If All Hell Conspire Against Thee

Have you ever felt like a ship on the endless sea?

It begins to rain, and at first that's okay. Then it starts to pour, and the waves lap up over your sides. You roll up your sleeves and start bailing with a bucket, but soon the wind is tearing at your hair and the waves are raging with an animal fierceness and the water is weighing you down, pulling at you, trying to drown you from below as the angry lightning from above threatens to scorch away your existence.

Have you ever felt a weight on your shoulders?

And at first you carry it willingly, making simple adjustments to keep pressing forward.

But then more weight is added, and you start to struggle. Your feet start to stumble, and your muscles begin to wear out. More weight is added, and you are crawling on hands and knees, and it's hard to breathe, and are you even breathing at all anymore? And you feel the crunch of the sharp gravel under your hands and knees as you are pressed into the ground, pushed into oblivion, squashed into nothingness.

Have you ever felt like you were being torn apart?

It starts as a seam coming loose, as a thread that gets pulled. You try to ignore it, but it keeps unraveling. You feel the ripping sensation as your heart is torn from your chest, as your lungs are torn in half, as your brain is torn to pieces. You are falling apart, but from the outside you look perfectly whole. Inside, you are ripping and tearing and shredding and you curl up in a little ball and press your hands to your face to stop the pain leaking out of your eyes and you take gasping breaths, each one pulling at the ragged edges of what you have become.

Have you ever gone through hell?

I happen to be well-acquainted with he who runs that awful place. He has reared his ugly head in my life many a time, turning a gentle rainfall into an untamed gale, a simple weight into a crushing one, a loose thread into an unraveled heap.

Satan's very purpose is to make you miserable, to drag you through the misery that he lives in, to put you through a taste of the hell he is doomed to stay in for all time.

His power is very real. The emotional, physical, and mental effect he can have can be frightening.

It can turn us into someone we're not if we let it.

It can take us somewhere we never imagined going, somewhere that is a deep pit, nearly impossible to escape.

But there is good news.

We have all been through hard times. Some of us have been through hell, have been brought as low as we could go and then forced lower, have been shrunken down to a hollow of what we once were, have reached a place we worried we would never return from.

But there is someone who can overcome all of that.

There is someone who can rescue you.

Peter once was going through a storm, too. He was doing fine, was doing miraculously, even.

But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.

(Matthew 14:30-31)

Christ immediately reached out and saved Peter when he called on Him. 

He will do the same for you.

If you ever feel like you are about to die, or that you are going through hell, remember there is one who has overcome both death and hell.

The awful terrible moments in our lives, the times when we are put through all of the misery of hell, are not permanent. Nor are they purposeless.

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

(D&C 122:7)

You can make it through this. 

You have a Savior who will do anything to rescue you, who did do everything to rescue you, who loves you more than you can comprehend.

Even the deepest misery and most painful experiences have purpose in our lives and will eventually work together for our good.

"There is help and happiness ahead."

-Elder Jeffery R. Holland

Have faith. Have hope.

These things will be for your good, and they will not last forever.

Christ's love, however, will.