Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Little miracles. Coming to know God. #God #spiritual #service #Jesus

Service brings us closer to God than most other things.  I have learned that if I want to understand my Heavenly Father better, it is through service that I usually learn what it is that I desire.

In this post I want to talk about an experience that had a large impact on me, and I believe my cousin that I worked with as well.  In sharing this I am not trying to paint myself as a saint, or puff my pride or anything of that nature.  I am attempting to share how one experience touched my life and brought me closer to a loving Heavenly Father.

The experience happened when I was living in Taylorsville, Utah and was a young boy, likely around the age of 8 or early 9.  I had a cousin that was pretty extremely handicapped and had a disease that made it very difficult for him to get around.  He struggled because of this and we would spend time together at the basketball court between our houses playing and talking.  I once asked him if he would like to walk and play, and he wanted that very badly.

I decided to take it upon myself to help him get out of his wheelchair and walk.  I knew it was more than just a teaching experience because he had never walked, and his muscles couldn't support him.  At the time I just knew it would take a miracle to allow him to do what he wanted, and he even said it isn't possible.  Even before we started all hope of success seemed impossible.

We spent days, then weeks, and then months just working on balancing him and allowing him to stand, and then to take a step which was an amazing day.  After months of work and many frustrations and struggles, he took his first set of steps.  I believe the most he ever did was to walk about halfway across the one half of a basketball court, but to him that was the greatest success ever.  I felt this was amazing and I was witnessing a miracle.  His parents became concerned that we were pushing him too hard, and insisted we stop the nonsense.  He also was concerned and agreed with his parents.  After that we were never able to work on this again.

I learned some amazing things from this experience though:

First I learned understanding for those less fortunate, not just those that are handicapped in some way but to see the struggles of those around me.  More importantly I learned to lift others when possible.  There is nothing that our Heavenly Father has that he does not want us to have.  There is nothing that we face he is not willing to help us through.

Second I learned that we have to respect the wishes of those who care for us.  It was very difficult for me to let my cousin sink back on his desires based on the decision of his parents, but it was the right thing to do.  From this I learned that Heavenly Father will respect the free agency of us and those around us.  Some things are out of our control, and we need to be aware of that. More importantly we need to allow others their free agency so they can make the choices they feel are right.

Another thing I learned from this is that people can give up when things seem to be going well.  I don't know if this was for the better or not in my story, but I know I was blessed by having the experience.  In fact, I was more blessed by letting my friend and his family make their choice and not pushing things.

This experience as a whole helped me to understand that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want us to know them and be like them.  They care more than we likely will ever understand, and even though we constantly stumble and fall they are always there to lift us up if we will not give up on ourselves or on them.

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