Go Thy Way: Reconciliation in Christ

Before I went to go live with my dad at the age of 16, I had grown up with just one sibling, a sister. Ours was a very rocky relationship. We were 6 years apart in age, which made her the adoring little sister and me the annoyed older sister. Looking back now, all she ever did was love me and want to be like me. But I didn't treat her the way a disciple of Christ ought to. We had different fathers and her dad and I didn't get along well which added contention and strife between the two of us. I used to think that sibling quarrels were normal and to be expected. When I converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ I began to feel a big inner-conflict with the way I treated my sister; I felt like a hypocrite. Worse, I felt I was not pleasing the Lord. However, old habits die hard and it seemed impossible to break our relationship pattern. Very soon after my conversion I decided to move away to Utah to live with my dad.

Years past, I got married and settled in Utah. My sister still lived in our home-state, Washington, and I felt like I never got to make it up to my sister for the years that I wasn't kind to her. We loved each other, there was no doubt about that, but we had spent so many years apart that we never had the chance to change the dynamic of our relationship. Then, as luck would have it, my sister moved to Utah very close to where my family and I lived. At first our interactions were cordial but very surface level. But then, anytime any tension or stress would arise, I would feel like we were 16 and 10 again, reliving our past arguments. It was ridiculous, I was 25 years old with a family of my own. My childish arguing seemed almost automatic, out of my control. It was like she knew which buttons to push and how to really get on my nerves. I again felt that deep inner conflict and hypocrisy. I knew that when I was around her I was not my best self. I was ashamed of my behavior and attitude.

But it wasn't until I stumbled upon a scripture from the Sermon on the Mount that everything changed for me. Jesus said in Matthew 5:24, "...go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." I can't tell you how deeply that scripture affected me. I knew, at once, that not only was our arguing unacceptable to the Lord, but the Lord was not accepting my righteous service because I had not first reconciled myself to my sister. I had repented of the past, but I still held onto the guilt of not being a better sister, and worse still, our relationship was still rocky.

I decided to take the matter to the Lord. After a lot of prayer, meditation, patience and stumbling across a fantastic book called The Dance of Anger, the Lord helped to heal our relationship---more specifically, He helped to heal ME. I learned to accept His forgiveness. I am not the person I was at 16. I came to trust His word when He said I was forgiven. I learned to let go of the guilt and allow the possibility for healing.

I finally had to give the burden to Him, and as I did, He lead me to find ways to change my behavior in a healthy way. As time went on, I could see that I could only change so much---my half of the relationship. The other half I had no control over. I just had to trust in the Lord and send love to my sister. Eventually, as I began to react positively and with love, there began to be a huge change in our relationship. Good conversations were had, forgiveness extended and the past overcome with a promising future.

We have since became dear friends, which is why I feel I can share this story on this blog. My sister means everything to me. I am so glad the Lord, in His infinite wisdom commanded all of us to make peace with our family members. You cannot be a disciple of Christ and have evil or bad emotions towards someone. I know that to be true. It does not matter what that person has done to you or will continue to do to you. You need to find peace in your heart. You need to forgive and seek forgiveness. It is a most liberating experience. It allows you to experience the atonement in your life in a very real way. If you have any disputations with your family members, I encourage you to go your way and seek reconciliation. It brings peace beyond measure.

When you have done all that you can do to forgive, seek forgiveness and make peace, if the other person doesn't change and continues to treat you poorly, seek reconciliation from Christ. Some things will not be solved in this world. Some people will continue to be mean, toxic and abusive. But you can forgive even them. Christ paid for the suffering of the sinner and the sinned against. Our sufferings are His sufferings. He desires to take them from you. Go to Him for help. Have a real conversation with Him. Tell Him why you are upset, why you feel mistreated or why it is hard to forgive. Let His atonement be powerful enough to heal your broken heart. Give Him the burden, let justice be in His hands. Someday it will all be fair. But for now, it is the atonement that undoes wrongs and removes the affects of being mistreated by others.

When you go to the Savior with your relationship problems, I know you can be healed. It has happened repeatedly for me. Even when people continue to treat me badly, I am able to send love and peace and know with all my heart that Christ will make everything ok. On the other hand, when I have treated others poorly, I know I can repent and be truly forgiven. He is our healing balm; there is no heartache too big for Him. When He was in the garden of Gethsemane, He suffered for your pains, sins, weaknesses and heartaches. They were all laid before Him. He knows you intimately. He waits for you to come to Him to be healed. He already paid the price and stands ready and capable to bring you peace.

As Christ so quickly forgives us, we ought to forgive one another and we ought to forgive ourselves. Love is the mark of a true disciple. Contention is of the devil, and is never acceptable to the Lord. It will be our love, our forgiveness and our living example of our conversion that we will be judged for. None of our gifts, offerings and generosity will be acceptable if we have not first sought reconciliation with our brother through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Don't Be A Tool

 

A word on the name of this post. Yes, I am aware of the pop culture definition of a tool. Ironically, it makes this post all the more relevant.

The idea for this blog post all started when I was at the orthodontist the other day with my son. I had an interesting conversation with the assistant. She said that before she worked there, she grew up working on cars with her dad using all the tools of the trade. Once she started to work for Dr. Coleman, the Orthodontist, he had to change her vocabulary from "tools" to "instruments." He said, this clarification was important because instruments are "sterile," tools are not. (As a funny aside, when I told my husband this story he said, "cool, we're both sterile". Not in that way, honey. It's sterile as in clean. Back to the story.) Immediately as she said that, the scripture found in Mosiah 27:36 came to my mind, "And thus they were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, to the knowledge of their Redeemer." 

As I pondered this simple analogy, it came to me, "The difference between a tool and an instrument is purity." Tools are puppets, instruments are servants. I want to be an instrument.

Orthodontists have many different instruments. Each serves a particular purpose and role. Each is important in their contribution. You could substitute the correct instrument for a particular job, but it wouldn't do as good of a job as the instrument made for the task. Even then, NONE of them would be useful if they were not clean and pure. I want to be pure so that I can be the Lord's instrument. I want to be pure so that when there is a particular job to be done or thing asked of me to do, I will be ready, immediately without having to be purified first.  

I want to have pure motives so that when I am in His service, I am not complaining or whining as I serve Him. I want to have a pure heart, so that my own wants, desires, appetites and passions won't take over. I want to have a servant heart. I want to be pure in mind in my service, so that I deliberately and intentionally serve Him. I don't want to just go through the motions. I want to be so pure that His words are my words, His actions my actions, His thoughts my thoughts and His desires my desires. Last of all, I want to be pure in my obedience. If this involves repentance of any wrong doing, I will square things away with the Lord and be obedient to His words.

I want to be ready when He calls me to His service. I want to be useful in the capacity for which I was created. I want to continue to become the instrument He needs for the work He has for me to do. Sure, someone else could take my place, but they wouldn't do it as good as me because I was born to do it. My destiny is best lived by me, not substituted by one who was not made for that purpose.

The Orthodontist literally could not do his job without those instruments. And just like those instruments, we are invaluable to the Lord. He needs our help. There are things that only we can do. There are things we were specially made to do. We can be ready, we can be pure and we can accomplish our special callings and work He has for us to do.

My Last Weigh-in

For those of you that know me, you know that I was a personal trainer for almost 5 years. I helped countless people over the years reach their fitness goals. My emphasis was always on health over aesthetics, but it’s easy to get confused when you are dealing with weight loss. People paid me to not only feel their best but to look their best. I always found this to be a difficult balance to teach. It is true that when you are at a healthy weight you feel better about yourself, but size or weight should never be a measurement of worth or a motivation for work.

The ambiguity and fine line between health and vanity is one of the many reasons why I left the fitness industry. I loved helping people see that exercising your body and eating whole “God-made foods” is your duty as a good steward over your body, that precious gift given us by a loving Father in Heaven. Fitness and dieting should always be founded on that principle. But so often it is not. So often it is about getting ready for a cruise, wedding or something else superficial. And honestly, my clients who’s main motivation was “getting to a certain size” or looking a certain way by a particular date, always struggled more to lose weight and to keep it off than those with the right motivation.

I found, time and time again, that people got sick of my “do it for your health” and “love the body God gave you” speeches and just wanted me to get back to “cracking the whip” and “punishing them” for the huge piece of cheesecake they splurged on the night before. Somewhere along the way a light went off in my head and I realized I was in the wrong business. People were paying me to help them change their body, not their mind. And what I wanted to do was to change their mind. So this is my last and final attempt as a personal trainer to all my past clients, friends and specifically the women in my life to help facilitate a healthy body image and ultimately a healthy self-image. I hope that after you read this, you will never again step on a scale to measure your worth.

Interestingly enough, it became clear to me that my clients are not the only people who need to make a change in how they view themselves. People with weight issues are not the only ones who try to measure their worth with outside calibrations. This problem of “measuring yourself” is a problem in so many other areas. It spans almost all aspects of our lives. Measuring, comparing, and weighing are all corrosive to confidence and self-esteem. I did a lot of soul searching to discover the “measuring sticks” in my life and there were many. What are you measuring yourself by? How do you weigh your worth?

Is it found in dollar amounts? Is it found in price tags? Is it found in your beauty? In the cleanliness of your house or the newness of your things? Is it found in what you possess or in how you present yourself? Is it found in your clothing size?

I am sure that many of you would say no to all of those things. But examine yourself, really examine yourself and you might be surprised. What motivates you to do what you do everyday? Does it involve one of those measuring sticks? What do you spend most of your time doing? How do you determine what makes a good day, a good life or a good person? Do you feel that a good life involves measurable achievements? We are certainly taught that by the world.

No one’s value can be measured in numbers. No one. Your worth does not depend on the number on a scoreboard, a mile marker on a road, a grade or degree, and of course a number on the scale or on a clothing tag. Your value and worth cannot be measured by any quantitative process on earth. Numbers do not count!

Your worth is innate by virtue of being a child of God. “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God…” Your confidence should come from the Creator of your soul. His love is unfailing, unconditional. He gently reminds us, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” The only approval we should seek is His approval. He is the only true judge and he “looketh on the heart.”

The advice given to the prophet Samuel is just as true today as it was back then, “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
Small acts of kindness, your ability to forgive, the prayers of your heart all speak louder to your worth than any earthly achievement or measurement you can attain to. Real beauty never ages, never fades and never goes out of fashion. Real achievement is not a score, time or grade. Real beauty, real achievement comes as you follow the footsteps of the One who has accomplished All and who’s countenance lacks no Beauty!

Our body image, our self-image should be the image of Christ! When you have His image in your countenance, and when He becomes your strength there is nothing you cannot do! Our confidence should come from him, not from man. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” (Psalms 118:8) Let us not put our confidence in the hands of others. Let us put our confidence in God. There is no other person we should seek to imitate.

Any worldly achievements vanish and fade. Your accomplishments should be measured by how closely you come to resemble Him. The next time you are tempted to judge yourself by what you see on Pinterest, or any other worldly standard, please remember Christ is the Standard. Your worth is unchanging and immeasurable, as is His love for you. There is no scale that will ever tell you that.