The Tender Mercies

As a kid, I would was taught in Primary that you should pray before a test, and the Spirit would help you remember the things you studied. I was always puzzled though, and wondered, 'well, if I'm studying, aren't I simply going to remember what I studied anyway? how does the Spirit actually help?'. As I grew more spiritually sophisticated on my mission, I realized that often times, the act of studying itself is what is needed, and that occasionally the Spirit would tell you things that you know you had never studied before, because you had prepared yourself by studying. I can recall an example of this from anatomy in the fall. It was a practical exam where things are tagged on cadavers and you have identify them. There was a hyoid bone sitting on a stool with a little tag that said "how many muscles attach to me?" I had never actually memorized the number, but into my head popped the exact number. I wrote it down, hoping it was right, but then tried to scribble all of the muscles that I knew attached to the hyoid in hopes of hedging my bet and getting partial credit. It later turned out that the number I had scrawled down was correct. I had always imagined this was the type of inspiration that the Spirit was supposed to give, but it never seemed to happen to me.

Today I learned another mechanism by which the Spirit helps us to learn. I had exactly one and a half days to prepare for the pathology final, which was cumulative. I spent 9 hours wednesday afternoon, and 13.5 hours yesterday cramming. Yesterday was the most focussed I have been all year, my mind was definitely in high gear . This morning I got up at 6 and reviewed cases online hoping to glean some gem that would be on the exam. I was reviewing pediatric neoplasia (tumors) and one of the pages had a chart delineating which tumors are common at which ages. Ewing's sarcoma caught my eye, and I happened to glance up and see that it was common in kids 5-9 years old. We have never discussed Ewing's in class, never mentioned it, I don't know what kind of cancer it is even. But, on the exam, there was a question "which one of the following would you most likely find in a 7 year old child ?" I checked Ewing's. I realize now, thinking back on the questions that Dan and Aaron and I asked each other while studying, that many of those questions were nearly verbatim test questions. Also, things that caught my attention for a brief moment before I moved on proved to be testable points. Reflecting on my childhood misunderstanding of inspiration, I realize now that many times, the Spirit is directing me what to study, so that I can remember it, rather than whispering the answer into my ear (though, as I showed, this does happen too).