Big faith – Small fears

By Bethany Theulen

Elementary school science class taught about perpetual transmutation, although personally, I don’t remember this terminology used. I do, however, remember being fascinated with the idea that our earth and its atmosphere don’t “create” moisture. The water and precipitation are all already within our atmosphere, and it is only the form the substance is in, at any given moment, that is constantly changing.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to Rare Faith that I realized how empowering the idea is that the form in which my outer circumstances is shaped is directly related to my thoughts. All that I experience is moving into and out of form based on my own thoughts. While this is an empowering concept, it has also been the source of a fair amount of self-shaming when things in my world appeared to be falling apart. I felt this deeply at one point when I came across a Facebook memory of a gratitude post I had written the year before. I will quote it below:

“Today I am grateful for our warm, spacious, and comfortable home. After 3 months of living here, there are still times I look around and wonder if I am just living in a dream. There are still fears attached to all that we have received that it will be taken away…..”

Did you catch that? Yes, I was writing gratitude, and it was sincere, but I was still living in a state of fear that what I had received would be taken away. Eventually, it WAS all taken away. Over time, what I feared the most had come to pass….I had become homeless and my family was split up between homes with families that had generously offered for us to stay with them until I could get back on my feet. This was the most humbling, scary, and discouraging time of my life. When I stumbled onto the above Facebook memory, I fell into a deep depression, realizing that I was the one responsible for my circumstances. It certainly did not feel empowering in that moment. I felt humiliated and spent days, which turned into weeks, quietly shaming myself inside of my own mind.

It was during this time that I withdrew into deep contemplation. I spent hours each day pondering all the Laws of Thought, reflecting on my personal faith, studying the Word of God, and leaning on the Atonement of my Savior. I knew that self-shaming and feeling sorry for myself were not helpful, yet those thoughts and feelings persisted, despite all I knew. I felt a deep sense of gratitude for my understanding of grace, knowing that it was only through grace I would be saved from my own thoughts during that time.

One afternoon, as I was taking time to journal, the first twinges of self-empowerment returned as I considered my thoughts and the Law of Perpetual Transmutation. I realized just how powerful my thoughts truly are – because I had not ended up in those humbling circumstances due to overwhelming fears. There had only been small twinges of doubts and fears amid actions I was taking based in faith. Big faith.

Big faith. Small fears.

I looked back at Leslie’s definition of the Law of Perpetual Transmutation in her book “Hidden Treasures” which states “circumstances and things are perpetually coming or going according to [my] thoughts.” PERPETUALLY. Always.

My thoughts then turned to Christ’s teachings of faith. He taught that if all we have is “faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing shall be impossible” (Matthew 17:20, KJV). But, a mustard seed is so tiny and easily swept away in the wind. I then thought of Peter who walked out onto the water to go to Jesus but became distracted by the storm raging around him – Peter, an Apostle, and he let his doubts and fears of what was happening around him distract him from his “goal” to walk on the water to meet the Savior. And he began to sink.

His rescue was immediate. “And immediately Jesus stretched for his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:31, KJV).

Immediate. Perpetually. Always. Coming. Going. Faith. Fear. Doubts. THOUGHTS.

The shift, or changing of the elements around me, could be immediate. We can see that when Jesus immediately pulled the sinking Peter from the sea. I thought back to the previous winter when we did a science experiment with my 4-year-old. We were in the middle of an extreme cold front and the outdoor temperature was more than 20 degrees below zero. We boiled some water on the stove, took the pot of boiling water to our back deck, and threw the water into the air. The change from water in its liquid state to vapor that instantly dissipated was immediate.

The return of my feelings of self-empowerment increased as I continued to journal and ponder on those things written above. As a “reply” to the memory I had found, revealing the fears I had allowed to fester, my journal entry contained this:

“Only a tiny bit of doubt contained enough power to have left me in the place I feared the most, homeless and my family separated. All it takes is that same, tiny bit belief to bring all I desire back.”

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