When You Can't Set Things in Order

I have a relationship that ended badly last year. I was in a dark place while I was pregnant, and I withdrew from everyone I knew, partially because of depression and partially in a last-ditch effort to protect those relationships from ruin. (I wasn't a very nice person when I was pregnant, which was a strange, new thing for me. I really didn't know how to handle it.)

This particular relationship suffered more than the others did for a reason I don't completely understand. Before I knew it, this person was offended beyond repair and out of my life without a glance back.

I tried to apologize, but they were in no mood to hear it.

And so I let that person go. What else was there to do? I thought about them every once in a while during the next few months. Always wishing I had an opportunity to ask what happened. To clarify whatever they misunderstood. But their message was clear when they left: I don't want to hear from you. Leave me alone.

And that is perhaps the worst feeling in the world. Wanting to making something right, but not being able to.

The months passed.

I decided to break my silence with this person, knowing full well that it was not welcomed. I got no response. This was almost worse than a bad response.

The next day I was sitting at church pondering this struggle I was having. The desire I could not make happen: to set things straight. I sat on the back row of Relief Society, half-way listening to the lesson, praying, pondering, then, resignedly, scrolling through Facebook. I happened to come across an article that was posted by a Mormon page I follow. It was a General Conference message from 1977 by Elder Boyd. K Packer, titled "Balm of Gilead." He talks about excess baggage that we sometimes carry in our lives. Of it, he said:

"Some of it you have to get rid of without really solving the problem. Some things that ought to be put in order are not put in order because you can’t control them."
And then I realized I needed to put down this excess baggage I'd been carrying around. I couldn't fix it with the person I'd (however unwittingly) offended because they had their own agency and I could not control them, even though I had good intentions. All I could do was work it out with God. I spent the rest of the meeting in silent supplication to give my burden to the Lord. In the end, He's the only one I'm responsible to. And you know what? It worked. I felt healing and peace for the first time in a long time.

I know the Savior is anxious to take our burdens. We are the ones who are often unwilling to give them up. When we do give them up, he takes those chains of our weaknesses and worries and forges them into our crowns of glory.

He can heal us.

He can take away our worries, not just our sins.

He is waiting to purify and exalt us, if we just let him.