Poignant Pain

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood session of the April 2003 conference.

I have come to a greater understanding of why some women hate church on Mother's Day. It is painful to be at church on a day when the very thing you want and have been denied is celebrated. Of course, Mother's Day is on the calendar and well known ahead of time so a person can choose to make other plans for that day. I often get blindsided by Sacrament meeting talks by departing missionaries, returning missionaries, serving missionaries or parents reporting on their missionaries. It reminds me of my failures and missed blessings, all rather painful.

This particular Priesthood session was much the same, all about missionaries. When the talks were given my four boys were still young and I was still full of hope and faith that they would all serve and I would be surrounded by priesthood power. This time around was much more painful and poignant.

Elder Daryl H. Garn spoke of the example of a particular returned missionary. "Because of his example I began looking at my associates at school, including those on the basketball team, and realized that the people I most wanted to be like were those who had served missions." I have found that the youth in the rural Midwest miss out on those examples and associations because all the returned missionaries arrive, report their missions, and quickly leave again to go to school in the Utah/Idaho area. There were no examples, mentors or friends to guide or encourage our sons. I'm not sure what the answer is, but hopefully the FSY conferences will help. (We were too poor to send our children to EFY.)

Bishop H. David Burton said, "Our bishops serve as personal trainers and use their sacred priesthood keys to bless our lives." I thought, well, only if they don't work four hours away in another state and are home only on weekends. When our son needed a strong priesthood leader to guide him through the repentance process, all he got were a few texts each week, never face to face time exploring the scriptures or conference talks together, no time serving, working or playing together. Our son missed out on help at a critical time and never truly recovered. (And what seemed especially strange to us was that the branch president never spoke to us about what we could do to help our son, even when we asked.)

President James E. Faust spoke of staying out of The Devil's Throat. 

My dear young friends, there is another great truth that you young men must learn. It is that everything has a price. There is a price to pay for success, fulfillment, accomplishment, and joy. There are no freebies. If you don't pay the price that is needed for success, you will pay the price of failure.

I can't completely blame others for the failures in our family. We all have agency and made choices without seeing the long-term effects and consequences. These are painful lessons to learn. I wonder what I would say to the me of 2003 if I could go back in time. Or the me of 1980 when I was a freshly returned missionary. 

I take hope from President Thomas S. Monson's talk in which he said, ". . . I share the observation that the seeds of testimony frequently do not immediately take root and flower. Bread cast upon the water returns, at times, only after many days. But it does return." I have hope that someday my wandering sons will return to the teachings planted in their hearts in their childhood and youth by a loving mother.