Our Personal Narratives

In a 2010 BYU devotional, David Paxman spoke about the “personal narratives we tell ourselves as we live our lives.”  He gave the Book of Mormon example of Zoram as an illustration.  Brother Paxman talked about how Zoram’s experience being forced to join with Nephi could have led him to tell himself and his children one of two possible stories. 

Zoram might have said, “At first I thought I was caught in a trap, but in the longer view, my presence was planned and prepared for….  I witnessed miracles as God brought us from Jerusalem to a promised land….  What I could see as a problem was actually the circumstance the Lord used to bless me and my posterity.”  Or he could have told his story this way, “I went along because I had to, but the truth is they kidnapped me and hijacked my life….  I was forced to make a promise against my will, and I’ll never know what I gave up….  He said we would be free like them, but I’ve always felt different.”  Brother Paxman suggested that we are all a little like Zoram.  As we look at the events in our life, we can “see God's providence or man’s manipulation.”  We have to “choose between competing truths by which [we] could interpret [our] life” and decide whether we see “difficult, even unfair, circumstances as the very means by which God would bless [us].”  All of us have to decide how to understand and view the unforeseen and uncontrollable challenges that come to us.  I think we see instructive examples in the scriptures of how people interpreted the same experiences very differently.  For example, after eight grueling years in the wilderness, Nephi said, “And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness.... And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children” (1 Nephi 17:1-2).  Laman and Lemuel who experienced the exact same thing as Nephi, gave quite a different narrative: “Our women have toiled, being big with child; and they have borne children in the wilderness and suffered all things, save it were death.... Behold, these many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance” (1 Nephi 17:20-21).  Nephi saw the blessings of the Lord which gave them strength through their trials; Laman and Lemuel only saw the terrible trials and the comforts they might have enjoyed if circumstances had been different.  We find another example in Job.  After the terrible loss of property, animals, his health, and his children, Job could have easily become bitter and angry towards God.  He could have seen himself as the victim of terrible punishments that he did not deserve.  Instead he said this, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  The writer of Job tells us that “in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:21-22).  His wife, on the other hand, who endured the same awful tribulations (except that she did not get the boils), said this to Job: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die” (Job 2:9).  I’m sure that in a similar situation I would be much more like her than like Job—how did he manage to maintain his integrity and to not take upon himself the personal narrative of pity and suffering?  Ultimately each of us will have to decide how to perceive the events that happen to us and how we understand the workings of God in our lives.  Are we victims of others or agents empowered through God’s refining?  Are we mistreated by the harsh world around us, or are we blessed by God’s tender mercies?   After the great war recorded in Alma of the Nephites and the Lamanites, we read this: “Because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened... and many were softened because of their afflictions” (Alma 62:41).  They all endured the same war, but some chose to harden their hearts against God while others still could see His hand and blessings in their lives.  In our day we would do well to follow Brother Paxman’s invitation about how we choose to view our life: “Faith in Jesus Christ has the power to help us get our stories straight, and I pray that, like Zoram, we will see that our life’s circumstances are often the very conditions in which God has chosen to bless us.”