November 27-December 3

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John really likes to talk about God’s love for us.

John 4:7-8

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

This same kind of principle is repeated over and over and over all throughout John’s first epistle. God loved us first. We love others because He loved us. He loves us. Perhaps it’s just me for this specific week, but I feel like that’s the entirety of John’s message in his first epistle. God is love.

This actually reminds me of a combination of experiences I have had over my lifetime.

Repeated but not internalized

John is not the only one who likes to repeat this message; leaders love to tell the youth how much the Lord loves them, but for some reason, I don’t think the reality of His love ever truly sunk in for me until I was an adult. Sure, I had moments of peace and feeling the Spirit, but I’m not sure I ever really accepted His love until I started this blog. In fact, I’m not sure I remember ever personally testifying of His love for me. I testified of Him in plenty of other ways, but I did not yet believe that He loved me.

With how often that sentiment is expressed, you would think that I could have figured that out so much sooner than I did, but alas…it took me a while. 

As I was cooking dinner the other day, trying not to lose my mind at my kids who were losing their minds because cooking dinner takes too long, I turned on a conference talk in a desperate attempt to bring some peace into the house. Elder Uchtdorf was speaking to the youth, and he was telling them repeatedly how much the Lord loved them. It actually caught me off guard how often this specific sentiment was expressed. “He loves you.” “He’s proud of you.” “He believes in you.” I was so taken aback that I wondered if this had always been expressed so often. I went back and listened to some of the talks given when I was a teenager, and I found the same thread of sentiments. The Lord loves us. 

Unfortunately, due to personal human frailties, I did not seem to catch those messages during my teenage years. If you were to go back and read my journals from those conferences, you would find a whole bunch of ways that I needed to improve as well as a bunch of embarrassing drama. However, I would not be surprised if I didn’t actually ever write about the idea that He really loved me. For some reason, I skipped over those specific messages. I never internalized them. I didn’t even really notice them because I was too preoccupied with other issues; I couldn’t even hear how often I was being told this message.

As I’ve become an adult, and more specifically, as I’ve gained a testimony of His love for me, I have been surprised to find that His love is likely the doctrine that is most repeated. I have “heard” messages for my entire life about His love for me without ever actually hearing them. However, as I began to speak to Him and lean on Him in a desperate attempt to write weekly gospel messages, I felt that love. And because of that, I was suddenly hearing the sentiment of His love everywhere. 

This, of course, changed everything. I was so much happier; I was far less stressed. I found myself hopeful about the growth I was acquiring because of my flaws, and I looked forward to the day when I would no longer have those flaws. Everything in my life shifted and looked different after I truly started learning about His love. Good things were blessings from a God who loved me. Bad things were interpreted as opportunities to do what I came here to do: grow. It wasn’t perfect; there were still times I faltered and had weaknesses and got scared. However, I was being “forced” to really check in with Him on a constant basis to try and meet my posting schedule. The constant relationship I had to hold with Him meant that I was constantly receiving doses of that love, and it gradually helped me see the world differently.

For almost four years now, I have been receiving these messages of love from Him, and they have been steady enough that I believe them. He was feeding me with this love, preparing me for a time when I would have to work harder to believe it. 

Then came the darkness

I have shared my testimony of His love before, but I have felt it in a new context in my life that has made it all the more powerful to me.

I’m pregnant. By the time you read this message, I will have already had the baby because I’m trying to get far ahead in my weekly messages so I can have a bit of time off after the baby comes. 

Pregnancy and me don’t get along so well sometimes. I am medicated for depression, and I really like what I’m on. For the most part, I do really well and feel normal and can engage with others and feel varying levels of enjoyment. However, when I’m pregnant, I get those old, haunting feelings again. 

Though there is often a bit of a baseline grumpiness, numbness, or weariness, there are times when my emotions swing much harder. The past few days have had a much harder swing. Not only do I find myself in a darker place, I feel like I’m a darker person. It’s much harder to feel the spirit, and I take on self-destructive tendencies that ripple out and affect my family. I have grown enough to recognize these feelings for what they are: temporary side effects of pregnancy, but regardless of how much I understand that in my head, the feelings are still present and overpowering and often take the wheel behind my decisions. Those decisions do not often lead to positive places. Rather, they spiral.

My testimony that He loves has carried me through some uncertain times, especially over the past year. But it feels different this time. When I’m depressed, it doesn’t just feel like a trial. In so many ways, I don’t like who I am. I feel like a bad person, and in the past, that has made it infinitely harder to turn to Christ. It’s easy to love someone who has had something terrible happen to them. It’s much harder (as a normal mortal) to love someone who does terrible things or has terrible thoughts. When I’m depressed, I often feel like a pretty terrible person.

There is another verse that John shares.

John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 

I feel as though I’ve found the meaning of this verse, or at least one meaning. 

When you are in a dark place (and I’m not talking about oppressive circumstances, I’m talking about when you find yourself bound down into someone you don’t like), it is a double edged sword. You’re making self-destructive decisions, but you don’t like yourself so why stop the self-destruction? What would motivate me to become better and happier if I don’t believe I deserve to be happier? It also becomes very easy to sincerely believe that things would be better for everyone else if you were no longer part of the equation, and I’m not just talking about suicide. I’m also talking about simply wanting to withdraw from everyone or sabotage relationships or push people away. It’s a pretty scary cycle. 

But that cycle feels different when you’re aware of His love. In some of my darkest, most self-destructive moments, I couldn’t necessarily feel His love but I also could not erase the testimony of His love for me. I could not turn away and lie to myself that I was the only one feeling injured because my knowledge of His love for me had become too real. I couldn’t ignore it. As I found darkness, I knew He was there with me, invited or not. And because I knew how He loved me and wanted to be there, I didn’t try to chase Him away. 

And when I was angry beyond all reason, I still let Him stay with me because I knew He still loved me. I could let the overwhelming feelings run their course and not be scared to turn to Him when I wore myself out. In fact, I couldn’t keep myself from turning to Him because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Him by alienating myself from Him. 

Perfect love casts out fear, His perfect love specifically. His perfect love has become such a reality to me that I am not afraid to turn to Him when I’m my darkest self. When you have felt His love so often that it almost becomes its own solid entity, it is easy to turn to Him. It casts out fear because it switches my motivation for turning to Him. It’s so easy to say, “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I don’t deserve His help,” and then to turn away from Him. And that’s totally true. There have been plenty of moments that I have not deserved His love. But when you have a knowledge of His love, it’s not about whether you deserve it. You go to Him because you know that He wants you to. It will make Him feel better if you turn to Him, and that is a much more powerful motivator. 

And as you let go of the fear of rejection and turn to Him, it changes you. It changes you over and over and over until you’re made perfect by His love. 

If you have found yourself in a dark place, you can turn to Him. If you find yourself as a darker person, He still wants you to turn to Him. I know that. I have felt it, and if you try it, you will feel it too.