cannot help but laugh! It seems as this little child of mine already grown up become like a little man!
I can see clearly the happiness or rather the relief in his eyes, signally to me as his heart was jumping in joy as “Yes! This is what I needed the most and God had saved me from my crazy mum!”
Issac touched my hand phone's screen with his finger, then the talk continued,
“Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!”
“Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, “Yeah, I remember it. Do you remember this?” Splat.”
We looked at each other and laugh again. I paused the video again, and wanted to share with Issac my thought.
“Issac, do you know that this talk I had already listened sometime ago and I listened so many times. I do not know why when I sat down just now just after talked to you, this talk came into my mind. It is just like the Lord knows you and wants to share with me. You know what I mean right?”
He just nodded his head and smiles. I guess both of us experience the same tender mercies moments from the Lord, but it was different things we learned or testimony that we gained for both of us.
We continued for the rest of the video:
“And soon enough everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what God, our Father in Heaven, pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.”
“Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is worse than Miniver Cheevy, and in some ways worse than Lot’s wife, because at least there he and she were only destroying themselves. In these cases of marriage and family and wards and apartments and neighbourhoods, we can end up destroying so many, many others.”
“Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement for us than to do as the Lord Himself said He does: “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42).”
“The proviso, of course, is that repentance has to be sincere, but when it is and when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebasing someone with their earlier mistakes—and that “someone” might be ourselves. We can be so hard on ourselves, often much more so than with others!”
“Now, like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book of Mormon, bury your weapons of war, and leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which is harder than to forgive: Forget. And when it comes to mind again, forget it again.”
“You can remember just enough to avoid repeating the mistake, but then put the rest of it all on the dung heap Paul spoke of to those Philippians. Dismiss the destructive and keep dismissing it until the beauty of the Atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future and the bright future of your family and your friends and your neighbours. God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. That is the thing Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did Laman and Lemuel and a host of others in the scriptures.”
“This is an important matter to consider at the start of a new year—and every day ought to be the start of a new year and a new life. Such is the wonder of faith and repentance and the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ…”
Just before I sat down on the floor, I looked at my pocket notebook as it was totally blank and I wonder if today there is not such or single spiritual moment for me to jot down or for me to feel grateful for?
And now, here it comes… reminds me that He is there with me all the time. This experience teaches me that, He is with my children all the time when they need His guidance too.
I love these final few quotes from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland:
“To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.”
“…When we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives…”
“…Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever…”
I am so grateful for the tender mercy experience that both Issac and me have this evening. It does filled and warmth my heart!
