“An eternity of cats”

Love hurts, and why it must

This one is for someone specific. Someone I love. And also for whom I ache.

Believing in general but not in specific is a test we all sometimes face.

As in,

“I believe that God loves His children…but I’m not so sure He loves me.”

Or…

“I know there’s a plan of happiness…but I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy.”

Or…

“Most people have it easier than me…I think that just means they’re more deserving than I am.”

When the tests seem never-ending and things keep getting darker and it appears our moment won’t ever arrive, giving up makes perfect sense. Why keep putting up with the pain? This has gone on long enough. I know when I’m beat. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.

Oh beloved one. Why does it have to hurt so much?

Loving God fiercely, unconditionally, unceasingly - no matter what - is to suffer. Misery? Not always, not forever - but sometimes. And almost always more than we think we can handle.

Cue Brother Brigham…

“I will now say, not only to our delegate to Congress, but to the Elders who leave the body of the Church, that the thought that all the cats and kittens were let out of the bag when brother Pratt went back last fall, and published the Revelation concerning the plurality of wives: it was thought there was no other cat to let out. But allow me to tell you, Elders of Israel, and delegates to Congress, you may expect an eternity of cats that have not yet escaped from the bag. Bless your souls, there is no end to them, for if there is not one thing, there will always be another.”

“An eternity of cats.”

Translation: As long as we’re here, there will always be more.

More tests. More tears. More trials.

Because of love. Infinite Love. Do you believe it?  To believe in a loving God who not only allows us to suffer but requires that we do so is a level of trust that demands deep roots.

To accept that the pain of rejection, mistreatment, scorn, indifference - even abuse - can all be made somehow useful, even beneficial to us…so so hard.

Several years ago, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland led a conversation with single adults during which they had the opportunity to ask him anything. One of the tender questions he was asked was why God allows those He loves to suffer. His poignant answer has stayed with me.

My version - “Who suffered more than the Savior? If protecting us from pain and sorrow is a sign of God’s love, what does that say about God’s love for His Beloved Son?”

To quote Elder Holland, “Everybody can have what they want, or they can have something better.” (If you want to skip to the section where he talks about the fact that even Jesus had to suffer, it starts at the 6:17 minute mark.)

This is the thing, the most important thing I share with you, my love. The heartache and soul-stretching and “the eternity of cats” is Jesus’s call to us, to you, to draw near to Him. He wants us close - At One with Him, even. It’s what He wants most of all. Forever without end.

Elsewhere in this same conversation Elder Holland reminds his audience, and us as well, that “salvation is not a cheap experience.” Deep waters indeed.

As I think about any I love who may be wandering in the wilderness of rejection or loneliness, my first impulse is to try somehow to shield them from the pain they’re living with.

Spencer W. Kimball’s thoughtful response to this very human impulse is instructive:

“Being human, we would expel from our lives physical pain and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort, but if we were to close the doors upon sorrow and distress, we might be excluding our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery.”

I close with a story from Carlfred Broderick. It’s from a talk he gave about adversity. I’ve quoted from the talk previously, but If you haven’t read it (and even if you have) it’s worth reading again.

My mother, I trust, did not have a typical Mormon woman's life. She married three times, but she got better at it as she went along. I've been grateful to her that she didn't stop until she got a good man. He wasn't a member of the Church when she married him, but he did join the Church and eventually became a bishop—a very good man. I'm sealed to him, and I love him. I wear his ring. He wanted me to have it because in his family when somebody died, people quarreled over the tea cups. He wanted me before he died to have the ring so no one would quarrel over it, and I could have it. I wear it with love.

He died, in some ways, in a bad way, a hard way. He was a strong man—a man who'd been a sickly youth, but he'd done some of the Charles Atlas exercises. I used to love to hear him tell about how eventually he'd turned the table on the bullies. I was one who always ran away from bullies, walked to the other side of the street and went home the other way, but I loved to hear his stories about how he'd finally gotten strong enough to take them on and beat them at their own game. I had a lot of vicarious satisfaction from his stories.

But at the end his lungs filled up with fiber so he had only five percent of his lungs to breathe with. With only five percent of the oxygen that he needed to metabolize his food, he just got weaker and weaker. His bones showed everywhere on his body. This big, beefy, all-solid-muscle man got to the point where all of his muscle had been eaten alive. I could easily carry him in my arms, although I'm not a strong man physically. He became petulant and childish because he could hardly breathe. He was constantly asphyxiated. He could hardly eat or go to the bathroom because he didn't have the oxygen to close his mouth that long. What a strain to see this strong, good man waste away.

A week before he died I asked him for a father's blessing. He could reach over only one hand because he couldn't find a position where he could breathe and get both hands together. He gave me a blessing; I'd never had one in my life before. With one hand, he gave me a father's blessing, which I treasure. Then I asked him—and it was more talking than he had done for a long time in one space—I asked, "Vic, what have you learned from this six months of wasting away?"

He said, "Patience; I was never patient. The Lord has taught me patience. I wanted to die six months ago, and he left me. I've had to wait upon him. You know those stories I used to tell?"

"Yes, the ones I liked so well."

"Son, those aren't good stories; they're full of revenge. They're not loving stories. I repent of them."

That man did not waste those six months. How many of us would have gotten bitter at God? "Why don't you take me? I've done everything; all I want to do is come home." That man spent those months being refined. I know he's presiding today over his family. We've done genealogy for his forebears and sent them up to him to work on in the spirit world. I know he presides over them today, and I know he's a better president of his familial branch in the spirit world than he was a bishop, and he was a good bishop.

But, I know he was refined by his pain, by his adversity. He needed to go through that suffering. He could have been embittered; he could have been destroyed. His faith could have soured and left him, but he chose to learn from his pain. I do not want you to think that it was the pain that was good. It was the man that was good and that made the pain work for him, as indeed our Savior did.

So, dearest ones, although I don’t want you to suffer, if you are, you don’t suffer alone.

Again from Elder Holland:

Katie Lewis is my neighbor. Her older brother, Jimmie, is battling leukemia. But like the faithful Latter-day Saints they are, the Lewises turned to God with urgency and with faith and with hope. They fasted and prayed, prayed and fasted. And they went again and again to the temple.

One day Sister Lewis came home from a temple session weary and worried. As she entered her home, four-year-old Katie ran up to her with love in her eyes and a crumpled sheaf [stack] of papers in her hand. Holding the papers out to her mother, she said enthusiastically, “Mommy, do you know what these are?”

Sister Lewis smiled through her sorrow and said, “No, Katie. I don’t know what they are. Please tell me.”

“They are the scriptures,” Katie beamed back, “and do you know what they say?”

Sister Lewis knelt down to her level and said, “Tell me, Katie. What do the scriptures say?”

“They say, ‘Trust Jesus.’”

Sister Lewis said that as she stood back up, she felt arms of peace encircle her weary soul and a divine stillness calm her troubled heart.

In a world of discouragement, sorrow, and sin, in times when fear and despair seem to prevail, I too say, “Trust Jesus.” Believe that He can lift mankind from its bed of affliction [trouble], in time and in eternity.