Thorn in the Flesh

Th —

I h—

C —

If I wrote how I sometimes sound, this would be a chore to read.

Kids used to ask me what caused my stutter. With the straightest face I could muster, I told them the stress of potty-training had left me permanently damaged. Other times I simply replied that I had been abducted by aliens, whose mysterious tinkerings with my body had left a few vocal cords in need of a good recalibration.

My school years had passed with my stutter as constant irritation but nothing debilitating. I bore my cross with murmurs but never turned aside from my course. There wasn't anything I could do, after all. My personal Calvary lay ahead still, and since I was incapable of tossing my burden aside, there was nothing for it but to press on.

The MTC presented a new hurdle in the path. Every new missionary experiences varying degrees of uncertainty, and every new elder brings his own tailor-made challenges into the mission field, but for me, my preexisting burdens and my new anxieties and general feelings of inadequacies compounded exponentially. The task before me seemed too great. How could I do what I knew I needed to do when I faced limitations I felt were so debilitating? Why would the Lord put such a task on my shoulders when a burden He had given me was preventing me from doing it properly?

TO BE CONTINUED ...