"He lives my mansion to prepare." There's a song that I know very well that has this line of lyric in it.
I was about to hop in my car and drive an hour away to sing at a fireside with my Jenny Phillips fireside choir, when my roommate appeared in the hallway next to my bedroom and told me some news that actually shook me up pretty significantly. I was surprised by how automatic my upset reaction was.
My roommate was very sweet -- as she always is (that's just her nature) -- when she broke the news to me. It wasn't absolutely devastating news. Nothing immensely bad or sad; however, it was pretty sad. I won't go into it right here, right now, because it hasn't very much to do with the points I wish to touch in this blog post.
But I did leave the house feeling angry. And so this piece of news must have been really been a doozy of a downer to me, because I rarely get truly angry. Anger happens hardly at all within me. It's just not my thing. But today it was . . . but just for a few minutes.
And I know that, whenever I do get angry, it only lasts for a few minutes. Today, after the news flash, with this knowledge about my anger habits consciously rolling thru my mind, I was 100 percent certain that THIS time would be a rare time that I'd remain angry for a little longer than the norm.
I had begun to drive the hour to my fireside destination. During the first 5 minutes of my drive, while I was all by myself . . . well . . . I confess that I was yelling out loud angrily. Yeah, I do yell at the universe sometimes, but usually just when I'm in my car by myself. It's the perfect time.
I started crying out: "God, I'm not mad at you. I'm not. I'm just mad at . . . the universe. Not at you. It's okay to just be mad sometimes, right? But God, I just want you to know that I'm not mad at you."
A couple more minutes went by, during which I was still talking in fretfully frustrated tones. Something inside me seemed to secretly be urging me to continue talking out loud. Five more minutes led to 10, which led to 20, then to half-an-hour, 45 minutes... And then the hour-drive was over, and I found myself at the church building I needed to be at for the performance.
My talking and talking and talking out loud had ended up evolving into a real, bona fide conversation with God. The more I talked out loud, the more it honestly, earnestly started to feel like not just some girl talking to herself, but a child talking to her father. It had become a two-way conversation. Even though it was just one audible voice speaking, there were two people in the car. There was a second person besides the girl: a loving father . . . a heavenly father . . . the one and only Heavenly Father. I found it interesting and quite cool that Heavenly Father, in this setting -- even though I couldn't actually see Him with my own eyes -- seemed to have been sitting next to me in the form of a regular person -- a good friend, like the type of good friend I could see with my own eyes on any given normal day. He seemed to really physically be there in my car with me, less than 2 feet away from me off my right-hand side. I tend to talk with my hands often, and so I actually did catch myself gesturing to Him with my right hand a couple of times as I was chatting with Him.
Anyway, so from the initial moment I began to throw my "tantrum" in my car, it hadn't taken me much longer at all to realize that my talking and talking and talking had turned into a prayer to my dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father. This was such a neat experience that I'm pretty sure I will never forget. This one-on-one conversation with Him turned my world and my day around in such a positive way. By the time I had arrived at the church for the fireside, I felt angry no more. My anger had done a complete 180 and became happiness. I found myself smiling again. My heart was at peace. No more storm inside my soul.
Here's what God and I talked about:
- First, I told Him that I was angry. Not at Him (like I mentioned before), but just . . . angry. And I asked Him if that was okay. At this point, I'm pretty sure that He said yes.
- I spent a couple of minutes loudly stating all of reasons why I was so mad. There was thing wonderful thing that I had found and acquired in my life, and I had just found out that it soon would be taken away from me, and as soon as I learned from my roommate that this is what was going to happen soon, my body almost literally felt like a rug had just been yanked from underneath. I felt so shook up. Wah. That really did feel so awful.
- And then I started to delve into philosophy and analogies with God. I started painting metaphors in my head, and I continued to talk out loud as I painted. I described to God what the picture in my brain was beginning to look like. I told Him that my life -- or, rather, what I wanted my life to be -- was a blueprint of a big, nice house that I was drawing out and designing myself. But since I've only been alive for so long, and since I know that there are still so many more upcoming life chapters of mysterious who-knows-what, I know that all I really actually have drafted up in my blueprints is pretty much just the perimeter of the house, and a few completed rooms and other interior aspects, which represent all the life chapters that already happened for me, and all the joyous memories from my past that I treasure now. There is still so much space left in the empty area of the house. So many more experiences to be had, and so many more joyous memories to make that will beautify the rest of the house, little-by-little.
{How did I know today that Heavenly Father was actually replying to all the stuff I was saying to Him? The Holy Ghost, man. It had to have been the Holy Ghost. Because these next few things were things I had never EVER before pondered in my whole, entire nearly-thirty-years of mortal existence. This next thing I'm about to say is something that I am totally, totally convinced could not have been a thought that I could have spontaneously come up with completely on my own. This one had to have been inspiration from the Spirit. I knew it. I can't give an adequate explanation as to why I knew it -- why I know it. I just do.}
- I recited the line from the hymn "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." You know, that line that I mentioned clear at the beginning of this post. I recited that line to God. I sang the song a little bit for Him. He lives my mansion to prepare...
- And as God was sitting right there, right by my side in the passenger seat of my car, which actually had my big purse and a concert program and some weird CD and some other piece of junk all over it (yeah, just another one of the infinite gazillions of reasons why God is so cool -- He can sit there comfortably even with all that weird also sitting there!), God helped me discover something quite big...
- For me, in my life, regarding the house that was getting designed in my blueprints... That house? It's actually a mansion that He's helping me build . . . right now . . . in my time here on this earth. "My mansion" that's mentioned in that hymn had always been "a mansion that I may see someday in some following lifetime." That mansion referenced in that hymn had always seemed to be something that's not yet within my reach. It had always seemed to be something that I could only dream about (haha, see also hymn #223). But now I believe that there is this mansion that He's helping me build right now. I now see my life as something that can be lived beautifully -- beautiful like a mansion.
- My mansion -- my life -- is something I can put my best efforts into, and can do my part in making it beautiful. Sometimes I make mistakes as I'm putting it together. Sometimes I accidentally spill and make huge messes. Sometimes I pick the wrong wall color, and at the initial time of my painting the wall(s), I think it's not looking too shabby. But then time passes and I realize that that paint color was quite vile. Ew.
- One main, recurring topic that kept coming up as God and I talked about the way we build my mansion together: rugs. Rugs. This is where I brought up the piece of bummeriffic news my roommate had reported to me not long ago. I restated that the news felt like the really nice rug being yanked from underneath me, and I just wasn't ready for it.
- But then the longer I continued to talk about the rug again with Him, He seemed to have helped me point something out to myself: it's not that rug was yanked out from underneath me, for that would have meant that someone in my life intentionally tried to hurt me. But this thing that was bothering me? It was nobody's fault, nobody's wrongdoing. There was no element of wrongdoing at all. It was just one of those "life happens" things. Just the way the planet spins, and the way cookies crumble. And so, instead of an intentionally cruel act of yanking a rug from below, the rug simply perhaps just got a stain on it or something. Like, someone just accidentally spilled their glass of cranberry juice on it or something. Haha, I dunno. :)
- But somehow the lovely rug just got stained or tarnished somehow, based upon the fact that I open up my life -- my "mansion" -- to other people. I share it with other people. Or, in other cases, I even indirectly share it with people I don't necessarily know, but the decisions they make do indeed affect my life -- sometimes in ways you're glad about, and sometimes in ways you are not too thrilled about.
- And then God and I talked about what happens when people open up there "mansion" homes to other people. People accidentally hit the baseballs straight through the windows. People drop your glass goblets on your kitchen floor. People track mud all over said-kitchen floor, not to mention all over your carpets. They turn your thermostat up too high, down too low. Whatever. I dunno. It's just that, sometimes in your life, people may hurt you -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- and opportunities arise for forgiveness. It's the same thing on the flipside: people will welcome you into their lives -- their "mansions" -- and you'll make some offense (whether intentional or unintentional) and you may ask for forgiveness, or forgiveness will be granted to you. From my conversation with God in my car, one of the biggest points that stuck with me is that forgiveness is so incredibly vital in maintaining the peace and beauty in our "mansions."
- God taught me a new interesting way to look at the great atonement of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. He helped me see that, lots of times, it really is I who is the culprit behind creating ugly messes in my mansion. Christ is an excellent, excellent helper (and an ever-willing one, too) whenever I wish I could have help in cleaning up whatever mess I made. Christ is such a great helper. So loving, too. Christ can (and very much wants to) help us build our mansion into something so beautiful, and He delights in helping us keep it clean and bright and as marvelous as it can be. Heavenly Father is an amazing helper as well. He and His Son are such a great team. The Holy Ghost, too!
AFTERWORD
At one point during the fireside that I was singing at tonight, after my hour-long roadtrip with God, I was sitting there and listening to one of Jenny Phillips' solos or testimonies, when I thought further about different things that can happen to a person's mansion. Sometimes a person's mansion can undergo incidents a little more serious than juice stains on the rug. Sometimes it may seem like a real tornado blew through and destroyed everything. Sometimes it may seem like the entire downstairs flooded and became submerged in 6 feet of water. Sometimes it may seem like an entire portion of the house burned up in flames. Sometimes life is just really, really hard. Trials may sometimes seem more than what can be borne.
But I promise you this: you always have your Jesus and your Heavenly Father, who are always, always, always there to help you build and rebuild.
One of the concluding things I said to God, as we were finishing up our conversation, just before I had to go to the fireside, was this: "God, you are always welcome in my home. You are always welcome to stay at my mansion. After all, you have always been there to help me build it. You have never not been there. And so, you are always welcome." And I wept as I said that to Him. Like, kind of a lot. My life is His. I belong to Him. He loves me, and has always loved me. And so I welcome Him.
OH, AND ONE LAST THING ABOUT THE RUG
So, about that one rug I was talking about which had seemed to have been yanked from underneath me... There is still not a replacement rug. I know that there's supposed to be a new rug. One thing God told me is that He'd bring back a new, even better and more beautiful rug -- one that will make that particular room in the house the most lovely it can possibly be.
Now that this "sad" thing is about to come to pass in my life, that thing which I'm about to "lose" represents that rug that was "yanked" (which was, in actuality, just "stained" or something). I don't know yet what I'm going to do instead. I'm going to figure it out. I know I will figure it out, with God's help. And whatever the great thing will be, which God will help me figure out, will be the substantially more awesome rug that God is coming back from the store with. He will help me install it in my home. Just one of the small yet wonderful ways God provides remarkably sweet and sweetly remarkable help in building up my life -- my mansion.
