In continual remembrance

Here are some things I recently wrote to my daughter, who is getting close to the end of her mission:

…I hope you’re feeling good about your mission as everything is winding down. I was just looking through the last several entries in my journal before I came home. Things went well and I had a lot of good experiences, but it was also clear I was battling some feelings of inadequacy about my mission.

If I could go back, I would not worry so much and be so hard on myself. Looking back over the nearly 25 years that I’ve been home, I feel like I’ve come up short in most things in my life. And maybe that’s okay, as long as I don’t get down on myself about that. As long as we do it in a healthy way, I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing to feel like we’re always coming up short.

I think it’s not such a bad thing to recognize our constant need for God. In mortality, I think we’ll always feel inadequate. And in the end, when the Lord redeems us, we will have a perfect knowledge that we could not have made it without him. It makes me think of what Nephi says: “...my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.” It also makes me think of this:

“…ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led…. After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, am God: and that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction; yea, that I did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem.”

It also makes me think of the following: “…if it so be that they [Nephi’s brothers] rebel against me, they shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in the ways of remembrance.”

I really would prefer that life get continually easier and easier. But, it seems that’s not the way it works. Instead, we’re continually given challenges to keep us in remembrance of our need for God and that it’s only through him that we can cross this great deep. This is what makes of us a redeemed soul. The Lord delivers us time and time again. And when we reach the other end, we know that we couldn’t have made it without him.

I hope you can feel that this is not an ending, but a beginning. You’ve learned so much. And now, I feel like you’re just leaving the MTC and beginning the greatest labor of your life. It won’t be easy. But, we should rejoice that it’s not easy. Because, it’s in the difficulty of our life that God manifests his great power unto deliverance. That’s why Nephi, in the midst of his anguish over his own inadequacy said:

“...nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded my enemies…. he hath heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge by visions in the nighttime.”

…I’m grateful that you served a mission. I think it’s been good for our whole family. It’s been a service, not just to the people you’ve helped on your mission, but also to us.