As I'm sitting here in a quiet house with kiddos tucked into bed (yay! Me time!), I am also thinking about how amazing it is that Heavenly Father knows us so well. While I was in AZ a few months ago doing a training for Let's Play Music, I stayed with my good friend April. It was an especially tough time for me then, and her husband David gave me a Priesthood blessing. The details are too personal and sacred to share, but I will share that I felt an incredible wave of His love and how much He hurts when we hurt and how much He truly does know EXACTLY how we feel. Because of this, He knows EXACTLY how to comfort us and what we need when we need it. Sometimes it seems that we are all alone and that we are stretched to our very limits (or even past them!), but then is when that light, that comfort, that "just enough", comes. When Joseph Smith was in the Sacred Grove, praying to know which of the churches to join and was overcome with a darkness so much so that he was unable to speak, when he was stretched past his limit and he "was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction" (JSH 1:16), "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of the them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other, This is my Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (JSH 1: 16-17). Joseph was overcome and unable to speak, ready to give up, when the light appeared and he had an incredible experience in which Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, appeared to him. Now I don't expect to see a vision like that when I am at my limit :), but I DO know that when I am at my limit (or feel that way), He will provide the light that I need in whatever form is best for me, whether it be a scripture I read that day, a friend who stops by, a phone call, an email, or a lucky call of "I'm on my way home early and I can take the kids to school and you can get a nap" from my husband, He will help me because He loves me and because I am precious to Him and He knows what I need. One of my favorite parts of The First Vision is that they called Joseph BY NAME. What a blessing it is to have a Heavenly Father who knows us so well that He calls us by name and comforts us individually, sharing in everything we experience in this life. The Spirit testified to me again through my experience in AZ that He had been there, holding me, crying with me, and comforting me when I thought I was all alone and just couldn't keep going. He knows and loves me and is always there even when I may not think so. I know that is true and I am grateful for the "stretches" to my limits as they have helped me come closer to my Savior and to striving to become the person He wants me to become.
