Because He First Loved Us

Being a mommy to two little girls has changed so many things. I think differently. I read differently. I even speak differently, desperate to show them a feminine example they can follow. That being the case, I was reading my scriptures the other day, thinking - as is my new habit - of how I'd teach what I was reading to little girls. I don't remember the passage I read, but it occurred to me that we obey the Lord out of love but that some people might not consider love for Him a natural thing. Why should we love Him? Why do so many love Him?

My mind did a small accounting of my moments with Him that have brought me to fall in love with Him again and again. Could a non-believer discredit those moments and attribute them to my own imagination and desire to create illusions for myself? Of course they could. And might someone also look at their life of trial and feel bitter or resentful toward the God who supposedly caused or allowed all those challenges? Absolutely.

So, I was searching for a doctrine to teach the love of God, and love for God, outside of mortality. We don't remember Him, so it's difficult to initiate a loving relationship with a being we can't see or hear. But we did know Him before we came. And this is the doctrine I'll teach my girls. Whatever trial we might be facing, whatever hardship we might be enduring, we can - if we desire - feel the truth in the teaching that we lived with Him before we came to this earth ... that we already have a relationship with Him.

It was His love for us, before we came to Earth, that made us love Him so dearly. It was His love for us that created a world wherein we might learn to be like Him. And it was our love for Him that made us so anxious to come here, so anxious to receive bodies and experience the joys and sorrows of a mortal life. It was His love for us that provided a Savior, His beloved Son, who endured the agony of the Atonement that we might all return home to Father better than we were when we left Him. And it was our love for Him that gave us the courage to exercise the faith to come here, trusting Jesus' word that He would do what He promised, that we could really become godly through His sacrifice.

The love I want my girls to remember is the love we had with our Father (and Mother) in Heaven before we came to earth. I'm confident they will have experiences here in mortality, as I've had, that give them new reasons to love Him. But if they are so deeply buried in trials and tribulations that they cannot feel His love for them, as I've been, or they struggle to find their faith in Him, as I've done, maybe it will be helpful to remember why we came to earth to begin with: we loved Him too much to remain unlike Him. Earth life was our chance to become like He is, and we could not resist it. We held our moral agency in one hand, and our love for Him in the other, and joyfully accepted the challange and opportunity of mortality.

I hope my girls feel the truth in the doctrine of our pre-mortal life. It is such a blessing to know why we're here. Yes, we're here to get a body, and be tested, and all those other things we hear and say in Sunday School. But ultimately we're here because He first loved us.