Hearts

Some time ago, a friend made an off hand comment in Relief Society. It wasn't intended badly and I didn't take it badly, because she is so deeply kind. I have never known her to be unkind. She stopped a few minutes later and apologized, that she didn't want me to think she meant her comment the unkind way. I assured her that I did not think she had, because I know her heart. That sentence of mine turned in my head for days after. What a wondrous blessing, to have someone know your heart, to know your motives are true, to know you.

This week has been an odd one. I began the week teaching seminary and feeling such a rush, such an urgency, to teach all the things. So many things spilling out of my heart, combined with the lesson manual and its things and my dear DH with his four years' experience adding his things and I found myself teaching probably the worst gospel lesson of my life on Wednesday. There were moments of truth, of Spirit teaching, but only a few moments in a lesson too otherwise bereft of Spirit in favor of hurry, of only me. I hate it when I'm the one teaching the lesson. This gospel teaching thing only works if I bring the Spirit and He teaches. When it's just me, it's just bad. And it was.

And then CE and I packed up the car and drove the long freeway to Provo where we checked her into her temporary dorm quarters for Honors Week and I have subsequently been at loose ends, staying at my sister's, attending some Education Week classes, going to the temple, but really not knowing where I was to be, where I was supposed to be. And all the while worrying a fair bit about this new big thing CE was beginning and my complete utter inability to buffer it in any way for her.

This afternoon I was truly at loose ends as the evening's plans fell apart a bit and I was left waiting and alone and not really knowing myself in my own head. And then I got to spend the evening with a true friend who has known me through all my adulthood, from when we were starting this same journey CE is beginning. We have spent most of the intervening years apart, but she gave me one of those rare and treasured compliments as we parted. "You're still you." I have felt very un me this week, but her ability to see my heart, my same heart in a sea of wiggly bits was a dear blessing. Her friendship is a tender mercy for me. It is a rare and wondrous blessing for someone to see your heart.