"Perfect people don't need a Savior."
The words entered my heart and remained, filling my soul with light, love and warmth. Although they were spoken clearly, I couldn't yet decipher what they meant for me personally.
It was as if my heart had come home; hearing the words that it had yearned for for so long.
Week after week I have attended church, making it a very important routine in my life. However, today was different. God knew exactly what I needed and how to give it to me, in a way that I would accept. He always does. But today, my heart was finally ready to receive it.
How many times have I heard, "The Savior loves you perfectly, He knows what hurts your heart" and thought, "Maybe for other people, but not for me. I've got to get through this life by my own strength and grit."
But today, I felt that He does indeed love me perfectly, and I know that He knows what hurts my heart. He knows what my fears are as I embark into new stages of life, and He knows the outcome of my story.
My fears are still very real, and my trials still exist. But it helps to be reminded that even though the Savior is not a woman, somehow He still understands what it is like to be in my shoes. He comprehends each woman's sorrows, fears, failures, joys, and challenges. And He has made a way for all of us to make it through and return home to Him. He wants me to rely on Him. And I need to rely on Him, more than ever before.
This is the quote that touched my heart, and opened it again to the Savior's warmth and love:
"We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
The words entered my heart and remained, filling my soul with light, love and warmth. Although they were spoken clearly, I couldn't yet decipher what they meant for me personally.
It was as if my heart had come home; hearing the words that it had yearned for for so long.
Week after week I have attended church, making it a very important routine in my life. However, today was different. God knew exactly what I needed and how to give it to me, in a way that I would accept. He always does. But today, my heart was finally ready to receive it.
How many times have I heard, "The Savior loves you perfectly, He knows what hurts your heart" and thought, "Maybe for other people, but not for me. I've got to get through this life by my own strength and grit."
But today, I felt that He does indeed love me perfectly, and I know that He knows what hurts my heart. He knows what my fears are as I embark into new stages of life, and He knows the outcome of my story.
My fears are still very real, and my trials still exist. But it helps to be reminded that even though the Savior is not a woman, somehow He still understands what it is like to be in my shoes. He comprehends each woman's sorrows, fears, failures, joys, and challenges. And He has made a way for all of us to make it through and return home to Him. He wants me to rely on Him. And I need to rely on Him, more than ever before.
This is the quote that touched my heart, and opened it again to the Savior's warmth and love:
"We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
Let me go further. There is nothing you have
experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound
level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through
pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the
immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about
rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples
were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your
five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader,
when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows
your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old,
when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your
seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a
quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your
former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your
fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for
two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that.
He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He
came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living,
and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or
shocked.
He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our
guilt and our grief."
-Chieko N. Okazaki-
