The Hit Bird Flutters - Dear Anonymous

Dear Anonymous...

A beloved seminary teacher once told me, "the hit bird flutters..." What he was trying to illustrate to his class of 30+ high school aged students, was that people are typically only offended if something is true. There's another, more widely known saying "The truth hurts." For years I've remembered that unique saying, whenever offended I would step back and ask myself if I was offended because there was any truth to what was said.

May I first admit to you, you are correct. I am an active member of the LDS church.

I do believe that obedience and faith bring blessings from a loving Heavenly Father. But I also believe in a kind and merciful Father in Heaven who grants blessings to those not of our faith, to both the obedient and the disobedient, because He loves them all. I also believe with all my aching heart in a Father who is merciful to His struggling child. I am grateful for He who looks at me and my meager contribution and tells me, as a parent should, that it is enough, and I am enough.

It's one thing to receive criticism from someone who knows nothing about you except a few lines jotted down on a blog. But to turn to those in your life who are meant to give you comfort, support and unconditional love, and receive no words of comfort, only cold words of condemnation, is quite another. I don't want to hear that I'm not good enough, that I'm not doing enough, that what I have given is less than the perfection they expect.

Struggles with infertility and miscarriage have left me drained, my hope and faith replaced by doubt and bitterness. What faith and hope I do retain feel like empty words, vacant like my womb, they do little to heal my broken heart or fill my empty, aching arms.

I know I should say something about how we would never learn if things always came easily. (Although others must not have as much to learn because the same things which seem impossible to me, come all too easily to them.) And without loss we can never fully appreciate what we have. In my mind I know it's true and will be great to say in retrospect. And even though I know it's true, it comes as cold comfort.

The Lord has commanded us to "Search diligently, pray always, and be believing..." and with that a promise that "...all things shall work together for thy good..."

But has he not also commanded us that we should be willing to bear one another's burdens, to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort?