Our Deepest Needs

I recently read these words about prayer from Michael Wilcox that have given cause for serious reflection: “Whatever we find within ourselves we may pour out, and we should do so with the most open honesty—fears, disappointments, hoped-for fulfillments and dreams, wounds, frustrations, everything. At times I visualize the human heart as something like a racetrack. At the center is the magnetic pull of our deepest needs, desires, anxieties, or questions. But for whatever reason, we spin rapidly around the track in our thoughts and communications with our Father without ever going to those tender center points” (in S. Michael Wilcox, Face to Face, Seeking a Personal Relationship with God).  The point is that in our prayers we all too often fail to go deep enough in our hearts and tell the Lord what is really bothering us or causing us grief or giving us angst that we may not even have ever verbalized.  We don’t let our heart “swell wide as eternity” like Enoch did in his most intense and sincere communication with the Lord over the thing that deeply troubled him (Moses 7:41).  My mission president’s wife used to speak about horses with painful burrs under their saddle; all too often we are like those horses but we don’t dig deep enough in our search for peace to pull off the saddle and get the burr out. 

               I just finished reading again The Promise, a powerful novel by Chaim Potok that is at least in part about discovering what is really in our soul.  The boy Michael in the book is psychologically very sick and is being treated in a center as they try to understand what is at the core of his bizarre and sometimes dangerous behavior.  When they have just about given up hope of ever getting him to communicate in their therapy sessions, they try a desperate move: they put him in a room by himself with absolutely nothing except a mattress to sleep on.  For months he is in there alone with his needs met but otherwise no one to talk to or any sounds to listen to.  Finally the oppressive silence broke him down so much that he pulled out what was really in his heart and what was at the core of all of his anxiety and fear and hatred and terrible behavior.  I feel like in a less dramatic way this is what Brother Wilcox is telling us we need to do with God; we have to move past the superficial around us, break down our walls we put up around our feelings, and dig into our hearts until we can really talk to God about those issues that trouble us most.  I feel like this is what Nephi does in his famous psalm in 2 Nephi 4.  He is very upset and pours his heart out to God for 10 verses until he gets at what I believe is the core of the matter: “Why am I angry because of mine enemy?”  I’d like to think that there was a long pause between verses 27 and 28; he finally expressed to God that it was the anger he felt towards his brethren; anger which must have eaten at him again and again and again over the years as he dealt with his brothers’ unbelievable actions.  Finally, Nephi realized here that he just couldn’t get over it alone; he couldn’t get rid of the anger alone; despite all of the power that we see him have through 1 Nephi, he in the end did not have the power by himself to completely rid his soul of the anger he felt towards his brother.  But, once he finally got it out before the Lord in full humility, that’s when the Lord poured into his soul the strength and power he needed.  “Awake, my soul!...  O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me?”  Nephi didn’t have to overcome the hatred by himself; the Lord could deliver him from those feelings once he really poured his soul out to Him. 

                 All of us ultimately have our own burrs in our saddles that we need to get out.  It takes brutal honesty with ourselves to find them and then great humility to take that to the Lord so He can help us get them out.  I believe, though, this is exactly what the Lord requires as He invites us, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).