Covenants

Mosiah 18 discusses the covenants we make at baptism, that we want to be called God's people, that we are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light. We promise to be willing to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.

I was listening to a podcast a while back where an interviewer lamented at how more often we choose to comfort those who mourn instead of mourning with them. I thought back to a story I read a long time ago about visiting teaching. Of a woman who lost her toddler in death suddenly. How her visiting teachers, as good visiting teachers do, arrived to help. She stared blankly. She could not process her reality. She could not tell them what she needed. She just sat there on the stairs. So they set about cleaning and such. Until, suddenly the poor bereaved mother ran from the room, to her bed, sobbing. The visiting teachers followed her, they encircled her there on her bed and held her and cried with her. They could not comfort her. They could fix nothing. They could only mourn. They could love her.

Covenants are powerful things. And we are weak, so we need the power they provide. Hopefully our covenants embolden us to do difficult things, to feel complicated emotions, to learn to hold a space, to find the difference between mourning and comfort. CE is about to embark upon adulthood, BYU and independence. She will have a visiting teaching stewardship. I hope I have taught her that visiting teaching, that this tender act of covenant keeping is only a very small part about record keeping, of rule following, of boxes and a very large part of mourning and comforting and loving people where they are. Loving people where they are is very difficult. A lot of the time we really need them to be somewhere else. A definition of offense I've heard is the failure or unwillingness of someone to do or be what you need them to do or be. If I can love someone where they are, I will be unable to take offense. I will see, if only for a flash, the blinding light the Lord has placed in them. When I am diligent about my stewardships and sincere about my covenant keeping, I ask to see, so that I may love better, so that I may mourn and comfort in appropriate measure and without doing what I think best.

When DH was the bishop, we went for several years with derelict home teachers or without any even assigned. I felt abandoned. Couldn't anyone see how much support we needed while DH was busy supporting everyone else? During those same years I had one shining example of a visiting teacher and many more examples of failure to see the point (even one 'sister' who glibly told me she didn't believe in visiting teaching, while she was my visiting teacher). That one faithful sister taught me so much. She ministered so well. She would call on her way to Costco and ask if she could grab anything to save me a trip. She once took my toddler with her to Costco to give me a break. She brought me treats and messages, the hallmarks of 'appropriate visiting teaching', but she also brought me service, love, friendship and a safe space to be where I was. She taught me, through openness about her own upbringing, how to keep a safe, faithful space for her little family, how to love unsafe, unfaithful and even toxic family members--where they were--without jeopardizing her little flock of husband and children. She is a wonder. Her lessons and love somehow nurtured me through the years of less nurturing visiting teachers and absent home teachers. She loved me where I was and showed me how to love others where they were, however they needed while keeping herself safe.

She is the example of covenant keeping I try to keep before my eyes, to love where others are instead of where I need them to be, to impute the best of motives for even the most hurtful of actions, to remind myself of the limits of my stewardship and unrighteousness of my judgment.