Pathfinding

In an exchange between his secretary and Brigham Young, the young man asked Pres. Young why God wasn't constantly at our side promoting universal happiness and easing the path of those that choose to obey his commandments. Essentially why when we're doing as we feel we should does life continue to be difficult. The answer: "Because man is destined to be a God, and he must be able to demonstrate that he is for God and to develop his own resources so that he can act independently and yet humbly." Then he added, "It is the way it is because we must learn to be righteous in the dark." (President's Office Journal, 28 January 1857, Brigham Young Papers)

I read this the other day and rolled that phrase around in my head for days. Learn to be righteous in the dark. When you're alone, when no one is watching, who do you choose to be? When circumstance presses and when opportunity begs, who will you be? When you're sure of what you want, but you're sure... it's not what you need, what leashes your desires? "Bridle your passions" was always a very visual phrase to me. Religiously, I always imagined I was more the horse with the bit between her teeth, taking the jump with or without my riders urging, unsure just who was riding whom. We just seemed to be going in the same direction for a while so there was no need to define the relationship. Somewhere back there in my history, I chose to be counted as I am. I'm an active participant, but I hold back, determined to stand on my own feet. To hold myself stiff, to give no quarter to the reflex to relax my guard, to not lean into the comfort that I crave. I tell myself it's because I don't trust it, but I lie. More frequently than I'd like, I find myself clinging to my faith by my fingertips and they're white tipped and shaking from the strain, BUT I KNOW IT'S BY MY OWN CHOICE.

So often I find myself asking for the desire to want to be the person I think I should be. Blame tangential thinking, but I've always loved wolf stories, to be just what instinct drives you to be. To forget reason, to be so sure, without equivocation. I wish I was that instinct driven but instead of warmth/food/breath, I long for a knee-jerk goodness, a willingness to give all, and to simply know like it was muscle memory. What to say, what to do...

To be righteous in the dark, to walk a path led by inspiration, to be oh so sure that there is solid stone beneath your feet, that while you can't see in the pitch black, you trust your guide has the vantage point to keep you safe and whole. I was listening to a friend talk about their view on 'faith' a while ago and I diagrammed my response in my head, what I'd wished I could say if he wasn't boozy and quixotically determined to sway me, if it weren't 2 am, and we weren't in a crowd. It'd have told him, "No, I believe because it keeps me alive. If this life were all there were, if there was nothing better, I'd rather have died at 14. The two proceeding years in my life would have gutted me and left me hollow without it. While that may smack of blind faith to you, it's not now and it wasn't then. I wasn't left alone to do it by myself. When I was doggedly getting lost, feeling like I was 90' miles from nowhere, just where I'd put myself, there were signposts. Sometimes they came in the form of people, sometimes answers to prayer I abso-freaking-lutely had to have, and sometimes statistically implausible events that dropped me, loose limbed and amazed, in a heap back smack in the middle of the path I'd lost. Something saved me again and again 'cause there was no way I was saving myself. No matter what I do in my life, no matter what stupid mistakes ---and potentially idiotic choices --- I make. I cannot ever say anything other than there is a God, he knows me, he watches, he listens, and good grief he's trying his best to bring me home."