I’ll admit it: I wasn’t looking forward to conference. Lately, I’ve felt distant from God, alone in my trials, and without much hope. When you feel perpetually stuck in the middle of something, talks about happy endings and promised blessings don’t always resonate. The last thing I was expecting was to hear a message that would magically bottle up my big feelings and give me something to hold onto.
You’ll imagine my shock when Sister Tamara W. Runia stood up and repeated my internal dialogue back to me through the conference microphone:
“How can our loving Father in Heaven watch as we go through heartbreaking experiences?”
Hearing a Church leader speak so candidly about the hard parts of faith felt so soothing to my soul. Her words validated the questions many of us don’t really want to say out loud but may privately feel. Questions like: Isn’t the gospel supposed to be the great protector and fulfiller of righteous desires? Why isn’t it working like it’s supposed to? Is it because I’m doing it wrong, or is it because I’m not faithful enough?
Sister Runia continued her message with this insight:
“The gospel isn’t the umbrella; it’s the solid rock we’re standing on during the storm.”
This line made me tear up. Partly because it felt so true, and partly because I felt embarrassed. Embarrassed that I’ve had it all backwards. The gospel isn’t what protects me from bad things like I sometimes thought; it’s what sustains me when bad things happen.
The role the gospel plays in my life is so much more than an umbrella. It’s what keeps my feet steady in the storms.
Realizing this shifted my mindset immensely. But it didn’t erase the lingering pain of not understanding why traumatic, heartbreaking things happen in the first place.
Sister Runia felt this same pain when her son tragically passed away without warning. She recalled what she said to her family during his funeral:
“‘I don’t understand why this happened. I don’t. But let me be clear: Not understanding is not the same as not believing.’
“I may not understand everything, but I absolutely believe God sees you, loves you, and knows your story.”
This insight further brought me to tears. I have always thought that if I don’t fully understand God’s ways, I can’t truly believe in Him. And that if hard things are happening that don’t make sense, I can’t fully trust Him.
Sister Runia’s insight expanded my black-and-white thinking and gave me a third option: I can not understand God and still choose to believe and trust Him. It sounds contradictory, but it felt so expansive to my brain.
As someone who is a huge overthinker, knowing that I can just choose to believe and trust God no matter what feels revolutionary. Almost shockingly simple. This doesn’t mean that I don’t still grapple with questions and seek answers—in fact, this new understanding ironically gives me more freedom to do so. It’s made me realize that there’s so much space between believing and knowing, and I kind of like existing in the middle of it.
Are all my anxieties, fears, and questions now suddenly relieved? Definitely not.
But I left conference with something I didn’t know I needed: Reassurance that understanding is not a prerequisite for belief.
Not having answers isn’t where belief ends. It’s where it starts to get real.
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