Parables of Grief--Living Up to Your Spiritual Privileges in Times of Profound Loss

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When tragedy strikes, our understanding of God's protection undergoes a profound metamorphosis. Just as a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, grief can change us into something entirely new—if we allow it. Today, Mama Bear Wendy explores what it means to live up to our spiritual privileges during times of profound loss.

The death of a spouse creates a defining moment that challenges our most fundamental beliefs. After losing her husband, Wendy's prayers transformed from what she calls a "shopping list" of requests to something deeper: prayers seeking alignment with God's will. This shift represents a spiritual awakening that often accompanies deep grief, where we stop bargaining with the universe and start seeking understanding.

Drawing inspiration from Emma Smith's remarkable self-written blessing, Wendy examines how this valiant woman—who experienced multiple child losses and persecution—didn't ask for protection from suffering when given the chance to write her own blessing. Instead, Emma sought wisdom, self-knowledge, and discernment. This historical example beautifully illustrates how living up to our spiritual privileges isn't about escaping hardship but developing the spiritual gifts to navigate it with grace.

For widows especially, unique spiritual opportunities exist. There's a special connection through the veil that allows continued relationship with departed spouses who "have not abandoned their sacred callings" to family. By recognizing and actively engaging with these privileges—through temple service, patriarchal blessing study, and consistent spiritual practices even in difficult circumstances—we can experience profound support and healing. Join Mama Bear Wendy as she offers hope and practical wisdom for those walking the challenging path of grief.

Support the show

If you would like more grief support please see my website at Mamabearwendy.com for upcoming grief groups and 1:1 opportunities.

Although your experience and path will be unique, there is hope ahead in this path and you are not alone. I can see your pain and we will walk this road together. Here is a big bear hug from Mama Bear Wendy, your fierce support in the journey of grief, until next time.

If you enjoy this podcast please consider donating to help us keep going.

"Wendy has a beautiful way of sitting in the deep end of the ocean with you. Her presence alone is healing. She meets you where you’re at and doesn’t push you any further than where you want to go. She gently nudges you into new places with new perspectives. She is highly intuitive, sensitive and compassionate. She brings a depth to the table you rarely see. Her experiences have given her an extraordinary level of understanding and a safe place to walk to as she is a safe harbor fill of strength and integrity. She is raw and real and beautifully vulnerable and she is exceptional at conveying the words that are hard to find. She is a rare one." Christi D.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello friends, this is the Parables of Grief podcast
and this is your host, MamaBear Wendy, I'm here to share
some love and light with you onyour journey through grief and
loss.
I hope, as our healing pathsconnect for the next few minutes
, we can walk together and findstrength for the road ahead.
One scientist suggests thatwhat the grieving need most is
to have others witness our painand help us not feel so alone.

(00:25):
I hope in our time together youwill find the companionship and
understanding that you need.
The intention of this podcastis to use parables of grief to
find the Savior and His promisedhealing in the daily and
commonplace, to see how we aretruly never alone and to find,
like the disciples on the roadto Emmaus, the Savior by our
side, even if we didn'trecognize him at first, because

(00:47):
he showed up in unexpected andcommon ways.
Also, there is much coming soonto help with your journey.
The Parables of Grief book willbe coming out by Christmas of
2025, and there areopportunities to join me in
online grief groups andone-on-one companion sessions.
Please check out my website atmomadbearwendycom for more

(01:07):
information.
Good morning, my friends.
Today's episode is going to beabout privileges and we are
going to discuss several ideasthat I have, starting out with
the idea of a caterpillarturning into a butterfly, but

(01:30):
first I wanted to just make surethat I invited you.
We are going to start a secondFive Pillars of Grief internet
Facebook group and on my websitethere is a form you can fill
out to be included in that.
So that again is atwwwmamabearwendycom and just go

(01:55):
to the place that says groupsand fill out the form there and
that will get you in our nextclass.
It does start April 4th.
So, to start off with, we aregoing to start out with two
different quotes.
The first one is from our dearprophet, president Russell M

(02:16):
Nelson, and he said women havethe right to draw liberally upon
the Savior's power to helptheir families and others they
love.
The heavens are just as open towomen who are endowed with
God's power flowing from theirpriesthood covenants as they are
to men who bear the priesthood,and this is from Spiritual

(02:38):
Treasures, october 2019.
President Oaks also stated weare not accustomed to speaking
of women having the authority ofthe priesthood in their church
callings, but what otherauthority can it be?
Whoever exercises priesthoodauthority should forget about
their rights and concentrate ontheir responsibilities and this

(02:59):
is the keys and authority of thepriesthood April 2014.
So, to begin with, we're goingto talk about something that our
family has done for many years.
We have gotten a kit with livecaterpillars in it.
They are painted ladycaterpillars and when they come
they are about a centimeter big.

(03:20):
They are dormant and as soon asyou bring them into the light,
they start getting active.
They are on a bed of food thatthey eat, so you do nothing for
them except watch them grow andwithin three days they are now
almost an inch big.
They are huge and it isfascinating to watch them turn

(03:43):
into chrysalises and eventuallyturn into butterflies.
Why do we start with that story?
There is so much in the storyof the metamorphosis of a
caterpillar to a butterfly thatI think applies to grief and
suffering.
The first part is there aresignificant changes that occur

(04:09):
when we lose our spouse.
We are turned into jelly.
It's very crushing and brokenand it is a feeling of shifting
and changing and, like thecaterpillar, I think we go into
maybe a state of healing andrest and, hopefully, eating and

(04:32):
sleeping.
Those things kind of come withtime, but they definitely were a
struggle to begin with and aswe grow and change and develop.
I haven't done it yet, but myhope is that we are going to
turn into butterflies and as weturn into butterflies we will be

(04:54):
living up to our privileges.
So our first question is whatare my privileges?
And our second question is howdo we live up to them?
What I have learned is myprivileges are to ask for help
when I need it.
Right after my husband died, myprayers changed from being very

(05:20):
wordy and needy and questionsabout getting things and
protecting all the people in mylife.
And when my husband died, itwas a shock to all that I
believed, all that I believedabout prayer, all that I
believed about God.
I believed that God would takecare of our family, about God.

(05:41):
I believed that God would takecare of our family, that he
would protect us from evil, thathe would not let anything bad
happen.
And that day something reallybad happened and we were not

(06:02):
protected from evil.
And that day I learned aboutthis fallen world and that God
allows bad things to happen.
And what does that mean?
Does that mean God is stillgood?
Does that mean God is stillprotecting our family?
And then I had to look at allthe ways that God had prepared
us and all the ways that God hadbeen there in this horrible

(06:25):
tragedy.
The people that were there asfirst responders were placed
there not by accident.
There are so many examples ofhow they were perfectly suited
to be there for us that day.
And so then the questionbecomes what if God's protection
doesn't look like?
We thought, what if God'sprotection is not about

(06:48):
protecting us from all that isfallen in this world?
What if God's protectiondoesn't look like safety at all
times?
What if God's protection looksvery different?
And so then my prayers changedfrom a shopping list for lack of

(07:11):
a better word to a prayer ofalignment.
My goal became a goal to alignmyself with the will of my
Heavenly Father and to align mydesires to be in line with His
desires for me, desires to be inline with his desires for me.

(07:36):
This brings up a reallybeautiful thing that I was
introduced to this week by adear friend.
The story of Emma and Josephhas been one that fascinates me
for many years.
Emma is a valiant, chosendaughter and her support of
Joseph through all of his trialsand all of her trials.

(07:59):
Multiple babies lost, multiple.
Not protection from evil wheremen would come in and steal her
husband and beat him and sendhim home for dead.
Emma and Joseph's life wascertainly not protected from
evil in the sense that they hadno experience with trauma and

(08:22):
loss, and so my friendintroduced me to this blessing
that is now in the churchhistory catalog.
This is under Emma SmithBlessing 1844.
The story goes that she was in aplace where her husband was

(08:44):
busy and unable to give her apriesthood blessing that she
needed, and so he told her thatshe could write out the very
best blessing that she couldimagine and that he would sign
it when he got home.
And so when I heard this story,I thought oh, I bet she asked
for safety, I bet she asked forprotection, I bet she asked that

(09:08):
no more of her children woulddie.
And I was wrong.
Emma asked for very beautifulthings, and I'm going to just
read you the first paragraph.
First of all, that I wouldcrave, as the richest of
heaven's blessings would bewisdom for my heavenly Father
bestowed daily, so that,whatever I might do or say, I

(09:30):
could not look back at the closeof the day with regret nor
neglect the performance of anyact that would bring a blessing.
I desire the Spirit of God toknow and understand myself, that
I might be able to overcomewhatever of tradition or nature
that would not tend to myexaltation in the eternal worlds
.
I desire a fruitful, activemind that I might be able to

(09:55):
comprehend the designs of Godwhen revealed through His
servants without doubting.
I desire the spirit ofdiscernment, which is one of the
promised blessings of the HolyGhost.
I loved this.
I loved how she focused onliving up to her privileges.
I loved how she focused onasking for the promised blessing

(10:19):
she had been given already.
I went to.
This goes along with aconference talk where he talked
about reading his patriarchalblessing and realizing that the
promises in it he was not on atrajectory to receive and he
would need to change thingsabout his life to receive them

(10:40):
and how he went about changingwhere he lived and his work, all
kinds of things to be in linewith his promised patriarchal
blessing.
I think sometimes we think ofprivileges as something we just
get and that we just don't haveto work for them, I suppose.

(11:01):
But I think Emma's blessinghere reminds us that we do still
ask and seek and knock.
I think that part of thequestion of how do we live up to
our blessings?
How do we live up to ourprivileges?
Goes along with that, as wediscover our privileges.

(11:23):
I have a file on my GospelLibrary app that is called
Promises Apostolic Promises andit is fascinating to me to see
how often the Brethren give usvery specific things that help

(11:45):
us know how to receive thoseprivileges that we need.
We moved to Maryland when I waspregnant with our sixth baby and
it was a time of great changeand shift, like the caterpillar
for me.
I had always lived close tofamily.
I had a big group of supportwhere we were and when we moved,

(12:09):
I'm sorry and I was all alone.
When I had this baby and theRelief Society president became
my surrogate mother, I looked toher in everything.
I told her my sorrows, I toldher the overwhelming things in

(12:31):
my life and she was a powerful,powerful witness to me of all
the things that I needed to know.
One of her blessings to me wasI had prepared a family home
evening for my family.
I had, like I said, sixchildren under the age of 11,

(12:52):
and they were busy.
It was very busy.
My husband worked evenings, sohe would leave our house about
noon and get back about midnightbecause he had a two-hour
commute and so I spent thewitching hour.
If you're not familiar withthat term, that means dinner.
Dinner is when everyone'shungry and ornery and tired and

(13:15):
it is not a pretty time.
Usually in most of our life myhusband would get home at that
time and be able to assist withwitching hour, but unfortunately
at this point he was working soI was alone.
I was newly having a baby andmy husband was gone in the

(13:38):
evenings and as it would getdark every evening I would be so
overwhelmed.
This sweet Relief Societypresident told me that she had
determined that she was promisedif she would have family home
evening her children would notbe lost and that, no matter what
happened, she was going to dofamily home evening.

(14:01):
I loved her sweet testimonythat what the prophets and
apostles promised and therequirement for that she was
willing to do no matter what.
I have taken that into my ownlife and tried to implement it

(14:23):
into my own life and tried toimplement it.
Living up to our privilegesrequires us to do those things
that we have been given aspromises In our patriarchal
blessings.
There are generally somecaveats In the temple.
There are definitely somecaveats of what we have to do to
live up to our privileges, andone of those things is to be
more earnest in our knocking andseeking and asking.

(14:46):
As widows, I believe we havespecial privileges.
I believe we have a connectionthrough the veil and I believe
that we can call upon angels toassist us, especially our
sweethearts.
I believe that they are verynear and that they are helping.
They have not abandoned theirsacred callings to our family or

(15:12):
to us.
They are very present and awareof our suffering and want to be
available to help us.
We can believe in that and bybelieving in that, I believe we
live up to our privileges andthose things can be increased in

(15:33):
our life as we focus and openour hearts up to that.
I think that's our podcast fortoday.
If you would like more griefsupport, please see my website
at mamabearwendycom for myupcoming five pillars of
resilience group and one-on-oneopportunities.
Although your experience andpath will be unique, there is

(15:53):
hope ahead in this path and youare not alone.
I can see your pain and we willwalk this road together.
Let's take a deep breathtogether and here is a big bear
hug from Mama Bear Wendy Untilnext time.