Do I Allow the Atonement to Sustain and Heal Me?

So today was our ward conference at Church.  There were many wonderful and powerful messages given and it was a strong meeting.  The primary speaker was our Bishop and he gave an amazing message about the Atonement.  Over the course of his talk, he posed a couple questions that really made me think.

Early on in his message he quoted the well-known scripture from 2 Nephi Chapter 2, verse 25;

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

He then posed a very powerful question.  He talked about Eve, the mother of us all.  He then asked simply.  Eve was evicted from the Garden of Eden.  She was sent into the dreary world to earn her keep by the seat of her brow.  Then as she started her family, her son Cain murdered her other son Abel.  Through this entire process, how could Eve have possibly been happy?  He paused for a minute and he then simply explained.  Because she allowed the Atonement of Jesus Christ to comfort her and sanctify her in her trials and struggles.

That really struck me.  She allowed the Atonement to help her?  It really made me think.  I have often heard that faith is an action.  That it motivates me to do things, to feel things, to experience things.  It is more than just believing.  But I'm not sure I had ever thought of the Atonement as an action.  Am I actively choosing to accept the Atonement?  Am I choosing to take my struggles, temptations and fears to the Lord and access his Atonement?  Or am I choosing to sit in them?  Am I choosing to isolate myself from the Lord?  For years addiction taught me to choose isolation.  It taught me to hide and lie and embrace fear.  It taught me that protecting my secret was the most important thing in my life.

As I made that connection I realized that it would have been impossible for me to allow the Atonement to heal me when my entire focus was on hiding and covering up the evidence.  As I thought about it and processed more I finally came to the conclusion that allowing the Atonement to help me in my addiction means to accept my powerlessness and surrender my struggles to the Lord.  In doing this I allow the Atonement of the Lord into my life.  It really can be that simple.  It almost seems like a paradox at times.  That the way to have greater strength in this struggle is to show more humility.  That the way to finally have the means to overcome temptations in the moment is the admit that I can never overcome them.  But it works.

The scriptures teach often that it is by simple means that miracles can happen.  The Children of Israel simply had to look upon the brass serpent created by Moses at the urging of the Lord and they would be healed.  Some thought it too simple a solution and weren't healed.  They perished because they thought the solution needed to be more complex.  But that isn't the Lord's way.  In Alma 37, verse 6, we learn that;

Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

I am really good at making simple things complicated.  It is something I have often struggled things.  I have been told more than once in my life that I learn things the hard way.  But the reality is the solutions to life's complicated problems are often very simple.  As simple as accepting that my problems are too big for me but that there is one who is more than willing and able to take them.  I just have to allow Him in.  He will always be there.  I just have to take that action first.