Be Not Troubled

Stories in this episode: When her dreams for a picture perfect senior year of High School get disrupted by Covid, Meg finds comfort and clarity at an imperfect football game; Sue learns an important lesson about what it means to truly trust God as she faces a mountain of boxes and an even bigger mountain of troubles. To see our show notes for this episode (transcript, pictures, links, & more!) go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel Find Elder Rasband's book, Be Not Troubled, here. TRANSCRIPT KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. Today, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be troubled. I know what it means to be "In trouble." I mean, that's basically my entire early childhood. But I just don't think that we use the word "troubled" anymore the same way we used to. I think we regularly describe the times as "troubling" or "troubled," for sure, but it's pretty rare that I text my friend to tell her, "I feel troubled," unless I'm reenacting a scene from some 1950s movie set in the deep south. It feels kind of antiquated, right? I think it's because we often associate feeling troubled with being afraid. And as we've grown in our understanding of mental and emotional health, we just have more focused language to describe exactly what we're feeling. And while I think it's a blessing that we can more accurately pinpoint our feelings –because that makes it easier to figure out what the right kind of relief looks like – I'm sort of on a little mission to bring the word troubled back to describe our state of being. Merriam Webster defines it as, "A state of being agitated mentally or spiritually." And I just don't know that there's a better word to describe spiritual agitation. I also think that while there are medicines for our anxieties and our panic, the only real medicine for our spiritual agitation is the peace of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we need a word for that, especially right now, in the midst of these times. So today, we have two stories about what it looks like to be troubled and agitated in our spirits, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of the gospel, can bring us to a place of hope, and calmness. Our first story comes from Meg, a high school senior here in the US who had high hopes for a picture perfect end to her final year of school, only to find herself troubled by the disruptions of a worldwide pandemic. Here's Meg. Meg 2:06 I have always loved independence and like autonomy and stuff, and so thinking about senior year, I was so excited. And I remember junior year talking with my friends about all our plans, and in my head, I have like this daydream of our first football game together, because that's like the first activity that you do together. We would win the game, obviously, and then we would run down on the field and congratulate the team, and then we would take like, this perfect picture that would just be a good memory. And then COVID hit, and I'm seeing all of my senior friends lose the last third of their senior year, and then the summer goes by, and it just keeps getting worse. And I'm realizing, oh, I have no idea what its gonna look like. This picture is just slowly disappearing. And at first, I felt like, it's not even that big of a deal, like I've so much more in my life, but like, the summer was full of a lot of disappointments. And they were all kind of building up. And I just wanted something small and good to happen. Like, at least I just have this small time with my friends that we can go to the football game. Fast forwarding to the first football game, it's a week before school starting. I'm walking up late, because I was debating on even going. And I'm just really sad because everyone is spread out and far away from each other. It was good to keep everyone safe, but it was also sad because there was no more room in the student section. And looking around to everyone, no one seems very happy. The whole time I was just like, "Oh, why did I even come here? This is not a good idea." I was just really sad because this perfect picture I had in my head was – it was impossible for it to happen. I looked over at my friend I was like, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom and I'll come back." When in reality, I was just gonna go to my car and drive home. And so I walked over to my car. And then I get a text message from one of my other friends and he was like, "Where are you?" He obviously knew something was up because I don't usually act like this. And he was just texting me, he was like, "Where are you? Are you like, are you okay?" I was like, "Oh no, like, I'm safe. I'm good. Don't worry about me. But I'm just gonna take a breather in my car and I'll be back." Throughout my whole life – my mom's always like, "What? Like, you had this huge cut on your foot!" And ...