Undaunted

This morning I was reading Alma Chapter 36.  Alma the Younger is relating his conversion experience to his son Helaman. In verse 12 he says

12 But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.
 13 Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; 

A harrow, according to various dictionaries, is a farming instrument with spike like teeth used in fields..  You drag it over the ground and it digs and shreds, breaks down clods of dirt and basically levels the land.

To harrow, used as a verb is to  disturb keenly or painfully.

So, to be harrowed, is to be painfully broken, shredded and leveled.

Discouragement is such a phenomenal tool of the adversary.  He knows my weakness lies in bogging myself down, or harrowing myself in my mistakes and failures.  I allow him to shred me with self doubt and crush me with thoughts that I shouldn't even bother trying to work my way out of the mess I've gotten myself into this time.  "You'll probably just do it again anyway." or "Do you think he believes you when you say you are sorry?"

 There's a book by Brad Wilcox called The Continuous Atonement. while the hardcover is nice to have on hand to take notes in, I recommend the audio version for those have a tendency to read a chapter and forget to pick it up again.  This book goes into using the Atonement as a help-meet with the daily struggles of overcoming transgression, instead of the "do everything you can do alone before asking for help" mentality.  (and that's just a small portion of the book!)

 Three days and three nights passed while [he] was harrowed up by the memory of [his] many sins.  Procrastinating those prayers for help. Waiting until you go 1 day without making that one particular misstep.  These are what we do.  We harrow ourselves up.  We (and I mean "I") have a terrible habit of believing I just don't deserve as much love because of my sins.  It's a terrible practice I am working on overcoming.

There are people in my life I will love no matter what they say or do to me.  Why is it so hard for my tiny brain to grasp that a perfect Heavenly Father can and does love me perfectly, without condition?  There is no rolling of the eyes when he hears me call out for him.  He doesn't ignore my calls, or cough sarcastically under his breath when I promise to "never do that again".  

Joseph Smith, at the young age of 14, at a time when the thought of angelic visitation was unheard of- reads a passage of scripture that changes all that we are.  "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God...."

He doesn't get an easy answer...

15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

 16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

I've read this so many times in my life.  And I have an understanding of modern revelation!  I've buckled under much less.  I dare say, this boy had no idea what to expect as an answer.  Certainly not the answer he received.  And subsequent visions and visitations throughout the rest of his life.

the Hymn  Joseph Smith's First Prayer:

When the pow'rs of sin assailing

Filled his soul with deep despair;

But undaunted, still he trusted

In his Heav'nly Father's care.

Without the Restored Priesthood, without all the knowledge we have today, this boy was undaunted under such darkness.  He found his faith from one line of scripture.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him as of God, that giveth to ALL men liberally... and it shall be given unto you."

Back to Alma's experience.  He described his despair:

17 And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.

 18 Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.

 19 And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.

He didn't say he forgot his sins. He said he wasn't held back by the memory of his sins anymore.  He was able to partake of the joy's of the Atonement and overcome the weight of his guilt and believe that he was worth saving after all.

 20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!

I know one day I can have this joy for myself.  I know I will have to work at it, change something inside myself so that my weaknesses no longer hold me back from peacefully knowing I am not in this struggle alone.  But that is the point.  I won't have to work at it alone. 

2 Nephi 4:19

...nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.