I’ve heard that every problem life can ever throw at you could be remedied by the scriptures. While I always simply accepted it as probably true, I don’t remember ever actually testing that theory.
One day, I was doing my daily scripture study, this time in the Book of Mormon, and I came across a passage that further solidified this theory in my mind.
As many of us know, Lehi had been commanded to send his sons to Jerusalem to gather the brass plates. While it doesn’t specify how long they were gone, the Book of Mormon implies they had been away from the camp for a substantial amount of time. Enough for Sariah, their mother, to fear they had died in their travels.
Sariah did what many of us do when things go wrong; she put the blame upon someone else. Now this isn’t to suggest she was a regularly bad person. She was under a lot of stress. First her comfortable lifestyle was gone, then her home, her friends, perhaps even extended family. She had been travelling, camping, and travelling again for days in the desert. And now she believed her sons were gone. And it may have been the last straw.
“She complained against” Lehi, sure that her sons were gone, and that the two of them, being old now, would die soon as well. How would you react in a situation like that? Would you have the strength to continue without complaint? Would you have gone weak even before then?
If you were Lehi, how would you have responded to your wife? Would you have been defensive, as many of us are prone to be? Would you have tried to take the blame off yourself and say it’s not your fault?
Lehi took an unpopular road, one not usually taken by others. Lehi never complained back. He never reviled back. He never continued the argument. He never got self-defensive. So what exactly did he do?
He comforted Sariah.
Here Sariah was grieving — literally, for she was sure she had lost her sons — and he offered what she truly needed. He gave her a shoulder to cry on and an arm to hug. He gave her assurance that all was well.
When I read this passage, I knew that turning to the scriptures and applying the principles therein could solve even marital problems. Let us resolve to approach our next conflict as Lehi, with a comforting touch rather than a contentious word.
