Parallels

Sunday morning, 10 am. Elizabeth is getting ready for church, wearing her Christmas dress. She is looking for her red shoes, but can only find one. I join her in the search and so does Cliff. After going over the whole house without finding it, Cliff gets her to accept the inevitable and wear the black ones. She is still sad, so I suggest praying. She prays to find her shoe. We resume our efforts and look all over, even in the unlikely places. Downstairs is thoroughly searched. I am relieved to find a red shoe in the shoe basket, but it is the one we already have, not the lost one. We search her room; she looks in the bathroom; I look under my bed and in my closet. Now it is almost time to go to church and I must talk to her about why Heavenly Father hasn’t led her to her shoe.

I try to tell her that sometimes we have a hard time listening; sometimes prayers don’t get answered when we want them to. Then she starts to sob and all I can do is hold her. She says, “I don’t know why I’m crying!” But I do.

Cliff and I made a decision a few months ago, but disagreed on the timeline. We fasted to help us know the best timeline. Since General Conference, I’ve been feeling that Cliff is right and we should do it his way. We agreed that this was the right thing, but I’ve been struggling to feel firm about the decision. I’ve been going ahead in faith, but yet still unsure and feeling…wary? Fearful? Whatever it was, I didn’t feel confident like I usually do when following the Spirit’s promptings. I was hoping that something would happen on Sunday, some message or song, which would bring comfort and assurance. The best I got was “God Speed the Right” which has lyrics like these: “If we fail, we fail with glory” and “Pains, nor toils, nor trials heeding, and in heav’n’s good time succeeding”. Yeah, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

Then, this morning on my way to work I was just driving along, not thinking of anything in particular, and everything felt just right. Don’t know why, but I just suddenly felt that confidence I was missing. Why that moment? Why not yesterday during church? Why not last night during prayers? Why not next week? Why THAT moment and not a million others? I don’t know. Sometimes prayers don’t get answered when we want them to. Maybe sometimes in my hurried, rushed, million-things-on-my-mind world, I have a hard time listening.

Sunday night, 8 pm. I am getting Lexa ready for her bath and I sit next to the tub to start the water. I look down and see a red shoe. Elizabeth and I had both looked in the bathroom, but neither of us had come in far enough to see the shoe between the bathtub and Lexa’s little tub. Elizabeth and I talked about how God doesn’t always answer our prayers when we want Him to. She said that maybe it was more important for us to go to church than to find the shoe. I agreed.