This talk was originally given in Sacrament Meeting in Eugene, OR on October 8, 2023.

In a Sunday School lesson that took place in the last few months, ward members were asked to quickly list commandments that came to their minds. For those of you who were there that day, you remember that we had no problem rattling off things like don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t lie, live chaste, obey the word of wisdom. And of course at the culmination of this list was to love God (which thinking about that culmination was the purpose of the exercise).

God commands us to love him because by loving him we can more fully feel his love. When we love God, his loving arms embrace us as we go through life – the hard parts of life, the joys of life, and everything in between. Those loving arms help us to feel hope in life.

In the last month I’ve been reading a book written by Latter Day Saint authors Fiona and Terryl Givens called “All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything In Between.” In the introduction to their book they discuss how problematic it is when we only focus on the sins and forget about God’s love. As they wrote, “A young woman wrote to us sharing her challenges as a missionary, wondering in moments of despair, ‘Why do I worship this God?…I couldn’t sleep. Night after night I would lay in bed thinking about an angry, retributive God.. We have heard these and similar sentiments expressed with great frequency. ‘I will wake up an hour or two before my alarm, only to have my mind flooded with thoughts of failings, sins, not fulfilling or magnifying a calling.’ From a grieving parent: “While waiting in the temple recently I came to [a scripture] about the damnation of those who fall from their covenants. I felt conflicted torment. What I read felt without hope. I begged God to understand.’ A man still hurting from ‘childhood wounds’ described the belief that led him out of the Church: ‘It had always been a faith in an angry old-man-in-the-sky God…The god I was raised to believe in was not kind, or loving or merciful. Instead he was judgmental.’”

If you have ever felt like the people Terryl and Fiona Givens described, this talk is for you.

If you have ever felt like listing commandments and ways to fall short is way easier than thinking about God’s love, this talk is for you.

If you have ever wondered how you can possibly “endure to the end” or even just make it past the day, this talk is for you.

I believe we can be hopeful only as we feel God’s love. So, I guess the question is, how do we feel God’s love?

And that’s where, I think, it gets personal. Everyone feels God’s love in different ways.

For example, former President Bonnie H. Cordon of the general Young Women’s organization shared how she felt God’s love one day on a church assignment. She was asked to go visit a boy at the children’s hospital, but was worried about the assignment. Her grandson had recently passed away and her emotions were still raw and fresh from that horrible experience. She worried going to the children’s hospital and seeing kids being treated for various health issues would only bring back her pain. She prayed for strength and decided to accept the assignment. She said of the experience, “as I walked in, just the sights and the sounds just opened up so much of the heartbreak for me. But I got the assignment to meet Oliver. And I walked in his little room, and on his whiteboard was a scripture that said, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding.” I don’t know how it happened, but that scripture opened my vision, healed my heart in a way that I could never have done it. And I was so grateful that the Lord gave me this gift.”

I love her story because it shows that, even in times when we’re mourning, and likely feel hopeless, God can speak to us in very simple ways to let us know that he’s there, that he wants us to feel his love, and that we can have hope in him.

Sometimes the way we feel God is even more subtle than this. For example, former President Jean B. Bingham of the General Relief Society said she didn’t really know what it felt like to feel God when she was a kid. She said, “It took me a while to understand how I hear Him. I remember the first time I shared my testimony. I was 12 years old, and I was in Minnesota. It was one of those wards where you sit in the congregation and they bring you the microphone. And my heart started to pound, and I knew I had to stand up. And I was just petrified, but I couldn’t stop it. And so that was the first time I stood there and waited for that mic to come, and my knees were just shaking. And I stumbled through a very simple testimony. But I felt so warm, so good, so affirmed that Heavenly Father loved me in doing that. So that was maybe one of the first times I realized that for me, one of the ways that I feel the Spirit and I hear His voice is that warm assurance that I’m doing the right thing.”

I liked reading her story because it shows that sometimes feeling God is a simple thing. It’s just a warm assurance, but nothing miraculous.

Other times, feeling God might come from other people. For example, President Camille N. Johnson of the General Relief Society said that she hears God through the words of others. She told a story of going to the temple and wanting to feel her late father there. “while I was there at the temple, I had someone that was working there in the temple come up to me and say something to me…that sounded so very much like something … only my dad would have said to me. And I was there at the temple that day hoping for a confirmation that my dad was in here. And on that day, I heard the Spirit testify to me through the voice of a person that I didn’t know that my dad was aware of me, that he was available to me, and that he loved me. And the words that she spoke to me in the temple gave me that calm reassurance that the plan of salvation was real. I knew it, but I knew it more deeply, I knew it more profoundly, and that’s, I think, the way the Spirit uniquely speaks to us. And sometimes they’re words of another person that motivate us, comfort us, provide us with peace or joy in the moment.”

President Johnson’s story stuck out to me because it helped me realize that sometimes we need to lean on each other to help us feel that love from God. And sometimes we might be the instruments in God’s hands that help someone else to feel that love.

I remember one day when I was about 8 months pregnant with our littlest one and feeling very-8-months-pregnant. It felt like just about everything that could have gone wrong that day did go wrong, including a call from my doctor that he was reading some research that got him thinking about my baby and, long-story-short, he was worried about her growth – never something an 8 month pregnant woman wants to hear. I remember a friend from my ward texted that day and said she was bringing over dinner. It was totally out of the blue. And not really something we necessarily needed that night, but I just kind of felt like it was a little note from God that said, “Hey, I love you. I know today was hard, but I’m here.”

I’ve been recently reading US Soccer Olympic Gold Medalist Abby Wambach’s book “Wolfpack.” Her book is titled “wolfpack” because it’s about how important each of us are for each other and for the wellbeing of the world, really, even if sometimes we might be feared. She said, “In 1995, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone after being absent for 70 years. It was a controversial decision, but rangers decided it was a risk worth taking, because the land was in trouble. During those seventy years, the number of deer skyrocketed because they were alone and unchallenged at the top of the food chain. They grazed unchecked and reduced the vegetation so severely that the riverbanks eroded. Once a small number of wolves arrived, big changes started happening almost immediately. First, they thinned out the deer through hunting. But more important, the presence of the wolves drastically changed the behavior of the remaining deer. Wisely, the deer started avoiding the places they’d be most vulnerable to the wolves – the valleys – and the vegetation in those places regenerated. The height of the trees quintupled in just six years. Birds and beavers started moving in. The beavers built river dams, which provided habitats for otters and ducks and fish. Ravens and bald eagles returned to eat the carrion left by the wolves. Bears came back because berries started growing again. But that wasn’t all. The rivers actually changed as well. The plant regeneration stabilized the riverbanks, so they stopped collapsing. The rivers flowed freely again. In short: The plant ecosystem regenerated. The animal ecosystem regenerated. The entire landscape changed. All because of the wolves’ presence.” Her book goes on to discuss how it’s up to us to come together, like a wolfpack, and work toward helping society thrive.

I wonder how often we feel like the wolf – feared by others. This idea reminds me of the quote I read by Terryl and Fiona Givens at the beginning of this talk, where they quoted so many people who had written to them discussing their challenges with feeling like they were never good enough in the church. Perhaps these people felt feared, just like the wolves were feared. Maybe they felt like they didn’t quite fit in at church or were sometimes othered by those around them. I know I sometimes (often) have those feelings. But honestly, we all play a special and important role. Abby Wambach wrote later in her book, “There is a wolf inside of every woman…Her wolf is her talent, her power, her dreams, her voice, her curiosity, her courage, her dignity, her choices – her truest identity.”

Though Abby Wambach’s book is secular, and not about God’s love, thinking about this imagery of Yellowstone and of the importance of the wolf pack can help us as we seek to feel God’s love through others and seek to help others feel God’s love through us. I believe God sees our talent, power, dreams, voice, curiosity, courage, dignity. He sees that in each of us. And he loves that in each of us. And it’s because of that love that we can have hope in Him.

I mentioned we may sometimes feel feared by others. But I also wonder how often we view others as the wolf – and fear them. How much better would it be if we took Abby Wambach’s advice and came together in unity to make the world a better place and recognize the power of even the wolves?

The gospel is a gospel of love. The gospel is a gospel of hope. The Savior’s atonement is available to us because of God’s love. Repentance is a joyful occurrence as we can more fully feel God in our lives. God loves us. We can work in unity to together feel that love and that hope.

Shifting gears just slightly:

What happens when we have mental illnesses and can’t feel God’s love? I remember after my 2nd child was born, I felt pretty empty. I had postpartum depression and kind of felt like I was being crushed by the weight of the world. If someone asked me how I was doing, I had to quickly answer and change the subject because otherwise tears would start falling from my eyes. Even though I may have believed in God and had knowledge that I should or could have hope in him, finding it was not possible. I was reading my scriptures and praying and going to church and doing all those things. But I could not feel God’s love. I wish I could say some beautiful moment, like the one I described earlier by Sister Bingham, occurred that helped me feel God. But truthfully, nothing like that happened during that time. I needed a combination of professional help and personal self-care practices that helped bring me from that emptiness. It wasn’t for a whole year after I had the baby that I could even begin to feel glimpses of God. If you are experiencing mental illness, my heart goes out to you. And it’s hard finding the right treatment to begin to feel less empty. Please do not feel guilty if you cannot feel God’s love. It’s not your fault and sometimes the answers are not easy at all.

Looking back on my experience, I’m wondering if perhaps it is times such as these where our wolfpacks can envelop us and help us through the hard times. Though I didn’t feel God’s love, I know that along with the professional help, I had so many loved ones surrounding me that helped me through that time. Though I didn’t feel it then, now I realize that even if I wasn’t feeling God and really had no hope in him, God still loved me. He put people in my path that helped me along the way.

Eventually, I was able to begin to feel him again. But it wasn’t a beautiful aha moment that I remember vividly of when things got better. Honestly, I just began feeling him a little bit here or a little bit there. But truthfully, feeling God’s love has never been the same as it was before the postpartum depression. Where I used to have bigger moments, now it’s usually more subtle. For example, I sometimes feel God’s love in the rare moments when my little one feels like cuddling with me. I sometimes offer a prayer of gratitude in my heart for my relationship with her and I sometimes feel God’s love for a tiny moment (before the two year old runs away and that moment is over). These aren’t big aha moments that I might have had in the past. But they are tiny moments that piece together to help me have hope in God. 

I believe that God is there, that he loves me, and that he wants me to feel His unconditional love. I believe that I can feel that love through many different pathways, including through those around me. I believe that I can also help others to feel God’s love. Feeling God’s love gives me hope. I have hope in God.