The Best Is Yet to Come
You may be wondering why I chose a photograph of myself standing across the street from an ordinary blue building as the main image for this blog. There is a reason.
That building has become a metaphor for my life.
And perhaps, in some way, it can be a metaphor for all of our lives. I believe one of the purposes of our time here on earth is to learn, to grow, to make choices, to experience joy and sorrow, and ultimately to discover how much we need the redeeming power of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
The blue building in that photograph did not always look like that. Years ago, I happened to be part of the emergency response when it caught fire.
Much of what was inside was lost. Seeing it in that moment, it was difficult to imagine what would someday stand there again.
I think life can feel like that many times. Things we thought were permanent turn out not to be. Plans change, relationships change, families struggle, careers end. Our financial circumstances change and our health changes. We get older. Dreams that once seemed certain sometimes disappear.Life can be really hard.
We all make mistakes. Other people make choices that affect us. Sometimes circumstances simply unfold in ways we never expected, and we find ourselves looking at what is left and wondering what has happened to me and comes next?
We Begin Where We Are
We cannot always undo what has happened. We cannot return to yesterday and make every decision differently, we cannot make other people choose differently, and we cannot spend our lives wishing we were standing somewhere other than where we actually are. Learn from the past and move on. Make a better future. We can chose how we respond.
We begin with what remains.
Then we try to do the next right thing. We ask for help when we need it. We forgive, and we ask to be forgiven. We repent, we learn, we change what we can change, and we let go of what we cannot control. Then we try again.
Often there is nothing dramatic about rebuilding our life. It happens one choice at a time.
Little by Little
I like how this photograph shows the conditions of the fire already beginning to change. The dark smoke was becoming lighter and steam was rising. There was a lot less fire and flame. Something that had looked overwhelming only a short time before was beginning to lose its power.
Life can change that way too. Not always quickly, not always according to our timetable, and certainly not without effort. But sometimes enormous changes begin with very small things: one prayer, one good decision, one honest conversation, one apology, one act of kindness, one moment of courage, one decision to forgive, one more day of trying.
None of those things erase the past. But they can change the direction we are heading, and sometimes changing direction is where rebuilding begins.
Years Later
Years later, I found myself back at the same place. My parents recently purchased a home by the beach and that's where this blue building stands near by. It caught my eye and I was pleasantly surpirsed to see it again. The fire was long gone, the smoke was gone, and the damaged structure I remembered was gone. Standing there was a blue building, rebuilt.
It caused me to consider it as a metaphor for my own life, because rebuilding our lives does not necessarily mean getting our old lives back. Sometimes we cannot. Some losses are permanent and some consequences remain. Some relationships change and some opportunities pass. Some chapters really do come to an end.
But the end of one chapter is not the end of the story. A meaningful life can still be built from what remains. There can still be purpose and peace, laughter and love, happiness and hope.
The Currant Bush
Do you remember this story from General Conference? It reminded me of a story told by President Hugh B. Brown and later retold by Elder D. Todd Christofferson in his conference talk, “As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten”. President Brown once cared for a currant bush that had grown large but was producing very little fruit, so he cut it back severely. (A currant bush is a small woody shrub that produces clusters of little berries called currants. They can be red, black, or white and are often used in jams, jellies, desserts, and sauces.) Looking at what remained, he imagined the bush questioning why the gardener had reduced it to such a small thing. His answer was that he was the gardener, and he could see what the bush could become.
Years later, President Brown experienced a painful disappointment in his own life, and at that moment the memory of the currant bush returned to him. He began to understand that perhaps the Lord could see possibilities in his future that he himself could not yet see.
God uses another form of chastening or correction to guide us to a future we do not or cannot now envision but which He knows is the better way for us. President Hugh B. Brown, formerly a member of the Twelve and a counselor in the First Presidency, provided a personal experience. He told of purchasing a rundown farm in Canada many years ago. As he went about cleaning up and repairing his property, he came across a currant bush that had grown over six feet (1.8 m) high and was yielding no berries, so he pruned it back drastically, leaving only small stumps. Then he saw a drop like a tear on the top of each of these little stumps, as if the currant bush were crying, and thought he heard it say:
“How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. … And now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me. … How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”
President Brown replied, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”
Years later, President Brown was a field officer in the Canadian Army serving in England. When a superior officer became a battle casualty, President Brown was in line to be promoted to general, and he was summoned to London. But even though he was fully qualified for the promotion, it was denied him because he was a Mormon. The commanding general said in essence, “You deserve the appointment, but I cannot give it to you.” What President Brown had spent 10 years hoping, praying, and preparing for slipped through his fingers in that moment because of blatant discrimination. Continuing his story, President Brown remembered:
“I got on the train and started back … with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul. … When I got to my tent, … I threw my cap … on the cot. I clinched my fists and I shook them at heaven. I said, ‘How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?’ I was as bitter as gall.
“And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, ‘I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.’ The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness. …
“… And now, almost fifty years later, I look up to [God] and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”
God knew what Hugh B. Brown was to become and what was needed for that to happen, and He redirected his course to prepare him for the holy apostleship.
I love that story, although I do not believe it means that every painful thing that happens to us was deliberately caused by God. We have agency and other people have agency. We make mistakes, people hurt one another, accidents happen, and life is complicated and sometimes deeply unfair. But I believe God can work with us wherever we find ourselves.
Second Chances
That is what the life, sacrifice, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ mean to me. Because of Him, our mistakes do not have to become our identity. Because of Him, repentance is possible, forgiveness is possible, change is possible, and healing is possible. Beginnings are possible, even after endings we never wanted.
Second chances are a gift from the Lord.
I have needed them, and I suspect all of us do. There are things I would do differently if I could live parts of my life again, but none of us gets to live backward. We live forward.
We learn what we can from yesterday and then try to make today a little better. We keep trying to become more patient, more forgiving, more honest, more charitable, more faithful, and a little wiser than we were before. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fall short. Then, with the help of the Savior, we get up and try again.
The Best Is Yet to Come
Maybe there are moments when all we can see in our lives is smoke. Maybe we are looking at something that has been lost and cannot imagine what could ever replace it. Maybe we are somewhere in the middle of rebuilding and wondering why it is taking so long. Or perhaps something new has already begun to appear and we simply haven't recognized it yet.
I don't know exactly what lies ahead, and none of us does. But I believe there is almost always more possibility ahead of us than we can see from where we are standing today. There are people we have not yet met and good we have not yet done. There are things we have not yet learned and people we can still help. There are relationships that can still be strengthened, prayers still to be answered, and peaceful days we have not yet experienced.
That is why the blue building is part of this blog. I once saw that place when it looked devastated, and years later I see what stands there now. It reminds me not to judge the ending of a story by what it looks like in the middle.
The loss can be real. The pain can be real.
But neither has to be the final chapter.
Second chances are a gift from the Lord. We can rebuild.