Lord You Have My Heart

One of my favorite songs right now; It really voices my feelings.  Especially because I am going into my mission hoping to develop an even deeper relationship with my Savior than the one I have already tried to so hard to cultivate. My favorite lines from the song go like this “Lord you have my heart and I will search for yours. Jesus take my life and lead me on.” I have been through a lot in my life but especially the past year and I have tackled the healing process a day at a time. However, no matter how hard things got I swore to myself that I would never turn my back on God. No matter how badly I hurt or how angry I was at what was happening I was not going to be mad at God. My Savior has become my dearest friend. I read a book recently called “I loved Jesus in the Night”. It’s a biography about Mother Teresa and she talked about how she lived like Jesus was her spouse, living only to please Him and make Him comfortable inside her heart. Her and I are kindred spirits in that goal. A lot of what she said is how I feel exactly 

What I have learned most from the hard year though is that God loves me. He loves me because no matter where He asked me to go, no matter how deep the despair or how dark the night, He was with me. Even when I tried to hide my pain from my roommates or my family I could not hide it from Him and I found it oddly comforting. When I got angry I did not direct towards the individual who was the source of my pain, instead I turned it towards my Heavenly Father, and He in turn helped me to know His Son better. He brought to my knees and then to the scriptures. Teaching me of  a man of sorrows that was acquainted with grief. In the night I came to know and love the Redeemer of the world. I came to truly understand that I am His as long as I am willing to make a place In my heart for Him to stay.

With a call to serve a mission I have a chance to demonstrate my thanks for His companionship and His unending understanding and mercy. I have offered prayers of gratitude on numerous occasions but I never felt I could adequately voice the gratitude I felt in my heart. He had walked with me through the valley of the shadow of death and he taught me to fear no evil. He helped me to know that goodness and mercy would follow all of my days (ref. Psalm 23). I know that my mission will heal me. It is the last step I need to take to truly feel forgiven. The final push to the disciple that I want to be; I have sought every day for a long time to be the kind of disciple that could look at the face of the Master with pleasure, knowing that I had been faithful in all the things He had commanded me to do. I am not there yet. I know, with my Savior at my side, someday I will be; but not yet and for now I just have to walking.

There are moments that ignite a glimmer of hope that I am doing the right things and living the right way. One of those moments came when I was talking with a friend. We were talking about some of the hard things I had experienced and he asked “Haley, do you love our Savior.” Without even thinking the words kind of slipped out as tears filled my eyes “I love him so much.” Then he smiled, like he knew something I didn't and said  “Its little wonder you want to specialize in New Testament studies.” In that moment I felt validated. I felt like all the efforts, all my prayers and all the sleepless night I spent worrying about my progress and whether He was pleased with me felt like they were not for nothing.

I echo those words now. I love my Savior so much. He is the friend I've always looked for, the One that I can confide in. Who is always ready to listen He loves me so much that He cuts me down to help me grow and after I have spent a long night in the dark I know that it is only to turn me into a beautiful and magnificent butterfly. Lord you have my heart; I only pray that I can find yours. May God watch over you in your darkest hours and always, until you read again. 

And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. (Isaiah 58:11)