Write at the Heart

Every week when we’d visit my grandparents, my oma would ask if I brought my piano books so I could play for her. If I’m honest, it annoyed me a bit because I really just wanted to watch TV. But we were close and I loved her dearly, so I played. She was on dialysis, and it wasn’t going well. The sicker she got, the softer she spoke, and with her thick German accent it became so hard to communicate! I felt so frustrated because she’d try to talk to me and I could barely understand her. But when I played music, we were on the same page. We understood. I started playing for her every chance I could. Sometimes she’d start sobbing in the middle of a song, startling me. I remember specifically she would cry when I played “Traumerei” by Schumann. “Traumerei” means “dreaming” in German. She’d say, “It’s so beautiful.” It still chokes me up. I saw music differently. It connected us. Oma was dying, and she wanted me to play. That was what she wanted from me in that last bit of time she had on ea...

Have you ever had ongoing struggles with something, despite your efforts, and you’re like, am I just not PRAYING hard enough?! I wonder if Nephi had similar thoughts as he walked to his home, “much cast down.” He’d tried and tried to get people to listen without much success. Did he think, maybe I'm just not a good missionary anymore? Where are the angels, the hundreds of converts? It happened before, so where is it now? Maybe I've just lost it! Am I doing something wrong? Or maybe he was doing everything right, and the Lord’s definition of success is different than ours. During Nephi’s pondering, God tells him, “Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word... thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments" Hel. 10:4 “I have beheld”! I SEE YOU. I SEE what you've done. I SEE that you're trying! I KNOW YOU. You’...

I just had a post all written and it just now got erased!!! Dang. And since I’m running out of time to post today and I don’t want to lose my streak already, I’ll just say: I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. Like I heard Elder Holland say so powerfully and earnestly in a training meeting, standing at the front of the same room I was in, “I did not give my life to a fairy tale.” It’s not a fairy tale to me. It’s not a myth. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is my Redeemer. There is an eternal plan. We are children of God. I can feel it. And it makes me happy.

  Alma taught the poor Zoramites, who had been cast out of the synagogues by the rich, that they actually could pray and worship anywhere. He reminds them what Zenos said- that God heard him in the wilderness, in the fields, in his house, in his closet, in the midst of the congregation, AND God heard him when he was cast out. That God hears those who seek HIM and NOT men. That God hears us in our afflictions. In our sincerity. And He is merciful! “Therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy.” Alma 33:11 It is beautiful that I can pray to a loving Heavenly Father, and He will hear me anywhere! I have prayed in some unexpected places, and have felt his peace in some unexpected places. I think of Joseph Smith’s “temple-prison,” the horrific Liberty Jail, and love Elder Holland’s words, “You can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: You can h...