Spiritual Sunday - questions and maybe some answers

I love this picture and use it often.  The symbol of the Savior teaching a woman at his feet makes it feel very personal to me.  I oftentimes feel like I am her.

Yesterday was interesting.  From pacing a beautiful and stellar race to heartache.  

I'll post about the race another day.

Not today.

As soon as I got to my car and headed back home, I had missed calls and a text with the important "call me asap"

Getting word that a mutual friend had unexpectedly lost her husband.

LuvPilot was too young.  His wife and sons are too young.

Why on earth would this be a good idea?  In what part of what great plan does this fit into?

Once I've gotten home, settled and now awake in the wee quiet hours of the morning, my mind is full of questions, reflections and quiet comforting thoughts.

2012 seemed to be a year of heartache.  In the early months, losing some good friends to the other side felt like my capacity had been reached when added to the challenges of the previous couple of years.  The rest of the 2012 began the workings of a new normal.

Life did assume a new normal.  At least for those of us on the perimeter.  We slowly adjusted to the large gaps left in our worlds, comforted the best we could comfort and helped our friends move forward the best we knew how.

The bleak winter months have a way of sucking one back into those sad feelings though.  And yesterday, to hear of another friend who is suffering, stirs that pot of emotions again.

This morning my mind started off with so many why's.  

Why do people need to feel such heartache?

Why do challenges such as death need to be tackled with young people?

Why does this now have to be with them the rest of their lives?

Why must a vacancy be there that will never be filled?

Why do they have to do this?

I don't know.

Did anyone feel that when I lost my Dad?  Did anyone wonder why did young mCat have to deal with all that at such a young age?

Those two thoughts have never before over the past 30 or so years, ever occurred to me.  Ever.  It just was what it was.  I had no realm of thinking beyond what was inside of me at the time.  I didn't even wonder or have it cross my mind what someone else might be feeling for me.

I then ask myself, for my young friends who are grieving now, is it the same for them?

I don't know. 

I do know this, if I had/have any way of instilling my heartache, sorrow, condolences, prayers, love, comfort into those of my friends who are suffering - I.Would.Do.It.

If I had anyway of accurately conveying my love, my feelings of empathy, sympathy and my desire to ease their burdens to them, I would.

And then the light clicked on inside my little pea sized brain.

This must be exactly how my Savior feels.  

This must be how my Father in Heaven feels.

If there were a way to ease another's suffering, they would do it.

But remember.

In the garden, oh so many years ago, it WAS done.

The Savior took it all.  Not just our sins and imperfections and disobedience.

He took our sufferings.  Our losses.  Our heartaches.  Our physical pains.  Our overwhelming grief.

He took it, He suffered it for us, so that He would know how to give the very comfort that many of us desire to give one another.

"And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take up him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities" (Alma 7:12)

He suffered more than just our sins, because He knew that we would suffer more than just the sorrow of mistakes.  He knew we would learn heartache, grieving, physical pain, hurt feelings, loneliness, depression, anxiety, helplessness, frustration.  He knew we would feel and suffer with those things, so He took them on as well so that He could know how to comfort us.

So the answer is Him.

The Savior.  

The only one who can possibly know exactly how we feel, because He felt it first.  For us.  On behalf of us.  And I believe in a very personal way.

I cannot comprehend how it was done, but this I know.  In my heart and soul.  

It was done.

Perhaps by name.  Perhaps, he took mCat on a personal level and experienced all the things I would experience in my life.  He felt them in the exact same way that I feel them, so that He would know how to comfort me.

I believe He did that for every living soul.

For YOU.

I believe it.  I know it in a place in my heart that is deep and solid

When He tell us:

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy lade, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (Matthew 11:28-29)

He means it.  He is telling us He knows how we feel, and if we just seek Him, we will find the comfort.  Maybe not understand the answers, but comfort and peace will be ours.

And on a very personal level.

I think that is what I love the most.  So personal.  So unique.  So intimate.

As I think over the last year or so and the death and passing of friends, I realize that they were all quite unexpected.   No one was ready for it.  Some were complete and utter blindsides.  There wasn't time to prepare and "gird up our loins".

Which brings me to me final thought.

Must always be ready.  Who knows what today, tomorrow or the next will bring?

My relationship must be so close with the Savior that when the sorrow hits, He is the one I turn to instinctively and automatically.  No need to "re-address" our relationship, it's there, it's a matter of simply reaching out my hand to His (which should never be far away - always withing grasping reach) and then holding a little tighter.

And further, as a disciple of His (which I took on when I was baptized a member of His church), I also need to lend whatever comfort I can to those who need it of me in the physical ways that I can provide.  On behalf of Him.

So back to my may "why?" questions?

The only answer I find is in Him.  No one else can answer those questions for us as individuals except Him.

Because He knew what we would need to deal with, He knows why and He knows how to comfort us.

The answer is Him