Learning When We Don't Even Think We Are

I was thinking the other day of Nephi, after a pretty negative experience and while feeling "much cast down", being told: "Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; ... with unwearyingness .... [T]hou hast not ... sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments. And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever ...."

Nephi is then promised he will be made "mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works". He's told that everything he asks will be so completely in line with the Lord's will, that it will always be granted. He's repeatedly promised "power". "[I]f ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast down and become smooth, it shall be done," he's told.

I don't know why it seemed novel, I know we learn and grow through experience, but as I thought about these verses the other day, it suddenly occurred to me that these blessings didn't just poof into existence in Nephi at that moment (just because he was awesome), rather they were the natural outcome of those years of unwearied service to God. They were the natural fruit that came from enduring and pressing forward. Might in deed, faith and works; comprehension of God's will--and a perfect desire to seek it; power from on high: Nephi received those things and had actually become those things, likely without fully realizing it, through the process of seeking God's will along the paths, and in the responsibilities and challenges, that made up his mortal journey.

Recently I had a cool little moment where information and understanding was brought clearly to my mind that, to my shock, I realized I had learned through a series of lengthy and tedious experiences where it never occurred to me I was learning anything at all! There was sudden enlightenment and awareness, a comprehension of things I hadn't comprehended before. It was all there, developed in those tiresome experiences, but not shown to me until an event called upon those understandings. 

It made me wonder what other things God might have taught me or trained me in (or might currently be teaching me or training me in) through the ordinary challenges and moments of life that I simply haven't realized yet; and I felt a renewed sense of awe over how amazing God is at wasting nothing of our experience. I feel this new confidence that He is using all of our experiences (where we muddle along, reaching for him and pressing forward, but often not knowing what we are to be learning) to teach all of us so much more than we yet realize--things that will become plain to us when future experiences call upon the need for that knowledge.

I was telling my sister Shannon some of these thoughts, and she told me how she'd just been thinking about an earlier Nephi. Shannon said how she hadn't really paid close attention before to the fact that Nephi was eight years wandering in the wilderness. And sure he had a handful of truly miraculous experiences in those eight years, but most of the time was probably just ... day after day enduring and moving forward with "unwearyingness" in what he was called to do. Likely, through much of that experience, he didn't feel he was learning or gaining or becoming anything at all, and yet, by the end of that time, he had developed the faith to build a boat when the Lord commanded him to, the faith to survive when chained up on that boat for days, etc. Did he recognize he had been becoming "mighty in faith" in the daily routine of that journey?

Shortly after this discussion I had the opportunity to talk with someone who was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by a life circumstance. They could see nothing good that they were becoming through it. (In fact they felt more discouraged and less capable to being of use to God and their fellowman than ever.) But I found myself testifying to them (with words that did feel surprisingly mighty) that they were learning incredibly important things through this experience and space of time. And it didn't matter that they couldn't see it. I told them with a new and absolute certainty that there would be moments ahead when things would come into their life that would show them that they had actually learned invaluable things during this time--things they'd had no idea they were learning!

And that is all. I just felt to record this here rather than in my "spiritual journal" where I usually record these types of thoughts.