In Mosiah 2:9 it
states “Open your ears that ye may hear, and your hearts that ye may
understand…”
This past week
I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to go for a run where I make the Provo
temple my half-way stop and the feeling I get when I stop there is beyond
amazing. I know I’m always posting all these uplifting quotes and always being
this happy go lucky girl but the truth is there are times where I am just like
man, I cannot do this [I especially think this when I have to do chemistry
haha]. So being able to go to the temple multiple times this past week has
really helped me humble down and open my ears to hear Him, to hear what He has
planned in my life. I don’t know about you but I have always been that person
who has their entire life planned and for those of you who know me, once I set
my mind to something there is just no going back. So having to accept the fact
that Heavenly Father has greater things planned for me has been hard. But as I
have truly prayed and truly studied the scriptures I have come to feel an
understanding in my heart just as Mosiah stated that you know this is how
things are meant to be.
It’s moments in
my life such as these where I like to look back and read the story called The
Currant Bush; it goes like this…
“I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was
run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over
six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no
currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada,
and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning
shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back
until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming
daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what
appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of
simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and
smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that
currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to
me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree
and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every
plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should
have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”
That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much
that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here,
and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a
shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush,
when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener,
for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me.
Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”
I know at times we may hit a point where we shake our fist
at Heaven and wonder why we must suffer and why we are being “punished” but I
testify that it’s when those hard times come that we should really focus on
opening our ears and our hearts and look to God so that we may hear and
understand what He wants us to learn from that experience/trial. So I encourage
all of you to focus a little more on what His plan is for each and every one of
you rather than what the plan you have for yourself.