"Thou Art Still Chosen:" A Letter To Those Who Have Given Up

Tonight I am writing to a special group of people, people who will always hold a place dear to my heart. I am speaking to those who are on the edge of giving up. I am speaking to those who feel they no longer can return from the path they have chosen to take. I am speaking to those whose hearts have been broken and whose spirits weigh heavy with the regret of past or current decisions. I choose to speak to you, my beloved brothers and sisters, because not so long ago at all I was in your shoes. Approximately eighteen months ago I was teetering on the edge of falling headlong into an abyss I had created for myself. This great chasm was filled with self-disgust, doubt, and despair. I had dug it over time during a “spiritual drought,” a time in which I lost sight of my divine potential, and made choices which left my heart shattered and my soul deprived and starving for light and love. I truly wanted to change, I had tried countless times to turn away from my habits, and I had failed each time. I felt like I had nowhere else to go with my life, that the person I had become was who I would be stuck as for the rest of my existence. I could not even stand to look at myself in the mirror. Truly, I had reached a point in which I had given up on myself, and I felt as if I had trapped myself in a self-imposed prison, which I had built out of bricks of sin. It was the darkest time of my entire life. I cannot recall a single instance so terrifically horrifying as what I felt everyday of my life during that time. I could hardly bear waking up in the morning, for I knew that day I would shame myself more, and I was terrified to go to sleep at night, aware that my dreams were often brutally honest recollections and reminders of the path I had chosen for myself. I had hit rock bottom. Hard. And yet, today the girl who writes this is a completely different woman. Who was once hopeless, is now full of hope. Who was once dwelling in utter darkness, is now filled with a most glorious light. Who was once unable to love her broken self, is now amazed and healed by the love of her Heavenly Father and brother, Jesus Christ. Eighteen months ago, I could barely imagine going to church meetings and not feeling guilty and miserable. Today, I went back to the temple after receiving my personal endowment last week, and I will be leaving in less than three weeks to serve a mission among the beloved people of the Nebraska Omaha mission. My friends, if you need evidence that no one is worth giving up on, look at me. I am living proof of the transforming power of the Atonement of our Savior.

And that is why I speak to you today; because I have been where you are and I have been rescued by the Lord. The sweetness of what I feel now is beyond all description, and I know without a doubt that you also can feel this way. You too can be saved. You too can be overwhelmed with the love and confidence your Heavenly Father has in you. Yes, He has confidence in you, just as I do. He has confidence that you will turn from your path. He has confidence that you will come to Him. And, perhaps most importantly, He has confidence that you will work great miracles for good in the future. I know this is truth. I feel it more deeply than I have words to explain. Just because you have been lost does not mean you cannot be found. It never has and it never will.  It is never too late to be found by the Good Shepherd. You can never wander too far, or stray into landscapes too dark and dangerous for His loving eyes to see you, and for His loving arms to scoop you up and carry you back to safety. No effort is too much to the Lord when it comes to saving His precious ones. You are precious. Let me repeat that. You. Are. Absolutely. Precious. No matter how many agonizing mountains He has to climb, no matter how many deep and pitch black valleys He must navigate through, no matter how many bone-freezing rivers and scorching deserts he must overcome, He will do it. Because you are worth it. You are precious. And not only will He suffer all these things, He does it with a smile on His face and love in His heart. Never does our brother and Savior begrudgingly reach out His hand to pull one of us up from the depths, thinking to Himself how pathetically we got ourselves into that mess. Not once has He, nor will He ever, complain that we once again need His help. I promise you that. His love and patience, like His Atonement, are infinite. We did not come to this Earth to be perfect. We came to this Earth to be proved. He knows that we will stumble and fall. That’s just part of the deal. But the wonderful thing about Christ is that when we stumble and fall, He is right there, just waiting to pick us up, dust us off, and help us choose a path, which next time may not be so perilous. Can you hear what I am saying? We could fall one million times a day, and He would be there waiting for the one million and first time, because He sees us perfectly, and He knows that eventually, when He picks us up and sets us aright, that one day we will learn to dodge those obstacles, to pick paths that are not quite so dangerous, and we will learn to lean on Him as our guide and friend.  He will NEVER give up on you. Never. He has not doubted you, He does not now doubt you, and never will he ever doubt you in the future. The Savior of the world, the most powerful and wonderful being in the universe and eternities, has faith in you. He believes in you. Isn’t that incredible? If He has not given up on us, why should we ever give up on ourselves? We have the greatest individual who ever existed on our side, helping us every step of the way. You have not yet lost His grace or your divine potential. I love Doctrine and Covenants section three for this reason. In this section, we read the revelation given to Joseph Smith Junior, after he had allowed Martin Harris to borrow the manuscript, against the warnings of the Lord, resulting in 116 precious pages of scripture to be lost. What a tragic consequence! This was undoubtedly an excruciatingly painful time for the Prophet, as he recognized the effects of his decision, a time in which he must have questioned whether or not he was still qualified to do the will of the Lord, and perhaps he even doubted whether or not the Lord even wanted him to be a part of the work anymore. And yet, in verse ten, we read these incredible words from the Lord: “But remember, God is merciful; therefore, repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work” (D&C 3:10.) I love the way that is worded. Thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work. Absolutely breathtaking.  Brothers and sisters, my dear friends, I testify to you that you still have an integral place in our Heavenly Father’s infinite plan. No matter what you have done, you still are chosen, and called to the work. Don’t you dare give up. The Lord hasn’t given up on you and you should not either. You are worth more than that. Cry unto Him and He will come unto you in your time of need and He will save you. Please, don’t you give up on yourself. You have miracles to work. You have mountains to move and seas to part. You have lives to bless and eternities to shape. You need not have lived a perfect life to be a part of this perfect gospel. If that was the case, our church buildings would be completely empty each Sunday. I am begging you, pleading with you, don’t you ever give up on yourself. Your experiences and wanderings may give you the insight and sensitivity to touch hearts in ways that perhaps no one else can. Perhaps you can find the lonely wanderers because you yourself have walked those same dark paths. You are needed and you are infinitely important. You have a divine potential to reach, and the Lord will help you reach it, if you only ask Him. Don’t you ever, ever, ever give up on yourself. You are precious. You are beloved. You are magnificent. Forgive yourself, and move on. Choose today a better path. It’s hard, I know. I absolutely know how difficult it is to turn away from habits engrained deeply within you. But it is so worth it. Yes, you may stumble and regress once, twice, one million times, but don’t you dare give up. You keep trying, you keep praying, and you keep asking the Lord to help you and I promise you that one day you will look back, just as I did today, and you will be overwhelmed by the complete change the Lord has made in your life…and you will be overwhelmed by what He has enabled you to accomplish, and you will be excited for the miracles He will have you work in the days to come. I promise that with my entire heart. The fourth chapter of Second Nephi is one of my absolute favorites, it is Nephi’s Psalm, and it is beautiful. Please, read it if you have a chance. I wish I could include all of the verses here, but I will highlight a small excerpt which brought me the courage to move on.

“O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in His condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?

 And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh? Yea, why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why am I angry because of mine enemy?

Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.” (2 Nephi 4: 26-28)

My courageous friends, don’t you give up on yourself. No matter what may weigh heavily on your soul, I beg of you to keep the faith in yourself. Your Savior and Heavenly Father have. You still can be a great and powerful force for good in this world. You can bring light to others in the dark. You can feel perfect love envelop you completely. Don’t you dare give up. Thou art still chosen.

The Bridge Builder: Thoughts on Justice and Mercy

Every day, you and I make decisions. And each action we take is accounted for in Heaven; whether it be righteous, or less than perfect. It is not any profound revelation that we, as human beings who are subject to the wiles of the natural man, make mistakes. We play in mud puddles, we trip and fall, and we often soil our pristine white clothing. I personally fall short of my vast eternal potential every single day. We are not perfect. The Lord knows that. He loves us, and just as a parent knows their child well enough to predict that, if left alone in a room with easily accessible candy, the child will spoil their dinner, He knows us and our weaknesses well enough to know that we will make mistakes…and a lot of them at that. He loves us through our imperfections and wants us to live with Him, and yet, in 1 Nephi 10: 21 we are told that “Wherefore, if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment seat of God, and no unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever.” This is a bitter pill to swallow. In Matthew 5:48, we also find this statement: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

I know at times in my life, I have considered this paradox. The Lord knows we are imperfect, and yet he demands perfection of us in order to gain entrance into His presence. He must be perfect in his justice, and cannot allow that any impure individual to return to Him. As much as He loves us, and may desperately want to allow us to live with Him, He cannot. Because He is a perfect being, so must He be perfectly just. At times, I have viewed this as unfair. I can remember crying out to my Father in Heaven “Why do you ask so much of me when you know I am not capable of meeting the bar that you have set? Do you want me to fail? Do you even want me to come home to you again?” In hindsight, I recognize that those questions were juvenile, and short-sighted. But I feel like there is a possibility that they may be more universal than I thought at the time. Everyone experiences, at some point or another, the bitter recognition of their shortcomings, and the ache of realizing that we are no longer qualified to dwell with our Beloved Father again.  That may be the darkest, most empty feeling the human soul is capable of experiencing. It is cold, and it is excruciating. We often cannot fully comprehend and reconcile the need for justice and consequences of our actions, with the fact that we have an immensely loving Father in Heaven who wants us to succeed. It is not difficult to see this commandment of perfection as harsh and callous, and allow our views of our Eternal Father to be skewed by such incomplete views of the concept of justice. With our limited vision and understanding, we often forget that we have a bridge to perfection. This bridge is called mercy, and it comes through the Atonement of our brother and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Mercy is the compassionate treatment of a person, greater than what is deserved.  The Savior satisfied the demands of justice with mercy when He stood in our place and suffered the penalty for our sins. Alma 34:14-16 sums this concept up better than I ever could in my own insufficient words.

“And behold, this is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal. “

“And thus He shall bring salvation to all those who shall believe on His name; this being the intent of this last sacrifice, to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice, and bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance.”

“And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal plan of redemption.” 

How incredible this is to me, that the Savior would sacrifice His own perfect, blameless life for someone as stubborn in their sins as I am. That He loves me enough to allow me a way to be “encircled in the arms of safety,” when the decisions I have made have been dangerous or could have been spiritually fatal without Him there to make up the difference and help me to become perfected. I love the imagery of being “wrapped up in the arms of safety.” As children, when we touch a hot stove and get burned, the first thing a loving parent often does, is scoop us up in their arms and comfort us, as they take the necessary steps to heal the wound and stop the hurt. In that moment, when our fingers are stinging and we have tears in our eyes and a wail in our throats, it does not matter if our parents have warned us a million times not to touch the hot surface, their first reaction is to comfort us and make us feel safe once again. They have mercy on us, their stubborn, rebellious children. And while justice would dictate that if we have been warned, then we must suffer the consequences on our own, but the mercy of their love overcomes that and we are wrapped in loving arms, and a healing balm is applied to our wounds.

As I consider this concept in an eternal perspective, I wonder what I have done to deserve this amazing grace. And the answer is that I have done nothing for it. And I will never be able to earn it, or repay that debt which I owe to Christ. But that is not what He asks. He simply asks us to believe on His name and practice faith unto repentance. What a small output of effort, for such an enormous and priceless treasure. “He offereth Himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.” (2 Nephi 2:7) We are receiving a literal sacrifice of a perfect being to save us from an eternity of torment, guilt and woe; and what is our price? A broken heart and a contrite spirit. I cannot even comprehend the enormity of the benevolence of the Atonement fully at this time, and I pray that one day I will have a perfect understanding of it. But I do know, in my young and limited view, that the cost is greatly disproportionate to the gift we receive.

Elder Marion D. Hanks once said “the specialty of the Savior is mercy.” When we purchase any sort of goods, we tend to want the best quality we possibly can. We want to know that the craftsman is a specialist in his specific trade, and that the item we are purchasing is of the highest caliber; but that kind of specialty often comes with a heavy price-far beyond our checkbook’s ability. So imagine, when selecting the builder of our path that will allow us to cross from a flawed and filthy state to the glory of the presence of God, would you want a specialist in building bridges of mercy? Would you want the very best man for the job? One whose work is known for it’s perfection and unending strength, no matter how much weight and stress is put on it? I think the answer is an obvious and resounding “yes!” And now imagine, that as you are awaiting to hear the exorbitantly high price that you will most likely have to pay for this peace of mind, that the builder turned to you and said “I will build you this bridge. I will offer you safety and peace, and an ability to cross over unto the banks of perfection for all eternity; no matter how many times you have to use it or how heavy your load is, I promise that it will not fail you. All I ask in return, is that you come unto me in humility when you have fallen short, and when you realize that you cannot even drag yourself across it on your own, and you allow me to pick you up, wipe your tears and hold you close, and carry you across that bridge myself.” What an incredible act of love. The Savior is, in fact, a specialist in mercy. His sacrifice satisfies God’s need for perfect justice, and perfects us so that we can live in His presence again.

I think one of the most powerful testimonies of the beauty and majesty of the Savior’s merciful sacrifice came from Elder Holland’s talk titled “Laborer’s in the Vineyard” from the April 2012 General Conference, and while it is a bit lengthy, I would like to include portions of it. “…I heard many years ago that surely the thing God enjoys most about being God, is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don’t expect it and often feel they don’t deserve it…However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have NOT traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement  shines….there is nothing that you have done that cannot be undone. There is no problem which you cannot overcome. There is no dream that in the unfolding of time and eternity cannot yet be realized. Even if you feel you are the lost and last laborer of the eleventh hour, the Lord of the vineyard still stands beckoning. “Come boldly to the throne of grace, and fall at the feet of the Holy One of Israel. Come and feast without money and without price at the table of the Lord.” Do it for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid an unfathomable price for the future He wants you to have.”

I add my testimony to that of Elder Holland and countless others; through the incredibly merciful Atonement of Jesus Christ, I know that the justice of our Heavenly Father can be fulfilled and we can be perfected to live with Him again. I am grateful for the expectation of perfection that we have, but more than that I am eternally grateful for the ability we have been given to reach it through our loving brother and Savior.

God be with you till we meet again, 

Alyssa