"Use the Atonement!"

One of my investigators brought up a universal question:
"When all these terrible things happened to me, they said that Jesus would help me, that I should use His Atonement. Sure, Christ suffered everything for us, but he has the strength of a God. Of course he could do all that. But I have the strength of a man. How is Christ supposed to help me?"

That got me thinking about me and how I figured that all out. In my childhood, whenever I heard about the Atonement, it reminded me of middle aged women crying in fast and testimony meeting and talking about how they "used the Atonement". To me and my literal mind, I was imagining some miracle product or a physical tool. I didn't get it. I didn't make the connection between Atonement and redemption/empowerment. I just saw all the women crying. I was doing my best to be good. I've never done anything really bad and thought that repentance was for those people that did obvious bad things. And thanks to my family, there were a lot of temptations that just didn't come up.  But on the other hand, I never really gave Christ my burdens. I kept most of my teenage angst, loneliness, and frustration for no good reason. As a result, I made things more difficult for myself than I had to. I didn't relate to people as I could or should have. I had a habit of drowning out my pain (as well as the Spirit) with really heavy music, all the time. It's not a terrible thing to do, but it's not a good idea either.

Now I don't feel the need to drown out my pain anymore, and it's not because I have less pain to work with. I don't know if there's a specific turning point, but at some point after I moved to Montana, things turned around. There were times when I could have been angry but was able to pray for strength to have an open mind (to the fact that I might not know the entire story) and for the strength to choose to be happy and give my anger/loneliness/pain/you name it to Christ. I learned that part of the Atonement means to give your burdens to Him so you're free to act, not be acted upon (2 Nephi 2:26). From there, I've relied on the Lord more and more, through everything that's happened in the last few years. Good times are ahead, no matter what.

Now my motto is "It's not about me". Thank Heavenly Father it's not all up to me and my will and efforts when He can do so much more with me.

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