It's sisterhood week in my sorority, and we have a fireside on Wednesday during sisterhood week every semester. This semester, One Clear Voice was our speaker (well, in this case, speakers).
I have to say, I wasn't totally stoked for the fireside tonight. I don't know why. I've heard them on the radio, and I like their music. But I just wasn't feeling it. Then the fireside started, and I just felt like I needed to hear what they were going to talk about. I didn't even know what it was yet, I just knew I needed it.
The first woman who spoke told us about her conversion and talked about taking a leap of faith and trusting that when we do the things that God wants us to, we can be blessed. I enjoyed her testimony a lot.
The next woman's talk struck me a little harder I've been having a hard time. Not super hard. I just feel depressed and down a lot these days. She talked about how she grew up LDS and felt like she had always had everything laid out for her. She knew who she was and what she believed. But when she left home for college and life started to change, things got harder. She felt down and lost and like no one understood her. As she was preparing for tonight, she found a talk that Elder Jeffrey R Holland gave in conference about broken things (I will need to look this up), and how the Atonement works not only for our sins, but for our sorrows and heartaches. No matter what way we are broken, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love us. I needed this.
The third woman spoke about her sister. And this is the one I think in many ways I needed most. Her sister went through a great deal of trials. She went through an abusive marriage, re-married, was diagnosed with cancer, went through a miscarriage, chemo, discovered she was 22 weeks pregnant and the fetus had gone through chemo with her and would have serious birth defects. And through it all she kept her faith. The baby was born, and made a miraculous recovery. They were told she would be in the hospital at least nine months, but she was able to come home after three weeks. And then, when everything was looking up, the cancer came back. It was hard on their family. After a year and half battle with cancer, she passed away. The woman who was speaking told us about how difficult this was for her. She felt like it was unfair and then she came across the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel chapter 3.
They told Nebuchadnezzar that the Lord would deliver them, but if not, they still refused to worship his gods because they knew it was wrong.
This was what struck me most. But if not...
So many times in our lives we pray for answers and we don't get the ones we want. The Lord always knows what is best for us, what we need most, whether it is what we want or not. I need to trust in this more than I do. Even if God doesn't make everything in life easy for me, He makes things in my life what they need to be.
The last woman spoke about trusting in the Lord as well. Her talk was also about remembering what those who came before us have done, and believing that we can accomplish things that seem difficult with the Lord's help.
Because they are a singing group, there was also a lot of music in the program. The songs corresponded to the talks that were given. My favorite was the one that followed the third speaker, called "Gratitude". I posted a link of the first verse below.
Gratitude
All in all, I am very glad I went to this fireside. It was exactly what I needed tonight.
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