I will give you rest

"..there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight."
Riah the Jew to Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

This quote resonated with me because I have recently been thinking about a time in my life when I looked at myself (my inner self) and did not like what I saw there. It had been a hard and emotionally taxing two or three years and when I wasn't feeling numb to everything around me, I felt anxious, lonely, angry, and with no visible way out. Up to this point, I felt like a victim of circumstance--I certainly didn't blame myself for the way I was feeling or acting. But after I truly took a look at what I had become, I realized that no matter what was happening to me externally, I did not have to be a person that I did not like or respect.

And so I started consciously trying to change my thought process, change the way I spoke and thought about myself and about other people, and even when I inwardly resisted the idea of reading scriptures and praying for help, I forced myself to do them...because I believed these things were the way I could get away from what I didn't like about myself and become what I wanted to be. What did I want to be? Happy. Not afraid. Someone who made positive contributions in the lives of other people--who made other people happy (even if just in small ways).

It wasn't easy. It isn't easy. I am not even close to being the person that I want to be yet. There are plenty of things still wrong with me. But one change happened almost immediately--I felt hope. I began to feel real, true happiness again, even if it was just for a few minutes at a time. And the hope and happiness made the rest easier to deal with. I know that God is real. I have felt hope and healing through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

What does any of this have to do with the Dickens' quote? One of the hardest things I have ever done was realizing that part of the problem with "me", was, in fact, "me"...and then deciding to get away from the parts of me that were, in part, causing the numbness and anger and loneliness. It was not a "flight" in the sense that I was running away from myself. It was a flight, in the sense that I truly faced myself for the first time and then turned away from self-destructive behaviors and patterns of thought. And it was hard.

I believe we all have to do this to some degree. Sometimes it is fleeing from inner demons (like self-pity and self-doubt and fear) and sometimes it is fleeing from outer demons (like temptation or physical harm). And always, it is a realization that you need help, be it medical, physical, emotional, or spiritual or all of the above.

What I have come to realize about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is a gospel of change. It is a gospel of hope. It is the promise that "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world. But that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:16-17) He wants us to be our "biggest, brightest selves" (to quote a friend) and only He can help us become our biggest, brightest selves. One time when I too hastily judged someone else's actions, my dad said something along the lines of: "It is not where you've been so much as where you're going that really matters." And I am starting to understand what he meant.

"The first words Jesus spoke in His majestic Sermon on the Mount were to the troubled, the discouraged and downhearted. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”¹ Whether you are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or among the tens of thousands listening this morning who are not of our faith, I speak to those who are facing personal trials and family struggles, those who endure conflicts fought in the lonely foxholes of the heart, those trying to hold back floodwaters of despair that sometimes wash over us like a tsunami of the soul. I wish to speak particularly to you who feel your lives are broken, seemingly beyond repair.

To all such I offer the surest and sweetest remedy that I know. It is found in the clarion call the Savior of the world Himself gave. He said it in the beginning of His ministry, and He said it in the end. He said it to believers, and He said it to those who were not so sure. He said to everyone, whatever their personal problems might be:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”^2"

^{Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "Broken Things to Mend."}

Elin
-Who may one day finish the everlastingly long book Our Mutual Friend. My kindle says I've read 76% of it...