Finding Moments of Peace

 
I still remember the feeling of kneeling on the sheets, slightly unsettled by the subtle motion of the top bunk, alternating between silent tears and silent prayers. I had been in the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah for about a week. I was finally beginning my service as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And all of a sudden I discovered that my life had reached one of those points where everything is in question and nothing is right. 

Of course, growing up in a faithful family in the church, it was always clear to me that serving a mission was the right thing to do. I'd been reading the Bible and the Book of Mormon since I first learned my ABCs and I'd found meaning and comfort in applying their wisdom in my life. I had learned to sing that "I am a child of God" and felt deeply that those words were true as I experienced an inner warmth when praying as a child to ask God if He was really there. Once I had turned nineteen and was officially eligible for missionary service, there wasn't much of a question in my mind - I would take a leave of absence from college and serve the Lord. 

But just because you believe something is right doesn't mean you're comfortable doing it. This was a proselyting mission - I would be meeting people and attempting to convince them to completely change their lives and join a new faith. I occasionally comforted myself that missionaries only shared their own beliefs and invited others to learn and decided for themselves, which is generally true. But of course the purpose of all that sharing and learning and deciding is to persuade others of the Truth. And that left some room for worry - what if I was wrong about Truth? What if an awkward 19-year-old was an unlikely candidate for having traveled far enough down the path of Enlightenment to lead others along? Or, what's more, to persuade them to leave their current path and choose another? 

Somewhat unusually, perhaps, I wasn't carried past my doubts and into the mission field by my study of the Book of Mormon or other devotional literature, or at least not only by those. Instead, I borrowed The Life of Pi from a neighbor I was doing some babysitting for. Pi Patel encountered the divine in different places and people. When others questioned the account of his remarkable journey, he told them that he preferred the better story. Perhaps I couldn't know for certain that I had a handle on the Truth, but I did know that the doctrines and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ were the best story I had ever heard and one that was deeply rooted in all the best things in my life. With that reassurance, I headed off on a mission. 

So this first crisis of my mission, whimpering on the top bunk, just one week in, wasn't about the Truth. It was just about me. I wasn't sure that the other missionaries in my district liked me very much. And I wasn't sure I knew how to learn to work well with them. And if something as small as all that was enough to derail me after so short a time, why would I ever think I could go about doing something so foreign and uncomfortable and potentially important as 'preaching the gospel' for two years? 

I didn't experience anything like an answer to prayer that night. The next morning, I woke, showered, shaved, put on my white shirt and tie and a suit jacket cut too wide ("In case you gain some weight," my dad had said). We had a devotional that morning with all the missionaries in the MTC. My district and I settled into our seats. The chatter died down as someone at the front announced the program. We began to sing a hymn: "I Feel My Savior's Love." 

As I sang along to the song - a children's song I had known as long as I can remember - I felt an incredible spirit fall over me. A deep sense of peace and stillness filled every part of my body. The words of the hymn became sacred to me, a deeply felt prayer, an expression of confidence in who I was, what I was doing, and my place in the world. 

I feel my Savior's love 
In all the world around me 
His Spirit warms my soul 
Through everything I see 
He knows I will follow him 
Give all my life to him 
I feel my Savior's love 
The love he freely gives me 

Everything was all right. Everything would be all right. 

I treasure those moments in life when I have experienced the sublime like I did that morning. They often seem to come after a night of worry or fear. I can't promise that everyone will experience that connection with the divine in the same way, but I know I often find it when I reach out in sincere and open prayer. I speak to God (even when I'm feeling less than certain that He's there), I thank Him for the goodness I experience, I tell Him how I'm feeling, I ask Him my questions, I listen and take in the stillness, I ponder on my thoughts and feelings, and then close in the name of Jesus Christ. 

I'm grateful for the moments of peace that often follow. I hope you find that peace too, in whatever way you find access to the divine. 

"I had never foreseen the possibility of that, a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them. … I only felt … the presence of a love … it [was] evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact." - Simone Weil, Waiting for God