Category: Opinion

What My Mission Taught Me About Motherhood

I had the privilege of training another missionary while I was serving my mission. I was pretty young in the mission myself and I was terrified at the prospect of training another missionary but still excited for the opportunity. In my mission, and in many other missions, we had the tradition of referring to our trainees as daughter or son. They, in turn, refer to us trainers as mom or dad. It’s remarkable how these seemingly meaningless titles gave you a very unique perspective on your role as a trainer. I’d like to describe to you some of the insights I received about motherhood in my time as a trainer. These are excerpts taken directly from my mission journal.

A reflection on motherhood

She arrives and you feel an exciting mixture of undying love and nervousness. who will she be? will she be like me? will she love me like I love her? Can I provide what she needs? What if I’m not good enough? In the end, all you know is you love her with all you’ve got and you’ll do anything to make sure her experience here with you is worth while.

She cries and cries, life here isn’t easy but the only thing you can do is hold her as those tears dry. She grows and starts to amaze you with her talent and that motherly pride swells. She complains, why is this place so different? It’s not fair! How can I go on living here? I want to go home. I’m sorry, baby girl, you signed up for this opportunity and everything that comes with it. My advice, keep going and slap a smile on your face; It’s more fun that way.

She gets mad when I don’t understand but can’t she see? I’ve been where she is, I’ve suffered what she’s suffering. Why can’t she just trust me? And then I remember how I learned those lessons, the hard way. So i’m here, guiding from a distance but close enough to catch her if she falls.

She’s making more mistakes. Her actions and frustrations take me back to when I was in her place. I remember feeling similarly, thinking similarly, and coming to the same conclusions. I also remember the pain and suffering I had to endure to learn the lessons she’ll have to learn. I want to save her the the heartache. It’s in her eyes, I call her on it, she explains her plan to accomplish her goals and get over her issues. She chooses the hard way. It hurts that she doesn’t trust me, that she doesn’t accept my council. I can see where her decision will take her and I know there’s an easier way. Mother knows best! But then He touches my heart and reminds me, “No, Father knows best.” I let her go. In my mind I know that this really is for the best. She’ll learn for herself, just like I did. But everything else in me is screaming to save her from the pain. But after a while, I just become a spectator. The coach has to stay on the sidelines and pray that something got through to them in practice. She’s caught in the game and I can’t play for her.

The most important thing I learned about motherhood on the mission field was that no one can prepare enough for what motherhood is. Motherhood is to important of a calling for God to just leave it to us imperfect people. While we can’t prepare ourselves for it, we can rest assured that God has been preparing us all along. He prepares us in subtle ways that we can easily overlook, such as sending me my trainee. For you it may be an incredible woman figure to look up to, a difficult relationship with a sister or friend, maybe God only gives you examples of what not to do. Any way He does it, remember that he won’t leave you alone as a mother, He has been turning you into one for a long time.

May 8, 2016
What I Wish I Had Known the First Time I Caught My Husband Looking at Porn

When I was a 24-year-old new mom I caught my husband looking at pornography on our computer from 25pc.com for the very first time. I didn’t know anything about pornography addiction. The Internet was brand new. Who knew this smut even existed on this thing called the World Wide Web? I naively believed him when he told me it was a two-month problem. It never even crossed my mind that he could be an addict. I had absolutely no idea what follow-up questions to even ask him.

I needed an education on addiction, but that education would sadly have to wait another 16 years, until I caught him yet again. The evidence, coupled with all the talk I heard about addiction from my friends and on those 5th-Sunday lessons at church, with the supported sites like https://sex-addiction-rehab.co.uk/, I finally opened my eyes. My husband was an addict. “My spiritual armor was never complete until knowledge about fighting addiction became a part of my life.”

How I wish I could go back in time, take my young, tender-hearted self out for ice cream, and say, “Oh Sweetie, sweetie, here’s what you need to understand. At least learn these three things. There is more to learn, but for now these three could change your life.”

The first thing I needed to understand when I was 24 was this: Pornography is a branch on the addiction tree; it is not the addiction. The real addiction is lust. Addicts feed their lust addiction with pornography. But an addict also feeds his (or her) lust addiction with other sexual habits: sexually explicit books, chat rooms, fantasies about women (or men), masturbation, sexually suggestive TV shows and movies. I thought I stopped my husband’s “little problem” after the first time I caught him because I controlled the password to our dinosaur-dial-up Internet service. Presto! No more pornography problem! What I didn’t realize was that all I did was cut off one of the branches. There were other branches he continued using to feed his lust addiction. Oh, and the pornography branch eventually grew back as well. The branches always grow back. You gotta chop down the lust tree, and then kill the roots of fear, shame, low self worth, and isolation.

The second thing my younger self needed to understand was: What exactly is an addiction? When does viewing pornography go from “just a little problem” to an addiction? Well, I don’t want to get bogged down in the clinical details of when bad behavior turns compulsive, someone else can do that, but here’s one very simple definition that cleared it all up for me: If he wants to stop, but always returns, a day later or a year later, it’s an addiction. Call it an addiction, a problem, or a bad habit. The remedy is the same. All bad habits or addictions require time and effort to solve. That’s what my 24-year self didn’t understand. I simply told my husband, “Just stop!”

“Just stop!” requires no effort on his part.

“Just stop!” doesn’t require him to end his isolation and seek out help.

“Just stop!” does not require a lifestyle change.

“Just stop!”’ doesn’t teach him why he does something he knows is wrong.

Saying, “Just stop!” was like wishing on a falling star. No matter how heartfelt my wish, the star kept falling and eventually crashed into something. It crashed into my heart the year I turned 40, shattering my world, shattering my marriage, shattering all trust I had in my husband. This “little problem” I thought was in the past turned out to be a decades-long addiction.

The third thing I wish I understood is that most often pornography addictions start during adolescence. Yes, grown-mature-LDS men and women can start to view porn in adulthood, but it most often doesn’t work that way. Had I known this, I would have heard an alarm going off in my head when he said it was a two-month problem. Once caught, he tried to minimize the damage by getting me to believe this was a recent problem. I eventually learned my husband was just eleven years old when he was first exposed through a friend in his neighborhood. What does an eleven-year old boy know about what will ruin his life? His future marriage? Nothing. His brain was still developing. And so at the tender age of eleven, my husband found something to help him feel good, to comfort him, to help him cope with low self-esteem.

It would have been important for me to know that a young man’s emotional growth is stunted at the age he begins viewing pornography. My husband rarely shared his heartfelt thoughts with me. He was a great listener, but a lousy sharer. He was not able to be “emotionally intimate” with me because in reality he was still that eleven-year old boy. I was starving for emotional intimacy but I thought he was just a “typical guy.” And guys don’t usually share their feelings. Mine never did.

Over the years of our marriage, I very often did feel like I was starving for “emotional intimacy” but chose instead to focus on all the good he did–reading to the children, rubbing my feet, shoveling snow from the walkways at the widow’s house next door, being a good provider, serving faithfully in callings. Now, my 40-something self knows it is ok to expect my husband to open up his heart to me. That really isn’t asking too much. That’s a normal part of all healthy marriages.

Thankfully, it is never too late to change. I didn’t know any of these things in my twenties, but it’s never too late to learn. And thankfully it hasn’t been too late for my husband to learn. To grow a new heart. To change his brain. With specialized therapy, the LDS 12-Step program, strong boundaries and rules he set for himself, and accountability to others, he’s experienced nothing short of a complete lifestyle change. All these things have been crucial to becoming a new man. The man God always meant for him to be. There’s a spiritual war going on, not unlike the physical wars in The Book of Mormon. My spiritual armor was never complete until knowledge about fighting addiction became a part of my life. Don’t be afraid to learn more. Knowledge is empowering. Truth gave me hope. It gave us a second chance.

This post appeared originally on HopeAndHealingLDS.com and has been reposted here with permission. Hope and Healing LDS is an online community providing resources and support for women affected by the sexual addiction of a loved one. This post is part of a series addressing education on and recovery from pornography addiction and betrayal trauma. To read the rest of this series head over to HopeAndHealingLDS.com.

April 30, 2016
The Miracle I Overlooked In the Story of the Loaves & Fishes

It was 4:50 in the morning, and I had approximately three minutes to eat something before leaving for my very first temple shift. I raced through a dark kitchen on my tiptoes and wolfed down a banana that had been sitting on the table. Worried that I wouldn’t have enough food in me to last throughout the day, or enough patience to eat a second banana, I looked to the slightly squished loaf of Western Family bread on the kitchen counter and felt a glimmer of hope. Bread’s filling, I thought. That should sustain me for awhile, right? Having barely enough time to snarf down a single slice, I ate one and ran.

Two hours later, in the quietest parts of the temple, my stomach made a noise similar to what it would sound like if every creature in Return of the Jedi had been thrown in the Sarlacc pit. Obviously, that single piece of bread had not filled or sustained me. It maybe had momentarily, but not long enough to make a difference or end my hunger.

As I thought about that little piece of bread and how I had expected it to fill me, I was reminded of the story of the loaves and the fishes in the New Testament and struck with new insight.

Picture it with me: the Savior has just heard of the passing of His good friend John the Baptist. Overcome, we can assume, by grief for His friend and the desire for solitude, He tries to get as far away as He can with His disciples. He, in fact, gets on a ship that takes them into the desert, almost literally the middle of nowhere. The people, hearing that the Savior has left, follow Him. These people are so desirous to be with the Savior that they don’t even think to take a boat or wagons — they follow Him “on foot out of the cities” (Matthew 14:13), leaving their homes and provisions behind to walk for who knows how long to get to Him. When they arrive, Christ, in His infinite compassion and in spite of being in the midst of His own trial, goes among them, healing their sick and afflicted.

Now, at some point, it gets to be way past dinner time. These 5,000 some odd people are in the desert, away from their homes, and have had nothing to eat for a very long time, and the disciples are, understandably, anxious about it. They approach the Savior and beg Him to “send the multitude away” (Matthew 14:15) so that they can get food for themselves. The Savior, as we know, tells them that the people don’t need to leave, and He asks His disciples to find food for them. Among all of the 5,000, they are able to find five loaves of bread and two fishes, which the Savior blesses and then breaks.

The miracle of this story that we most often focus on is that, when the disciples hand out the bread and fish, every single person receives some. Our human brains try to grasp how so few items could be split among so many and how the disciples could end up having food leftover to boot. With our small and limited understanding of this miracle, we might mentally divide the bread the fish into 5,000 pieces. They’d be pieces so small, it’d be a wonder that anybody could eat them at all. We consume ourselves with quantity and figures, but we forget another miracle that is, perhaps, more important in this story, one that sneaks quietly behind the first:

“…they did all eat, and were filled” (Matthew 14:20).

The miracle of the five loaves and the fishes isn’t only that 5,000 people all got food, but that they were all filled by it. It staved off a hunger that had likely been building for hours, and it sustained them all. Can you imagine it? With five loaves and two fishes, the Savior provided meals for 5,000. It’s incomprehensible to those of us who concern ourselves with wondering how.

The lesson here, however, is a tender and beautiful one. With this second miracle, the Savior showed the multitude and us that His love and His Atonement can fill us. He doesn’t hand it to us in portions, He doesn’t give a little to everyone. He fills us all with it. He gives us enough and then more than enough. That eternity that He promises those who follow Him is also offered completely. It’s a magnificent thing to think about.

Those of us who actively follow the Savior and want to be with Him are part of that multitude, spiritually if not physically. We might occasionally think there isn’t room for us or that we don’t matter. We might look at others receiving blessings we desperately want and think, I guess I’m not meant to have them. I guess I’m not trying hard enough. The truth, however, is that the Savior is waiting to fill our lives with every blessing. To those who follow Him, He offers eternal life individually, and He offers it in full. We must have the faith, like one in a crowd of 5,000, that when it is our turn to receive those blessings, we will receive them all.

Though a piece of bread early on a Saturday morning will not fill us, the Savior’s love and Atonement always will. There is more than enough for all. All we must do is seek Him.

April 27, 2016
Finding Compassion Through Addiction

When I was small, I never thought I would have to deal with the effects of addiction, especially within the walls of my own home. Substance abuse and other forms of addiction were completely foreign to me, and when I would see loitering smokers standing outside of buildings, I would quickly become afraid of them. Unfortunately, I and so many other members of the church have a natural response to those who do not always follow the principles of the Gospel: we are quick to judge others for their choices and mistakes. As I have grown and endured a long haul of tragic and excruciatingly painful events, my heart has been changed and humbled when considering addiction.

A family member of mine has been a long-time suffering addict. This person is clean-cut, respectful, and reasonable. No one upon first glance would ever see the pain and weariness in their eyes. The signs of an increasing problem started small. A few coins would go missing from the car ashtray, and a few dollars would be misplaced here and there. These small accounts of missing money would go unnoticed or be forgotten. As months went by, my family was in a constant panic regarding the amount of missing items or money throughout the home. Things got bad enough, that I would place my wallet under my bed each night, out of fear that I would be stolen from. Although this person would never admit to stealing anything, and acted completely innocent and normal, something in my heart was telling me and the rest of my family that something was amiss. I know now that the feeling was the Spirit trying to get through to us all. After so many nights of arguments, sweat, tears, and accusations, this person finally admitted to having an addiction to heroine and was desperately in need of help.

The amount of betrayal I felt, and the hatred I harbored toward this person was unbearable. This person was meant to build me up, and was not meant to make me feel vulnerable and small. Alas, I felt smaller than a speck of dust in their eyes. The stealing, the lies, and my own lack of empathy completely crushed my spirit.

My heart was heavy, broken, and fuming. I had changed from being a tolerant, patient, and kind person, into someone who was barely recognizable. I am not one to hold onto a grudge, but this situation was going to be my one exception. I had no compassion for this person within my soul, and compassion was something that often comes easy to me. I blamed this person for giving into temptation in the first place. I hated them. I wanted them to leave and never come back. I would cry every night and hide the truth from most of my friends out of shame. I had a drug addict in my family and I was embarrassed by that fact. The situation caused so much contention even between the sober members of my family because of frustration and confusion on how to move forward. I prayed to Heavenly Father to take the burden he placed on my family away. I did not understand why my family could not shake this trial off after so many years of praying and faithfulness.

One day, as this member of my family was slowly regaining some freedom from their addiction, I realized something: I was looking at them in a different way than God was. To God, this person was still His child, and not even the greatest sin could change that fact. God loved them the same as He loved me and everyone single one of His children on the earth, despite their choices, religion, circumstance, race, or any circumstance. God loves the homeless people on the side of the road whom we quickly disregard and judge. He loves those who have committed the most heinous of crimes. He loves the “A” student as much as the “C” student. And his heart breaks for those who struggle with addiction. He loves each and every one of us the very same, and that love is unshaken by any situation we may find ourselves in.

If the Lord could love this addict, why could I not also? With that thought, my entire countenance toward this person changed. My heart was finally softened in understanding, and the heavy burden of the grudge lingering on my shoulders was lifted by forgiveness. I cannot begin to express the amount of confusion, hurt, remorse, and guilt this person has gone through for so many years. But I constantly remind them of the fact that they do not have to endure the torments of their past alone. The Atonement is for each and every addiction, anxiety, and pain that was ever felt by anyone. It is God’s gift to His children to ensure we never have to endure anything alone, and to remind us that the path to redemption is possible. If there is anything I know for certain, it is that through God and love, people can change. With God, the impossible becomes possible.

By finally loosening my hold on the bitterness that previously filled my heart, I felt peace and humility take its place. This trial has constantly taught me to have compassion and understanding toward all those who struggle with the bonds of any addiction. Often times if we hear about an addict or someone who struggles with sin, our initial thought is to blame them for creating their own problems. I have come to know that good people can fall victim to horrible things. People make mistakes and we do not have the right to categorize them with the other iniquities of the world. Pornography and drugs continue to desecrate even the most vibrant of minds, but addicts are not the only ones who need to come unto Christ for strength and hope.

Compassion, kindness, and empathy will turn the addiction tide toward hope. As hard as addiction is to comprehend if you have not fallen victim to its tentacles, a desire to understand, empathize and to help is the first step. Addicts already feel the pain, remorse, and guilt that comes with their vice; the least we can do is try to lead them back to the light without any further judgments. 1 Peter 1:22 says:

“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.”

Love and kindness can alter even the most bitter of hearts. Christ-like love and constant prayers of support from friends and family is what will lead addicts to the path that leads from darkness to everlasting light. Just like any other sin, addiction can be forgiven. Though my family member still has a long journey ahead and some set-backs from time to time, I know that through the eternal power of the Atonement and love, all who were once bound to vices can become whole and clean again.

Chakell Wardleigh recently graduated from Weber State University with her Bachelor of Arts in English. Chakell is a firm believer in enjoying the little things in life. She loves to keep herself occupied with a good book and when she is not silently correcting grammar mistakes, she enjoys chocolate licorice, puns, and Harry Potter references.

April 24, 2016
Was Jesus Christ a Feminist?

Cover photo © LDS Church

Recently I realized that I am a feminist. I want to see men and women treating each other as equals and seeing each other with equal value and potential. This newfound identity as a feminist came as a surprise to me, because all my life I have been bombarded with so many conflicting stereotypes about feminism. For years, I thought feminists were radical men-haters. With the rise of the Ordain Women movement, feminism has also been cast in a negative light within the Church. But I learned that feminism, like all ideologies, has a spectrum of belief that can’t be defined by its outliers. When I looked into both sides of the feminist spectrum, I found a middle ground that I totally identified with: men and women on equal playing fields, working together toward common goals. What a beautiful concept! What I’ve realized, however, is that we aren’t there yet. In my exploration of feminism, I’ve also realized that we have a perfect example to look to to get there, and that example is the Savior himself, Jesus Christ. Jesus was one of the only prominent men in written history that was recorded as treating women as equals, and a lot can be learned from his example.

Throughout history, women have been treated as unimportant or corrupt. One example of someone who gets a bad rap is Mother Eve. Christian and Jewish commentators alike have viewed her succumbing to the temptation of the serpent and partaking of the fruit as the cause of all the sin and evil in the world. Many believe that if it wasn’t for Eve, we’d all be living in some fantastic paradise without sin or worry. They subsequently extended that blame onto all women, and we quickly became viewed as unholy and inferior to men. Ancient Jewish tradition also cast women in a negative light. As seen in the Mosaic Law, women were deemed as ritually impure after giving birth. While they had some responsibility over household religious rituals, they were largely excluded from religious activity, which was handled by men. An early Christian philosopher, St. Augustine (354-430 a.d.), argued that only men were created in the image of God, and women were intellectually, physically, and morally inferior. St. Jerome (347-419 a.d.) said that if women choose a life of virginity, they could become more spiritual: “As long as woman is for birth and children, she is as different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man.” Woah. These are Christian thinkers, the men who founded modern religious thought. Talk about a bad influence.

Views on women got really interesting with the Greeks. Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato saw women as mere casualties of a birth defect. Women were simply imperfect men whose primary purpose was to procreate rather than companionship. The relationship that existed between men and women paled in comparison to the relationships between men and men. These prominent thinkers and philosophers have peppered history with ideas of women’s subordination and inferiority. Keep in mind, these commentaries and ideas were all written by men because females were not given voice in ancient times. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks in her book Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe quoted a verse taken from Canterbury Tales (1483) where the Wife of Bath said:

My God, had women written histories

Like cloistered scholars in oratories

They’d have set down more of men’s wickedness

Than all the sons of Adam could redress.

How would history change if there were more female voices? What if male historians painted females in a more positive light? Unfortunately we will never know. Modern feminist initiatives have led to a huge shift in the ancient views on women and gender roles. But due to the intense repression of women throughout history, this paradigm shift was never made earlier, except with one distinct exception: Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ contradicted the traditional stereotypes held against women. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks pointed out this contradiction to the male perspective on women when she said,

“Jesus himself spoke frequently to women and included them in his followers, sometimes to the embarrassment of his male associates. He preached that men and women were equally capable of achieving life after death and that women as well as men should not let their domestic responsibilities come before their spiritual well-being. Many of his parables use women as positive examples or relate things that would have more meaning for women, leading some contemporary scholars to view Jesus as a feminist” (Wiesner-Hanks, 20).

Jesus came into a heavily patriarchal setting and treated men and women as equals and preached that both were equal in the eyes of God. There are three examples in the scriptures that really demonstrate Christ’s love and compassion towards women.

The first example comes from John 4, where Christ stops at a well while traveling through Samaria (a place Jews normally avoided). At this well, he meets a Samaritan woman who has been put away by five husbands who all left her for one reason or another (perhaps due to a lack of fertility). She was not married to the man she was with at the time of meeting Christ. Christ discerned all of this about her without having to hear her story, yet with her less than desirable status as a Samaritan woman living outside of the law, Christ spoke to her with all the respect and understanding He gave to His own disciples. Here was a man who didn’t give a thought to any societal constructs, but loved the individual.

Next we have a very tender scene where a woman was caught in adultery. This was one of the most severe accusations that could be placed on a woman at the time, punishable by stoning or even death. Instead of taking care of the problem themselves according to the law, the men who accused the woman wanted to humiliate her further by taking her to be judged by Jesus. They saw this as an opportunity to catch Christ contradicting himself, and they gave no thought to the woman they were making a public example. The first thing Christ did when they asked what should be done with such a woman was point out the weakness of everyone present in keeping the Law of God. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). He made sure everyone understood their equal status as sinners in the eyes of God. Once the accusers had left, He then tenderly turned towards the woman and made sure she understood that everyone, her and her accusers, would have an equal opportunity to become reconciled with God and forgiven of all their trespasses. He admonished her as he would admonish his male disciples: “go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

Finally, we have a beautiful example of the woman who bathed Christ’s feet with her tears. He went to dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. A woman who was a notorious sinner heard he would be there and went to meet this Great Rabbi. She brought with her an alabaster box full of ointment and washed the Savior’s feet with her tears, anointed them, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. First off, the feet were considered unclean and unholy in the Jewish tradition — the most humble gesture a person could make was to wash the feet of another. Not only did this woman kneel before her master and wash his feet, she wiped them with her hair which was considered to be the glory of the woman (1 Corinthians 11:15). Thus, this woman put forth the greatest demonstration of love and humility a person could exhibit. She didn’t do it to show weakness. She wasn’t forced to do it because of her station. She simply wanted to do it. The Pharisees were shocked that Jesus was letting this sinner touch him. Christ gently reminded the man that this woman was showing the kind of courtesy that His guest had denied Him and told him that she is free to love much because she was forgiven much. Christ taught us not to be afraid to express the love that he gives to us.

Christ loves women, He always has and He trusts them with His work and He wants us to come back to Him. Thanks to His Atonement, Eternal Life is available to all men and women and if we are willing we all can participate in His great work and glory.

April 2, 2016
There’s a Reason Why the Internet Never Agrees About Who Christ Was

A few months ago, I became involved in a somewhat heated discussion between friends. The central topic of that discussion was about what the Savior would do if someone who had once had a testimony left the church and became very vocal against the Gospel. One stood firm in his belief that the Savior would be bold and unashamed, even if it meant hurting the feelings or turning over the spiritual tables, if you will, of His critics. The other defended his belief that the Savior would be infinitely loving and kind to them. Both held their ground, and the discussion eventually came to a reluctant draw, neither really abandoning their original opinion.

As I’ve looked back on that conversation, I’ve found myself incredibly fascinated by how each of my friends chose to identify with the Savior, and by extension, how anybody chooses to identify with Him. When it comes to using the Savior’s example to defend our beliefs, our behaviors, and even the actions of others, I’ve noticed that most of us pick out and relate to just one of His traits. Most people identify with a Savior who is very accepting — I myself tend to identify with that. Others identify with a Savior who is bold and even, at times, offensive, as Christ would have been to those in His day who did not understand Him or accept Him. I’ve witnessed many conversations, online and offline, where these two characteristics are pitted against each other, as if they are both mutually exclusive or the only traits Jesus Christ ever had.

I think that by doing that, however, we don’t fully understand who Christ was or the extent of His capacity to understand us.

The truth is that Jesus Christ, in His mortal ministry, was not a unidimensional figure. He cannot be classified as only “The Righteously Angered Savior” or “The Loving Savior.” Though He is the Lord, He was also human. He was complex and dynamic. He felt the full scope of our emotions and feelings, not only when He atoned for us, but when He walked and lived among us. His message was simple, but His personality was more intricate.

The Savior did not just turn the tables of the money changers in the temple. He sat at the tables of sinners and Publicans and ate with them. The Savior was not completely accepting. He, in fact, called the Pharisees fools, serpents, and vipers, “full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanliness” (Matthew 23:27). He loved those whom others would not love, He touched those whom others dared not touch. He said of enemies, “Love them as thyself,” while defending His Father with boldness and courage. He was often frustrated by the Pharisees and Jews who would not accept His message, but He also atoned for them. He said, from His cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He would let sinners wash His feet, and He would wash the feet of His disciples. He would teach at the head of large crowds, and He would stoop in the dust to address the one. He was often burdened by sadness. He sought isolation following the death of His friend, John the Baptist, and He wept to see the anguish of Lazarus’s friends. He was also filled with joy, walking among the Nephites and thanking His Father for them. He was tender, and He was firm. He was filled with sorrow for His brothers and sisters who strayed, and He was pleased to see the faith of those who followed Him. At times surrounded by thronging crowds, He was both hardly alone and often very lonely, left and betrayed by some of His dearest friends and left entirely alone in his last moments on Earth.

The truth, if it be fully told of Jesus Christ, is that He is not a Savior who only knows how to love or rebuke. He is a Savior who hurts, who joys, who agonizes, who celebrates, who weeps, who smiles, who angers, who corrects, and who adores. When we speak of Him, let us do so with the reverence that comes from realizing that He is not just who He says He is, but He’s more than we too often give Him credit for.

March 5, 2016
What This Harry Potter Plot Hole Reveals About the Plan of Salvation

Cover photo ©Warner Bros.

It was one in the morning at a bus station in Chile, and everything was still and quiet. Even the street dogs seem more subdued, I thought as I moved my foot out from underneath one that had collapsed on top of me. I held my backpack a little tighter, and I leaned against my tired companion’s head, which rested on my shoulder, as the third hour of waiting for my bus came to a close. These nights of picking up and dropping off missionaries at the bus station in between transfers were always random. We never knew if our bus was going to be a few minutes early or a few hours late. This particular night, we had the latter. Our zone leaders kindly waited with us and another companionship of elders who were waiting as well, and we soon began discussing a few movies we’d missed while on the mission. All of the sudden, one of the elders perked up and said something had been bothering him for a long time.

“I never understood how Harry Potter, a misfortunate orphan with a terrible childhood, could find out he was a wizard and get accepted into a prestigious wizarding school and still get bad grades and slack off. If I was accepted into Hogwarts to become a wizard, I’d freaking pay attention in class!”

Harry and Ron squandering their opportunities.

I was dumbstruck. Of course! How could Harry be so reckless? I recalled reading the books and thinking of all the times Harry and Ron ditched their homework to go to Quidditch practice or to steal ingredients to make a polyjuice potion. They blamed their lack of success in potions class on Professor Snape, because he obviously hated them. But why would anyone take MAGIC CLASSES for granted? Hermione sure didn’t. Her attitude seemed the exact opposite. She took advantage of every moment she had to learn and understand everything she could about this new world she was introduced to. She took harnessing her new-found power very seriously and, consequently, became known as the most clever witch in her class. I suddenly realized that Hermione was the only rational one in the group. Knowing this made Harry’s situation more baffling.

Imagine what a privilege it was for Harry Potter to have the opportunity to leave the empty, dull life on Privet Drive and enter a new world where he was given nearly limitless power and instruction on how to use it. He squandered his potential by not paying attention in class and by taking his education for granted! I remember lying awake in my bed until midnight on my eleventh birthday, just for the off chance a magic owl would swoop in and drop off a letter addressed to me. I remember feeling disappointed for a moment that such a magical, mystical place didn’t exist (or at least not for a poor muggle like me). How could Harry act so blasé about his fantastic life?!

This never happened to me. #MuggleLife

I realized that I do the exact same thing.

Someone once appeared and told me I am much more than an ordinary human, I’m a Child of God! I have been accepted to come to this earth to be tested and to gain experience so that one day, I can become an exalted and celestial being. I was invited to leave my dreary state in the pre-existence to gain a physical body so I could act according to my agency and learn how to choose the right. I was blessed with amazing teachers who instructed me on how to use my new found power and responsibility here in mortality so that I could one day use my gifts to choose the path of my Savior and example, Jesus Christ. Despite my immense privilege, I often choose not to pay attention in class. How ridiculous! I’ve been given limitless potential, and I squander my time by not paying attention. Granted, it’s not easy to be completely focused and maintain that eternal perspective every day. Living with a wand would definitely become pretty normal sooner or later. But if I could maintain the I’m-the-luckiest-person-alive feeling, if I could train myself to keep that eternal perspective and wake up everyday with the determination to take advantage of every moment, how would my actions change? Well, I’ll tell you: I would be a happy, hardworking Hermione who has accepted her lot and is doing her best to make the most of it. I would be a little more hopeful, a little more faithful, and probably much, much happier because I would know that I’m perfection in the making!

You can argue that Harry had a lot to worry about with all the dark forces of evil convening against him every year of his education, but that is exactly what we are dealing with! There is a terrible villain who wants nothing more than to destroy our chances of a happy life, but the joke’s on him, because with every trial, we become stronger and more experienced. Every trial we get through makes us more capable to overcome future trials.

Life doesn’t always seem fair, but everything is stacked in our favor. In God’s eyes, we’ve already won. As the scriptures say, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than be with them” (2 Kings 6:16). Our faith is like a powerful wand in our hands, but we’ve got to learn how to use it before all of its power is revealed to us. Let’s all pay closer attention in class and practice our swish and flick.

February 27, 2016
The Danger of Clinging to the Iron Rod

At nine p.m. on a beautiful night two summers ago, I found myself paralyzed against a cliff that was a good 130 feet above a winding canyon road. A head lamp bounced sporadically around my neck, and bats swarmed around me, nicking my helmet with their wings and feet. My hands were soaked in sweat, making it difficult to grip, and my legs rattled, making it just as difficult to keep climbing. To gain a breather, sites like 선시티카지노 might be more than helpful.

Under normal conditions, climbing that wall would be a dream. A beautiful view of the canyon, challenging cracks, and a whole lot of self-congratulations would be the reward of pushing through it. That night, however, it was dark. The holds were impossible to see without a lamp, and sometimes, I had to blindly feel around for them. Bats and birds flapped around the cliffs, my friends seemed miles below me, and to top it all off, that cliff was on top of an even steeper cliff that made you dizzy to look down. The weird thing was that I’d climbed walls of equal height before. I’d bouldered in the dark without much pause and climbed up off-trail sites that were extremely sketchy. For the first time in a long time, however, stuck on that wall, I completely choked. I made it up and I made it back down in one piece, but not without serious trepidation and anxiety.

“Isn’t clinging a good thing?” Dwelling on that experience has given me good insight about life and the challenges we often face in life. Unexpectedly, it’s also given me valuable insight into my scripture study, particularly a few scriptures in Lehi’s account of the Tree of Life that I have never been able to fully understand. They read as follows:

“And it came to pass that I beheld others pressing forward, and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron, even until they did come forth and partake of the fruit of the tree. And after they had partaken of the fruit of the tree they did cast their eyes about as if they were ashamed…and after they had tasted of the fruit they were ashamed, because of those that were scoffing at them; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were lost” (1 Nephi 8: 24-25, 28).

I don’t know about you, but for most of my life, I’ve been so confused as to why those who clung to the rod fell away. Isn’t clinging a good thing? I’d asked myself. Isn’t desperately relying on the strength of the iron rod okay?

After spending a harrowing night on that rock wall, I realized why it might not be okay. In the context of rock climbing, “clinging” is very obviously a bad thing, and I think it applies in these scriptures the same way.

In spite of how many times I have climbed high walls, that climb two years ago completely derailed me. Hanging in the darkness of the canyon, I lost trust in both my tether and my harness. I found myself clinging to the rock face and even (needlessly) my rope, terrified that if I wasn’t clinging, I would fall. I somehow managed to convince myself that the rope wasn’t strong enough for me and that my harness wouldn’t hold me, and instead of having faith in my gear, I relied on my own strength.

I imagine that those who clung to the iron rod did so because they, like me, were terrified, not because they had faith in it. Lost in the mist of darkness at the edge of a precipice with nothing to direct them except the roar of the water, the uproarious mocking of those in the great and spacious building, and the iron rod, they chose what was most reliable, but they still remained “…instead of having faith in my gear, I relied on my own strength.” unconvinced that it was reliable. They weren’t there to reach the top triumphantly; they were there because the rod was there, and, consumed with their surroundings instead of their destination, they were propelled by fear. They weren’t actually relying on the strength of the rod when they clung to it, but on their own grip, their own understanding.

Relying on your own grip, I can attest, makes the climb harder. Instead of moving forward with faith and peace, you’re driven slowly and haltingly, your body unbending and weak. On most rock walls, having faith in the rope allows you to be flexible, to focus on where you’re going and how you’re going to get there instead of whether or not you’ll fall. With faith, falling does not seem like much of an obstacle. With fear, it’s major.

Because I let fear direct my climb that night, I didn’t enjoy my journey much, neither did I appreciate reaching the end of it like I would have if I’d just been confident. Like the clingers, I was a bit ashamed of myself. I was embarrassed because I lost faith in my equipment mid-climb. Those who clung may have been embarrassed because they never had faith in the rod to begin with. I’d imagine the sweetness of the fruit was overwhelmed by the bitterness of realizing that they were never really in it for the fruit to begin with.

The basic truth is that the Iron Rod (the Word of God) only helps us when we consistently and faithfully seek it. If we only read the scriptures and watch Conference because we’ve been told to or because everybody else is, we miss true progression. We don’t rely on truth and doctrine so much as we cling to routine and others’ opinions. We miss the Lord’s limitless love, because instead of focusing on how His words can direct us, we focus on getting our reading over with and we maybe focus on how dire and directionless our present situation seems. We care too much about what misdirected sources tell us and care too little about what the Savior promises us. He doesn’t want us to cling. He wants us to have faith. He wants us to hold onto that rod because we trust him, not because we’re blinded by fear or doubt.

The Savior is the rock of our salvation, the stumbling block to those who don’t seek or trust him, but also the glorious way to the top of the mountains and a divine view we can get in no other way. We must only have faith in our capacity to climb and in the equipment he’s given us to help get us there. The way might be steep and narrow, our environment dark and confusing, but with the scriptures, with the prophets, and with our faith, we will always reach the top. And let me tell you, the moon and the streets and the hills and the trees are stunningly beautiful up there.

January 22, 2016
One Punctuation Mark Changes How You Read “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”

I would like to take a moment to call your attention to a microscopic fragment of English syntax that recently snagged my soul a little: the colon. Or this thingy [ : ]. Let me first define the technical grammatical powers of these two neatly stacked specks, and then I will explain why this tiny unsung hero had such force on my not-technical, not-logical-neither-law-abiding heart.

“The most common use of the colon is to inform the reader that what follows it, proves, explains, defines, describes, or lists elements of what preceded it.”

From the Wikipedia entry for Colon (punctuation),

“The colon… introduces the logical consequence, or effect, of a fact stated before… introduces a description; in particular, it makes explicit the elements of a set… also separates the subtitle of a work from its principal title… introduces speech.”

So, basically it’s saying that whatever thought follows the two dots belongs within the thought that came before the dots, and can frequently be regarded as an explicit description of the first thought. Now here’s the application test. Open your mind, and take a second look at this familiar phrase:

“The Family: A Proclamation to the World”

Take that colon for ALL it’s worth, and I think you’ll start to see something funny, but not something to be laughing at. What that little colon does is tell us that the family is THE proclamation to the world. And what does it proclaim?

The family IS the epic testimony that we are something more than just another class of living organisms trying to work out some kind of commensalism with everything else here on planet earth. It proves an extraterrestrial, but not alien, origin of man.

Is there not something universal, poetic, and heart-gripping in the image of a man standing protectively between wife and child, and harm’s way? When you’re thrown out over your couch in a posture similar to your grandmother’s afghan, watching that old classic of the dying single mom and her two kids, does your heart not bleed? When your kid brother hasn’t written or called you for months, doesn’t it feel like there’s a laser boring an increasingly large hole right through your chest? No one taught you these reactions, and we can’t really explain them entirely. They just kinda come with our programming. Regardless of age, tongue, or culture, we all share an obsession with family relationships.

Why do we need those relationships anyway? I’m positive that no mosquito holds any bosom-warming regard toward mother or child, and yet they are still wildly successful even as relatively unnecessary members of most ecosystems. LOVE! “Love!” cries the lyricist, philosopher, psychologist, psychiatrist, social scientist, politician and poet. But what on Earth is love? Is it of Earth at all? The best star-spangled, new-fangled science would have us believe that it’s a precise blender mix of all the right juices and hormones swirled around to perfection up in your noggin and not much else. But no one who has ever been in love before, including all those advocates of the “blender mix” sporting lab-coats and statistics, will deny that locking eyes with their lover is like looking through a window to…somewhere else they don’t understand but feel very acquainted with. Regardless of age, tongue, or culture, we all share an obsession with family relationships No one who has ever held their own precious, minutes-old infant will ever tell you that their heart wasn’t racing and they didn’t feel breathtaken as they cradled that tiny life for the first time. No one who has ever lullabied a true friend and treasure at the edge of mortality will ever tell you that love is merely a chemical reaction. Love is the one shining remnant of memory from a life long ago that we can cling to. It is the most ennobling, and ultimately the most deifying element. And no, it is not strictly native to Earth.

We can love and feel love because we are members of God’s family. Love and honor are the sources of His power, and we’ve inherited a sensitivity toward these things. This family that we belong to is comprised of a Father, Mother, and children: us. Each son and daughter is a chain link in the race of gods, with the potential to become as He is. A chick will grow up to be a hen or rooster. A kitten will grow to be a cat. Any sensible person would say it is nonsense to believe that a puppy would grow up to be an alligator; that simply opposes all the laws of nature. But, it is perfect reason to say that if it is possible to believe that you are God’s child, that it is destiny for you to be like Him, that is, a regal and supreme creator. And that’s what He wants for you.

The families we live with here are models of the family we came from and a prototype of the lifestyle intended in the eternities. Embodied in the family are all the principles and essential creative powers that make gods different and…well, gods.

What the family, as designed by Heavenly Father, proclaims to the whole world is that there is a purpose and a plan to life. It paints a “why” for the things we do every day. We can love and feel love because we are members of God’s family It screams to the world that because of your own divine origin and destiny, you can achieve whatever lofty dream you have inclination toward and be whomever you’d like to be. It gives you reason to believe in yourself, and other people, too. It gives you reason to believe in a Living God.

In this phrase, those two tiny dots, aligned so neatly, help me see where the dots in my life need to be connected. They align me with a cause much larger than me. They inspire me to give a voice to the most important things. Let’s give a round of applause for the little guys!

Abe is an outdoor-loving lady, with a special affinity for back-country powder skiing. By day, she loves making her kindergartners laugh, but when night falls, she digs writing music, experimenting with food in the kitchen, and singing karaoke way too loudly. She hopes to make it to Disneyland before her spell breaks and she grows up.

January 17, 2016
What My Anxiety Taught Me About Christ

My legs bounced up and down as I sat on the train that would take me to Salt Lake City and, from there, my brand new job. It was September of 2014, and I had just moved away from home to take a position as a writing/editing intern for a lifestyle magazine. I found myself feeling excited and overwhelmed at the change. Within a few months, I had gone from being a stuck college grad with very little to look forward to to having multiple life events hit me all at once. I was in a new city with a new job, attending a new ward, and, at the time, exploring a new relationship, which, out of necessity, became long distance. As I sat on the train that first day, dwelling on all of it with a small smile, I thought, I have the greatest life.

Two weeks later, I had a massive anxiety attack that left me mentally, emotionally, and physically crippled. I couldn’t manage to eat anything and, as a result, lost 10 pounds in a 2-3 week period. For days, I couldn’t get up to leave my house. I would lie in bed and shake and pray for sleep. When I finally got myself to fall asleep, I’d toss and turn in pain. It escalated to the point where, a month after starting my job, I quit and moved back home, desperate for relief. For a short time, relief came, but within a few days, I was mentally right back to where I started. If you also struggle with anxiety, you can consider trying CBD products, such as those available at biocbd.

There were days when I could do nothing more than lie on my couch and stare at the ceiling and beg for the Lord to just end it. I didn’t really care how He did it, only that He did. If I let myself, I’d end up in very dark places where life felt meaningless and where the length of life was so daunting to me that I didn’t want to have to go through it. I felt completely broken and completely alone.

Moving beyond the weight of this particular trial took strength that I did not have and hours of begging for the ability to know how to overcome it. No one seemed to understand the situation I was in, one I later learned was escalated by worry, then false and destructive beliefs I had convinced myself were true. My mind could not bear the burden of these things alone. It took many hours on my knees, many brutal runs and bike rides to fight it off, and many long conversations with people I trusted to move forward and be okay. Occasionally, when I am not careful and avoiding the things that trigger it, anxiety is still a very real trial for me, one I often deal with quietly.

As I think back on the trials of the past year, I find myself reminded of the story in the New Testament about the father who brings his possessed son to the Savior. Do you remember? In the middle of a crowd of people, a father, who I imagine was cradling his son in his arms, speaks up and says, “Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not” (Mark 9:17-18). The father tells the Savior that his son has had this spirit in him his whole life, and that “ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him” (Mark 9:22). He begs the Lord to be compassionate, to which the Lord responds, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). In the most humbling and poignant moment of this story, the father, tears streaming down his face, cries out, “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.”

In my moments of deepest pain and despair, I realize that I am both the son and the father in this story. I am broken and burdened by trials that, frankly, I am not strong enough to get through alone. Like the father, I lay myself before the Savior and beg for help, sometimes so weak that it’s all I can do to muster the faith that He is there and willing. As I’ve come to know in quiet moments, He is always there, and He is always willing. His Atonement gives Him the ability to be both things.

The most humbling thing about the Atonement for me is often not that Christ suffered for all of our sins, though that is incredibly humbling and the overarching purpose of it. Our sins would separate us from our Heavenly Father completely if not for the grace of His son. What Christ was willing to do to eliminate that distance for us is incomprehensibly important. The most humbling thing about the Atonement for me, though, is realizing that, because of it, the Savior knows what it’s like to have anxiety. He knows what it feels like to struggle with mental illness, to fight depression, to go through the hardest mental and emotional trials all of us have ever faced, some which, like those of the young boy, have been with us a lifetime. He has felt every insecurity, every ounce of defeat or darkness, and every crippling worry we have ever had and will ever have. And he did it twice. A good friend once told me that when Christ was left entirely alone on the cross to bear the pain of living without his Father’s presence, he must have again known how it felt to be burdened by mental and emotional anguish, by deep depression. His whole purpose, life, and motivation was his Father. Can you imagine the darkness he must have felt to face those last moments without Him?

My anxiety has taught me that Christ is infinitely compassionate. I have no idea how he could carry my burdens along with every burden anyone has ever had, or how it could even be worth it for him. To be willing to do what he did, you would have to selflessly, endlessly love someone. The crazy thing is that he feels that way about all of us.

Trials are difficult, and often, they are crippling. Often, they leave us convinced that we are alone and that there is no way out. Like the father, desperate for help and relief, we forget that there is a way: that way is Jesus Christ. He is the only one who knows exactly what we feel and has promised to be with us every step of the way. I can’t help but think of the joy and relief we will feel one day when, if we’ve done what he’s asked us to do and believe in him, we will be healed of all the things that hurt, cleansed of all the darkness that gets in. We, like the child in Mark, will be completely set free. Our task, until then, is to believe in Christ, and believe Christ. When he says he is the way, he means it.

The scope of the Savior’s love goes beyond my anxiety, beyond your trials, and beyond the heartache of this life. We are always healable, and he, because he loves us, is always there waiting to heal us, even if it takes one stumbling step at a time. The darkest of nights cannot keep him away. We need only have faith in him.

November 14, 2015