Redemption

Some of the most intimate and powerful dialogues I have with my Heavenly Father take place while I'm driving...it's quiet, I'm alone, and my heart and mind are constantly reflecting on things I don't have a chance to think about or feel when I'm surrounded by people and noise.  Today I felt the renewal of strength that comes with redemption.  I thought about what redemption really means--deliverance, rescue salvation, atonement, advocacy, freedom--and felt a rush of faith as I thought through the examples of redemption from my life, especially the ones that have blessed and, very literally, saved my marriage and family.  Every so often I stand back in awe at the miracle the Savior has worked with me and my family...today was one of those moments.  I remembered a time when, desperate for hope, desperate for redemption, I read the words of President Howard W. Hunter:  "Whatever Jesus lays his hands upon lives.  If Jesus lays his hands upon a marriage, it lives.  If he is allowed to lay his hands on the family, it lives." (Ensign, Nov 1979, p.65)   I remembered the first time I'd dropped to my knees and pleaded with God that His Son find a way to lay His hands on me, on my marriage, on my family, and I remembered the months that followed--many months--where it seemed that this redemption was not to be.  These months were heartbreaking and even hellish, but I learned to trust that my will is and must be subject to God's and that, paradoxically, submission to Him is the water that grows unshakeable personal strength.  I learned that no one and nothing can be saved that doesn't want to be (nor should it) and that redemption was something that must be both granted and accepted.  I learned, as Elder Maxwell once testified, that the Savior's redemptiveness is relentless, something I would not have learned without those long difficult months of wondering and searching and trusting.  I remembered the first time I knew--I mean really knew--that even though I didn't know where life would take me, I knew it would be OK, I would be OK.  That realization would never have come without my life having been pulled out from beneath my feet a few years ago, without having tumbled to my knees, without wondering if I'd ever stand again.  Then I learned what relentless redemptiveness really means.  It's being picked up and brushed off  in the middle of the uncertainty.  It's having Jesus walk you across the water as the winds get wilder and the waves more menacing.  It's knowing you'll be OK even when that's the only thing you know.  It's being so completely dependent on something bigger than yourself that you are quite literally filled with power and hope every time you fall to your knees in prayer and every time you search for answers in the scriptures.

All of this flew through my mind and filled my soul in the minute or two spent sitting at the stoplight on Shary Rd and 495.  The green light (and horn honking behind me) snapped me back into action and I turned left onto 495 and then right to pull up to Michael's daycare.  I rushed in and hugged my beautiful little boy, more grateful than ever for this very real and eternal evidence of the redemption of our family.