The Lord is seeking to teach my husband to have a spirit of forgiveness, and forgetfulness of the dark passages in his experience. The remembrance of the unpleasant past only saddens the present, and he lives over again the unpleasant portion of his life’s history. In so doing he is clinging to the darkness and is pressing the thorn deeper into his spirit. This is my husband’s infirmity, and it is displeasing to God. This brings darkness and not light. He may feel apparent relief for the time in expressing his feelings; but it only makes more acute the sense of how great his sufferings and trials have been, until the whole becomes magnified in his imagination, and the errors of his brethren, who have aided in bringing these trials upon him, look so grievous that their wrongs seem to him past endurance. (3T 97.1) MC VC

My husband has cherished this darkness so long by living over the unhappy past that he has but little power to control his mind when dwelling upon these things. Circumstances and events which once he would not have minded, magnify before him into grievous wrongs on the part of his brethren. He has become so sensitive to the wrongs under which he has suffered that it is necessary that he should be as little as possible in the vicinity of Battle Creek, where many of the unpleasant circumstances occurred. God will heal his wounded spirit, if he will let Him. But in doing this, he will have to bury the past. He should not talk of it, or write of it. (3T 97.2) MC VC

It is positively displeasing to God for my husband to recount his difficulties and his peculiar grievances of the past. If he had looked upon these things in the light that they were not done to him, but to the Lord, whose instrument he is, then he would have received a great reward. But he has taken the murmurings of his brethren as though done to himself and has felt called upon to make all understand the wrong and wickedness of thus complaining of him when he did not deserve their censure and abuse. (3T 97.3) MC VC