Sunday, September 20, 2020
It is good to be back with you. I thought we would stay home a bit longer, but after a lot of discussion with John we ultimately decided that our 8-year-old Luke’s baptism day would be a good day to come back. We no sooner made this decision, than John mentioned that he needed speakers for today and I hadn’t spoken in Sacrament Meeting in quite some time. I feel his motives were suspect but I’ll give the talk anyway. I was actually supposed to speak the first week that church was cancelled because of COVID-19, so maybe me finally speaking now will break the curse! Who knows? Regardless, I hope that I can share something meaningful with you today.
A while back John and I were reading the talk by Elder Renlund that became the basis for today’s topic, and this quote stuck with him so much that he texted it to himself from my phone so he wouldn’t lose it: “remember, joyfully and reverently, that the Savior loves to restore what you cannot restore; He loves to heal wounds you cannot heal; He loves to fix what has been irreparably broken; He compensates for any unfairness inflicted upon you; and He loves to permanently heal even shattered hearts.”
As I have been studying Come, Follow Me and pondering on how the Savior mends our broken hearts, I have found myself circling around a bit of a paradox in my mind. There are some scriptures that speak of the Lord’s ability to mend or bind up broken hearts:
Isaiah 61:1–The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
But as I searched I found that the vast majority of the scriptures on the topic speak of a broken heart as an offering to the Lord or a prerequisite for the companionship of His Spirit, as in this scripture from this week’s reading in the Book of Mormon.
3 Nephi 9:20–And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost.
It got me wondering how these metaphors relate to one another and what that means for applying the Atonement of Jesus Christ in my life. As I thought about this, two experiences came to mind.
The first was probably the most dramatic and trying experience of my life. Shortly after my 18th birthday, and this next part will date me quite a bit, our family received a fax that changed my life forever. At the time my dad had been working for his mother and step-father’s company in Japan, and was traveling back and forth between Tokyo and our home in the Central Coast of California. This time we hadn’t heard much from him after he arrived, and assumed things were busy at the office. But a few days later my sister and I found a hand-written fax on our machine with a little picture of an ambulance drawn on top. We couldn’t read Japanese so we didn’t know what it said, but I still remember that little drawing. We called my mom who quickly got in contact with the office in Japan, and it turns out my dad had suffered a stroke a few days previous and was in the hospital. My grandmother hadn’t told us, out of some mixture of fear and guilt and distress, but one of the employees at their small family company felt we should know and sent the message. We were assured that my dad was stable, and my mom and brother got on a plane as soon as they could to go be with him.
The next two days were full of assurances from doctors and a promising blessing given by the president of the Tokyo South Mission. Plans were made for physical therapy, for my mom and brother to stay with my Dad in Japan until he could travel home, and for my sister and I to go see him as soon as we could arrange passport renewals. But the next night my father had another stroke and passed away.
I remember how crushed I was to find out, and how completely surreal it was. I remember having to tell my sister and her throwing her pager across the room in anger and despair (again I’m telling my age here). But even more I remember that night as I knelt on my bed for what must have been an hour or two or more. I have never been good about kneeling and having long, formal prayer conversations; I am forgetful and so I tend to say a lot of little prayers throughout the day, right when I am thinking of whatever it is that I need to ask for or thank my Father for. But that night I felt I absolutely had to have it out with Heavenly Father, however long it took. I had to know if my Dad really wasn’t gone forever. I had to know if I would see him again, and if the course I was setting for the rest of my life was the right one. I had to keep reaching until I received that consolation because otherwise I didn’t know how I could face the next day and all the ensuing ones. And eventually that night I did know. My heart was bound up in peace, and I knew it would be okay, even if I knew nothing else. And little by little, from that moment, my broken heart was mended, and while the pain of losing my Dad will never be completely gone, I was able to feel whole because of that peace and those assurances. I know that the Savior can hold us and heal our hearts when mortality brings its inevitable heartbreaks, because He suffered all these and more so that He would know how to help us.
Fast forward to my other experience, which started just over 11½ years ago and will continue the next 18 years and probably the rest of my life. That experience, or combination of experiences, is motherhood. And while motherhood has been beautiful and soul-enriching experience that has brought me so much love and joy, and of course my six boys, it has also been the most heart-breaking experience I have had. Losing my dad was something external that happened, and my heart broke from sadness—the kind of heartbreak we usually talk about in the world, where we lose something and we grieve the loss. But it is possibly even more heartbreaking to me to daily come up against my own weakness and to fail my boys on a regular basis. Every time I lose my patience or my temper and wound their little hearts, mine breaks. I find myself constantly forgetting that, and least until they are 8, they are the perfect ones and I am here to teach and coach them and learn with them, not to control or force them to obey me and walk the path I would choose for them. As a result I spend many nights asking forgiveness for the same things and wondering if I will ever feel like I’m doing it right or if I’ll always be broken.
This is where that second type of scripture I mentioned has brought me hope. Perhaps I am broken-hearted because of my failings, but that broken heart means that the Savior can enter. In fact, He requires it of us, because none of us is perfect, and that sorrow, if yielded up to God, brings us to Him. All of us are broken—every one of us on this earth—and we can choose to build a wall of shame or of pride to hide our brokenness, or we can be vulnerable and offer up our heart so that His light can penetrate. Being vulnerable is against the nature of the natural man, and takes humility and spiritual work to achieve. It requires that we constantly keep our focus on removing the beams from our own eyes, so to speak.
In October 2015 General Conference, Sister Neill Marriot of the Young Women’s General Presidency put it this way:
True worship begins when our hearts are right before the Father and the Son. What is our heart condition today? Paradoxically, in order to have a healed and faithful heart, we must first allow it to break before the Lord. “Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” the lord declares. The result of sacrificing our heart, or our will, to the Lord is that we receive the spiritual guidance we need.
With a growing understanding of the Lord’s grace and mercy, we will find that our self-willed hearts begin to crack and break in gratitude. Then we reach for Him, yearning to yoke ourselves to the Only Begotten Son of God. In our broken-hearted reaching and yoking, we receive new hope and fresh guidance through the Holy Ghost.
In short, the only way the Lord can heal my broken heart is if I offer it up to Him, trusting that He will make it whole this time and every other time, day after day, until at some point in an eternity I can’t now see my heart will be one with His. I don’t have to do the work of healing on my own, but I do need to do the work of opening my heart to Him and submitting to His will. That may mean that I follow a prompting to change a behavior or to offer an apology. It may also require me to consider a medical or psychological intervention, or to ask for and accept help. If my heart is truly broken, I’ll be willing to do whatever it takes to facilitate the healing I’m asking for.
In October 2013 General Conference, Elder Randy D. Funk shared this:
The Lord instructs His servants to be humble because the process of being made whole spiritually begins with a broken heart. Think of the good that comes from broken things: Soil is broken to plant wheat. Wheat is broken to make bread. Bread is broken to become the emblems of the sacrament. When one who is repentant partakes of the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, he or she becomes whole. As we repent and become whole through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we have much more to offer the Savior as we serve Him. “Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him.”
We can safely offer our whole souls and hearts to Him because He knows how to succor us. Like that sacrament bread, He was broken for us. We can’t imagine how broken He felt in those moments, but it was enough that He cried out for the pain to be taken away if possible, and later to question why His Father had left Him. He understands when we likewise feel alone with our heavy burdens and broken hearts, but because of His gift we don’t have to carry our burdens alone.
Elder Funk continues:
If you are burdened by sin and need to repent, please do so immediately. When the Savior healed those who were afflicted, He often invited them to rise up. The scriptures record that they did so straightway, or immediately. To be healed of your spiritual afflictions, please accept His invitation to rise up. Without delay, talk to your bishop,...and begin the process of repentance now.
The healing power of the Atonement will bring peace to your soul and enable you to feel the Holy Spirit. The Savior’s sacrifice is beyond measure, but our sins, though numerous and serious, may be counted and confessed, forsaken and forgiven. “And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!”
I know that the Lord has forgiven me and healed even my self-inflicted wounds, and I trust that He will also cover the wounds I have inflicted on others because of my failings. I still get discouraged regularly, and still wonder if I’ll ever close the gap between what I am and what I know I should be. When I spend time focused on that gap, as I tend to do, I get depressed and exhausted. But when I shift my focus to the Savior and bare my heart to Him, He fills that gap and forgives me time after time. And if I am broken, He has asked me to be.
If you find yourself right now broken-hearted and lacking hope, please let these words sink into your heart.
President Benson:
The Lord is pleased with every effort, even the tiny, daily ones in which we strive to be more like Him. Though we may see that we have far to go on the road to perfection, we must not give up hope.
Elder Anderson, Wounded, October 2018:
Never give up—however deep the wounds of your soul, whatever their source, wherever or whenever they happen, and however short or long they persist, you are not meant to perish spiritually. You are meant to survive spiritually and blossom in your faith and trust in God.
God did not create our spirits to be independent of Him. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through the incalculable gift of His Atonement, not only saves us from death and offers us, through repentance, forgiveness for our sins, but He also stands ready to save us from the sorrows and pains of our wounded souls.
The Good Samaritan
The Savior is our Good Samaritan, sent “to heal the brokenhearted.” He comes to us when others pass us by. With compassion, He places His healing balm on our wounds and binds them up. He carries us. He cares for us. He bids us, “Come unto me … and I shall heal [you].”
“And [Jesus] shall … [suffer] pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; … that … he [might] take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people … [taking upon Himself our] infirmities, [being] filled with mercy.”
If you find that you aren’t brokenhearted, I’d invite you to follow Sister Marriott’s counsel that I shared earlier, and reflect on the incomprehensible grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and allow that to break your heart. Ask, “what lack I yet?” and be willing to hear the response. It’s something I need to do more often, and I avoid it too often because it’s hard to face more of my own failings. But failing in mortality doesn’t make us failures. Failing in mortality, to one degree or another, is why we are here, because failing shows us where we can learn and where we can rely on the Savior. It’s what opens the opportunity for us to repent and to come to know Him in the process. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18)
I testify that He suffered all things and died for us, and that He lives again. I don’t know everything, but I do know that He can bind up our broken hearts and give us His peace.
