Because I Know It's True

by Sariah S. Wilson

We'll have to go back in time to about three weeks ago when I injured my jaw (which is still not better, by the way. I'm not in any pain, but I still can't close my teeth together on the right side and sometimes chewing gets a little painful. So weird).

So, three weeks ago I was in all this pain, and was unable to do anything to alleviate it because of my pregnancy. And things being as they are, this was the same week all of my children became ill with the flu. One child had only diarrhea, another threw up once in bed and had a slight fever, but the baby caught and re-caught this illness. One fun night she threw up every hour on the hour - dry heaving at the end because she had nothing left to throw up. It was terrible.

Of course, this meant that I caught it. And I got the vomiting all day part of it. With my jaw in excruciating pain.

I'm sure you can imagine how much that hurt to have to pry my mouth open just to be able to throw up. It was awful. It was some of the worst pain and suffering I think I've ever been through.

By that evening, I had had enough. I wanted to collapse in a heap, crying from the pain and the overall tiring sickness. I couldn't keep going on the way that I had been. It was too much. The thought occurred to me that I did have one way to try to make this better - I would ask for a blessing.

My husband called my father to come help him administer to me. As we waited, my husband asked which of them I would like to give the actual blessing. We both thought it might be neat for my father to do it as it had been a while since the last time he'd had the opportunity to give me a blessing.

My father agreed, and in the process I had one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences of my entire life.

I am no stranger to blessings, or to having very spiritual moments in those blessings.

But never in my life had I experienced anything like what I experienced that night.

My father began by REBUKING my illness. I don't think I'd ever heard such strong language from him before. He rebuked my sickness, and said that I would get all the rest I needed that night and feel completely fine in the morning. (Both happened.)

And then...then it was like the Lord was standing in the room speaking directly to me.

The illness part of the blessing having been dealt with, my dad said things that he couldn't possibly have known. He used phrases and language that I have ONLY ever used during my individual prayers. They are not words that I ever used in conversations with my family or my husband or my mom. They were things I have only said to the Lord. And to hear those phrases and words being said back to me, in a way that acknowledged my pain and struggles and suffering, well, it was staggering. Words are inadequate to express how I felt.

I can only give so much room to coincidence or good guesses. What was said was far too precise and accurate.

I knew that the Lord knew me. He knew me as an individual, as His daughter. I could feel the overwhelming love of my Heavenly Father through my earthly one. The promises that were made to me, the blessings that were recounted and why they'd been given - I have a relationship with Him that extends beyond anything in this sphere and He was there to remind me of it.

I can step back from my beliefs and realize how strange it might sound to someone else. I can see how fantastic certain things might seem, how unlikely, how some will never be converted because there will be elements they just can't get past.

And I know I can't always explain it in a way so that others will understand it. I can't give the logic, reasoning or scholarship that some will require. Some have said I can't possibly "know." I can claim faith, I can claim desire to know, but that I can't have knowledge of such a thing.

I can only say this - in one of my darkest moments, in the depth of despair and racked by sickness and pain, my God was there. He spoke to me by name, He let me know that I was not alone, He shared wondrous and marvelous things with me that restored my hope. I know He was there. I know He heard my prayers. I know He loves me. I *do* know it.

So why do I believe what I believe? Because I know it's true.