LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN: ON FEAR; OR, ON SADNESS

My dear children,
Today I had a thought about sadness. We spoke in Sunday School and in Relief Society about the joy and happiness of the Gospel, and about how his covenant children are most blessed above all. Therefore we ought to be of all people the happiest. I asked myself, “Why was I so sad as our children were growing up?” Especially you older ones.
The obvious answer is that we were not my ideal of a happy family; we were not like my family. Also, I was such a failure. It was so hard, and all my efforts seemed to go for naught. And on and on.
But the real reason is that I listened to the insidious little voices that whispered in my ear. I did not listen to the voice of the savior, the one that said, look to me in every word; doubt not, fear not. The voice that said, Trust in the lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. The voice that said I love you. Believe.
Over time and through affliction, I started believing and hoping more, and I came to the realization that happines and joy are indeed my heritage. I know that those insidious little voices come from liars, from the father of lies. I flick them off my shoulder: Be gone. You are not the spirit of truth in which I trust. If I feel sad on some occasion or because, perhaps, of some clinical genetic miswiring of the nerves, I acknowledge that it is just that, a feeling. Not a reflection of what is real.
My purpose is to warn you: growing up under the tutelage of a mother too often sad, and perhaps, born with that odd miswiring, you are dangerously susceptible, some of you more than others, to follow those voices into gray mist. Don’t wander off into it and become lost. Hold, hold, hold, to that iron rod which proclaims, “Men are, that they might have joy.” Believe that joy and happiness are pleasing to the Lord. He has no pleasure in gloom. Though we have responsibilities and obligations, burdens and temptations, to which we fall prey too often, yet joy is our inheritance, and will be ours for the seeking. Let us not be guilty of the greater sin of not allowing it in, of judging ourselves unworthy. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Not ours.
Ways to which we have grown accustomed are always, in their odd manner, comfortable. We feel alarmingly exposed coming out of that comfort into the light of something greater and better (“See,” says Satan, “you are naked!”). In this case, though, repentance is not a case of covering our heads with dirt and lying down in sackcloth and ashes; it is a case of allowing happiness to take us over, to move us to hope, to trust, to have faith, which in turn move us to abound in good works. This process feeds upon itself to produce more hope, more trust, more faith, and more abundance in good works.
All repentance requires a stepping out into the darkness, inspite of the doubts and fears. Let us nevertheless make the attempt, and walk into joy. Continually.