Answers Will Come

I'm not really a jewelry person, but I have a favorite pair of earrings I wear most days. One day, I decided to remove them and try on a different pair. Carelessly, I placed my preferred earrings on top of my dresser and forgot about them.

A few days later, I discovered one of the earrings on my bedroom floor. I regretted not putting them in a safer place. I knew I must have pushed them off onto the floor when I was dusting my dresser. I began searching for the other earring, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I enlisted my young kids to help me with the search. My five-year-old son, Rhett, thought he had seen an earring but couldn't remember where. Assuming he was referring to the one I had already found, I explained to him that we were looking for the other one.

After searching for a while, one of my kids suggested we pray for help. I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer, but in this instance, I had my doubts about whether or not prayer would actually lead us to find my earring. I had already turned the entire room upside down looking for this tiny piece of jewelry with no luck. I was starting to think that the small stud had clung to my dusting cloth and traveled to the washing machine or that I had vacuumed it up and accidentally discarded it in the trash. If the earring was no longer in my bedroom (and it clearly wasn't), there was no way we would find it there no matter how hard we prayed. If it had reached the garbage, a favorable answer to our prayer was impossible.

Not wanting my kids to lose faith that God hears their prayers, I had a little chat with them. "You know," I said, "Heavenly Father hears our prayers and answers them, but sometimes He doesn't give us exactly what we ask for. It's possible that the earring isn't even in this room anymore, but that doesn't mean He didn't hear our prayer and doesn't care about us." My kids seemed to understand, and we proceeded to pray together.

Just as I suspected, our continued search was fruitless. The kids soon lost interest and went back to playing. I was satisfied with the lesson I taught them. I hoped it helped them keep their faith in prayer to know that God still hears us even if we feel like He's not answering. I wasn't worried about the earrings. They were inexpensive, and I easily ordered a new pair. No big deal.

More than a month passed, and I was teaching a group of children at church. I had asked them about their experiences with prayer, and some of them were sharing stories of missing toys and other objects they had found after praying for help. (God must receive many such requests from children.) I wanted these little ones to know that Heavenly Father loves them even when they don't get the help they expect from Him. I explained that sometimes what we want is just not possible or not what we need. I told them about the missing earring. I testified to them that even though I didn't understand why God didn't give my kids and me the miracle we asked for, I knew He loved us.

Exactly one week after sharing this story, I was sitting at church again with my family. My son, Rhett, reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled something out. As he opened his little hand to show me what he retrieved, my mouth dropped open. He was as shocked as I was. We looked at each other in excited disbelief. It was the missing earring! It had been in the pocket of his church pants all along! He must have discovered it after I dusted it onto my bedroom floor, but hadn't remembered where he put it.

I felt instantly humbled. I had used my short-sighted logic to explain to myself and all of those kids why Heavenly Father hadn't answered our prayer. I thought I understood the ways of God. As Rhett and I marveled quietly at the sudden appearance of the earring in such an unexpected place, I couldn't help but feel the foolishness of my reasoning. I knew that my lesson to the kids wasn't completely wrong. It's true that sometimes we don't get what we want when we pray. However, I wasn't completely right either. I had missed an important truth about prayer: God's plans for us take time to unfold. He knows exactly how to help us find all of the answers we seek, but He operates on His timetable. We can trust that even if our prayers don't yield immediate results, God is present and working in our lives. Answers will come.

"Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven. But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come." (Jeffrey R. Holland, "An High Priest of Good Things to Come," Oct 1999)