Hands

Each of us has our own trials and struggles in life. The one I write most about, obviously, is infertility. However, I have experienced other trials in my life that caused me to feel hurt, frustration, anger and resentment. This helps me to understand that, although I write about infertility, many of these same emotions can be brought out because of other situations and disappointments in life. This has helped bind me to other people who have not lived my same experience.

You can take this entire blog and replace the word “infertility” with many other words (“death of a loved one”, “serious illness”, “career loss”, “divorce”), and I doubt much would change. Maybe the details would differ but the tone would not.

This Sunday, we heard an inspirational talk in church. Both Ryan and I were touched by it. The speaker spoke of trials, and centered his talk on this scripture:

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.
Alma 7:12

Christ’s goal is to carry our burdens for us. There is no emotion He has not felt before. He suffered the hurt, disappointment, and weaknesses of every soul that has ever lived, or will live. There is no way to even imagine the suffering that Christ took upon Himself for our name. Living through our trials helps us to recognize a tiny fraction of what the Savior did for us.

Like the Savior, we should look up from our own difficulties and reach out to someone else.

Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.
Doctrine and Covenants 81:5

I LOVE this scripture. It is so descriptive of what we should be doing to help each other.

One of my favorite songs reads as follows:

His hands
tools of creation
stronger than nations
power without end
and yet through them we find our truest friend

His hands
sermons of kindness
healing men's blindness
halting years of pain
children waiting to be held again

His hands
warming a beggar
lifting a leper
calling back the dead
breaking bread, five thousand fed

His hands
hushing contention
pointing to heaven
ever free of sin
then bidding man to follow Him

His hands would serve his whole life though
showing man what hands might do
giving, ever giving, endlessly
each day was filled with selflessness
and I’ll not rest ‘til I make of my hands
what they could be
'til these hands become like those from Galilee

His hands
clasped in agony
as He lay pleading, bleeding in the garden
while just moments away
other hands betray Him
out of greed, shameful greed

and then His hands
are trembling
straining to carry the beam that they'd be nailed to
as He stumbles through the streets
heading towards the hill on which He’d die
He would die

they take His hands,
His mighty hands,
those gentle hands
and then they pierce them,
they pierce them
He lets them, because of love

from birth to death was selflessness
and clearly now I see him with His hands
calling to me
and though I’m not yet as I would be
He has shown me how I could be
I will make my hands like those from Galilee

The speaker on Sunday spoke of the Sacrament we take in church each week. Typically, you sit quietly while the bread and water is passed. The speaker mentioned that he often sits and looks at his hands. He thinks about Christ’s hands, and the stories you could tell about what Christ did with his hands. I wonder what stories my hands would tell… and how I can use them to better the lives of those around me.

I hope, this year, to listen more than I speak, support more than I lean, and dry more tears than I cry. Maybe in doing this my tears will ease as well. :)

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This is a little video I put together about the life of Christ. The music is ‘His Hands’, the song quoted above.