You're Invited...

I'm not much for throwing parties.  They take a lot of time, a lot of money, and then they're over way too quickly.  So I don't bother.  There is one kind of party, though, that I think I have mastered, and that's the pity party.  Pity parties are so easy to plan and execute that I think I could write a whole book on how to throw a successful one.  The supplies are easy - one invitation (for the party thrower, of course), a snuggly blanket, a box of tissues.  All of those supplies are even optional, so there's no real pressure in the planning.  The only essential, non-optional pity party supply is chocolate.  Now, normally I'm not a chocolate lover.  However, chocolate, preferably Dove Chocolate, is a must for any pity party to truly succeed.

©Darrell Wyatt

When I'm in the middle of a really great pity party, I have a tendency to look at the people around me and think about how much better their lives are than mine.  They have perfect families, perfect jobs, perfect bodies, perfectly clean homes, I think to myself.  Of course, none of that is true, but it prolongs the party.

It made me feel better about my pity party throwing tendencies when I read this morning about a prophet in the midst of his own pity party.  Nephi (the son of Helaman, not to be confused with the son of Lehi) had been preaching and preaching to the people in the north lands.  He preached and prophesied "many things unto them; and they did reject all his words insomuch that he could not stay among them, but returned again unto the land of his nativity."(Helaman 7:2-3) This was very hard for Nephi.  His people had, just a few years prior, been in such a state of peace and happiness, and then so quickly turned to iniquities that it made his heart "swollen with sorrow within his breast; and he did exclaim in the agony of his soul:

Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land; then were his people easy to be entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the words of the Lord - 

Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren. (Helaman 7:6-8)

I read that, and was kind of overcome with surprise.  Was he talking about the same Nephi that I remembered?  The one who was forced from his home in the middle of the night because his father was about to be murdered?  The one who traveled across the wilderness and across the sea, all the while being beaten and tortured and mocked by his own family? And then when they did reach the promise land, he stayed faithful while his own brothers made it their mission to try and destroy his seed off the face of the earth?  That Nephi?  It couldn't be!  But it was.  In the midst of this Nephi's own trials, all he could see were the great things that Nephi of old had experienced.

I learned some neat things from this chapter.  The first thing I learned was that prophets are still men.  They still feel sorrow.  They still feel frustration and agony and fear and self-pity.  They are human.  But the other, and more important thing,  I learned was that in the midst of any pity party, prophet or plain Jane like me, turning to the Lord is the way out.  Nephi climbed to the top of a tower and poured out his soul to the Lord.  He knew, even in this his hardest time, that the Lord was there and would listen to him.  And when he was finished, he arose from his knees with renewed courage to face the obstacles that had been and were still in his way.  He could have skulked off and continued feeling sorry for himself, but he didn't.  With renewed vigor, he began again his preaching of God.

I don't think pity parties are necessarily a bad thing.  If we keep them going for too long, then of course they will have a detrimental effect. But, if we do as Nephi did, and linger in our sorrows only for a short time and then turn our troubles over to the Lord, we can bounce back, just as he did - with renewed strength and dedication to our life's work. 

Chocolate anyone?

Click here to read what I read today: Helaman 7