Pearls of Wisdom

An oyster creates a pearl in an effort to protect itself from a foreign object. Some irritating speck gets inside the pearl and pokes and tears at it, so the oyster wraps the speck in layer after layer of smooth, non-irritating pearl coating. The longer the pearl sits inside the oyster, the more layers it acquires and the larger and more lustrous and more precious and valuable it becomes. There are things in this life that happen to us that don't make sense - not to our mind, not to our heart, and not to our soul. There are pains that we feel like we can't endure, betrayals that we feel like we can't forgive, wounds that we feel will never heal, doubts that will never be resolved, fears that will never be quieted, despairs that will never be consoled, and burdens that will never be lightened. These are foreign objects that pierce and poke and irritate our hearts and our minds and our souls. We can pray to our Heavenly Father to give us some relief, and in His infinite mercy He may pour His grace upon us and wrap us in the smooth and luminous light of His love. It will not fix the problem right away nor remove the irritating, painful, foreign object from us. We can pray again and He can wrap us in another layer of personal revelation. And we can pray again and receive another layer. It may take dozens, hundreds of times of praying and fasting and receiving and acting on personal revelation before we are able with the power of the Atonement to transform our anguish into a pearl of wisdom, but the longer it takes us to heal and recover and forgive and be forgiven and understand and see the intent and the reason and the purpose for our suffering, the larger and more precious will be our eventual pearl of wisdom. Some pearls of wisdom will require everything of us, all of our hope and our faith and our love and our strength and our health and our sanity, but when we at last reach the end we will examine our pearl of great price and we will realize that sacrificing and selling all that we had in the end was a little and a light thing compared to the far greater weight of eternal glory that awaits us with our pearl of wisdom for which we paid so dear a price.