"Without Me Ye Can Do Nothing"

It's been an interesting week, full of a few ups, several downs, and a number of important self-realizations, most of which I will keep to myself.  After a week of not being able to sleep at all during the nights, I'm once again able to rest at nights and be productive during the days.  For this, I am extremely grateful.

I wanted to share one realization that came to me.  It was the realization that the Savior is exactly right when He declares, "Without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5).  When he says "nothing" He means "nothing."  During some recent challenges, I found myself trying to make personal progress and let go of some things entirely on my own.  Too often we try to move beyond the hurts in our lives all on our own.  We try to make things right by shear force of personal effort.  In a sense, we try to save ourselves.  But this life does not work that way.  Sometimes the hurt runs too deep, and thank goodness it does.  In the very process of hurting, we are brought to the inevitable conclusion that "Without Him we can do nothing."  And so our pains and our struggles cause us to reach out to others and most importantly to reach up to Him.  Then, like the wounded souls He healed so often, He lays His hands upon us and restores us to strength and health and comfort.

I was not numbered among the ten lepers, nor the paralytic man lowered through the ceiling.  I was not among the blind that He physically touched, nor the dead that He called forth from their graves.  But of a truth I can testify that I have in very deed been healed of my own leprosy.  I have been given power to take up my bed and walk.  I have been taught to see where once I was blind.  And I have had moments where I found new life within my heart where once there had been deadness and despair.  Through all these miracles, He has taught me, "Without me ye can do nothing."  And no message has ever been so truly comforting.