“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27). Sometimes life hits us with the full force of an earthquake. When we are blindsided by tragedy, the fault lines and cracks in our hearts appear and then widen and spread. These weaknesses are not evidence that we are abnormal or unworthy. We have not failed out of our Heavenly Father's great plan for us. On the contrary, when our afflictions make the fault lines in our hearts manifest, this is the Plan of Salvation in action. Christ promises that if we come unto Him, He will show us our weaknesses and our faults and the cracks in our heart. When our heart is breaking, that is when Jesus shows us our weaknesses. We may assume that either everything is completely fine or we may assume that everything is completely terrible, but when we are truly in pain and distress, all of those assumptions are chased out and our focus narrows down exactly to the fault lines in our hearts because that is where it hurts the most, right at the breaking point. It is no easy task to expose the fracture points of our hearts. Many of us will be tempted to shield ourselves from the pain by hardening our hearts. We will pretend that everything is fine and there is nothing wrong with us. Or we will pretend that we are helpless victims and therefore have no power nor responsibility for the causes or solutions of our misery. But it takes true sacrifice to let down our guard and lean into the full awfulness of our situation. That is why our Savior requires of us a broken heart. He wants us to dive in with both feet into the furnace of affliction until our heart truly starts to crack and break. He wants this so that He can show us where the fault lines of our heart are, where the weaknesses are, so that He can hammer them out, and build up a better, stronger heart. None of us look forward to finding out what our faults and weaknesses are, but once our Savior has shown them to us, we at least know what we need to work on so that hopefully when the next tragedy comes along, we won't crack and break in the same place again. If we are afraid that our current crisis will break us, then we must replace that fear with certainty. It will break us. That's the point. The hardest part about our trials and tribulations isn't the fact that they break us, but that we believe that being broken is a bug and not a feature and especially that just because we have been broken once we must somehow be doomed to remain broken forever. Our Savior asks us that when we are in the midst of trials, we come unto Him so that He may show us our weakness by breaking our hearts, and then as we make the sacrifice of a broken heart, He will give us a new heart and make weak things become strong unto us.
