Self-Expression and Depenedence on Others

Allow this post to be more personal than usual.

Emily went to bed a few minutes ago and I had just finished tweaking and printing out the ward program for her for church tomorrow. As I sat on the couch thinking about her and me and our relationship I had a revelation of sorts. Not really a revelation of anything new, but a picture of what already was made more clear to me. One of our differences is also a great strength to both of us. Emily has a stronger dependence on close friends and relatives immediately around her: Her parents, best friends, me, our kids. When she has a problem she depends on others around us for the help or the answer. Last night, her new sewing machine she just bought went funny and she couldn't get it working before bedtime. This afternoon she went to the sewing store and the saleswoman spent a good deal of time with her explaining everything Emily could soak up and more and helped her out a lot. When Emily is having emotional troubles she comes to me or her parents for help.

I'm a little different. Instead of immediately going to people for help, I go to books, guides, internet, etc for the information I want (unless the person who can help is literally in my presence AND I trust them enough to show the limits of my abilities). I had begun to think that Emily was more dependent on others and that I was somehow more independent. The silly truth is that I am just as dependent on others as anyone else could be. I depend on authors, teachers, and scholars for writing books, websites, and articles on what I want to know. For emotional trouble I've always felt I had to rely entirely on the Lord. There were a lot of lonely times as a teenager (and even into adulthood) when I had no friends but the spirit after a prayerful plea to warm my aching heart. Even as I grow, I have to depend entirely on God to ease my burdens. I know this is what we're supposed to do, but there's a strong independent side to me that wants to figure everything out on my own even though I'm not very good at it. Because of this, often the only person left to help me through my (often self-imposed) isolation is my Father in Heaven. One upside to this is that I feel I've gotten to know him very well.

As I encounter problems with my environment and with myself and my weaknesses, I've usually tried to take care of it myself first, with my own abilities and talents. I was taught about personal responsibility and self-reliance and for a long time felt that this applied to spiritual issues as well. The truth: It doesn't. I can get to a certain point, but I cannot get past it and the more I try to get past it on my own, the more often I fall back down.

What I've realized is that even most of my own ability to choose right is a gift from God. The choice is still mine, but that is literally all there is to my credit. Yes, I do the task, the action, or the work, but the ability and even motivation to take action on the choice is entirely up to him. Any righteousness others might see in me is purely a gift from God that he has bestowed on me due to choices I made. All wickedness and faults that others see in me are purely my own fault and only a tip of the iceberg because of God's tenderness in hiding most of my flaws and mistakes from others for some reason that is known only to him. My wicked choices are often even hid from myself until I am ready to tackle the choice head on, consciously. He is leading me through life exactly as he knows I should so that I can end up where he knows I want to go. I'm the one who has to learn for myself what I want and I will learn it by seeing the choices I make when they are brought to light.

One choice I made involved self-expression. Art. At one point between high school and adulthood I was faced with a solid choice presented to me. Obtain a gift for self-expression that would fit my imagination or pursue a course that was more certain to fulfill God's commandments. I knew at that moment that for me, in my place, the choice was one way or the other and I knew the likely consequences of each. Even though I ached to find some way to express everything I felt, I knew the eternal benefits of the latter and chose that. A few days after this decision I felt a certain reassurance that the choice I made would fulfil my desire for self-expression in a way I never could imagine. That by fulfilling these commandments I would be able to use every capacity, feeling, and emotion I had in a creative way that would express itself to me and to others. I see this expression forming now. A symphony and opus in its infancy.

This choice and the following reassurance were not the effects of an emotional, distraught, or fatigued mind. They were as clear as a Fall day on the coast with no clouds or haze, when mountain tops more than 50 miles away are plainly visible. The same reassurance that told me as a young missionary I would certainly see the town of Bella Coola and perform missionary work in the town of Terrace, both of which occured before returning home--an opportunity afforded to very few missionaries and an opportunity that was only decided on days before it occured. When these reassurances were physically fulfilled, fire burned inside me as I was reminded of what I'd been told by the Spirit 8 months previously in a dark damp apartment in Vancouver.

In this same way I am reminded now of what I was told 8 years ago about how I would be able to express myself beyond my imagination through the same certain aspect of my life promised so long ago. This makes me happy.