Spiritual Wanderings

A while back--February, March, something like that--I went in to talk to my Bishop, Tim.  Not because I "needed" to talk to him about some indiscretion, but because him and I are buddies.  He's an extremely busy man, so every 6 months or so, we would schedule our chats through the Executive Secretary, and that worked great.  We laughed and learned together.  Sometimes we cried.  It was fantastic.

But this time, during our routine visit, it mysteriously dawned on me that soon Tim would be released.  When I arrived home, that feeling struck again, this time with great force.  And it came with another feeling:  Rob will be called to be Bishop, AND SOON.

What the WHAT?!!

I spent the next few weeks crying, scrambling, trying to prepare.  Rob gave me a priesthood blessing, just so I could be calm enough to get through my normal day without hysterically sobbing mid-drive-across-town (okay, that only happened once).  I tried to figure out how we would re-arrange our family's life.  It wasn't a question of would we accept the call, it was a question of how we would make it all work.

Miraculously, we got past Spring's Stake Conference.  I held my breath as the Stake President passed us by after the meeting.  I felt like we'd escaped a gauntlet.

And then something strange happened:  nothing.  Tim wasn't released.  Rob wasn't called.  And the feeling lessened.

How did I react?  I was angry.  Not for any normal reason, but simply because nothing was happening.  I was stuck with the Lord's timing, which wasn't fast enough!  I was in what I felt to be a no man's land.  I knew something was coming, but seriously?  Why tell me something was coming SOON only to leave me hanging?

I stopped praying for a long time (truth be told, I have a hard time with prayer on a normal basis - He knows it all anyway, right?  Why tell Him again?  It's a lifelong struggle, and one I hope to beat before the end).  I stopped reading scriptures.  Mostly I stopped caring.  Friends don't do this to friends, I thought, metaphorically shaking my fist toward heaven.  It wasn't nice of Him.  Not nice at all.

I approached a member of the Stake Presidency.  Really, I accosted him in the hallway and said, "Jim, I'm not happy with the Lord's timing."  He smiled and said, very lovingly, "Get over it."

As time passed, I approached him twice more, and told him that I was holding him personally responsible, and that he should fix it.  One of those times, standing beside him was a man in our ward, a friend named Jeff Weddle.  Jeff and I talked about the Lord's timing, and complained that sometimes "soon" is not nearly soon enough.  He confided that he was waiting for something, too.  Then he proposed a plan.  "Tell you what, I'll pray for your thing, and you pray for my thing.  We won't tell each other any specifics, but when the thing happens, we'll call the other person, let them know that it happened."  I told him that was a deal.  He added, at the end, "And when you pray, say, 'And I mean OUR soon, not YOUR soon.'"

Turns out that Jeff is a genius.  Every time I wanted to be frustrated and frazzled, I'd remember Jeff.  I'd stop and say a little prayer for him:  "Heavenly Father, please bless Jeff.  Help him be patient, and help his thing happen soon.  And that's our soon, not Your soon."  This was a brilliant psychological tool.  It got me thinking beyond myself.  Plus, however brief and pathetic, it got me praying again.

Well, the "end" of the story is that Tim was released as Bishop last week.  A new Bishop was called, and that Bishop IS NOT ROB.  Glory of glories!  My testimony isn't shaken.  And I don't even wonder why I'm so bad at receiving revelation.  Maybe things were on a fast track in Spring and then things changed (and things HAVE changed since then.  I'm going back to school, for starters, and that's a big difference right there).  I don't know.  But I do know that Rob isn't in the clear for life.  Heavenly Father has just given me more time to prepare.  Potentially because I need that time.  Clearly I am not as charitable as I need to be.  I can definitely work on that.  (Rob doesn't need time to prepare.  He's amazing.)

Funny enough, the new Bishop is Jeff Weddle.  I haven't talked to him about it yet.  I don't know if this is what he was waiting for.  But it's what I was waiting for.