One Eternal Round

A few years ago, I was desperate to talk to anyone who could give me some answers, direction or advice.  I was in a very dark place mentally, spiritually and emotionally.  I turned to apologetics, which provided some temporary answers.  In the end, it gave me much more
dissonance to deal with.
 

At one point of desperation, I turned to professional therapy for the very first time of my life.  At the end of the day, it was my wife and some dear friends that really helped me through and still help me through tough patches.  
 

I was reflecting the other day and had one of those jaw dropping moments.  I was speaking to my 11 year daughter the other day and she asks me out of the blue, “Dad, why doesn’t God answer my prayers?”  
 

I responded, “It does seem like God doesn’t answer some of our prayers, doesn’t it?”  She nods at me.  I continued, “Sometimes I feel like God answers my prayers and other times it feels like He is either not answering me and sometimes I wonder if He is really there at all.  To tell you the truth, I’m really not sure what to make of it.  Sometimes I REALLY want to believe God is there, listening and answering, but at times it is very difficult to believe that.  The only real answer that I can stand by is, I really don’t know.”  
 

I know what you might be thinking.  What a terrible answer to give to a young girl!  I completely agree.  I wish more than anything that I could give her a concrete answer, an answer that would give her that certainty that all of us desire and need.  But, I don’t want her to think that I know and understand something that I don’t actually “know”.  My journey has taught me to embrace uncertainty.  Trying to accept uncertainty goes against everything I have known and grew up with.  Accepting the notion of uncertainty is not easy and it is very uncomfortable.  But I feel like I have too because it is the only “Truth” I am absolutely certain of.  It also keeps me in a searching and learning direction, which I believe is very healthy and productive.  
 

I have spent over thirty years living with a life full of certainty and confidence in what I believed.  Very little doubt entered my mind until adulthood.  Now, I find myself in the exact same place as my young daughter.  She is full of questions, with uncertainly all around.  Ironically, I am also in the exact same place as she is.  So I can now use the analogy that Joseph Smith used of a ring of being one eternal round and now apply it to my situation.  After all those years, of believing including more than three years of re-evaluating my beliefs with extensive research, I am no farther along than my beautiful, skeptical and intelligent daughter (yes, I’m a proud father with a strong bias).  But this new direction and path brings me a great deal of peace and comfort.  You wouldn’t think so, but it does.