An Experience with Personal Revelation

A week ago I received a brief email from an acquaintance who lived in my hall at BYU last year. Every time I read through her note, I'm tearing up by the end. It amazes me that sometimes when we exert a little bit of effort or courage in order to make contact with someone, the experience is very personal, gratifying, and fortifying for both involved, whether you're dear friends or total strangers. The past few days I've been thinking about the event and the experiences that her note was about. I'd like to recount here the way I experienced it all, and share what I'm grateful to have learned.

My church calling in the BYU ward I attended as a freshman was that I was to be one of about five Relief Society teachers. I love to share what I think and feel with others. On the other hand, I also usually feel very acutely aware of all the things that I don't do well, and I have a hard time feeling as worthwhile as my wonderful peers. So, teaching on a stage with a microphone in front of 100+ girls was fun as well as very daunting.

For one of my lessons, I wasn't given a chapter to prepare from the manual. I was instead instructed to choose a talk delivered at the 177th Semiannual General Conference that past October. It was up to me to look through them and find a talk that the girls needed to learn about. I read through several that stood out to me, then reread some of those, and prayed for guidance. The talk that I felt I should use was called Personal Revelation: The Teachings and Examples of the Prophets by Elder Robert D. Hales. To be honest, I was scared. I felt that of all the subjects addressed in that conference, this had to be one of the very most difficult for me to teach about. I struggle with personal revelation. I overthink and analyze and worry about everything to the point where it is very difficult for me to recognize or acknowledge the Spirit as the Lord gives me guidance and help in my life. It's hard for me to have faith in my ability to receive promptings from the Spirit. So how could I offer advice and insights on this subject to all those girls when I felt so personally weak? I thought about just picking an easier talk for me, but somehow managed to stick with it.

Preparing that lesson was extremely stressful for me. As the week went on, I began to hope that as I prepared I would feel some major inspiration and confirmation about what I was doing, and then from that point the lesson would write itself because I would have finally had a major breakthrough with personal revelation in my own life. Such hopes are bordering on delegating to the Lord how you want things to happen, instead of trusting Him. Needless to say, that is the wrong attitude to have. He knows much better than I do, and my little wishful game plan didn't seem to happen. Right up to the morning of the lesson, I was really nervous, stressed and unsure. And then as I gave the lesson, everything actually seemed to be going very well. The Spirit was there, the girls were participating especially well, and I could see there was an appropriate amount of laughter as well as tearful, thoughtful faces.

Afterwards, I received a lot of warm feedback and praise, which felt great, though perhaps secretly I was mostly grateful that it was all over and I hadn't bombed it. That night I thanked the Lord that things had gone well, and I didn't think about it much more. Then, a few days later, I found a note slipped under my apartment door addressed to me. As I read it and then reread it, it was like my naive and nearsighted eyes were opened a little bit more, and I could much better perceive what was happening. In the note, this anonymous girl in my ward thanked me for being such a fun teacher and giving a good lesson. Then she specifically thanked me for receiving and heeding the personal revelation that she knew I must have had in order to know just what needed to be said for her, individually, that Sunday. She mentioned some things she struggled with (which very closely paralelled some of my own struggles) and told me that she would approach her life differently because of what she learned from my lesson. That night I wept at my desk, absolutely overwhelmed by the goodness of God and his tender, caring and perfect guidance in the lives of his children. I may have missed it initially, but that evening I realized that throughout the preparation and delivery of the lesson, there was a lot of revelation involved. I was being guided and prompted all along, and it was a blessing in my life as well as in the lives of others. So ultimately what I'd been hoping for did happen and worked wonderfully, just not on my terms or my time.

It is amazing to me how much Heavenly Father trusts us to be instruments in his hands for good in the lives of our peers. Even when the list of things I'm doing poorly is very long and I feel devastatingly inadequate, as long as I exercise a little faith in Him, He will guide me by the Spirit to say and do important and helpful things. It is very humbling, and I am so grateful. I want to be helpful, and when experiences like this happen, it strengthens my testimony as well as those of the people I get to help.

That note was the first of a handful of wonderful "thank you"s that girls were kind enough to give me. Each note, email or conversation has been uniquely sweet to me and has helped me to feel the Spirit as I'm reminded of that experience. This recent email I mentioned at the beginning has affected me strongly. It has reinforced my gratitude and my knowledge that personal revelation is an incredible gift that can effect positive change in anyone's life (including mine).