A few fast Sundays ago, right after I began my fast I suddenly became insanely thirsty. Not the kind of thirsty where water seems like a nice idea - more like the kind of thirsty I'd imagine you'd feel after walking through a desert for three days. And my fast had just begun, so I knew I was in for a very long day. For the next 20 hours or so, I just tried not to think about water too much.
I've never been so thirsty in my entire life. So you can understand why the next day when they started to pass the sacrament, I was eager for the water to come around for more than one reason.
I swear to you, nothing has ever tasted so good to me as that tiny cup of water did. It might not have been much but it was enough to quench my thirst, and it was such a huge relief. And then that relief got me thinking, that's really how we should feel about the sacrament every time we're able to partake of it. It's a huge blessing to be able to hit a reset button at the beginning of every week.
My mission taught me about the Atonement in two ways. First, I came to realize pretty quickly that there is no such thing as an exactly obedient missionary. Other people might disagree with me, but I'm convinced there isn't a single missionary out there who didn't make it home five minutes past curfew or who stayed at an investigator's longer than an hour because the investigator just kept talking (there's no way any southern missionary never faced this problem) or who didn't take advantage of every second of the day because they just needed to stop and have a good cry for twenty minutes. I just don't believe any missionary reached that level of perfection on their mission, no matter how hard they were trying. But I have a suspicion that's one of the reasons missionaries have so many standards to live by. I'm not saying I'm a perfect person at home, either, but I was a lot more aware of my imperfections on the mission, and it caused me to turn to the Lord and rely on the enabling and forgiving power of the Atonement.
One of the reasons a mission was so hard for me was because I had to watch a lot of investigators I cared about struggle through many different trials. As a missionary, I felt like it was my job to help them and make things better, and it upset me when I realized that in a lot of cases, there was nothing I could do besides teach them the gospel and invite them to lay hold on it. I knew that wouldn't make all of their problems go away. I learned to put not just my burdens on the Lord, but the burdens of investigators, recent converts, and returning members on him too, because I couldn't bear the weight of their load on my shoulders.
Essentially, I learned that the Atonement really is an all-purpose solution, and we can't overuse it. In fact, He wants us to use it as often as we can. My mission was a time when I felt extremely inadequate more often than not, but I think that's what Heavenly Father wanted, because if I hadn't been humbled to turn to the Lord, I wouldn't have been able to be led by Him as often as I was, and I wouldn't appreciate the sacrament and Atonement as much as I now do.
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