Nourish It This Long Time

Someone I love has been drifting, not far, maybe not even to danger, but a drift can turn into a long drive and eventually a vacation from the Lord and His church.

Once I discovered the wandering, I began to wonder what my stewardship should be. What was my role and how was I best to respond?

My answer came after a trip to the temple, several prayers, and some saturation in the scriptures. It came from an unlikely source. In fact, it was one of the longer sections in the Book of Mormon, Jacob 5:22, which reads,

“I have nourished it this long time, and thou beholdest that it hath brought forth much fruit.”

I was led to understand that some nurturing is temporary, such as magnifying a calling in the Church to teach children, lead the youth, or help in Relief Society. Other callings, however, are more eternal in scope, especially those relating to our immediate and extended family and close friends.

And so if my answer was to nourish and do it for a long time, how was I to go about doing it well?

So far, there are the several principles I have come to understand. I hope by sharing them with you will see answers for the needs in your own life.

Frequency
Be in the life of the person you care about on a frequent basis. This is not to preach or reprimand, but to love, care, and serve. The person in question needs to know that you care and will continue to care past his or her personal decisions and present diversions from a gospel lifestyle.

For me, this takes a new kind of nourishing. I’m more apt at pouring on the fertilizer, adding a bucket of water, and promptly removing all the weeds. This “nourishing for a long time” is more about adding small amounts of fertilizer on a regular basis (by bearing testimony when the situation merits about important principles of the gospel), gently sprinkling with water (by speaking of your own personal growth and struggles during different seasons of your life), and by tugging at the weeds in the other’s life occasionally to see if they will come (by inviting them to join you in simple gospel activities like prayer or sharing the interpretation of a scripture).

Personal Pruning
I have also come to understand that I need to prune out some of my own faults and foibles. How can I so quickly condemn another when I do much of my gospel worship by habit and not by purposeful design? How can I so quickly criticize when I’m somewhat lax in several areas of my own zeal? How can I lead when I am not always what I should be, steady and unwavering in my own testimony? So even as I nourish, I must look to my own life to prune, water, fertilize, and weed. Then my example can also lend a hand in this nourishing.

Past Regrets
It probably won’t help much, but now I wish I had been more diligent in the small things when this person was more under my influence on a regular basis. I wish that there were more memories of invitations to our family home evenings, steadier family prayer morning and night, and more times when I attended the temple. I wished I had been there more when it didn’t seem to matter so there would be memories to shore up the fledging heart now that it does matter.


Potential Possibilities
I’ve also thought about my specific experiences with nourishing in our yard and how it applies to this new challenge. We lost a beautiful willow in our back yard some years ago. The signs of potential possibilities has been there occasionally. First it was a bacterial infection that caused puss to foam through the bark. Then the tree seemed to heal, although now we know it was significantly weakened. Later, outer limbs seemed more frequently to be dead and brittle. Then eventually, a heavy wind caused the tree to split apart right down the middle to the trunk.

In much the same way, I see how my current situation has been caused, in part, in small places where I didn’t nourish as much as I needed to have done during long ago days. I tended to think that it didn’t matter then, that perhaps the wound of my inabilities had healed over. Now I see that although it did, there was a significant weakness because of my lesser example.

In much the same way, I learned from another incident. There was a plant that died in our yard from simple neglect. The dripper pipe had been crushed by the growth of the trunk and essentially squeezed off the water supply. Sometimes, in other parts of my past, I simply left my primary responsibilities undone too long before I recognized signs of my own neglect.

Mistakes Still
Of course, I have made other nurturing mistakes. For instance, I over pruned an apricot tree and caused its potential demise, too. So now, I must be careful that any nourishing must not be interpreted by the recipient as smothering. I sometimes suffer from this pre-occupation, wanting to know just how far my loved one has traveled from the road, when and where they will be at any given time and date, and often watching too closely the bush which is not yet burning brightly enough for me.

This “nourishing” for a long time is a complex activity, causing me some regret, some pause to rethink, and often a moment of prayer. I want to do this nurturing as the Lord would have me do. And so I continue to nourish, trying and failing, but willing to try again.

My Hope
I’m afraid, like most projects of value, this nourishing will indeed take a good long time. I’ll still occasionally over-prune, inadvertently neglect, and sometimes smother in my attempt to encourage, cajole, and love properly. But nourish I will, this long time. Eventually, there will be much fruit. Of this I am sure…



Photos by David N. Ricks and Marie C. Ricks. Used with permission.
©2010 Marie Calder Ricks/www.houseoforder.com