You may wonder how this topic got on this blog. Well, it was deep lesson I learned and have still been learning through family history work. At the end of my first trip to England, Robert and I found ourselves back in London attending the Hyde Park Chapel ward once again. I showed up to church that day, and sorry to say it, was angry. I was angry that here my best friend in the whole world was going home to get married and I, who was older, was still single. I cried in my heart during sacrament meeting "its not fair!!" It was then I received a very important answer. "Heidi, think of all the work you have done here in England. Think of all these people who have waited for so long. When they lived on the Earth, there was not even a chance for them to be married in the Temple. Would it be fair if you just took all those blessings for yourself and left them without when you have the time, resources, money, know how, and skill to come find them and do their work? Would that be fair?" Well, I had never looked at it that way before. I had a long talk with Robert outside the hospital on Cromwell road late that night. Fairness is so incomprehensible to our finite minds sometime. A friend of mine recently told me of his oldest brother being adopted and how jealous the other children were of how his father gave him extra attention. His father had said, "you who have always had a dad, think of it. He has never had one. It is fair."
I remember another night, perhaps a year later, as I sat in the chair on the stairwell at home, crying and curled in a ball. I was about 26 years old and having a pity partyasking the Lord why it was that I was still single. My mother used to listen to General Conference talks as she 'edited videos' that she recorded. She had left one on though she wasn't in the room. Just then, I heard President Faust's voice:
"We want you single sisters to know of our great love for you. You can be
powerful instruments in the hands of God to help bring about this great
work. You are valued and needed. Other women, even though married, may
not be mothers. For those in either of these circumstances, please be
assured that the Lord loves you and has not forgotten you. You can do
something for another person that no one else ever born can do. You may
be able to do something for another woman’s child that she may not be
able to do herself. I believe some compensatory blessings will come in
this life and in the hereafter to sisters in those circumstances. These
blessings and a comforting peace will come to you if you can love God
“with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”
You can still be highly successful in whatever you do as instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work."
It was from a talk entitled "Instruments in the Hands of God" given in October 2005. I'd heard it just as I'd finished my prayer. I was so astonished by it, I came downstairs, rewound it, and listened to it again. Compensatory blessings!! I was excited. And relieved. Life is fair. God keeps his promises with all his children. Sometimes ours are held in reserve so that others promises will be fulfilled too.
