The Cure for the Limbo Blues: Love, Music and Revelation

Today we had our Christmas program. Our ward has a lot of holiday travel, so we do it early each December. It was a truly wonderful thing, which wasn't necessarily unexpected, but in the past several weeks I was too much in a grumpy cloud for it to reach me.

Still, I went through the motions of all the practices. In each practice I dreaded one particular song. It starts out from the view of a shepherd who sees the star, hears the angels and witnesses the Christ child while he was still a boy. In a later verse the Shepherd says,

But life goes on, years beyond one brief night of my youth.
Time clouds my vision of truth.
And though I stumble, and fall,
I can hear someone call,
"Do not despair,
Your star is still there."

Now, I've been having a hard time not seeing my path as clearly as I'd like. I've been really even questioning if there was a plan for us some days. As a result, I had the annoying and inappropriate habit of always falling apart into complete despair exactly at time we sang, "Do not despair, your star is still there." On one occassion I had to excuse myself to the women's room to commence a big baby breakdown: "I don't see the star!"

As mentioned before, I'm guilty of thinking that just because I don't know or understand the plan for my life, that there isn't one.

On Wednesday I was at the church practicing for a small group number to start off the program. The Bishop was there and, in a pathetically resigned, "what-the-heck" way, I decided to ask him for a blessing, which he willingly did. It was remarkable how different I felt afterward. Basically I was reminded there was a plan, and received a great deal of understanding of why things are going the way they are. Not a lot of understanding of where they were going, but some direction at least. But beyond the words, I just left feeling fine about the state of things for the first time in a long time, even though they seem so uncertain still.

Just to know there was a plan, I could be okay not knowing really what it was.

So I spent the remainder of the week practicing Christmas songs, doing our mom's group Christmas music class, enjoying the group cookie exchange and giving away cookie plates to my VTees, visiting with friends, motherly nursing a bad case of poison oak on Ben, reading with Sophie, laughing at and with Noah, making Lucy giggle with kisses and generally feeling pretty good. And nothing really changed in my life, just a reminder that I'm on the Lord's radar. God's love is powerful stuff.

I have a lot of friends in limbo right now--financial, employment, relationship and fertility issues. One sweet friend of mine in a housing/financial limbo gave me this article, and if you are in any kind of limbo right now, I highly recommend it:

Our Unexpected Journey Toward the Promised Land


So I sat down in church today and thought for the first time that hey, all this practice has been for a Christmas program, maybe this would be a good time to get the Spirit of Christmas. In the meeting, President Bradford shared a quote that I instantly adopted as my life creed, a quote from President David O. McKay,

"Man's basic needs are love, music and revelation."

And as we sang and I listened to the narrative, I really felt wonderful. And because of this little reminder of the Lord's love this week, given through revelation, in a week filled with music, I was able to sing "Do not despair, your star is still there." --and really believe it.