"That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold …"
We talked about my gold tooth (haha): my tiny gold tooth that cost hundreds of dollars. And we then speculated what a pot of gold might be worth and what HEAPS of gold might be worth.
But the trials of our faith! The struggles and questions and doubts and sorrows and sufferings we wade through. More precious than gold.
I'm going to put this on my bathroom mirror. It's going to be ingrained in my heart. A mantra. Something I will keep reminding my kids in hopes of it becoming a lens by which they understand mortal experience.
Already Jesse and I reminded ourselves of it during a late-night conversation yesterday. Jesse was feeling particularly hopeless and discouraged over various things he feels are hard for him that appear easy for "everyone else". But these struggles, the things he has to war against, they will shape his soul and fashion his understanding in ways that nothing else possibly could. They will, in the end, have been more precious to his soul than gold.
I recently read a talk by Francine R. Bennion on suffering. Here was a bit I particularly loved:
"We are here because we chose to come. We are here not just because God decided it would be a good idea and made it happen, not just because Adam and Eve fell and we automatically followed, but because we chose to come. However essential what God or Adam or Eve did to make it possible, we believe the decision to be born was our own. ...
"We wanted life, however high the cost. We suffer because we were willing to pay the cost of being and of being here with others in their ignorance and inexperience as well as our own. We suffer because we were willing to pay the costs of living with laws of nature ... whether or not we understand them or can manage them. We suffer because, like Christ in the dessert, we apparently did not say we would come only if God would change all our stones to bread in time of hunger. We were willing to know hunger. Like Christ in the desert, we did not ask God to let us try falling or being bruised only on condition that he catch us before we touch ground and save us from real hurt. We were willing to know hurt. ...
"One reason we were willing to pay the high costs of continuing to address reality and become ourselves is that God told us we can become more like himself. We can become more abundantly alive, with ultimate fulness of truth, joy, and love -- fulness impossible for souls unable to take real part in creating it, souls ignorant of good or evil, pleasure or pain, souls afraid of the unknown. ...
"[W]e are not preparing now to begin in the next life to become more like God. We are not simply waiting to get started with the process. We are in it here and now."
My dear Jesse. I laughed and cried at once -- when I told him that he likely knew of, chose and prepared for the very struggles he is facing here -- and his response suggested that he may have made a terrible judgement error in agreeing to any such things. Because ohhh I've felt that! I've often thought that I must not have understood! I must have assumed "hard" meant … something less hard. Hahah. And I've pushed and kicked with all my might against being pulled from ease and simplicity to challenges that demand I, spiritually speaking, develop my muscles by lifting weights rather than feathers.
But then, I guess that proves how necessary and precious all of this is. We clearly never could have understood it by theoretically discussing being imapcted by evil or the agency of others, or by simply imagining temptation or illness or mental and emotional fatigue. We never could have just guessed or assured ourselves of what we might have done in response to pain and tragedy in the lives of those we are expected to help.
And in the end I guess it isn't only that these experiences in the arena of a fallen, mortal world are more necessary and precious than gold, but that they will allow us to become gold ourselves. "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10)
