LDS Living Podcasts

Stories in this episode: Steve gets to choose the song at his mission farewell and discovers pirates in the hymnal; Lillie finds herself leading a choir of cloistered nuns in singing her least favorite hymn; The last few lines of a treasured song turn out to be Holly's only solace as she faces heart wrenching disappointment in her journey to adopt.

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Transcript:

KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

I am really excited because we have something so fun to introduce our theme today. I was scrolling through my social media feed–as one does–and this comedy bit from Steve Soelberg popped up. And as I was watching it, I was like, "Oh, my gosh, he's read my diary about some of the hymns that we sing on Sundays." So I thought there was no better way to get us talking about music and our gospel practice than to start by having a good laugh together. Here's Steve.

Steve 0:40 You know, I do have this theory, though. I think it is good to be embarrassed and do things that make yourself feel awkward and kind of out of place and stupid sometimes. And I think that's healthy. I think it's good to do that. That's why I went on a, I went on a two year mission for my Church. Because it made me feel embarrassed and awkward. I had a lot of doors slammed in my face, and I think that's healthy.

One of my favorite parts of it was even before I left. Before I left, they said, "Steve, you get to pick the hymns that the congregation is going to sing before you leave." It was like a little farewell thing. And I thought that's cool. That's a big responsibility and I didn't want to mess it up. So I asked my dad, I was like, "What hymn should we sing?" And my dad goes, "I don't care, just don't sing the pirate hymn." And I was like, "Wait, what? There's a pirate hymn? What are you talking about? We have a pirate hymn?"

And I've done some research on the pirate hymn. The pirate hymn–the lyrics are used across many Christian churches. And as far as I know, my Church is the only one that uses this particular tune. The tune is also used by 1950's Disney movie that was about pirates and the ocean. And so I go, "Dad, please explain to me, what is the pirate hymn?" And he goes, "Well, it goes, it goes yeah, da da da da," and I was like, "Okay, that does sound kind of piratey, but keep going." And he goes, "Yeah, da da da da da"

And that felt so piratey I was like, "Oohh... and I started the swashbuckle a little bit"–I don't know why my pirates are Irish, but they are. It just feels . . . I don't know why that's how that goes, but I don't know how to do a pirate accent. It's all Irish. Sorry, if you're in Ireland, and you're watching this.

I didn't recognize the song yet. Right? "Ya da da da da da," I was like, "I don't recognize it yet." And I was like, "Dad, please sing it." And he's like, "Ugh." He didn't want to, but he did. And he goes, "Well, I'm gonna sing it the right way. With the pirate accent." My dad sings, he goes, "Okay, this is the song. 'Who's on the Lord's say who? Now is the time you show.'"

I was like "Oh! That is a pirate hymn." "We ask it fearlessly!" Fearlessly? What is that! Like, running the Jolly Roger up like, "Are you on the Lord's side? Fly the flag then, we ask it fearlessly. Who's on the Lord's side?" And then it doubles down on the pirate theme, it goes yeah, "Ya da da da da da da, ya da da da da da" at that point seaspray is hitting you in the face.

My favorite part, "Who's on the large side who," And the whole congregation sings that line, everybody goes "Whoooooo," You have grandma's next year going "Whooo." Is that how we sing that? Then you look up at the top for direction and it goes "Sing pirately." You go, "Oh there we go. That makes sense." Sing it pirately.

You go, "Are you on the Lard's side?" "The Lord?" "The LORD?" "The Lord?" "The Lord's side! He's on the starboard side." Of course we sang that when I left. I was like, "Dad, I'm shoving off! We gotta sing the pirate hymn." So excited.

KaRyn 4:55 That was Steve Soelberg at Dry Bar Comedy. We love Dry Bar and Steve Soelberg for lots of reasons, but the fact that they specifically offer stand up that doesn't make us bleep anything, that's kind of a big deal. In fact, Steve has a whole special that you can watch on the Dry Bar app that doesn't require any bleeping.

So maybe you're a better person than me, but I really resonated with this whole thing. I'm admitting here and now that I have giggled through more than a few hymns in my day, "Scatter sunshine," "Put your shoulder to the wheel," those have always made me feel just a little like we're all "Yo, ho ho ho-ing" through the rest hymn. And I just realized that I miss the rest hymn! I miss it. And if that's not a pandemic miracle, I honestly don't know what is.

Music is such a funny thing in our gospel worship. There are a lot of different camps of opinion about our hymns. Maybe sometimes we wish they were a little more lively or a little bit more modern. Or in the case of the pirate hymns, maybe we wish they were a little less lively? A little more reverent? I think the reason we have so many different feelings and opinions about the music in our church is because sacred music is one of the ways that so many of us connect to heaven. It's the workhorse of our spiritual communion. It can be a conduit of praise and revelation, a way to express our gratitude and keep a prayer in our hearts.

We use it to spiritually prepare ourselves for participating in holy ordinances. And for me, it's often the tool that God uses to soften my heart so that he can correct me and invite me to come closer. Maybe I forgot to list the way that sacred music wends its way into your gospel practice. But if you think about it, I'm sure something came to your mind.

Today we've got two stories about the way our sacred music tutors and blesses us as disciples. Our first story comes from Lillie, whose love for music and languages gave her the unique opportunity to start a choir, quite different from any that she'd been a part of before. Here's Lillie.

Lillie 6:50 The year my husband and I got married, I was teaching high school Spanish so I had summers off, and he was still in school so he had time in the summers as well. So we decided to volunteer. I needed more experience with Latin American countries so that I could feel like I was a better teacher. So I decided to–we signed up for this nonprofit to go and do nonprofit work in Ecuador, with a man named Washington Zambrano, he was actually a bishop at the time too, but he was a dentist. We signed up to be there for almost four months.

And when we got there, there were a bunch of nurses there that were volunteering with him, actual dentists, dental hygienists, so we basically did whatever he asked us to do. One particular service we were asked to do was go and help a bunch of nuns that lived in a monastery there in the historical district of Ecuador and Quito. Cloistered nuns take vows to never leave the convent. And they vow to just basically study and pray and be close to God. So it's pretty amazing that these women chose these things.

Some of the women that we met while we were in there doing their dental work, had actual jobs before they had taken their vows. And so some of them hadn't entered the convent until they were in like their 50's. And others were young, there were a couple of nuns that hadn't taken the vow to be a cloistered nun yet, so those were the nuns that would go out and get food or take some of the prepared food that the nuns made, and give it to the homeless population there in Quito.

So when we went to do dental work for the nuns who obviously hadn't had dental work in a long time, we felt really lucky to have been invited. And we kept hearing from the director, "We are so lucky to be here. They don't let people come in." And so we did feel that and we were really expressing how happy we were to be there, and we knew that it was probably the only time we'd be let in there.

They were super excited when we came because they didn't see people very often. They were talking our ears off. It was super fun. And so while one nun was getting her teeth cleaned, we'd be chatting with the other nuns and getting to know them. I do remember two nuns, they were actually radio personalities in their previous life. They were hilarious, and I think that they missed the attention. Oh my goodness, they were wonderful.

So somehow music came up with the nuns while we were there, and they had missed music in their lives and didn't have anyone to lead a choir. And my husband is a musician and he plays the guitar really well and oftentimes when we would go to do the dental work at the schools or in little villages I would play the violin and he would play the guitar and we'd just play music for them. They said, "Well, we would love a choir, can you teach us music? Can we form a choir? Would you come and do that?" And it was like our dream come true, "Yes!" You know, because I mean, dental work is one thing, but doing music is is exciting and super fun. So yes, we said we'd love to.

And so myself, my husband, and so we got it all set up, and I got these folders, I thought they would feel really important having you know, their folders. I wanted them to know that I was taking it seriously. So I gave them their folders, they had a pencil, you know, to mark anything. The real problem was I didn't have music. And the only music I had access to was the church hymns. So I found a hymnal. It was in Spanish, of course. And I chose some songs that I thought were simple. And I was really drawn to, "As Sisters in Zion" And then the other song was, "As I Have Loved You", and "Keep the Commandments."

[Nuns singing "Love One Another" in Spanish"

So the "Sisters in Zion" song, it was an interesting one, because I'm going to be honest, I haven't always loved that song. I haven't always enjoyed singing it. Maybe because I grew up listening to Relief Society sisters sing it, and maybe, you know, there were older voices in there that weren't always the most lovely to listen to–I don't know, it just wasn't a song that I always loved. But as I read the words in Spanish, the translation, it's called, "We Serve United." And what I think is neat about that is they are, they were cloistered nuns serving together.

The first line, the first part of the song, "We serve together because we're sisters." And then it's saying that they hope God blesses us in our work, and we will edify his kingdom on the earth, bringing service in love. It's very simple, and there's nothing that says even Zion in it. And I felt like it translated perfectly for their situation, I thought that they would relate to it, and that it would help them feel strength in their purpose.

So when I brought this song in their little folders with their little pencils–which, they were just giddy when we arrived, I still remember their faces. And remember, they're wearing habits, just like on "The Sound of Music," and they were so excited to see us that of course, we were just thrilled. And I remember singing the song with them, they really caught on pretty quickly. And after they sang it, they looked at me and they said, "Wow, did you write this for us?" Like, "No, actually Janice Kapp Perry wrote this, but it does relate," like, they loved it. They just loved it, it almost became their anthem.

And what I love about it is it completely changed my perspective on this song. I cannot sing this song. Without thinking about these sisters. I really, I saw them as my sisters. I–when we sang that together, I just felt so much love that Heavenly Father had for them.

They let us come several more times during that time we spent in Ecuador, and they weren't really preparing for anything, they didn't have a choir concert, I think it was for their own edification. I think they just really wanted to sing.

So I've always loved music, and I feel like music is what helped me build my testimony throughout my younger years and even now, if I have questions, they're often answered while I'm singing hymns. And I feel like this experience solidified that for me, because, as we sang, the Spirit was there. Music invites the Spirit. And it doesn't matter what religion we are, we are all children of God, and singing a song or singing a hymn that speaks words of truth invites the Spirit. And I felt that so strongly and I looked around at these faces of these beautiful nuns singing "As Sisters in Zion," and I could see the love that they had for the same Heavenly Father, and I feel like it really did unite us in a cause for good. And I'll never sing that song again without that feeling.

KaRyn 15:34 That was Lillie. We first heard her story on our pitch line and were mesmerized by her description of acquire of cloistered nuns in Ecuador singing "As Sisters in Zion." My favorite spark of gospel from Lillie's story is that when we sing songs that speak truth, the spirits present, regardless of our faith tradition. And that's only amplified when we sing those songs together.

All my fellow choir nerds out there know that something really cool happens when we join our shaky, imperfect voices in praise of Jesus. And I think that something is a taste of Zion. The things that make us different or disconnected seem to fall away as we exert the same kind of effort to take individual notes and individual voices, and meld them into one. I think it's a really transcendent experience, and it can change the way that we see one another.

Maybe it's the erstwhile fiction writer in me speaking here, but I have this vision that someday anthropologists in the year 3000, will find this recording of a Spanish translation of Janice Kapp Perry's, "As Sisters in Zion" in an abandoned nunnery in Ecuador, and it'll spark a historical mystery for our posterity that will end with them coming to the conclusion that we were a unified and connected people across cultures and continents.

I know, it's a little far fetched, but a girl can dream, right? And maybe, just maybe, when we get back from this quarantine, we'll all decide to take another look at joining the ward choir. Just a thought. Our next story about the power of music comes from Holly who needed additional strength to move forward after a devastating setback. Here's Holly.

Holly 17:16 My husband and I were married in 1986, it seems like a really long time ago. And in 1991, we did our first adoptions. We had three biological children and in 91, we went to Romania, to adopt and adopted two little girls from orphanages there and decided that we would really want to welcome kids into our home who had been abandoned, neglected, in some way–hard to place, because we also had a biological daughter with disabilities, and so it really opened up a world of possibility for us to add to our family.

When we decided to adopt, when we felt inspired to adopt another child, or add another child, we always took it to the Lord. We always prayed, we always got confirmation, we both had to be on the same page. I think my husband would tell you that, if we had adopted every child that I had felt would be a good fit, we'd probably have 50. And we don't have quite that many, but we always got confirmation. And that was one of the things that I relied on, right? Is feeling confirmation from the spirit that these were the children that I needed to add to my home.

So in 2007–actually beginning in 2006–we started to pursue an adoption from a country in Africa, it's no longer open, but at the time it was open, and we had that same familiar feeling, it's time to go add to our family. We did all of the paperwork, and I traveled to that country prepared to adopt. My husband was going to stay home, I was going to go and I took one of my teenage daughters with me to do this adoption. And we actually spent months there.

We lived there to complete these adoptions, and we found three little girls. One was in an orphanage, and two were actually abandoned in the hospital, and they were legally adopted to us. We got birth certificates, and passports in the Richardson name, the courts released them into my custody and I started taking care of them, while we were still undergoing the rest of the legal process and the court process.

Absolutely bonded, I fall in love with my kids very quickly. The last step is to go to the American Embassy and get visas to bring them home to the United States. We went to the American Embassy and they . . . they said "No." They turned us down. First they said "Well, we need to go verify where these girls actually came from." So we tracked down all the information we had, we tracked down the police report where the kids were abandoned, I mean, we tracked all of this information down, provided all of the paperwork, and then there was another reason. And we just couldn't figure it out. And it started to get concerning.

One day with my teenage daughter who had come with me, we got a knock on our apartment door where we were staying and it was Child Services from this country, and they were coming to take the kids back into their custody. Two of them were newborns, one of them was only three months old, so they were really close in age. And I had been their full time caregiver around the clock for a couple of months at least. And here, these people show up and they're like, "We're here to take your babies." And I'm like, "What? What . . . like, How can that be possible?"

And they just said, "Well, we know you're having trouble with the American Embassy, so you go work it out in America, and we're going to take care of the girls here," and told us to go home and work on the problem at home. And we were just like, I was just stunned. I . . .I couldn't believe it, right. It was really traumatic and very sad.

And here I had been, trying to be faithful, following the spirit, and it had not worked out and I was in shock and grief. I did not feel the Comforter, I did not feel supported, I actually felt betrayed. I felt betrayed by God, that He had led me so far, and then taken away the ability for me to get these little girls home.

I had this realization that I was at a moment of choosing. And I did debate a little bit on on whether this was going to be the last straw for me, because we'd gone through some really rough stuff. I could have said, "Okay, I'm done. I'm out."

I had, at the time, this was 2007, so I had a laptop, it used to have a CD player and I had CD's with me from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And as I played, "How Firm a Foundation," I was stuck on the last verse. And the last verse says, "The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I cannot, desert to His foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, I'll never no never, I'll never, no never, no never forsake."

And I literally put that on repeat. This music helped calm my soul, it was so soothing, and I just sat there and listened and cried and listened and cried and cried. And made that commitment that I'll never forsake. I'll never forsake, no matter how hard it is, I'll never forsake and that was, that was really my moment of choosing. That music really helped me choose faith.

I heard later, one of the people that was helping us said that they had just participated in a meeting where the woman who had come and taken my children from me, stood up and said that Mormons were not Christian, and that she had saved these children from a fate worse than death by preventing them from coming to an LDS home. I don't know exactly what her difficulties were with my religion, but it was very clear that that was the reason that they decided that they were going to prevent these kids from coming home.

Now what happened is, I went home and I spent, we spent many, many hours with attorneys and working the legal process, and the reality was–it never happened. And they didn't come home.

I entered a period of really dark depression, because I couldn't bring them home. And it just felt so awful that I knew where they were, and I couldn't do anything about it. People would ask me, "How are you doing?" and I would literally burst into tears. I look at pictures from that year, I never did my hair, I never wore makeup, I put on sweats, like I could barely get myself out of bed. But because I chose to stay in the gospel and to do the things that I needed to do to feel the light again, because I didn't for a long time.

One morning, in December of that year, I woke up and I could tell that things were a little bit better. That was the day that I started to really feel like I was healing from that. And now it's been, what, 14 years. And every time I still hear that song, I remember that commitment that I made, both to myself, but to God as well to say, I'm going to stay, and I choose faith.

And I think sometimes. . . II think sometimes people think that, that people stay in the church out of maybe naivete, but, but I choose to stay in spite of the difficulties, and I choose to stay in spite of not knowing. And I chose to stay even when things were really hard and I felt like they were really not fair–and they weren't fair. But I knew that I would have dark times but I also knew that I could rely on Heavenly Father and my Savior, I knew that they would be there, and I knew that I would get through it. And I did it.

And I think part of it for me is knowing that if I hold on during those dark times that the light will come again. I've gone to the temple where I felt not one thing. I've prayed where I felt like not one thing, nobody was listening, nobody cared. But I just did the things I knew I was supposed to do, and the light came back.

KaRyn 25:37 That was Holly. Holly and her husband, are parents to 25 children who've come into their family in various ways. And if that doesn't tell you what you need to know about her willingness to commit when the Spirit directs her, I don't know what does.

I appreciate what she learned about the beauty of our hymns as spiritual teachers, that when we listen to and surround ourselves with sacred music as part of our discipleship, we're creating a little well of inspiration that we can dip from when we need to learn something or decide something in a moment, even if that moment is characterized by pain or grief. Those songs will float upward and act as a catalyst for the Spirit. But even better, after we've had that experience with the Spirit, the moment is gonna fade, but that song will still remain.

And just like Holly said, every time we hear it, it becomes this tangible touchstone of a time when we were inextricably connected to heaven, a solid reminder to recommit or to stay strong or to have additional peace.

I suspect that most of us could point to a pivotal moment when a song, a sacred song, offered an answer or comfort to us. I know I can. For me, it always seems to come from the song, "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go." In fact, that song has become kind of an inside joke between me and the Lord. Every single time I don't want to do something scary, or I'm on the fence about following inspiration or revelation. Invariably, I go to church, I sit in the back pew, I argue with the Spirit about it, and then we sing this song for the closing hymn.

This conversation with music and the Spirit happened when I was trying to decide whether to serve a full time mission. And it happened when I was feeling nervous about my decision to leave my job and move to South Korea. And it happened again when I didn't get into a graduate program that I desperately, desperately, wanted to be a part of. And when the answer was to stay right where I was for the time being. It's this line that gets me every time, "But if by a still small voice He calls to paths that I do not know, I'll answer Dear Lord with my hand in thine, I'll go where you want me to go."

I admit that it has some of the lilting of a pirate hymn, but it's my pirate hymn. And every time I hear it, I am reminded that sacred music is a powerful and personal tool of communion between me and my Heavenly Parents. There's one other piece of this that I think is worth mentioning. In a Church Educational System talk the President Nelson gave in 2008 he spoke about the power and the protection of worthy music.

And at the outset, it might seem like our stories today were all about the power of music, the power to unify, to transcend differences, to anchor us to the gospel and soothe our troubled hearts. But when I look a little bit deeper, I can see what President Nelson was talking about when he said, quote, "Music is not only a source of power, but also of protection," end quote.

Surrounding ourselves with sacred music–and that could be lots of different kinds of music, I'm not just talking about hymns, but surrounding ourselves with sacred music offers a shield against the darts of the adversary. It covers our efforts to share eternal truths when disagreements, misunderstandings, or cultural differences could easily drive a wedge between an ad hoc choir director and her newly formed corral of nuns. Sacred music can hold us still, while our hearts break in a hotel room far from home. And it can fill us with a hope that is strong enough to cast out the doubt and the dissonance that threatens to send us far from God's goodness.

In my own life, I've seen sacred music fill the space between the angry words in my head and my sometimes too sharp tongue. It stopped me from saying things that I couldn't take back. And I have experienced the presence of angels after a light filled song open the gates of heaven against a darkness that felt like it could own me.

Worthy music is a power and a protection. Is it any wonder then, that President Nelson warned us in that talk to use that power and care for that protection intentionally, when he said, quote, "Do not degrade yourself with the numbing shabbiness and irreverence of music that is not worthy of you. It is not harmless. It can weaken your defenses. Fill your minds with worthy sights and sounds. Cultivate your precious gift of the Holy Ghost. Protect it. Carefully listen for its quiet communication, you will be spiritually stronger if you do," end quote.

And to that, my friends, all I can say is amen. And in the spirit of our theme today, I want to leave you with one more thing, a hymn that my Pappy used to sing with all of his heart and soul in our sacrament meeting, arranged and sung by some of my favorite musicians. I hope it gives you an added measure of power and protection today. This is "II Stand All Amazed" by the Bonner family.

Bonner Family 31:33 "I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me. Confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me. Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me. Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me."

"Wonderful to me. I marvel that he would descend from His throne divine. To rescure a soul so rebellious and proud as mine. Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me. Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me."

"I stand all amazed at the love, I stand all amazed. Wonderful to me. Wonderful to me."

KaRyn 34:33 That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Lillie and Holly, and comedian Steve Solberg and Dry Bar Comedy for sharing their stories and their love for all worthy music, including the piratey ones.

We'll have a link to Steve's full length comedy special–that again requires no bleeping–and more info about each of our storytellers in our show notes. We'll also have a way for you to find more of that gorgeous music from the Bonners. Seriously, they're bringing a whole new energy to our hymns, and I am here for it. You can find our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel.

One of my favorite things besides the Bonner family and cake is hearing from you. We love to hear how this podcast is adding to your practice of the gospel. You can find us on social media at @thisisthegospel_podcast, or leave us a review on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen on. Reviews are super helpful in pushing us up in the recommended section of a lot of platforms, so more people can find us easily.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. We find so many stories through the pitch line and we'll be gathering those stories and ideas for season four soon so get ready to share them. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179. This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Brett's charge to defend a man who has committed heinous crimes is almost too much to bear until a desperate plea to God in the middle of the courtroom restores his hope; As a new judge, Carey faces a crisis of conscience when a temple recommend interview offers new insight; When Jennifer is unfairly judged by her colleagues, the consequences send her into a bitter tailspin that only a vivid dream from heaven can stop.

View shownotes at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

Follow us on instagram and facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast

Transcript:

KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

And I am proud to say that I have only been in front of a judge in a courtroom once in my life. Apparently, if you're trying to kill a spider that drops from the rearview mirror while driving, and you rear end a brand new Jeep in the state of Virginia, you have to show up in court to explain that to a judge, the police, and a courtroom full of only semi-amused onlookers.

And I'm the kind of person that already thinks I'm guilty of things that I haven't done, but this time I actually had done it so I was doubly intimidated to stand in that courtroom and explain myself. I didn't really know what to expect. I was all alone, I was really nervous and feeling really stupid. So when the judge called me to the front of the courtroom to plead my case, I was shaky.

I stood there, I offered my tail of spiders, and woe, and after a surprising amount of good natured laughter from the people in the courtroom, the judge said that she, for one, could totally understand how a spider might distract someone from being fully focused on the road, and that this could have happened to anyone. So she ordered me to pay the court fees, but otherwise, I was free and clear of any charges or additional penalties imposed by the court.

That's not to say that I didn't have any consequences, because I felt those the minute that I saw my car insurance premium spike. Her mercy didn't supplant justice, but I was really grateful that in her determination of the best interest of the law, she was willing to listen to the context of the situation. And I left that courtroom feeling surprisingly better than when I entered, which is saying a whole lot.

Well, whether or not you've had to stand before a judge in Virginia and tell your spider story, this idea of judgment and what constitutes good judgment is something that as a disciple of Christ might be on your mind anyway. We're all facing a really complex world with sometimes seemingly impossible decisions to make. And if it isn't on your mind, then maybe today's theme will give you some space to think about how judgment is connected to our desire to be a better follower of Christ.

We've got three stories from three people who really needed some help honing their understanding of what constitutes good judgment, in the eyes of God. Our first story comes from Brett, a lawyer tasked with defending the indefensible.

Here's Brett,

Brett 2:33 The hard part about being a prosecutor is that there are some times when the things the person accused of are so harsh, that it's really hard to see the humanity behind the allegations. I am an attorney and I have both prosecuted and defended people who were accused of some very bad things.

On the prosecution side, I get to work closely with victims of crimes, I get to see the pain they are going through, and I get to try to help them make sense of it and hopefully get some kind of resolution. I see the horrific nature of the things that the accused has done, and you want to really make sure that things like that get punished in that, people in society have an idea that laws will be followed and that there are consequences.

More often than not, though, in that situation, you do not get to know the alleged offender. Usually they have an attorney and you aren't allowed to talk to them and see the things that led them to where they were. You don't get to see the small acts of kindness or joy or love that they have both received and given to others. You really don't get to see what makes them human. And sometimes that's kind of hard to do, especially when the things they've been accused of are pretty horrific.

There was a time when I was on the defense side, and it started like many cases with the judge reading the things that he was accused of. And even just the nature of the things was pretty lengthy. It was something like 13 pages long, the indictment, and my client had chosen to plead guilty to just about everything.

But in this forum, before that court, the people accused of crimes, my client, was not allowed to simply say, "Yes, I'm guilty to charges 1 through 13 and I accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate, Judge." But rather, the judge needs to go through the conduct in what we call "Providence Inquiry," where the judge needs to make sure that my client understood what the law was, understood all of the definitions, and then agreed to his actions and agree that his actions actually violated the law.

Now, as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, you get used to being around some of the most disturbing and criminal conduct that people can do. And you have to look at it and make sure yourself what the law says about those things. So you can either prosecute or defend. And so we were going through this, and usually that doesn't take too long. You can always do that in waves. You can do it for 20 minutes, 30 minutes at a time, take a break, and come back to it when you're feeling up to it.

But in this case, because it was so long, we had just pressed through, and for about two hours, we had been listening and seeing some of the most disturbing things that you can be subjected to.

And as we're going through this, I started to feel literally sick to my stomach. I was getting to a point of almost panic, because it was incredibly unprofessional to throw up in the middle of a courtroom. But what I was more concerned about was my client, because one of the great things that I do love about being a defense attorney is that you get to help some people go through some very difficult things.

In many instances it is the most difficult, embarrassing, humiliating experience of their lives. And this was that for my client, and for him to see how much it affected me, I thought could undermine his confidence in me and my belief in him. And he had already lost so much. He lost his family, he lost his job, he was losing his freedom. He had some elderly parents, and it was unlikely that he would see them again before his prison term ended. And I wanted to be there for him. And so when this was happening, I knew that I had to get up in just a few minutes after that was done, and argue for him, both to argue for leniency–to paint a picture of humanity for him–and also to argue about different things that he was alleged of, that he had not done, and defend him in those.

And so not knowing what to do, I thought, well, maybe I just need to ask the judge for a recess, or, you know, maybe the feeling will just go away. Then I realized that it wasn't. It was getting worse. And so I did the only thing that I can think of, I decided to say a prayer. And in that prayer, I just prayed for Heavenly Father to be with me to help me to know what to do in that situation.

I looked over at my client, and I felt the spirit enter my mind and body with, like, great waves. It was amazing. It kind of lit up my whole soul. And I could see the love that my Heavenly Father had for this young man. It was regardless of the things that he had done, it was regardless of the harm and pain he had caused so many. It was a pure and powerful love. And when I felt that the nausea, the sickness, it just evaporated, like instantaneously.

I was calm, I knew what I had to do, and I was able to get up and argue for him, for mercy, and to paint a picture for the judge to see who he was, not just the things that he had done.

No matter what kind of trial, the situation has stayed with me. I always try to understand and see these people as my Heavenly Father sees them. It's no justification or excuse for whatever they've done, but it helps me to always go back to this to understand that even those who have done some of the most horrific things, that we are very much more similar than we are different. We are all much, much better than the worst things that we've done. And it changed me in a lot of ways. And I'm very grateful for that.

KaRyn 8:54 That was Brett. I can only imagine what kind of spiritual gifts it takes to sit in a courtroom and listen day after day to all the ways that people have hurt one another without losing your hope in humanity.

Brett's willingness to ask for help from heaven, so that he could perceive what seemed absolutely imperceptible in his client, especially as that list of offenses was read, that's a real example to me of truly offering your will to God. And in this particular case, "Good judgment" didn't mean ignoring what was broken in the person sitting next to him. It actually meant that Brett could experience firsthand the dichotomy that comes with being human, which is that we can be capable of doing terrible things, and somehow also be worthy of divine love.

It reminded me of the prophet Jacob, who is given the gift to perceive the evil that lurks in the hearts of his people, while also recognizing the love that God had for them in his desire for them to repent. It was this ability to feel both things at the same time that I think allowed Jacob to speak those hard things, to call those people to repentance, and to do it with a power that could actually change hearts. I personally believe that this capacity to hold space for that dichotomy is exactly why Jesus Christ will be the best "good judge" for you and for me when the time comes to stand before him, and receive our justice, and hopefully our mercy.

And I really hope that Brett's client felt it in some small part through Brett that day. And that we can feel it today in the words of the prophet Jacob, when he says, "Arouse the faculties of our soul, shake ourselves that we may awake from the slumber of death."

Our next story comes from Carey, a new judge who found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place with his first case assignment. Here's Cary.

Carey 10:41 I started law school a little bit later, when I was married and had three small children. And during law school, I learned–I realized, that it was important for me to be a judge, I could be an attorney, but I wanted to be a judge. And I wanted to be a judge because I wanted to make the right decisions. I wasn't as concerned–and still not as concerned about finding out who's right, as I'm finding about what's right.

As a judge, you get to determine what's right, based upon what's in front of you, and then make the right call. A year after law school, I got the chance to become a judge. And I was hired by the state of Oregon to serve as a judge in its administrative law program, dealing with agencies and various government entities.

Just a few months after I became a judge, they started a brand new hearing program involving psychiatric patients at State Hospital. These are patients who have been diagnosed with mental illness and either committed on their own, they voluntarily committed, or usually, it's a court that has said, "You need to be taken care of until you're better."

And in order to meet the patient's needs, they developed a program for patients who wanted to object to the medications that doctors wanted them to take. And so it was called "Informed consent hearings" at the state hospital. The agency asked me to do the first hearing involving the first patient to request a hearing under these circumstances.

I was surprised, and then as we approached the hearing, I was very concerned. I had a bit of a crisis of conscience. What it comes down to is, the patient, who may or may not be experiencing significant psychiatric symptoms is told by the doctor, "You must take these psychotropic medications." And the patient doesn't want to. They don't want to for a very specific reason, it makes them feel horrible. These medications are not lightweight, and they do not feel good.

Having known people who have dealt with these medications, how could I, in my mind, make the decision to force someone to take them? In my mind the picture came of someone being held down and being forced with a needle to take these meds, and it would leave them feeling awful. How could I do that? I was all about justice. I was all about honoring people, I was all about making sure it was the right call. And I was very focused on the end result of "Could I be the one to make the decision that would end up with someone feeling very, very horrible, especially against what they would they would hope for?" It felt like I would be making a decision one way or the other that was bad. There were no good outcomes.

And it did not feel good to me. I wrestled. My heart hurt about the possibility that I would either A, caused this suffering on the person because they'd have to take the medication, or B, cause more suffering on the person because they didn't have to take the medication. It did not feel like I had a good result.

I didn't sleep well for the days leading up to it. I couldn't think about much else, other than what was coming up on my calendar and this decision that had to be made. And I could not think my way through to some answer that would give me peace.

I was very fortunate because our temple recommends we're going to expire that month. And so we scheduled unexpectedly to have our temple recommends renewed with a member of the stake presidency the night before the hearing. That was the stake president who happened to be a career counselor and leader of LDS Family Services. I didn't know about his background before I went to the interview. I only knew that I needed help, and I knew he was one of my priesthood leaders.

And I sat down with him and I did my interview and then I said, "President, I need help." And I shared with him my concerns and I told him all about what was going on, and he shared with me, "Brother Meerdink, that sounds like a very challenging decision to make. So let me ask you some questions." He said, "Why would you require this patient to take the medications? Is it out of spite?" I said, "Absolutely not. I don't hate anybody. I'm not got angry with this person." He asked, "Would you want this person to suffer or to be in pain?" I said no, I don't feel anything about this person. No, none of those feelings. And he said, "Well, why would you make this person take the medications?"

"Well, if that's what the law requires, I'd have to do it." And then the light went on for me. He said, "The requirement of the law is what it is, and somebody has to serve as Judge. And if you are the person who serves as Judge, you must do what the law requires." And then he opened up the gospel light for me, emphasizing that the Savior is the judge for all of us, and that He is perfectly just. He's as just as He has to be, but He's also perfectly merciful, He's as merciful as He can be. And oftentimes, that mercy is how we are treated by the Savior or by the judge. And he said, "The only thing you can do is to treat the patient, like a child of God, just like everyone else in the room. You are not there to judge any person based on their value, you are there to decide whether or not the law has been met. And that's what the Savior does."

It was amazing, the peace I had, being able to sleep the night before the hearing. The tension, it relieved immediately, the confusion, the uncertainty, the fogginess was gone. It helped me to know the result is what it is, based upon the process. And it helped me to understand the importance of my role in the process, in this circumstance, and in my role as a disciple of the Savior throughout my life.

After a long hearing, we adjourned for the day, and I ended the hearing. And so I went back to my office, I considered all of the evidence, I looked through the whole thing and I made my decision.

This experience was a real door opener for me, that . . . that even though I'm imperfect and that I have made mistakes in my life, that that's okay. That the mercy is still there. I think the Savior is much less focused on justice than He is on extending the mercy. I think His interest and the reason He spread His arms wide, was to try to bring us in.

Justice will only keep you away from His mercy if you allow it. There's nothing keeping you from Him.

KaRyn 18:21 That was Carey, I love that line from his stake president, I kind of wish I had it on some sort of T-shirt or mug, "That Christ is as just as He has to be, and as merciful as He can be."

Isn't that so heartening? The judge of all of us, who is perfectly equipped to mete out the correct amount of justice will also offer us as much mercy as He can. And we know from scripture, and especially the Book of Mormon, that Christ's bowels, which represent the very center of His eternal and infinite being, are filled with mercy and compassion toward us. That's a lot of mercy to give. You and I aren't yet eternal or infinite, but I think it's a really good rule of thumb that if we want to become more like our Savior, one way to do that is to ramp up our compassion. To offer just a little more mercy when it's ours to give.

And it's not going to be easy. Frankly, seeking justice comes way more easily to me. Because there are really clear rules in society about what's fair and what's not fair and what should happen to make something right when injustice has occurred. That's comforting and safe. But mercy . . . mercy is real spiritual work. It's nebulous. It requires more of me and more reliance on the spirit to trust that God has got it all taken care of in the end. It's going to take some real effort to lean into mercy. But honestly, if it's good enough for Jesus, then it's got to be good enough for me.

Our final story on good judgment comes from Jennifer.

Jennifer 19:51 When I think about my life, and my career, I think I've faced my fair share of rejections. In fact, sometimes it feels like more than my fair share. And part of that may be that I've chosen kind of a niche job, and so it's tricky to get hired in the fields that I've, I've opted to pursue.

But there was one–there was one rejection that really turned me on my head. It crushed me. And . . . I had been working at this place for a little while. I was temporarily working for this company and hoping for a more permanent position. And an opportunity presented itself that I was so excited to apply for. And I felt like that I'd put forward maybe the best foot that I'd ever put forward, and was really quickly rejected. And it boggled me. I felt like things were going well, I felt like I was well received.

The process of assessing or choosing a candidate for even interviewing is a committee process. And so a group of men evaluate the applicants and then review and make decisions based off of probably a lot of criteria that I didn't understand and thought, frankly, that I was the right person for it, but I was rejected.

And so I wanted some feedback. I took a little bit of time, a couple of weeks to try and process it and then asked my supervisor, if he could provide some kind of feedback. I, by nature, want to please people. So to have felt this rejection, felt like maybe I was not good enough. It was a question of my skills, of my capacity, of things that I felt like I'd spent decades trying to harness. So going into the meeting was incredibly vulnerable for me.

I, I was nervous, I was sweaty, I was a mess. And I remember trying to talk and articulate the clarity that I was seeking. And my words didn't feel clear, like I felt so jumbled, and awkward. And in part, I think I've, I've always kind of struggled being a voice for myself, and to say, "I really want to do this. And this matters." And frankly, our family needed it, so it was pretty intense for me to sit across a desk and to say, "Why?" "Why was I not chosen even to have an interview? What is it about me?" Gratefully my supervisor was very kind. It's his nature.

Still, I struggled through most of the conversation, and when he offered the feedback I was really grateful for it, but I was also very confused, because it felt like . . . it felt like a character attack. And that maybe there was a question about the kind of person that I was. And, again, I think that's an important part of the story is that sometimes, when it matters so much, it becomes more personal. And that, that was hard for me to filter because it felt like a dream. It felt like something I was passionate about, or even a life mission, that I felt called to it. And so there's a lot more at stake.

As I go back and read my journal about that day, I think it took everything I had to not just scream that "You've got to be kidding me. This is, this is what they said about me? And is that who you think I am?" And I think I even said that, "Is that who you think I am?" And he's like, "No, Jenn,. No, that's not who I think you are, Just be patient. And will you give them a chance to get to know you." And I didn't get that.

I just–I wanted I wanted the job then, I didn't want to have to wait another season. There had been years of waiting and years of feeling this same sort of rejection. And and so you make up stories and narratives that start to really weigh on you. And so I started to really question, is this me? Is it them? Who am I really? And I was devastated and defeated.

The field that I've chosen has few women in it. That's shifting, but it doesn't have as many women working in this field. So the committee that was evaluating my application was made up of men. So that became personal. I got mad. I spent a lot of time being really angry, but still working there. And so I was still going to be interacting with these people. And suddenly, I'm needing to go into meetings, and walk in and go, which one of you said that about me? And which one of you hates me the most? And well, that maybe wasn't accurate, that maybe they didn't hate me, but the harshness of the feedback was such that I'm like, Hmm, I wonder who it is.

It was, it was hard. And, and there was a lot of times that even just going to work was hard. I'd anything I could to not have to interact with anyone. I would find ways to enter the building differently, or could I get there really early, or really kind of late? Is there any way to just get my job done without being seen? Yet, at the same time, I felt like they need to see me, to know what they're thinking of me isn't true. And so it was this really complicated process of feeling shame, I felt a lot of shame, actually.

And I remember one day driving, knowing I was going to be in a meeting with several of the people that are on the committee that assesses hiring, or applicants. And I was just in that state. I was mad, I was frustrated, and I just said this prayer of "I'm so tired of feeling silenced and oppressed." And whether that was true or not, it's what I felt. And when I stopped screaming, I, I just held still for a minute. And the Spirit said, "You're not being silenced. I just need you to listen right now." And that, to me, was such a game changer to shift in going–maybe this is a chance to observe, or to understand human nature.

I was so self-absorbed in my pain, that I think it was too hard to look beyond myself, at least in this situation. Again, I'm not trying to negate what I felt or what happened, but I needed to shift. And so that day, it helped to listen. And I left less frustrated, but not healed. But it was . . . it was the beginning.

And there were months like that, where I would know, okay, today's a day that there's going to be high interaction. And I'd have to really gear myself up for it. It was a lot of prep work on those days to just go to work.

Maybe two months after the feedback, I started to keep a gratitude journal. I wasn't to the place yet that I was giving thanks about the people that had offered the feedback. But, I was grateful that I had employment. And that it was, that it was perhaps moving me in the direction of what I was hoping for.

The other thing that I started doing in this process was practicing some self care. And as I started to reflect on some of the feedback, I realized, there's so many things that are just so out of our control in our lives, but that I could take care of myself. And that was an interesting thing. The initial prompts were physical care, sleep and wellness. But it was interesting that those things started to soothe my mind, and I was able to start to surrender–trusting, hoping, that God had a plan in it all.

But it didn't stop that anxiety. I was getting ready for a meeting one night and just–I was so worked up. I just was so tired of feeling so inadequate, feeling like I have to prove myself. And I was ranting about it to my husband and just said my prayers and went to bed. And I'm a dreamer, I've always been a dreamer. I've wondered if maybe that's God's way of saying, look, I can't get through to you unless you're asleep.

And on this particular night, I had a dream and it was really a disjointed dream. But at the beginning of it, I was in a meeting. I was really vocal, which was not typical of me in this context–I can definitely be vocal. And I just kept saying, "I don't see Jesus in this." Everything they were presenting, everything they were talking about, I just kept saying, "I don't see Jesus in this." And then the dream sort of shifted. Suddenly, I was in this crowd of people, and they were pressing and moving. And I'm like, "What's going on?" And they're like, "He's, He's here."

And I'm like, "Jesus? I want to see Him." "Show me Jesus." And it was so cool because I looked and He locked eyes with me. And I woke up, darn it, I woke up. And I fell to my knees and just said, "What do you want me to know? What are you trying to tell me?"

And I just kept saying, "Give me Jesus." And suddenly, I had this new mantra, "Show me Jesus." And I knew that if I could walk into that meeting, and if I could find Him in the meeting, that it was gonna be okay.

And I walked into the meeting. And before I walked in the door, I just kind of touched the doorframe. I remember touching the doorframe, and just whispering, "Show me Jesus." And I just started looking around the room, I had this total shift. And He was there. In the eyes and the faces of each of those people sitting around this table. I still was in a hurry to leave afterward, maybe because I had felt this change, and it started to get easier.

Where every time I started to feel inadequate, or every time I was making this false judgment about myself, or about someone else, and you know what, it's not even just about people at work anymore. It's everybody, that I hear just this simple, "Show me Jesus."

Once I saw Jesus, He became part of everything. And I thought I knew that. And I thought that He had always been in my walk–which He was, he was always in my walk–but that simple "Show me Jesus" shifted everything for me.

A new position came open about six weeks after that, and I wasn't going to apply. I was too afraid. And I actually had someone encourage me and say, "Well, do you want it?" "Yeah." And the advice was, "Well then be patiently persistent, and show them you want it." And so I applied again. And I did my best. I brought this broken offering. And I just laid it out. And I wanted to show them Jesus.

It was interesting to actually sit with this committee at a luncheon while I was interviewing, and to look around and know exactly who had assessed me previously,

And to think that maybe it wasn't so much about them changing, but that there had been such a transformation in me. And that I felt like I was sitting with my brothers, and I loved them. I mean, these are the people that I would call on, if I were in an emergency, I would trust them. And so maybe there was something about their feedback, whether it was accurate or not, that created a context for me to be shown Jesus. And I will love them for that. For the rest of my life.

I got the job. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened had I gotten it in the first place. How different life would have been. Would I have brought Jesus to work with me in the same way that it took something so hard for me to shift, to shift with every person I interact with at work, at home, at play.

I've given a lot of thought to this phrase, "Show me Jesus," and wondered why? Why then, and why that? I think about President Nelson talking about being myopic, and that it's easy to have a really limited perception. It's part of being in a fallen world, that we don't see things fully. And I've often thought–I wonder if maybe what he was trying to teach me then and now, every day, that He sees me, and then I think, is polishing me to be more just or merciful, in other people's wrestle to see the divine in them.

Because I think that's what it all kind of boils down to, is this constant struggle to honor the divine, and to see it in ourselves, but to see in each other. We're all in a wrestle, and if I could just find Him in them, or in anyone, for that matter, that I could see His power to compensate. And that I could change and not worry so much about any judgment, except for His. And that he would take care of that.

KaRyn 36:51 That was Jennifer. "Show me Jesus," what a powerful reminder to seek Him in every single person and every single situation, including the ones where we've been falsely represented or perceived.

I love that she didn't say that our feelings of hurt and betrayal weren't valid or worthy of being acknowledged. When we've been misjudged or our hearts have not been understood, it is healthy and appropriate, to mourn that experience. And I speak from experience, it's really hard, and it takes time to be ready to learn what we need to learn from it.

But I love seeing the progression in Jenn's story from hurt to self care, to reflection, to revelation, to reconciliation. The fact that the colleagues she once hid from, both figuratively and literally, could eventually become like brothers–that's a result of the transformational power of handing our fallen perceptions over to Christ. Handing over both how we're perceived, as well as how we find Jesus in each person that we meet.

I remember the first time I learned that among the more well known conditions of the fall of Adam and Eve, like spiritual separation from God and physical death, we also inherited another condition–a fallen intellect. I was reading Stephen Robinson's follow up to the book, "Believing Christ," which I think I've mentioned is one of my all time favorites.

The book was called "Following Christ," and I stumbled upon this, quote: "We humans trust reason and logic. Some of us trust reason more than we trust God. We have a tendency to think that if we start with what we know to be true and proceed with correct logic, we'll always arrive at correct conclusions. But that is wrong, for human reason is flawed. It is fallen" end quote.

He goes on to share some compelling reasons to understand and believe that our intellect has fallen, along with all the other parts of the fall. And he says, quote, "If we don't maintain a certain humility, and therefore a certain caution about our ability to reason correctly, and thereby to control our own fate, life will wound us dearly. And we are most at risk when we are most sure of ourselves" end quote.

I was only in my early 20's, but I had just finished a mission and graduated from college and I was pretty sure of myself and my ability to reason through most things. Reading that section of the book offered me a paradigm shift that I've never forgotten. Relying on my intellect in matters of judgment would never be enough. And as Brother Robinson says, quote, "Fallen intellect can never arrive at the whole truth on its own. Absent the influence of the Holy Ghost on some level, whether as revelation, inspiration, intuition, or whatever, our reason will eventually lead us to error" end quote.

Our reason, our ability to perceive things without distortion is hopelessly flawed by design. A loving Heavenly Father created a condition in which good judgment is not a function of our earthly reason. It's a function of our relationship to Him and His Son, Jesus Christ. And the only way to access that good judgment here in this fallen world, is to link ourselves inextricably to the spirit, so that when we must, we can discern truth from error with divine perception.

One other thing that's been sparked by these stories for me today is the realization that good judgment is a gift that we can seek after. While only Jesus Christ is qualified to pass final judgment with all his infinite mercy and justice, we can seek to do better in the small courts of our daily lives. We can ask for the ability to feel and to understand the incomprehensible love that Christ has for someone whose actions might otherwise preclude fond feeling. We can ask for the wisdom to fulfill earthly law with as much justice as is required, and more mercy than we thought possible, while also trusting that God's going to take care of filling in the gaps of all of our fallen capacities.

We can ask to find Jesus around the conference room table. And we can ask for clarity against the distortions that plague our self-judgment and our perception of others. And I think that as we practice humble, merciful, judgment now, we'll be way more ready to stand in front of our maker at that final day, at the judgment bar of God, to tell our story without fear, because we'll know some small part of His compassion towards us, because we have felt it towards others.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel," thank you to our storytellers, Brett, Carey and Jennifer for sharing their stories and their good judgment. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers including a link to Stephen Robinson's books, "Believing Christ" and "Following Christ" in our show notes at LDS living.com/thisisthegospel. You can also find us on Instagram or Facebook at @thisisthegospel_podcast.

A huge thank you to everyone who shared the reviews of this podcast and told us about your favorite stories and episodes this past week. And always, we love to hear from you. You can leave a review of the podcast on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen on. Reviews are super helpful in pushing us up in the recommended section of a lot of platforms so more people can find us.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers, and we find a lot of our stories through our pitch line. As we're wrapping up production for season three, we don't have any specific themes to share with you. But if you have a story to share about a time in your life, when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we absolutely want to hear from you. We'll be gathering stories and ideas for our next season soon. And the best pitches will be short, they'll be sweet, they'll have a clear sense of the focus of your story and you'll have three minutes to pitch it when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with story production editing from Erika Free, Kelly Campbell and Sarah Blake our crack team of awesome. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we explore one of the ways that we can become better storytellers and better listeners through cultivating our holy curiosity. In honor of Black History Month, we revisit the faithful story of Isaac Thomas, a black Latter-day Saint who converted to the gospel in the 1970's despite the fact that he would be unable to hold the priesthood or participate fully in the restored gospel he loved. We'll also hear from Tamu Smith and Zandra Vranes, (aka the Sistas in Zion) who give us their tips for better ways to interact with one another across cultural divides.

SHOW NOTES:

If you're looking for ways to get curious about the lived experiences of our brothers and sisters of color in the gospel, you can find a list of resources (as promised!) at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn 0:03

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

If you've ever spent any time with a three year old, then you might not agree with the central tenet of our theme today, that curiosity is a gift. But listen, if we can get past the exhaustion that comes from answering those rapid fire questions of our tiny humans, we'll eventually come to that magical place where we admit that the ability to look into the wide world and ask a million times, "How does this work?" That's pretty awe inspiring.

It's interesting, when we talk about the commandment to become as a little child, I think our minds often go straight to humility. But is there anything more humble than acknowledging that there's so much we don't know and so much that we want to know?

Curiosity is a function of true discipleship. And when we tap into it, we open the door to so much beauty and possibility in our efforts to become a true child of Christ. Now, listen, I'm pretty sure that I am preaching to the choir when I say this, but I can't think of a business that is more suited to a cultivation of curiosity than the work of storytelling, and it's necessary companion act of listening. When we dive into a story and allow ourselves to feel something from someone else's experience, that's evidence of a curious heart. And that translates when we tell our own stories.

Having the spiritual gift of curiosity about others will make us more introspective about ourselves, our motives, our fears, so that when we bear our own stories of faith, we'll convey the heart of the story instead of just the details. If curiosity can really do that, then I think it's something lovely, of good report and worth seeking after.

I've also been thinking about how curiosity, storytelling, and listening can be tools for us as we try to accomplish what President Nelson has charged us with, when he said in the October 2020 General Conference, that Latter-day Saints and followers of Christ must, quote, "Lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice."

I firmly believe that offering a curious heart to one another and listening from the starting place of, "I don't understand and I want to understand," is the key to beginning that work.

So as we celebrate Black History Month here in the U.S. in February, I figured maybe we could start there today. Start by practicing a holy curiosity about a part of our church history, that sometimes hard to hear. Today, we've got a story about faith, pain and hope from Isaac Thomas, an African American Latter-day Saint who converted to the gospel in the 1970's, despite the ban that precluded Black men like him from holding the priesthood. We first shared Isaac's story in season one of the podcast. So you may have heard it before. But even if that's the case, I'm a huge believer that with a little bit of a prayer in our heart, the spirit will show us new insights. Here's Isaac.

ISAAC: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. I've been a member of The Church for 46 years. I was part of the Civil Rights movement, I was involved in the marching and the sit-ins and those types of things, and campaigning and being a non-violent protester for rights not only for blacks but for everyone. That was what I was doing at the time when I first started college. It was 1967 to 1971. It taught me patience, if nothing else, and long-suffering because during the Civil Rights movement to sit in at a cafe, and to be hosed in those things, there's a lot of patience involved in that, and a lot of long-suffering.

I first came in contact with the church through a young man that was in my basic training unit when I was in the Air Force, and he gave me a Joseph Smith pamphlet for me to read. That was my initial contact with The Church. I actually didn't get a chance to read it all. I just got to the first paragraph, explaining who Joseph Smith was. And then my drill instructor took it out of my hand and told me that Mormons were racist and bigots. Oh, okay well, forget that. I don't need racists and bigots in my life. I almost ended it.

After that, I went to my next duty station and again, there was another Mormon on base that asked me for, you know, said he'd give me a ride at the chow hall and he asked me to go to his church with him that night. I forgot to ask him what church I was even going to. It didn't occur to me that everybody in the jeep that I was in, leaving base, was white but me. And the church was on the road in Southwest Texas alone by itself, I'm squinting, going where's the church, and I realize it's a Mormon church. Ahh, it's a Mormon church! It's a Klu Klux Klan meeting and I'm going to be the burnt offering. I was, I couldn't believe it. I said I'll get out of the Jeep. I'll stand here, They'll go in and I'll walk back to base. Nobody moved until I did.

I'm walking into this church, I'm going, "Please let there be another person of color in here." There was not. They had a mahogany foyer and I was going, if I stand close enough I can blend in and they won't notice I'm here. I expected for the chapel doors will open I would enter and see the grand dragon with hood in sheet. I could not believe I had gotten myself into such a terrible, terrible situation.

KARYN: What Isaac found that day was actually far from what he feared. The rumors were untrue. There was no grand wizard lurking in the chapel, and instead, he felt something sweet and meaningful. He agreed to take the missionary discussions that soon came across some difficult information that was hard to process.

ISAAC: The first time I learned that I couldn't hold the Priesthood was when they gave me the last lesson which was added to the series of lessons that they were giving me and they explained it to me. They told me all the reasons, all the reasons that the time that they were told. And I listened. And then I said, "You'll have to tell me that again". And they repeated everything. And then something just said, "It's okay." And I said, "Fine. Fine, I'm okay."

The thing that kept me anchored was I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I knew that, got that witness, can't deny that. I knew the Book of Mormon had been restored by the prophet of God, can't get rid of that one either. If those two are true, then The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Church of God. There was some dissonance because I didn't know what other blacks would think of me, how they would accept me. I wasn't sure how the rest of my family members would accept me which troubled me because we were very close family. And so I was wandering in this mist of darkness really, just feeling my way, but I could not deny what I know to be true.

I actually joined the church December 15 in 1972 in an old chapel in San Angelo, Texas. I remember just fighting with myself in the restroom, going, "Should I leave? Should I stay? No, Get out of here, this is bad. No, you need to stay this is going to be good for you." But I indeed stayed and I was baptized and it was glorious for me. Really, I'd never felt so good and all my days. I remember the feeling of being light and forgiven.

My parents' reaction when I joined the Mormon Church, my father was not there when my mother asked me, "What church did you join?" And I said, "The Mormon Church," and she dropped the skillet. My cousin left cussing. My brother said, "You did what?" And I just kind of sat there silently. And then my grandparents, when they heard about it, they said, "Just leave him alone, it's one of his passing things. It'll be okay." But after a while, when I stopped drinking, smoking, carousing, doping and all those things, my grandmother finally said, "I don't care what church it is, hallelujah to it." It got me to be the person that they wanted me to be. Because my grandmother, when I was younger, I was ill and she promised the Lord that if I was saved, or live, that I would dedicate my life to the Lord. And I have to admit, I found that out and I purposely tried not to be that person, but here I am.

Well, I decided once I got out of the military that I wanted to go on a mission. That was 1976 or 77. And I knew I couldn't, so I wrote President Kimball a letter and said, "Dear President, I'd like to go on a mission. I don't care if I can't baptize people, somebody else can do all that. All I want to do is be able to get in there and to teach people, just to teach them the Gospel." I got a letter back and it said, "Dear Brother Thomas, we're sorry, you can't go on a mission because you don't have the priesthood."

Then, I went, "Women go on missions!" So I wrote him another letter, "Women go on missions!" I got another letter back saying, but they had to go to the temple and take out their endowment. And for you to go on a mission, you'd have to take out your endowment. So you can't go." And I said, I'm going to mission one way or the other, okay? And then my mindset, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Okay, I'm going to go, I'll figure it out, then I'll let them know. That was my mindset. I had not given up, but I accepted what he said, I understood what he was saying and why it was being said. But I figured there was some other way for me to accomplish the thing that I wanted to do. Because after all, the Lord gives no commandment unto the children of men unless He provides a way to accomplish the things that he has commanded.

Well, I realize how to serve that mission. When the kids came home from school and they told me about this song and dance group at BYU that did missionary work, and all they did was sing and dance. And they said it's Young Ambassadors. And I went, "I can do that!" So me and my friends jumped in his MG, drove up here inAugust of 1977 for me to audition for the Young Ambassadors for my mission. But I got there and I was intimidated by all the talent that was there. I mean, I hadn't had music lessons or dancing lessons so I didn't audition. But then I was getting ready to go do baptisms for the dead and the phone rang and it was the director of the Young Ambassador's asking me to come up and audition. The director of the Young Ambassadors was told to call me because when I was in Thailand, a group from BYU came over to entertain the troops. And I worked the lights for them and Randy Booth was playing the piano and I met him and I was doing USO shows. Apparently, somebody told him that I was there. And a dancer had dropped out of the Young Ambassadors so they had called me to see if I wanted to come up and audition. And so I went up, after I'd gone to the temple, sang and danced, sand and danced, and they said, "Yes, we want you to be part of our group." We want you to know that you're going to be in a fishbowl, that everybody will be watching you that this won't be easy. There will be a lot of questions, a lot of pressure that you will be under. It was going to be pressure because I was a black member of The Church. And at that time, there were not a whole lot of us around, particularly in a performing group at BYU. And because we were going to be traveling all over, that there will be non-members and other people that would take me to task and take The Church to task on their stand about why blacks could not have the priesthood. And I said, "Well, that's their problem. This is my mission for two years. I don't have time for that." Done.

That was one of the greatest learning experiences of my time being a member of the Young Ambassadors. I learned more about performing, I learned a whole, whole lot about brotherhood. When I say brotherhood, I include sisterhood as well. The love and care that they had for me was genuine and real. There would be some that would leave and go on missions and they would tell me, "Isaac, I'm gonna baptize this many people in your name." I was promised that I would have special friends and associates that would be for my good. And that was indeed quite true with that group. When something untoward happened, like a member or somebody would not let me stay in their home because I was black, some of the girls— they got very, very upset—and I didn't like that kind of thing. So I would have to stay in a hotel or something with the director. But they were always there. I never had to worry about my back. Ever.

There were some challenges while I was on my mission with the Young Ambassadors, and there was a time where we were doing a number in Georgetown, Pennsylvania and a girl jumped about two inches off the floor, ripped her knee out, hobbled off stage. I was the only one off stage because I had a solo number after that one. And I carried her off and the director came back and said, "Isaac, go get someone that has the priesthood." And he might as well hit me upside the head with a wrecking ball, or taken a machete and just gutted me. I was devastated. He wasn't being mean, it was just a fact. And really, I think for the first time, I really did feel inferior in some way because of that. Like Man's Search for happiness, I just didn't know what was happening in my life because I had no question about the priesthood for six years. I'd been a member for six years, what's going on? And I was talking to Brad Smith, he was my roommate, and I just told him I felt like I was holding on to my testimony by the skin of my teeth at that point. But then, I realized, we have to trust in God because man will disappoint us every time, but God will not. He may not come when you want Him all the time, but He's always on time.

So about June, end of May of 1978, we were in Toronto, Canada. And the missionaries brought this young lady to the show for me to talk to, she was black. And the director kept bugging me to talk to her. And I said, "Okay, fine." But when I jumped off the stage, there was a bunch of anti-Mormon people that came to the show. I was surrounded by all these people that are calling me a traitor to my race. That I was an Oreo, an Uncle Tom, and I just didn't need that my life. I finally talked to this young lady and I told her she'd do more for a family in the church and she ever could outside of it. And I left. We jumped on our bus, traveled to Kansas City, June 8, and we had lunch with my mom and we sang songs, we got back on the bus and we start going through Kansas. I went to sleep. Cause Kansa, it's flat, there's nothing there and I'd seen it before. I went to sleep. They woke me up when we got to Salina, Kansas and told me to get off the bus. I got up, I got off the bus, didn't know what was going on. When I got back to our equipment van that had our costumes and instruments in it, Gary, our piano player was driving that when he said, "Isaac, we heard something on the radio. We don't know if it's true." I said, "Well, Gary, what did you hear?" He said, "Well, we want you to hear, we just don't know what to think." He kept going on and on and on. I recognized the station, it was WHB in Kansas City. I thought they had heard that my mom had been an accident. I said, "Gary, if you don't tell me what you've heard, I'm going to be all of you like stink on a monkey." He said, "They gave the blacks the Priesthood!" I said, "Don't, don't believe that, please. We're in the heartland of the reorganized church, the heartland of the reorganized church. They could be giving the cows the Priesthood for all we know out here. And don't tell anybody on that bus because I can't handle if it's not true. I can't handle all that disappointment. No, don't want to deal with it. I got in the van, we drove to a mall, the director gets out runs in the mall. I figure we're going to go in, pass out some pamphlets about The Church get some contacts for the missionaries and sing some songs. Done it before, no big deal. Gets back on the bus. The bus pulls in front of the van and I see every, all 40 something people on one side of the bus hands and faces waving. At that point, I knew that they had told them about this fictitious rumor about this Priesthood thing. I went, "How could they do that to me?" and then on the CB radio, I hear, "Elder Thomas, it is true."

My entire life passed before my eyes. And I went, wait a minute did I sleep through the Millennium? I was always told what happened in the Millennium. And then I went wait, well who's coming in these clouds? And I didn't know if I should look or not. It was like being in a dream. I get on the bus and they say "Bare your testimony!" I couldn't think of my name. I don't know what I said, I said something and I sat down by the director. At that point, people start singing songs, "The Spirit of God like a Fire is Burning," and then someone would bear their testimony. "I am a child of God." "I know that my Redeemer lives," all of those harmonies from all those talented talented people floated across Kansas. But everybody that I'd ever know from the Laotian border from Karamursel, Turkey, San Angelo, Texas, the family that got me in the church was trying to find me that day. For they had been there supporting me all this time. Praying along with me for this day to come, like many, many, many of the silent majority of the members of The Church, praying for this very, very special thing. It wasn't my letter, either one of them, it was a collective effort for those that wanted this to be done and for the Lord to hear the prayers of His children that were given in righteousness and in devotion unto Him.

After the revelation, our last show was in Loveland, Colorado. The bus pulled up and there was like, hordes of people there to welcome us and at that show that night, the audience was great. Several encores, several testimonies, but when we got back to BYU, it was a little different because there were people that would speak to me and thought I could walk on water because I didn't have the priesthood. Now that I could, they would not speak to me. There were also advertisements taken out the newspaper denying the priesthood revelation that made me feel bad. And it took me a while to understand that that was their choice if they were cheating themselves out of their own exaltation. That was hard, but for the more part, it was grand. I wanted to write someone black, the only black person I had, which was this young lady I met in Toronto, Canada. Well, she came down for General Conference because they were going to be you know, ratifying and talking about the Restoration of the Priesthood for conference. So she came down, stayed with her missionary's that converted her. I met her and we, you know, went to a couple of sessions together and then Sunday night, we were walking on Temple Square, and we were just talking and I asked her what she was going to be doing and told her what my plans were and we got up by the Christus, and all of a sudden I heard these words come out of my mouth, "Will you marry me?"

And I was so startled by what came out of my mouth. I couldn't believe it. Because I promised I would never have a Mormon romance, you know what I mean? And she said, "I'll have to think about it." I'm going, it's a good thing somebody's thinking because obviously I am not. She came back a couple days later and said, "Yes." And we talked about will we get married civilly first? Will we wait and get sealed? And we decided to wait to get sealed. And we got married June 15, 1979. We were the first black couple to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. There were so many people at my sealing. I can't tell you who was there. All I know is there was standing room, people everywhere, halfway out the door. And when we walked out of the temple, there were all kinds of people taking pictures, it was in the Deseret News and I'm going, okay. But we were, we were so dizzy just from being nervous about being married. But really, it was another surreal experience in my life, but a great one.

My testimony helps me when things aren't connected as far as race and understanding in the church. People can say and do anything, there will always be bigots, some knowingly being bigots, some unknowingly being bigots in every religion, they're there. No matter what the trial is, or what the circumstance is or what's been said to me or thrown at me, literally. The Lord is there. We sing a song in my grandmother's church, it went, "I trust in God, I know he cares for me. On the mountain tops, on the stormy sea. Though the billows may roll, he thrills my soul. My Heavenly Father watches over me."

KaRyn 23:12

That was Isaac Thomas. I produced the video for LDS Living that first told this story in 2018. And it's amazing to me that I've heard Isaac's story literally dozens of times. And I still heard something new as I listened.

Maybe you found yourself like I did filled with gratitude and wonder at Isaac's faithfulness and his determination, that part about choosing to serve a mission even when he couldn't formally serve, I mean, that just gets me every single time. And maybe you, like me, heard those stories of pain and wounding from Isaac and wondered if maybe you'd inadvertently allowed a bias or lack of understanding to get in the way of another child of God feeling the full stature of their divinity.

If that's the case, well, then good. Good, good, good. That is the gift of curiosity, doing its beautiful job, reminding us that we're still alive here on this earth and that our time is not over yet, we still have some spiritual growth left in us. It can be painful, a real gut punch to be curious about ourselves in that way, to search out the moat in our own eye.

But our love for Isaac and all of our brothers and sisters of color demand that we do it. Our desire to be more like the Savior demands it as well. And I firmly believe that he will help us to push past the shame and the fear that that self examination can bring up if we let him.

In the spirit of practicing curiosity, I want to share one more quick little thing with you today. It's audio from a video series that LDS Living did a while ago called, "What and what not to say at church." We did the series to help us all navigate potentially awkward situations at church with a little bit more love and a little more self awareness.

And one of the topics that we tackled was talking to our Black brothers and sisters. I don't know about you, but I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and my interactions with Black culture were really limited until I was in college in Philadelphia. And I made a lot of mistakes. And I acted on a lot of assumptions. And I know I hurt people.

I really love that saying that is making the rounds lately, "When you know better, you do better." Admitting fault and vowing to do better is the very heart of our gospel practice. And that's true of navigating cultural differences. It's a holy work that requires God to help us complete. But bridging the gap is possible, and listening to others with a different life experience, really listening to them without defensiveness, that's the first step.

So here are Tamu Smith and Zandra Vranes, also known as the Sistas in Zion, with their tips for doing better at interacting with each other at church. And here's a funny thing. This video was done long before President Nelson asked us to stop calling ourselves "Mormons," so you're going to hear that in this audio, but just know that we know that we don't use that anymore. Here you go.

Tamu

Sometimes people will come up to you and grab you hair.

Zandra

If this has ever happened to you at church, you might be a Black Mormon.

Tamu

On a serious tip, at church, sometimes we say things like, "I don't see color," which is not true, but it is awkward. And we understand that. We're going to have some awkward moments, but we're just going to ride it through. And we're going to get through this because we are all brothers and sisters, and we're in this together.

Zandra

Absolutely, so we're going to give some tips.

Tamu

So what do you say to people who just come up to you and touch your hair?

Zandra

So we know you're curious, and that's okay. But we really shouldn't touch people without permission. So if you're interested in my hair, get to know me. Know my name, what are my interests, and once we're friends, maybe we'll get to hair.

When we serve admissions around people of color, we often like to share with them that we've connected culturally with an experience that might resonate with us.

Tamu

Basically, what you want us to know is that you love Black people, and we want you to know we love you back.

Zandra

But while we're seeking connections, there are some assumptions that can actually disconnect us.

Tamu

For example, I'm from California, not from Ghana, where you served your mission.

Zandra

And that sister from Ghana is not from the hood, where you served yours.

Tamu

People think I can sing because I'm Black, so they want me to be in the choir. I'm not a good singer. Also, I'm a convert to the church to the LDS faith. She is not.

Zandra

I am a convert, actually, everybody's a convert to the LDS faith, but I don't have a gangster to gospel story that you're looking for.

All Black people don't know each other. I cannot get Alex Boye to speak at your farewell.

Tamu

So sometimes people will come up to me and they'll say, you know, "Oh, my gosh, I served my mission in Chicago, Illinois. Do you know champagne?" And I'm like, "Yeah!". . . I don't.

Zandra

But the truth is, all Black Mormons kind of really do know each other.

Tamu

Don't speak slang to me if that's not your native language.

It's okay to ask me, "Are you Black? Or are you African American?" I'm both. And I'm also Tamu.

Zandra

When it comes to asking questions, motive matters. If your motive is the loving one, it'll shine through.

Tamu

Sometimes we have these conversations in the church, and sometimes race is a part of it. Don't skip over the race part. We want to be a part of that conversation.

Zandra

Tamu and I don't speak for all Black people, so the best rule of thumb is treat everybody like individuals, get to know them. And then you'll find out what they like, what they don't like. All are like unto God. But that doesn't mean that we are all alike. It means that we're striving to love each other, like God loves each of us.

Tamu

I'm excited to see you on Sunday.

Zandra

Catch me in the pew, how about that?

Tamu

How about that.

Zandra

And when we wear our wraps and hats to church, don't ask us to move to the back row because you can't see over them. Come on up and join us. The more the merrier on the pew.

KaRyn 29:20

That was Zandra Vranes and Tamu Smith. We'll have a link to that video in our show notes so you can see what you can't when you're just listening to the audio. Tamu and Zandra have never been shy about sharing what it feels like to be a woman of color in a church that sometimes doesn't reflect their experience.

And I for one, am grateful for their willingness to speak up with plainness and love and self respect. They brought up an interesting point in the video that I had honestly never thought of until just now. It's the difference between a holy curiosity and a nosy curiosity. And here's what I mean.

Holy curiosity respects people's boundaries. It's motivated by love and acknowledges the godliness and the divinity in every person, while also asking, "What's it like for you to be here?" But nosy curiosity is just the opposite. It's actually all about you, and meeting your needs to know, at the expense of another person's dignity.

It's doing what I know I have done before, touching someone's hair because you want to know what it feels like regardless of how that might make them feel. Or asking someone if you've hurt them, only to try to defend yourself.

I love what Zandra said, that our motives matter. And it's going to shine through as we press forward through awkward moments in our attempts to form genuine familial connection. I don't know what it's like for you, but my church life sometimes seems like it's all awkward moments. Ministering, teaching over zoom, accepting ministering, all of these great things require me to be slightly uncomfortable all the time.

So after listening to these tips again, I'm going to try to put this into practice. To ask myself if my curiosity is holy or nosy, to pause before talking and check myself to see if my curiosity is motivated by a desire to really know someone and understand their life on their terms, or if it serves only me.

I'm hopeful that as I do that, that my comfort and ease will grow as I do the work of discipleship. We can't leave this theme of curiosity without recognizing that ultimately, we seek this gift so that we can become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. Talk about a holy curiosity.

Despite the fact that he knew all and could perceive every single thing, Christ asked hundreds of questions during his ministry. And those are only the things that we have recorded in canonized scripture. I'm sure there was more. Christ loved curiosity. And in Matthew chapter seven, verse seven, he promised us that our sacred curiosity would be rewarded, he said, "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

So back to that charge from President Nelson to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice, I think it all starts with engaging with the gift of curiosity, asking Heavenly Father to show us what we don't know. And listening to stories from people who've lived it, like Isaac, and Tamu and Zandra, and others. Asking questions with a motivation of love and a commitment to do better, when we know better.

If you're feeling that desire right now, we will have a list of really great resources to feed your curiosity in our show notes, including some links that offer opportunities to hear directly from our brothers and sisters of color who go to church with us. I don't think we have to wait to be perfect to lead out. We just have to be like a little child willing to let people see us and our growth and our curiosity. And then we can truly call ourselves, all of us, the children of Christ.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storyteller, Isaac Thomas, and our wonderful Sistas in Zion, Zandra and Tamu. We'll have more info from all of these storytellers in our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. That's also where you can find a transcript of each episode.

If you haven't already started to follow us on social media, go find us on Instagram or Facebook at @thisisthegospel_podcast, we work hard to make sure that it will add to your scrolling instead of taking away.

The stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers, we find lots of our stories through the pitch line. So if you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch when you call, 515-519-6179.

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This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with additional story production from Davey Johnson and the producer director of that "What not to say" video, Skylar Brunner. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, our executive producer is ErinHallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com slash podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

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Ashley's life was in full bloom as a talented teenager when a tragic car accident leaves her grieving the loss of her father and her ability to play the piano. Her mother, Michelle, forges ahead to keep her family afloat without her husband when she receives an insistent prompting from the Spirit that will only make sense in the months to follow. In the end, that prompting is the key to Ashley's healing and a reminder to both that love and family endure beyond the doors of death.

Get pictures, bios and more in our shownotes at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

You can also follow us on Instagram or facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

Okay, be honest – when you saw this week's theme, did you gag a little bit and think, "Ugh, how cliche for the week of Valentine's Day?" If you did, I totally get it. Even as a person who loves love and finds deep joy in all those red hearts and the explosion of pink that comes with this holiday, it's sometimes hard to reconcile the expectations of love that we're sold in the movies with what actually happens when we attempt to practice this divine principle with human people.

It's funny, we throw the word "love" around like it's nothing when we're talking about our relationship to say – I don't know – a Popeye's spicy chicken sandwich, because well, it's delicious, for one thing, but also, we don't have any expectation that that sandwich is going to love us back.

But people? People are complex and interesting, and oddly enough, human. There's a deep risk to love that can feel way more intimidating and vulnerable than Valentine's Day, or Hallmark, or even Popeye's chicken sandwiches would have us believe. Loving someone means truly stepping into the unknown on so many levels.

So if you're worried that we took the easy way out here at "This Is the Gospel," don't let the theme fool you. Today, we have a story that does not shy away from the risky parts of love. But it also doesn't shy away from the beauty of it either.

Ashley and Michelle, our mother daughter storytelling team, have a tale of love, and loss, and miracles that spans this world and the next. It'll have even the most cynical among us believing in this thing called "Eternal love." A quick note, this story has elements of trauma that – while told carefully – may be hard for some sensitive listeners. First, we'll hear from Ashley and then Michelle will join in the story.

Here's Ashley and Michelle.

Ashley 2:01 I've been playing the piano since I was eight. And my mom, was super adamant that all the kids learn how to play because she didn't know how to play and she wished that she did. So we would get up before school and practice half an hour before school and then half an hour after school every single day – piano was just always playing in our house and it was such a huge part of our lives. And I used piano as a stress relief. It was truly like my joy in life.

Family was also a big part of my life, and my dad actually used to love to sit in the living room and listen to me play. That was one of my favorite things to do was to play for my dad. We had such a genuinely good father-daughter relationship.

So when I was 17 – this was actually 17 years ago – my dad came to pick me up from a school event and my youngest brother – who was four at the time – tagged along. And halfway home, I was thirsty and begged him to stop at McDonald's, which was so out of character for me. I would have never asked to go to McDonald's, and he would have probably never pulled over, but he did. Like miraculously, he said, "Okay, let's do it." And while he was inside getting me a drink, I hopped in the backseat, which is also super uncharacteristic, especially for like a 17 year old, who likes to sit shotgun.

I went and got in the backseat, I was going to read to my brother and then take a nap. And I was asleep in the back, so I was unaware that we were in a car accident until it actually happened. And I just remember thinking as the car was . . . I could hear the windows being smashed and I could feel the like hot August air coming in. And I could smell like burning tire, and I knew that this was an accident and like the whole front of the car was gone.

First thing I did when I came to, is I checked my limbs. I checked my hands, and I made sure they were still there. That was the first thing that crossed my mind, I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to play the piano again. And they were still there, but I watched my left hand and wrist just start to crumble and deform before me, and I knew that it was not good. My brother was awake and he was conscious and crying and some angel of a woman who saw the accident came and got him out of the car.

And my dad was in the front, he was unconscious and I didn't know if he was alive or dead. I just knew that he didn't look great.

Michelle 4:57 I was cleaning when I got a phone call, and it was 911. And I thought – 911? It just was trippy to me because 911 doesn't call me, I'm supposed to call them if there's a problem. And she told me her name, and she said to me, my family has been in a bad accident, and that if I could find somebody to take me up to the hospital, that was what they needed me to do. I . . . it just took me a moment to register what she was saying. I asked her individually, I asked her, "How is –" each one of them, "How is Jet? How is Ashley? How is Kash?" And I kept going over and over and over, like, how are they? Because I wanted to know what was going on. And she said to me that she didn't know. But she did know it was tragic.

Ashley 5:55 My brother went to one hospital, and I went to another. And the hospital contacted my mom and told her where my brother was, but they couldn't find me – they didn't know where they had taken me. So I was alone, in and out of like ER rooms and x-rays and . . . being shuffled around before surgery for like five hours by myself. And no one knew where I was. I didn't know where I was, I didn't know the state of my family, like what was going on.

And I remember thinking on a gurney in some hallway waiting for the doctors, I just remember thinking, Heavenly Father, please, please do not let my dad die. I promise I will do anything and everything to be a good person if you let him live. And I remember feeling, I didn't hear it, but I felt it distinctly in my heart, that – "No, if I take him home, you will do anything and everything to be a good person to live with him again." And at that point, no one had to tell me that he had passed away, I knew that he was gone, because of that confirmation.

Michelle 7:07 They accident happened at, oh, about a quarter to four, and I probably was at the hospital by four thirty. Maybe faster, you know, I got there pretty quick. But I can't recall exactly . . . I know a social worker came into the room they put me in. They put me and my kids and my girlfriend who drove me up there into like a room in the ER. And a social worker came in and I can't even recall what she said to me, but the next thing I know a sheriff and the bishop come in. And now there are three women in this room with my kids and the sheriff says, "Which one of you is Mrs. Johnson?" So . . . oh boy.

And he got on his knee – he had Kash's driver's license in his hand – and he got on his knee and . . . probably because that way he could see me face to face because I was sitting in a chair, and told me that Kash had passed away at the scene of the accident.

I tried to deny it, like my mind just couldn't accept it. And I think you do anything you can to say "No, that's not him," or "Are you sure?" kind of a thing. And that was really hard to watch my two children that were there react to hearing that their dad had died because I couldn't prep them, I didn't know that was coming.

And um . . . that day in the driveway, I – because he was in a taller car, I just remember standing on the side rail – I'm short – so I stood on the side rail, put my head in the window and kissed him goodbye. . . Sorry. It's a hard memory. But um . . . and he said, "I love you," Of course we always said, "I love you," and "Goodbye." So I kissed him goodbye. And that was the last time I heard his voice or saw him or anything.

At this point we have no idea where Ashley is. No idea. Nobody can tell me – the hospital doesn't know anything about it, nobody can get to the bottom of it. I just think, where's my child? Someone finally said, "We found her." And uh . . . she was next door. She was at the U. And so now I've got to tell Ashley what really happened.

So I . . . my Bishop went with me. But he of course, said it was my job to do that. You can't prepare them or find words to say that to your kid. And I think by nature, when we have bad news, we don't want to say it, we find other things to say. So, you know, I've tried to catch my breath, and I walked into the room, and I can see that she's in pain and . . . and I don't know, do I hug and love her? Do I talk about her dad? What do I do?

And the first thing she says to me is, "How's dad? Where is he?" And I didn't want to tell her, so I told her about Jet. I said, "Well, Jet's in surgery, he's going to be okay," which I didn't know anything about. That was pretty much a good lie. But it felt a little safer, because I did see him alive. And so I told her that, and she pushed it. And I just thought, okay, I have to tell her. And I just said that . . . that he went home to Jesus. I couldn't say that he died, I just couldn't do it.

So that's what I told her. I said, "He went home to Jesus."

The day after the accident – it was less than 24 hours for sure – that the organ donation people contacted me. They are the kindest, most empathetic and well-trained people to deal with such a heartache. And were so kind about me losing Kash, that he passed, but they also very tenderly reminded me that he had offered to donate, and if I was willing to honor that wish – and I told them, I would do that. And they said, "Well," you know, they said, "We need to read this to you." They said, "Can we have –" and they started going through the list. And it just became so overwhelming to me.

First, a lot of it was – they were medical terms, things that I wouldn't, I wouldn't call a body part, a layman's word. So some of them I just didn't even know. And at some point, I didn't care. And the list went on and on and on. I just thought, I can't hear this. I don't want to know what you're taking. Just take it all. And I told them that and they said, "We can't." "We have to read you the list, and you have to agree to each, each part." So I let them finish reading the list and I was overwhelmed. I also had the two kids that I needed to get back to at the hospital. So I just said, "Can you call me back in a couple of hours? I'm going to donate. But I have to breathe for a second." And they said, "Yeah, we'll call you back."

And in between that I asked the bishop, "Is this something that the Church is okay with? Kash really wanted to do this, he really wanted to donate." And he said, "Absolutely." So, a couple hours later, they called me back and they went through the list again. And I can't tell you if I paid much attention to the list. But apparently, I must have remembered a few things. And some of them were easy to remember. Like I remember things like heart valve, and I remembered . . . I heard the word "bones," I know what that is, but I didn't remember all the and I knew they were you taking his eyes and . . . but I couldn't tell you a lot of the other parts until it was reminded to me later, but the list was long.

And so I gave them permission. I just said, "Make sure that I can't tell when I bury him." They said, "We are perfectly careful about that." And so respectful. So it was not traumatic at all. And the decision had been made two or three years – two years before.

My husband Kash was a pilot for Delta Airlines. And probably about a year or two maybe before he passed away, he came home from a trip and he was quite emotional about something that had happened. And he told me the story. He said that before they took off on that day that a medical crew came on to the flight and brought an ice chest up into the cockpit, and it wasn't to be touched or anything like that. It just had to be there. And it had organs in it. And he knew that he was transporting it. It was going to a children's hospital.

It just really made him think he said the whole time that he was flying he thought about where it was going. We had five kids at that point and so it was probably really tender, and maybe . . . it probably made him think about, wow, would I ever donate any of my kids parts or organs, or how would I feel if I was the one that needed to receive it for one of them? So it really touched him. And so that is how he decided that he was going to become an organ donor, just because it was such a tender moment for him.

And he often also said that, flying, he always felt that . . . It's really quiet in the cockpit – when nothing's going on, of course – he always felt closer to Heavenly Father while he flew, because he could see the earth. And it just was a really spiritual time for him or it was – he could have spiritual moments while he flew. So having those organs in the cockpit with him, just really touched him. And it – enough that he came home and I can tell that something was going on, like "What, what's going on?" And he said, "I have to tell you this." It's just something that we don't think about much. And so he just had a situation that brought it right to his, to his face and his heart and everything else. It was in his presence right there. So it was easy for me to say yes. So that is how I was able to make the donation.

Ashley 15:53 My mom eventually found me and she officially broke the news to me right before I went into surgery. For a while I was super angry. I mean, I was 17. And I was superficial and angsty. And it – my perfect life had been ripped out from under me and I was very angry at Heavenly Father.

I never doubted that he . . . I never doubted that my dad was supposed to die. Sounds terrible to say – I never doubted that though. I knew that that was part of the plan of salvation, and that he had work to do on the other side. And . . . but it made me mad. It made me mad that his work on the other side was more important than his work here with his family.

After several surgeries, my hand was still not healed. I couldn't move it, I couldn't move my fingers or my wrist, the blood flow was slowing down and my hand was dying. I couldn't play the piano. I was in a cast for 14 months after the accident. My brother had extensive head injuries, but he fully recovered. I would sit there at the piano and play one handed and just cry, because I didn't think I would ever be able to play again.

So I also danced, and that was over. I couldn't dance, I was too – there were too many surgeries, I was on too much medication. And just – that was over as well. My entire life went from this blossoming, full, happy life to nothing. I had, I felt like I had nothing and everything had been taken away.

My family was super close. And we pulled each other through it, but I think that I, personally, because I was in the accident had kind of a grudge a little bit? Because not only had I lost my dad like them, I was the only one that lost everything else. Like I was the one that was in the accident that . . . that had more than just my dad taken away. I was jealous. I think I was jealous of my siblings. I mean, I was jealous in the self absorbed teenage way. You know, like, I don't know it wasn't it . . . yeah, it didn't ruin any relationships at all.

About three or four months after the accident, my hand wasn't getting better and there wasn't a specific plan going forward, there were just options. And one of the options thrown out there very casually was just maybe we can do a bone graft. And then just as quickly as he said that, he went on to the next option. So it really . . . we didn't know for sure.

Michelle 18:48 I just remember one of the times that we were disappointed again that a surgery didn't work, and as I was talking with the doctor about it, one of the things that he had said, "If some of the surgeries don't work, we can always take bone from her hip and do a transplant to her arm." And I did recall him saying that and I just thought, oh, we can't do that. Ashley was devastated when she heard that. She didn't need another surgery and another place that hurt on her body.

I just remember being at home or I couldn't tell you where it was. I have no idea if I was in my kitchen cooking, I don't know at all. I just know that out of nowhere, I had this moment where I went, "Oh my gosh! I donated his bones. Where are they? Oh my goodness. Where are they? Where are they? Where are his bones?" It just kind of like almost hit me – like I was stumped for sure. Because I wasn't thinking about her surgeries or anything, that conversation with the doctor had passed probably weeks before that. It wasn't on my mind, it just all of a sudden – there it was: you donated his bones.

It had been about three months down the road already. And I called the organ donation people and asked them, "Where are his bones?" Like, please – I just had my fingers crossed, please, please, please, I hope they're not gone. And they said, "Actually, they are not even finished being processed. We are about a week shy of them being done." That's when I called the doctor and said, "We donated bones from her Dad, can they be used?" And he's like, "Of course they can." He didn't know anything about that part of it of the story. So he called the – I'm going to say – the bone bank, because I don't know what words it's called, I kind of look at like a blood bank, and reserved what he needed, and then some. He said, "And extra, just to be sure." And so they were just put aside. And we still didn't know if we were ever going to need them. We hoped we didn't, because we didn't want to have to go through more surgeries on a trial basis to get there.

Ashley 21:04 But then six months down the line, we knew that that was the last option. The last thing to do to save my hand was a bone graft. And at this point, my mom, the light bulb turned on. She says, "Guess what, I saved some bone, I reserved it for you. Let's do this." And so as I was in the operating room, before I went under, the doctor pulled out this little container, and it had my dad's bone in it. And he said, "Here it is, here's your dad, he's, he's gonna make you better."

And we both cried a little bit together, and then I went under and the surgery worked. My blood started flowing again, my hand, came back to life – I guess you could say. My fingers were able to move again, after lots of physical therapy. My wrist is still paralyzed, but I am so grateful to have a hand, I'll take it.

I think that had I received a transplant from anybody else, my own hip or another donor, that I may not have ever healed emotionally. I felt like I was getting a little bit of him back like he hadn't quite left me. And I also felt like even in death, that he was still my dad. And he was still looking after me and taking care of me and making it better.

The fact that I had lost everything, made it possible for me to get that very special, unique connection with my dad that none of the other kids were able to have. It was kind of the turning point where I could start to heal emotionally. And I think at that point, that I kind of accepted what had happened, and knew that everything was going to be okay.

Michelle 23:12 I remembered that a good friend had told me when Kash passed away, that Kash was not released as my husband or wasn't released as the children's father, and that at any time that we needed him that we could call on him and he would be there if he could be, in any capacity that he really could be there for us. And so when we got the bones . . . to me that day, I felt like I had this . . . I don't know, beautiful confirmation from Heavenly Father, that Kash still belonged to us and that he was still a part of their lives – my children's lives – in any way that he could be.

Ashley 23:58 My dad is very much alive in our lives still. We talk about him as if he just lived in another state. We talked about Papa Kash and who he was, what he did. We have a picture book of him that my kids look through and know all about his life. A lot of people after they die, we talk them up and we remember all the good things and forget all the bad. But I feel like everything that we talk about, like all the things we talk about my dad in death, that's how we talked about him in life. Like he was that big in life and he was such a good dad,

Michelle 24:32 Because of his job, he was – when he was there, he was there all the time. And so his focus was 100% on the family or on the kids, mostly. He just enjoyed every second being with them, so that's what he did. Until his next trip and then he would hurry up and come home and start all over with all the playing and homework and everything else he loved doing.

Ashley 24:53 My kids who've never met him like to hold my hand and say, "Oh, it's Papa Kash." And it is, it is fun to think that I literally have a piece of him with me, always.

I think that we are able to do this because we know that we're going to see him again, like we know that he is still alive and present. I mean, truly, if it wasn't for the Savior and the knowledge of the plan of salvation, I'm not sure that I would have been able to get over this. And I really clung to my testimony of the plan of salvation, to kind of understand and accept why my family would lose my dad.

Michelle 25:38 At the time of Kash's death, I felt like we . . . I thought that we were doing okay in the gospel, I felt like that we had tried hard or, you know, were obedient and did the things that we were supposed to. But the day that he died, our eyes opened up to the all the truth. We always thought we knew the truths, but when you need them to be true, and you just don't say, "I believe they're true," but you need them to be true, it's different.

I like to use this analogy that the day that he died, our family's ship sunk, and the captain went down with the ship. And we were tossed in an ocean of waves. And then I realized that we were wearing life jackets. And I always say, and that was the Savior who gave those to me. He didn't stop the storm, but he gave us tools to be in it. He gave me life jackets. And did I go underwater, every time a huge wave came? I went down. And thought I would never come up.

The only thing that came to my mind was get those children's life jackets attached to mine. In my mind, that was like, get those kids as close as I came to me every day all day. This is my world, I've got to help these kids survive. And then over time, the waves felt to be a little lower and a little further apart. And as I paid attention, I noticed that I wasn't – we weren't floating anymore. Now we were on like, a piece of wood. And then I noticed it was like a little dinghy. Over time, we figured that we could see – it wasn't like we ever watched it happen, but we could look back and say, "Wow, we've built our own ship now." We are not drowning. But it took us from drowning to . . . until one day we looked and we had rebuilt a life and we had a ship and not one second of that time that we went from being our ship sinking, to getting on to being on our new ship, not once were we not completely aware who was building that ship with us. Whose hand was there.

Ashley 28:11 There really is a plan. And the plan of salvation is real and alive and there are no coincidences, there are no accidents, that Heavenly Father really does have the big picture. And even though it doesn't make sense, and even though we hate it sometimes, in the end, everything that He does for us is for our good.

KaRyn 28:39 That was Ashley and her mother Michelle. We first learned of Ashley's story when it was featured on the Humans of New York Instagram account not long ago. We love Humans of New York and the work that they do to bring humanity and empathetic stories to our social feeds. So before we even knew the whole story, we were just drawn to the love – that true love – that permeated this family and their experience with their loss.

The fact that Ashley's dad's love could reach from beyond the grave to offer healing to her and so many through the donation of his earthly body, it's really inspiring and hopeful.

Our story producer, Erika, pointed out this really beautiful parallel. It didn't scientifically or medically have to be Kash's bone that was grafted into Ashley's hand, but the fact that it was brought so much healing in a way that no other surgery could have accomplished.

As you and I move through life and love on this earth there are plenty of options for mitigating the natural pain and suffering that come with mortality. But there is only one option, one true option that has the power to bring real healing to us. The atoning gift of our Savior. And every time we accept the offer of the sacrament, that beautiful symbol of his flesh and his blood, every time that we humbly take that into our own bodies, we are grafted into the body of Christ and blessed to see his salvation bloom in our lives. Talk about a love that is enduring and eternal.

I want to go back to what I said in the intro. Loving people the way God loves them is a risky business. We have expectations and hopes when we love deeply that leave us vulnerable to loss and deep sorrow, especially when, as Michelle said, the ship goes down.

It would be really easy to believe that all that love that we poured into that ship is lost under those mountain waves of grief and pain. I had an opportunity recently to revisit a talk that President Nelson gave long before he was President Nelson. It was a general conference talk from 1992 called, "Doors of death." It might seem like a really morbid title for a talk, but as I read it, my heart was filled with that strange fluttering of hope that comes from truth.

One part that really stood out to me was this: President Nelson said, quote, "We mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love. It is a natural response in complete accord with divine commandment: thou shalt live together in love, in so much that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die. The only way to take sorrow out of death, is to take love out of life."

Both Michelle and Ashley understand this concept well. That taking the love out of life is not an option. As disciples of Christ we sign up to live the commandment to love, to risk it all by pouring our hearts into one another. C.S. Lewis said in his book, The Four Loves, quote, "If a man is not on calculating toward the earthly Beloved, whom he has seen, he is none more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the suffering inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to him, throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and he chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."

I think what C.S. Lewis and President Nelson are saying is that mourning departures from this life is actually proof positive that we honored our covenants. That deep expression of pure love means that every tear, every dip below the waters is more evidence that love is still with us in its most eternal and everlasting form.

And that it can actually be a tool to bring us closer to the source of true healing and hope. So if you have an ache that lingers after deep loss, that leaves you feeling unmoored and drifting at sea, there's nothing wrong with you. It just means that you have loved well and eternally. And when the time is right, probably just when you think you can't bear one more dip below the waves, you'll remember the reserves of strength and hope that God has set aside for you in your very bones that will bring healing.

You'll remember that you are always encircled about by the life jacket that comes from the gift of the greatest and most eternal act of enduring love. You'll feel and understand what President Nelson said that, quote, "We need not look upon death as an enemy. With full understanding and preparation, faith supplants fear. Hope displaces despair. The Lord said, 'Fear not even unto death. For in this world your joy is not full. But in me, your joy is full.'"

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Ashley and Michelle for sharing their story and their love. We'll have a link to the Humans of New York post, as well as more info from both our storytellers in our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. That's also where you can find a transcript of each episode.

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The stories in this episode are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers and we find lots of our stories through our pitch line season over season. So if you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learned something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you.

The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch us your story when you call 515-519-6179. If you want to help spread the word about "This Is the Gospel," there are two ways to do it. Share an episode with your friends, because personal recommendations are kind of the best. You can also leave a review of the podcast on Apple, Stitcher or whatever platform you listen on. Reviews help our podcast to show up for more people who are weeding through the true crime podcasts and other offerings on those platforms.

This episode was co-produced by me KaRyn Lay, with Erika Free who also produced and edited our story. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com/podcasts.

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While sorting her late daughter's belongings, Becky makes a surprising discovery that eventually takes her across the world to India, where her eyes are opened to a whole new world. Consumed with the desire to "do something" but unsure of what to do, the answer to Becky's prayer is startlingly simple, and begins an effort that will eventually impact thousands, but most importantly, lead Becky to personal healing through Jesus Christ.

Get pictures, bios and more in our shownotes at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

You can also follow us on Instagram or facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people, who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

As someone who works full time – and maybe a little bit more than full time, because I really love my job – Saturdays are my only day to run errands. And when it comes to General Conference, I'm not organized enough to remember to get everything done ahead of the Saturday sessions. So I admit, sometimes I find myself on the road when conference starts. And I tell you this so that you'll understand why I remember that I was sitting in the parking lot of a dollar store when I first heard sister Craig's talk, "Eyes to See" from the October 2020 General Conference.

I picked it up right as Sister Craig was telling the story of a friend who was in the middle of a painful divorce. That friend really just wanted to come to the chapel and go unnoticed on the back pew, because Sunday's had become really hard days for her with the change in her family situation. But there was a 16 year old girl who had other plans.

She saw the sister sitting at the back of the chapel, and then made it a point to go and talk to her, to hug her, to comfort her that Sunday. And then she did it again and again, week after week after week. And Sister Craig quoted this friend who said, "It made such a difference in how I felt about coming to church. The truth is I started to rely on those hugs, someone noticed me, someone knew I was there, someone cared." And I of course, sat crying in my car in the parking lot, having all the feelings, because that concept of seeing others deeply from this talk, it resonated with my storyteller heart.

It's basically the whole reason that "This Is the Gospel" exists. Because seeing people deeply is the key to the kind of charity that isn't just giving things away. It's the kind of charity that demands and offers us Christlike connection to every person, and the kind of charity that defines our Christian discipleship.

The thing I loved most about Sister Craig's talk – look, I'm crying before we even get started – the thing I love about a Sister Craig's talk was that she acknowledged that in order for us to see others deeply, we first have to have eyes to see. And that part is going to take some introspection, and a commitment to examining the terms of our covenants.

So today, we have one powerful story from Becky, a woman who desperately needed eyes to see, and how the Lord offered that gift to her in a truly unique way.

A quick note, this story contains a brief mention of suicide and descriptions of disease that might be difficult for some sensitive listeners. Here's Becky.

Becky 2:41 My oldest daughter, Amber, was severely bipolar. Amber struggled in and out of mental institutions when she got into high school, for the next seven years, trying to find healing. And she eventually gave up and took her own life. I was devastated. The loss of a child is always soul rending, but the loss of a child through suicide is absolutely crushing.

She was in college at the time that she died, and when we went through her things, we found that she had been sending part of the money we gave her for college every month to support an orphan in India. I was really surprised to find this out because, you know, typically college students are really struggling to make ends meet. But I think maybe because she suffered so much she just had a tender spot for the underdog. And I think it lifted her and it kind of helped keep her going.

So we decided that her funeral, instead of having people send flowers, we just asked them to send donations to this little orphanage that she was sending money to. People were so generous than enough money was sent in that the orphanage asked me to be on the board of directors. And I thought, okay, if I'm going to be on this board, maybe I better go to India and see what it is I'm doing.

But there was more than that. I was struggling to find healing for this gaping wound that seemed to have hit my own soul. And I was really hoping that when I got to this orphanage and saw what Amber was so involved in, that it would bring some closure for me, also.

When I got to India, the children in the orphanage were darling. 54 of them, and this was back in 2000. As we would go from our hotel to the orphanage and then at night back again, on the streets of India, every time our car stopped at a stoplight, these beggars would just engulf us. Pounding on the windows and these were not normal beggars. Their faces were sunken. Some of them their eyes were gone. They had pus dripping down their arms and rotting hands and feet. I just have never seen anything like it.

They're suffering to me just seemed almost palpable. And they were pounding the windows. And I was with three other women, and so we would just start talking to each other whenever the car started slowing down at a stoplight, because we didn't want to look at them. We didn't know what we could do for them. I said to our driver, "Who are these people?" And he said, "Oh, those are the lepers." I said, "What are you talking about? There's no leprosy in the world today." He goes, "Yeah, we have millions in India."

And I thought, seriously? Millions of people live this way? Why doesn't somebody do something? At night when I would be in my bed trying to sleep, I would just keep thinking about these people. And I just thought, this problem is huge. What can I do? I mean, who am I? I'm a homemaker. I mean, I'm not anyone that could do anything. But I kept thinking, why doesn't somebody do something? And then finally I thought, well, duh, you're somebody do something.

One night, I just started to pray. And I said, "If you want me to do something, you need to teach me. I mean, I have no idea what to do." And the thought just came to me, you can just look at them. And I thought, what? I just have to look at them? I mean, seriously, that's it? But I thought about it, I thought, well, maybe no one looks at them. Maybe they need to be validated or accepted as human beings. So I thought, well, you know, this is a little thing.

Yes. Okay, so I can look at them. So the next day, I was determined to look at them. But, as we got in the car and started to go in the morning, it was just that same sense of feeling – so sad to look at them. I had a hard time. But then we came to a stoplight. And the driver said, "Becky, open the window, stick your head out and tell that woman to back away. I'm afraid that when the light turns green, I'm going to run over her." So I opened the window and put my head out. And here's this woman who had crawled up to the car on her belly. Now, you have to know that everyday in India in the summer in Chennai is over 100 degrees, that blacktop is boiling hot. But she crawled up, she was bone thin. This ragged, sari draping, and of course, saris are just a long piece of material, there's no – they're not really sewn. And so it was, you know, separating as she crawled and she was there scratching the tires on our car trying to get our attention.

And I leaned my head out the window and yelled at her, you know, "Move away, move away." And she looked up, and there was just the split second that our gazes met. And I thought, oh my gosh, she's just a woman. She's just like me. She's probably a mother. I mean, I have no idea, right? I mean, it just, it was so fast. And then the light was green, the car was gone. And that was it. You know, there are moments of life – they're gone. You just can't get them back. And that was one of those moments, but I could not get her out of my mind the rest of the time I was in India.

When I finally got home to Georgia, I had the same problem. I couldn't sleep because these images just haunted me at night. And finally, one morning after a long night, I got up and I thought okay, Becky, well, you can have insomnia forever, or you can do something about this.

And so I called three of my friends who were also homemakers. These were people I'd worked with over the years in different organizations, Young Women's, Relief Society, whatever, and people that I knew were doers. And I said, "I have a project for us. It's a surprise, come on over to my home, and let's talk about it." They came over, we sat around my kitchen table and we talked about my experience. And I said "We gotta do something, ladies."

And they said, "Well, what are your thoughts?" I said "Well, I don't really have any thoughts." "Well, what do you think we should do?" "I have no idea. But you are very creative people. Maybe together we can think of something. At the very least we need to raise money and hire a doctor. Those people over there need to get their wounds treated for one thing." So they said, "Okay, well we could raise money to hire a doctor."

But really, we were clueless. Frankly, we threw out ideas, we didn't know anything, but we were excited. And everybody left excited. So when my husband, John, got home a few minutes after they left, I was still very excited. I said, "John, you are never gonna believe what I did today." He said, "Becky, those are words that strike fear into my heart" –does have a history. But he said, "Alright, hit me." And I said, "Okay, so, you know, my friends came over and we have formed a charity. We are going to serve people in India that have leprosy," and he just was stunned. And he said, "Seriously?" He said, "Becky, what do you know about leprosy?" And I thought, oh, well, nothing. And he said, "Okay, well, what do you know about medicine?" And I said, "Well, not a lot . . . I mean, you know, nothing – essentially." And he said, "What do you know about India?"

And I said, "I was there. I was there for 10 days." And he just kind of rolled his eyes and he said, "What do you know about running a nonprofit or a business?" And I said, "Okay, nothing." And he said, "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" And I said, "I don't know. But we're gonna do something. And I know, if people donate to us, we're gonna need a license that says that they don't have to pay taxes, you're an attorney, you need to get us that license." And he said, "I see." He said, "That's called a 501C3 license, and normally, Becky, when you ask the government for one you have to tell them what you're going to do."

I said, "Great. Just tell them we're going to do something." And that's how we started. We were four housewives and a secretary. And we thought we were going to change the world, right? But I have learned since then, that it is possible for one person to make a difference in this world. There's all kinds of things written about the power of one, but when one person is joined by others, then that power is multiplied exponentially. And in our case, we just literally saw that happen. Not because we were smart, or we were anything, because we weren't nearly smart enough to create what has followed. And we made mistakes. And we were humbled. We encouraged each other though, rather than give up.

But I kept wanting – when I would go back – to find that one lady, I just kept looking for her. I never did find her again. But God brought many wonderful people to help us.

One day, I was sitting in my bedroom in Norcross, Georgia, and the phone rang and the woman was on the phone. As she said, my name is, "Padma Venkatraman and I work in India with people that have leprosy, why don't we partner?" And I just thought, well, who are you? And I didn't learn from her then, but later, I learned that she was the daughter of the former President of India, that she had been the permanent woman's representative to the United Nations from India for 20 years, and that during much of that time, she was the Head of the Council on women's affairs. So essentially, the top woman in the world on women's issues. And so she had all the experience that we didn't have, and she began to teach us and to try to guide us.

In India, there's a very strong caste system. The government claims that it was outlawed, and it no longer exists, but it's very much alive in the hearts of the people. And the leprosy affected know that they're not to be touched. In fact, they're that very, very bottom of the untouchable caste, there are hundreds of well defined levels within each caste. And they are the very, very bottom – they're the most cursed by God. In fact, they are so untouchable that until just the late 1980's, by law, if their shadow touched you, you were considered defiled, and you were justified by law in beating them almost to death.

So they were frightened when we first started touching them. Because in India, typically the lighter your skin, the higher your caste. And since we have light skin, they were afraid that if anyone saw, that they would become angry, and that they would beat them because they were being touched by a high caste person. So they were in fact afraid of being touched by us. So there was a huge gulf there that we had to learn to cross, and they had to learn to be able to cross it.

We could not find a single doctor that would work for us, because the leprosy affected are considered the very bottom of the untouchable caste. And they are so stigmatized that when we tried to hire doctors for any amount of money, they'd say, "Oh. I could never work with people that have leprosy, because then I would become defiled and all my patients would leave me and I would lose my entire practice. And so no, I can't work for you."

When Padma joined as she said, "Oh, I've worked with so many doctors at the UN, with leprosy, I can surely find you a doctor in India." And she did. And we were able to start a little mobile medical clinic. But every time I came to India, I noticed that the wounds weren't really getting any better. They seemed to be just the same to me. As I said to our doctor, "Hey, we're paying you all this money, how come these wounds aren't getting any better?" And he just looked so discouraged. He said, "You know what, it's because they never do anything I asked them to do." And I was astounded. I said, "What do you mean, why? Why won't they do what you asked him to do?" And he said, "I don't know."

I asked Padma, and Padma was quiet for a few moments. And then she said, "You Americans. You come to India, and you just give things away. I know it probably makes you feel good, but the truth is, nothing given free has any value. And anytime you give something to someone, you diminish that person, because in essence, all you're doing is making them beggars to you. If you truly want to lift people, make them responsible for their own well-being. You can't just give away medical treatment."

And I said, "They don't have any money". She says, "Well, they can pay two rupees" – which is like about three cents, U.S. – "and they'll feel like they're paying for their medical treatment." But she said, "If you want to lift them, give them the power to lift themselves." And so we started charging two rupees to see the doctor. Well, the amazing thing is the next time I came to India, those wounds were all healing. And the doctor said, "They're doing everything I asked them to do."

So we created a campus at Rising Star Outreach. And in this campus – all of our students have to live on campus because the leprosy colonies are so far spread apart, they couldn't possibly come and go every day. They're not welcomed on public transport. And so the donor who donated the money to build the girls and the boys dorm, they got to name them.

And they decided to name the little girl's dorm, the "Amber Douglas Home for Girls," after my daughter, Amber, who really was the one that started all this. And I have to tell you that every time I go to India, and I've now been 66 times – but every time I walk on that campus as see her picture over the doorway, I get chills. And I think you know, there are hundreds of girls on this dorm right now, and there are hundreds, over the years that will go through this dorm, and their lives will be vastly different. They will be able to go back into normal society, they will lose this stigma of being an untouchable. And these girls will one day marry and have children, and those children's lives will be vastly different. Because their mothers came to Rising Star.

And over time, thousands and thousands of little girls lives will be changed for the better, and all because my daughter suffered. I think that God is so incredibly wonderful. That he can take our most terrible tragedies, and he can find a way to bring beauty and joy out of them and healing out of them.

There was a time in 2004, this terrible deadly tsunami hit the Indian Ocean, and was ranked as one of the top natural disasters ever recorded, because it killed a quarter of a million people across several countries. And our little children's home was right across the street from the ocean. And that tsunami, it was six feet high. It was traveling over 500 miles an hour, it destroyed everything in its path. And our children's home was on a hill, and we were above six feet. And so that wave literally came to the bottom of our porch and stopped and pulled back. And it was just this unbelievable, tender mercy of God. We didn't lose the single life. But all around us were tens of thousands of deaths. It was just absolute devastation.

I caught the next flight to India, and spent the next several weeks trying to help these people recover. Trying to help mothers find their children or their husbands. We worked 18–20 hour days with just a few hours of sleep at night. And one day when we came home, the guy who was with me, his name was Gopi. He was the leader of our children's home. And he looked at me and he said, "Becky, I'm afraid I'm losing my belief in God. What kind of a God would do something like this?" He said, "Look at the suffering that we see, all day every day. I just can't believe that you talking about a loving God."

And I felt like I needed to have an answer for him. And so I just sent a little prayer heaven ward, and I truly felt the presence of my daughter, who just immediately was in that car with us. And it was so sweet and so overwhelming. And I knew immediately the answer. And I said "Gopi, the hardest thing I ever did in my life was bury my daughter." And he knew that, because that's what had brought me to India. And he, I mean a little tear came down his cheek and I said, "But Gopi, if I hadn't buried Amber, the children in the children's home that you love – as if they were your own – where would they be today? If I had not buried Amber?" And I said, "You know Gopi, God is so wonderful. He gave the Atonement for us and that's why he can take anything that is so horrible in our lives, then He can bring good out of it. And He will bring good out of this. I don't know how, I have no idea what. But He will bring good."

And by now, his head was in his hands and he was sobbing. Just, I mean, he was so stunned by this whole thing. He went home, years later after he left Rising Star I got an email from him and he said, "Becky, do you remember that night when we had that talk?" and I went, "Oh, do I remember that night. Yes, I do." And he said, "I didn't believe you." He said, "But you know what? You were right." He said, "Look at what's happened." He said, "All these international charities poured into India, those miserable huts that the fishermen lived in, have all been rebuilt, close – further inland, they now have water and electricity and bathrooms. They've made they've built schools for their children."

And he said, "And the best thing of all," he said, "You know what, I just thought about it. I've never seen a higher caste person reach down to help a lower caste person in India. But at that time, they came from all over Chennai. They brought food, they brought blankets, they brought cooking oil, they brought bandages, water, they came by the hundreds. And they came day after day after day trying to help these lower, untouchable people." And he said, "That's the only time I've ever seen India come together as brother and sister." And he said, "Good did come from that."

And I think that little moments like this, I did learn that each of us has a power within us to make a difference in the world.

We work with 65,000 people today, across the nine states of India, 160 leprosy colonies, we have 1300 children in school. And I think, God did this because my daughter suffered.

The other thing that happens is – I have to tell you, I feel her. When I go to India, I feel a closeness with my daughter, that I don't normally feel. And there have been times in India, when that feeling is so overwhelming, it just brings tears to my eyes. I feel like I'm being taught not only by God, but by my daughter. And that because of the sacrifice she made, many people have been healed. And of all the people that have been healed, I feel like I have been the most healed.

And I just have to humbly say how grateful I am to the Savior. Because it was His Atonement, that made this all possible. He was the great exemplar. It was his suffering that made it possible for all of us, to not – to be able to be healed of our sufferings, right? And I just feel like the fact that we can in some small way, do a small thing for others, we are following in His footsteps.

God has equal love for all of His children. I think sometimes we get confused by the term, "Chosen people." But I believe that we're chosen to serve and to bring God's truth to others. But God Himself, I don't believe plays favorites. Because I have seen as many miracles in our school for our Hindu students, as much as I have seen miracles in the lives of the few students that are members of the Church over there. I think that we need to learn to see people that same way we need to see them as God sees them, that every life has equal value. And I have learned that even through tragedy, He empowers us.

We sometimes say, "Who are we?" "I'm only a student, I'm only a wife, I'm only a mother, I'm only a secretary," whatever, "What difference can I make?" But the truth is, we all have a power within us to make a difference, because I've seen it happen.

You know, I have to admit that there are times in my life when I would walk past a beggar on the street, and I would purposely not see them. I didn't want them to think I had money and that I could give it to them. Plus, it made me feel helpless to see people that were homeless. And so the fact that this was India was not the first time I had ever not seen someone. But, I don't look at beggars the same way anymore. I see them as people that just haven't had the opportunity to develop their talents, and I don't look away.

If you have eyes to see, if you're willing to see, then you have to also have a heart that cares. And if you will see, and if you will care, then you have to take some action. And once you take that action, you bring the power of God into your life. When our volunteers come to India, they always say, "I'm here to help. I'm here to heal, I'll do anything you need to do. I just can't clean up those leprosy wounds." We go, "Okay, okay." And we assign them different duties to do, working with the patients and they fall in love with the patients. And before long, all those volunteers are cleaning out leprosy wounds.

Because when you love a person, you don't see them as a disease. You see them as a friend. You see them as a child of God, and that makes all the difference in the world. And people who never thought they could do it, they'll sometimes tell us when they leave that that was the most meaningful experience that they had. These are God's children. And honestly, I think when we reached out to help his children, I feel like it opens the heavens and God pours blessings on you and you are healed. And I just think that that's a beautiful thing. That God gave us a gift, that we can reach out to others so that we can find wholeness within ourselves.

KaRyn 25:17 That was Becky Douglas. We are so grateful for the years of soul searching and effort that she put into her quest for eyes to see. It led her to an understanding about the true value of every human life.

And we agree, if you or someone you love is struggling with mental health or thoughts of suicide, please, please reach out to someone for help. You can text 741741 from anywhere in the U.S. or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, because there is always hope for healing and light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe after listening to Becky's story, you feel like I do, that there are almost too many lessons to take from it. There is so much good stuff here. But one thing I love about the spirit is that it helps us to hear what each of us needs to hear individually. So maybe what you heard was that when people are united in a righteous cause with hearts turned towards the Savior, they can accomplish anything. Or that sometimes we need other people like Padma and Gopi, to show us what we don't know as we embark on our mission.

Maybe it was the lesson that when we see each other with the pure love of Christ, it transforms any act of service from an obligation to a true joy. Whatever it was, you heard, write it down. Don't forget it. We've been lucky enough to sit together in the Spirit today, to have our eyes open, and it's our privilege to write it somewhere permanent so it can be written in our hearts.

Since first recording this story I've been drawn to look closer at a painting that we have hanging in our living room. It's Carl Bloch's healing at the pools of Bethesda. It shows the Savior moving among people who were by many objective standards, untouchables, like the friends that Becky met in India. They were lame, diseased, disfigured and hidden from society.

In the center of the painting, there's a little shack made of sticks and straw and a drape of fabric covering a man who we learned from scripture is at the pools because he hopes for healing from its waters. But there's no one there to help him get down from his perch and into the water fast enough. And of course, he has no idea that the source of all true healing and hope is standing right in front of him, not until the Savior tells him to take up his bed and walk. That he doesn't need the pool, he's healed without ever having to touch the water.

I love that story. But I love the painting because it shows Christ actively uncovering the hiding place of this man. Lifting the curtain of his darkened makeshift shack, and bringing him into the light so he can be seen and see the miracle that is about to occur.

Sister Craig said this, "Jesus Christ sees people deeply. He sees individuals their needs and who they can become. Where others saw fishermen, sinners, publicans – Jesus saw disciples. Where others saw a man possessed by devils, Jesus looked past that outward distress, acknowledged the man, and healed him." End quote. He looked, He acknowledged, and then He healed.

I loved how Becky put it in her story, if we will have eyes to see, then we'll care and once we care, will act just as the Savior did. Loving action is the natural result of the gift of Godly vision and eyes to see. And that action definitely doesn't have to look like all of us running off to India to do exactly what Becky did.

I always think of Sister Linda K. Burton's talk, "I Was a Stranger," where she wisely reminded us with a story I might add, that as we seek to do good in the world, we should also go home and serve our neighbors. I say let's start there. Let's start by asking humbly for eyes to see what's really going on around us in our current sphere. And let's ask for the courage to look beyond the things that feel strange or different or confusing.

As we practice the spiritual skill of looking, opportunities to see deeply will come. We'll grow in our ability to acknowledge one another the way that Christ did, and it only gets better. From there, our vision, our vision will bloom and grow and deepen and expand until, like those volunteers who couldn't possibly imagine cleaning the wounds of a leper, we will be filled with the love of the Savior that makes it possible for us to do whatever we are called to do. To lift the curtains of those hiding places, to bring one another into the light to be seen, and to finally see the miracles of Christ's healing.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storyteller Becky Douglas and all the people she works with at Rising Star Outreach. We'll have more about Becky and her experiences in India including pictures in our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel.

You can also get more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. We love to hear how this podcast and specific stories have stuck with you, you can leave a review on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen on.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storyteller, and we find a lot of our stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time when maybe you were sitting in $1 store parking lot and learned something new about the gospel of Jesus Christ, well, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with so much story production and help and editing from Sarah Blake, Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and all the other LDS Living podcasts at LDSLiving/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Wendy's childhood is fraught with bullies and self-doubt until she asks God to teach her what her parents knew all along; A run-in with a trampoline right before the family reunion sends Cassidy into hiding, but she can't hide from the Spirit; When artist Melissa can't find herself in museum paintings of Heaven, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

For shownotes and more, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel.

Follow us on facebook and instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

Today, we're talking about beauty. And I have no quippy intro or funny anecdotes or poems. I don't even really have a good etymology lesson about the word beauty for us. Because here's the thing, defining what is beautiful in today's society, and how that's connected to our worth, and our value – that's a really hard thing for me, personally.

I mean, I can look at some flowers or a flaming purple sunset over the ocean, or even a baby wrapped up like a burrito, and somehow I know that there's beauty there. But how those things are beautiful, and why some things are beautiful to me and not to other people? That's just confusing. Maybe you feel the same way, or maybe you think I'm nuts for being tied up in knots about all of this.

But all I know is that I kind of need something or someone a little bit smarter than me to break it down and teach me the truth about beauty and its place in God's plan.

So if ever there was an episode where I need stories to open the door to new spiritual insights, this is the one. And that's what we're going to do today. We'll listen to three stories from three storytellers who grapple with ideas of beauty, and learn something about themselves and God in the process.

Now, I have to acknowledge that all of our storytellers today are women. And I really wanted to find a story about beauty from a man, because I know that women are not the only ones wrestling with this ideal. But hopefully, regardless of gender, we can open our minds and recognize ourselves in these stories. Our first story today comes from Wendy.

Our first story today comes from Wendy.

Wendy 1:47 So when I was a toddler, I was at the grocery store with my mom, and she was going down the aisles and a woman with a bunch of teenagers came up and pointed at me and said, "Hey, look kids, that kid doesn't need a Halloween costume. She's already got one." And then they all laughed and walked off. And my mom was so shocked. She didn't know what to say.

When I was about two months old, I had a little red dot that was right center of my forehead and it started spreading out and it was a hemangioma, which is a blood tumor. And it was coming out like a golf ball off the top of my head. A hemangioma, it's got lots of blood vessels in it, you can't take it off because there's too much blood, things, going on in the head. It's kind of purple and red. They usually will deflate a little bit when the child is older, more like nine or ten. Until then you just have to live with it.

So I knew I looked different. My mom was always trying to comb my bangs so that they would cover my forehead. I always had bangs right to my eyebrows, but I was an active kid. So you'd run around the bangs would split and you can't cover a little . . . a ball on your head. So no matter what we did, it was always showing and then I would forget that I had it and then run into a new person that didn't know me, and they would stop and stare and look at me and . . . if it was a kid, well, even sometimes adults, then that's when I would get teased for it.

So when I was in preschool, I was going to a religious school and the teacher told the class that I had the mark of the devil and that they shouldn't associate with me because they might be infected by my badness, just because of how I look. So I came home and asked my mom, "How come I have the mark of the devil?" And my mom pulled me from the school – because she's a good mom – and then we had to go find somewhere else for me to go after that.

So my mom and dad both were very protective of me. And they were trying to be the buffer between me and the world. One time my dad, I had told him that I was being bullied and pushed around on the way home from school, and so he waited for me on the porch. And he saw these kids following me home from school and they were pushing me into the street and pushing me down.

And so he came out and told them, "You don't have to be her friend. But you do have to be kind to her, and you cannot put her in danger." And so he was, he was a protector for me. And then right after that, he went to the school and asked them to have a meeting of all of the kids anywhere near my grade and he talked to them all about it. About what a hemangioma was, and that Wendy was a pretty, pretty neat kid if they'd give her a chance, they could be friends.

When my dad came to my school, I felt very special. And I felt very loved and protected because my home and the protection that I had at home extended to this school at least somewhat. They were trying to reach out and, and just have a little bit of a safety net for me farther out than our home.

So when I was about nine, then the hemangioma started to deflate. So it slowly lost the big redness of having all the active blood vessels. And we were able to go and have it removed. I remember in the hospital, my mom was reading me A Wrinkle in Time, as we were getting ready to go back for the surgery. And my mom doesn't even like reading fantasy books, but she would read me anything that I would listen to.

When I came out and had it off, then I traded it for a scar. The scar for a long time was really, really bright. So if I was angry, or exercising or anything, then it was almost as glaring as the thing was to start with. But slowly it faded. And at first I always had bangs, because I was still trying to cover this scar in this place where I used to have this thing that I felt was shameful.

My self worth was something that I did struggle with. Having been someone who was told that I had the mark of the devil, often made me wonder what my worth was. I often felt like there was two faces, because there was this face that the world would see, and then there was the real person inside that didn't have value. Because if I was somebody of worth, then why did I have things like this happen? Why were people cruel?

There just came a point when I realized that I had to make a choice. If I was going to keep feeling this way, if I was going to keep disliking who I was, if I was going to keep doubting whether or not I had any value, or if I was going to believe in myself and believe that I was worth loving. And so I started to read scriptures more and have prayers that were less routine and more heartfelt. And I just started asking that even if I lacked the belief, Christ and Heavenly Father would help me with my unbelief and make up the difference.

A few years went by, and pretty soon I stopped using the bangs, and my parents got me into Taekwondo. And I started pursuing more interests that I loved, like art. So the change in how I perceive myself and where I thought I was, for being worthy to be loved, is not something that happened overnight. But something I had to deliberately work toward. And it's something I'm still working toward, but I think that my mind understands that I am of worth and that I'm worth loving, and that God loves me.

Now my scar, it has faded to the point that most people don't notice it. But I remember what it was like I feel that this whole experience growing up with a birthmark and the other things, I feel that that has really taught me compassion, that when I see someone else struggling, then I try to reach out to them. Whenever I see a kid who has any kind of a birthmark especially, then I run right over and talk to him. I feel it. I know what they're going through. And I know what the parents are going through.

My parents were wonderful examples for me, it was not uncommon for me to go to see them in the evening and to find them on their knees. So in those moments when I didn't have the faith, to believe enough that I had any value or when I didn't have faith enough to believe that someone was there to listen to me, then I could rely on my parents testimonies, because I knew that they believed enough for both of us.

So my whole life whenever I have doubted myself, whenever I have doubted whether or not I was strong enough or smart enough are brave enough to do anything that I wanted to do, then my parents were the ones that were like you can do this. You are a daughter of God and you are of infinite worth. With them believing that, then they were kind of my shield against the world.

And they make it so that I can go out. And I can share my stories and my message and I can achieve dreams that I didn't think were possible when I was little. When I didn't think I had any value at all. And a lot of that is because of the faith of my parents.

So now I have five children of my own. And I have one who wants to be an artist and another who wants to go on a mission and another who wants to make prosthetics for people who are missing limbs, and another wants to be a dancer. And the other one he doesn't know what he wants to do. He mostly wants to snuggle, but the point is that I tell them that they can do anything they want to do, and that they're smart enough and they're good enough, and that they have enough value, that whatever dream they have is valid, and that I will support them in anything they want to do.

KaRyn Lay 11:18 That was Wendy. Wendy Swore is the author of, A Monster Like Me, which is a lovely middle grade novel about a girl with a hemangioma. I love that she's been able to take that love of fantasy books and her own experience and translate that into a passion for telling and writing stories that help us find the humanity in one another.

I was struck by Wendy's description of her scar and the transformative effect that it had on her sense of worth. How at first, it was a painful reminder of something that she couldn't control about her body, something that she felt shame about. But as she prayed and asked for help from heaven to see herself and her value differently, eventually those scars became a gentle reminder of her divine beauty, a beauty that was revealed in her ability to offer empathy and compassion to others.

And here are the truths about beauty that I'm going to take from Wendy's story. True beauty is always present when our actions are a reflection of the Savior. And I believe that it's perceived only through the lens of charity or the pure love of Christ. You know, when Christ returned to His disciples after the resurrection, His scars took on new purpose.

They were more than just a reminder of his past pain, they became a tool of testimony. A symbol to His disciples of his power, and His love for us all. And as Wendy showed us, our scars can also be made beautiful tools of testimony if we allow them to be transformed through the gift of Christ's atonement. And that is really beautiful.

Our next story comes from Cassidy, who's run in with a trampoline right before a family reunion left her with some questions about beauty. Here's Cassidy.

Cassidy 12:59 It was a few summers ago, me and my two sons, after we ate some lunch, decided to go and have a little bounce on the trampoline in the backyard. And we were bouncing and having fun. And my oldest son just did a really strong bounce and bounced up and hit my nose with his head, and it broke right away. I could tell it was bleeding, and if you could imagine my nose, you know, it's straight now, but it was like completely swelling and it was crooked and I had bruising, and I just did not look like myself.

When you break your nose, they can't just fix it right away. I remember going to the instacare and just wanting them so badly to just like, push it back into place, just fix it right away. But they have to wait for – I think – at least a week, in order to help the swelling to go down and the bruising to kind of calm down so they can actually go in and fix it the way it should be fixed.

I had a family reunion coming up, and I knew that I was going to have to go to that before I could have the surgery to fix my nose. And I was just feeling sad that I had to participate in this fun family thing while I was feeling uncomfortable and quite self conscious, to be honest. I didn't like having to go out and about with my nose looking the way that it did.

I feel like sometimes I have the tendency to worry a lot about what people think of me and worry about how I look to other people. And sometimes I fall into, you know, the traps of comparison or not measuring up and so I think all of those feelings were surfacing as I was going to have to be out in public and with my family with my broken nose.

We got ready to go on our trip. It's funny, I still remember I actually asked my sister to pack some hats for me, I'm not normally a hat person, but – and my sister wears hats more often and I was like, "Can you just bring some hats?" And maybe that will be able to conceal my face a little bit more if we're going out. So she packed some hats for me, we went up to our family reunion.

And this place that we stayed is this little condo in a ski town, and we stayed with a few of my sisters and their families in the same unit. So there were multi-levels. And one morning, I was cleaning up breakfast, and I was washing the dishes, putting things away, I looked down as I was at the ceiling, I looked down and I saw at the top edge of the cabinet, a little label – like the labels that you get, you print off of a little label maker – and it was just on the very top edge of the cabinet door, and it said, "Fire extinguisher below." I remember thinking that was really interesting. And so I curiously opened up the cabinet door and looked inside the cabinet, and there was the fire extinguisher just kind of sitting in the dusty corner.

So I just thought that was interesting and closed it up and finished up my morning cleaning up. Then shortly after I was downstairs, getting ready for the day. Some families were out and about already enjoying their day and my sister was in her room. And I heard the fire alarm going off, and I couldn't smell smoke yet. And so I ran upstairs, ran to the upper floor, the main floor, couldn't smell anything, couldn't see anything.

And as I was running around and trying to figure out why the smoke alarm was going off, I finally went back down into the basement and opened up my sister's room. And as I opened up the door, I saw the closet kind of open and smoke coming out of the closet. Me and my brother in law opened up the closet and saw a fire in the closet.

Because it's in a ski town, they had these interesting amenities where in the basement bedrooms, there was a closet that had a small stove and sink inside. We opened it up and there the fire was going and it was it was getting kind of big. I knew right away, I told my brother in law, I said, "I know right where the fire extinguisher is." Ran upstairs, got under the cabinet and ran downstairs and my brother in law was able to extinguish the fire really quickly.

It happened so fast that I think that we were all just grateful that I knew where it was, but there was a moment after when we were all kind of waiting on the street and talking about it, where I just I knew that it wasn't an accident that I had seen that little labeled that that morning.

I remember feeling at that time, a distinct impression that Heavenly Father and Jesus loved me, and that it didn't matter what I looked like, that they could still use me to be a tool to help others and love others and save others even.

Even if it's not about my physical appearance, there have been times in my life where I've felt inadequate or unprepared or not enough. Sometimes throughout the day, I just say, "Am I doing okay? Do you love me?" And I know that I feel His love when I'm trying. And I don't have to be perfect. I can do His work, because He will help me and He will guide me.

KaRyn Lay 19:20 That was Cassidy. Her conclusion that God can use us at all times and in all states of being is an important one as we try to understand what true beauty is.

I think that sometimes it's really easy to inadvertently confuse the word beautiful with the word ornamental. And here's what I mean by that. A few years ago, I learned of a concept called self-objectification which is this idea that when we're considering our own physical appearance, we're often thinking about it with regard to how other people are perceiving us. And just like an object, we might start to see our bodies only as useful as long as they're perceived as useful by someone else.

This kind of self objectification can stop us in our tracks. It keeps us from showing up to the family reunion with our broken nose or getting into the swimming pool with our kids or being anywhere else that God might need us to be. And isn't that exactly what the adversary wants from us? He wants us to stop working towards eternity, to stop showing up and to become objects moved only by fear and shame instead of beings filled with the agency to move forward towards salvation.

If he can successfully convince us that these bodies that we were so excited to get, are only valuable or worthwhile if they look or work a certain way, then his work here is done. And here's the truth about beauty that I am going to take from Cassidy's story. These bodies that we live in, and we serve in and we love in – their beautiful right now, as is. Imperfect, weak, whatever. Because beautiful is not the same as ornamental. True beauty is inherent in the gift to act with agency so that we can bless each other and serve one another. And true beauty became a part of us the minute that we chose to follow Christ in the life before this one, to take up this body, and to get to work as part of the plan of salvation.

We've got a few more truths about beauty to discover, and our final story today comes from Melissa who decided to create beauty for others, when she had trouble finding it herself. Here's Melissa.

Melissa 21:30 I don't ever remember a time when I didn't love art. When I was little I would always be drawing, I would always be painting and I had the biggest imagination. And thankfully, I had parents who saw value in my hobbies and they cultivated my gifts. And they helped me grow them. They were always buying me art supplies, or children's books.

I grew up in a rural town called Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. My father's from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and my mom grew up mostly in Connecticut. My dad is from a tribe in central Kasai in Congo, and obviously, that that did affect me growing up because I was one of the only Black people in my school, in elementary school in junior high, and in high school. So I knew that – the obviously the older I got – I knew that I stood out. And I knew that I had to do more to fit in.

One moment I do remember is when I was in second grade, and I realized that I was Black. My brother and I had gotten into a fight. It was like a little dumb fight. I am a lighter complexion, and my mom is white and my father is Black. So in my head, I am white and I am Black. And then my brother said, "Melissa, you're Black." And I remember looking at him just so confused. I looked at my skin I said, "No, I am brown mixed with yellow." Like I remember saying that, because I was looking at my skin literally, like my skin isn't Black. And then I kind of realized at that moment, the way the world saw me was as a Black girl. And I think that was a defining moment. Because then I just remembered being so shocked that that's how people saw me.

And I knew that there was negative connotations with the word Black. And I remember one of my friends growing up in Church, she would never want to be around my dad. And as a child, I knew it was because he had dark skin. And she thought he was scary because of his dark skin. And me being nine or eight as a children, we have no filter. So I asked her. I said, "Hey, are you afraid of my dad because he's Black?" And I remember her just nodding. And she said, "Yes." And that was the end of the conversation.

When I was drawing as a child, I would often draw my family or me. It wasn't till maybe 12 and above, is when I started to notice that illustrations did not look like me, that I saw in school and at church. It affected me because I didn't really paint Black people, I didn't really paint people who look like me. So I would draw nature, paint nature and sometimes when I would attempt to draw people – which I didn't draw a lot of – they were white, because I noticed Blackness was not associated with pretty. It was more subconscious at that time period.

Most of my awareness came at the end of high school, beginning of BYU. And then I think this world that I had been brushing aside or ignoring really, kind of blew up in my face in a way. I became more aware of racism. I think I felt a little betrayed in a way when I came because I was never taught about a lot of the racism that happened in the Church. And I was like, why was I purposely not taught about these things? Why are we sweeping the hard stuff under the rug instead of confronting it and talking about it?

And once I learned more about history, whether it be church history, or African and European history, and colonization, colorism and internalized racism, that's when I was able to be more aware of myself and more aware of these harmful thoughts that I had about myself that pertained to the color of my skin, or to my ethnicity. And I realized that was damaging, because if I didn't see myself as divine or worthy, the way I was made, then how can I see other people that way as well?

So when I finally got into the BYU illustration program, I was ecstatic because I had applied the first time and I hadn't gotten in, and I had worked my butt off and finally got in the second time. So with our art department, once you got into the BFA of illustration, you spent most of your time in the art lab working on your projects. And it's pretty, it's a pretty exclusive part, there's only around 28 to 30 people in it. And I happened to be the only person in that room who would paint people that were not white. And I, and I noticed it right away. And that was another fueling moment for me.

I was used to being uncomfortable or having uncomfortable moments, whether it came to my friends saying inappropriate Black jokes, or just so many different things that were said that maybe stemmed from ignorance, or maybe because they didn't know better, and I wasn't in a confident headspace where I would, I could correct them, because I was afraid of making them uncomfortable. And so I sacrificed my own comfort for theirs.

I was hesitant to talk to anybody who was white about ethnicity and race, and racism. Because I had a couple experiences when I kind of opened myself up and wanted to talk about these things, because I was ready, and I I understood that it was something that needed to be talked to, and like, "I can confide with some of my close friends, and I can talk to them about it, I'm going to try." And unfortunately, I had a couple of experiences where it was just completely shut down.

They told me I wasn't spiritually in tune, or that I was just being too sensitive, and that my experiences weren't real and that they weren't valid. And I was just heartbroken, because I'm like, these were people who I thought had my back and who I thought . . . knew me, and they completely invalidated my experiences when it came to like race and ethnicity.

When I first got into BYU, I met one of my closest friends. And I didn't know she was going to be one of my closest friends at the time. But we ended up sitting right next to each other. And it was probably like one of the best experiences I could have had at BYU. And I just remember, just feeling like I didn't have to prove that my experiences regarding racism were true and valid. Like I felt like she saw me and she saw the issues. And she educated herself and I just . . . that anxiety that would sometimes come with having to prove that my experiences were valid or having to talk to someone about race kind of depleted because she literally was the first person who listened to me, she was like the first authentic friend I think I had at BYU.

I was just kind of protective of myself, and I knew that I didn't . . . I just knew right away from her aura that I didn't have to be like that. She was just one of the best listeners I could have ever hoped for. And she still is. Anytime, anytime something inappropriate was said in that room, and if I didn't have the emotional stamina to talk about it or I felt anxiety, she would speak up for me and she would correct people if they said racist things or ignorant comments. And she would do it in like the most Christlike way too. And I felt because of that like I was in a safe space, and I felt like I could completely be myself.

You know, I'm in a, I'm in an illustration department where we're always creating images. And of course, most of . . . 99.9% of those images were European images, or people who did not look like me. I remember walking through the MOA, that's the Museum of Art at BYU, and seeing this huge painting and depiction of heaven. And it was all white people in this heaven. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. If God is only viewed as European, and angels are only seen as white then . . . when you don't see images that look like you, ever, especially in school, or in church and every aspect of your life, you automatically think that you're not worthy, or you're not . . . just meant to be shown or seen, and that you're not enough.

It feels like you're not worthy of being in a divine space. And it feels like you're not seen. It's like, do they even know that they exist? Or that I have my own story? And that I matter? Like, does God not see me? If all we have are these one sided images, it just hurts, because it feels like you're not enough.

So I decided that – and I knew and I felt my heart that I needed to make paintings of people who did not see themselves as divine, or as beautiful or as worthy of being seen.

When I painted these images, I felt peaceful and I felt calm. Like, I felt like I was doing something, not for myself, but for others. And one of the first paintings I painted, was just simply named "Eve." And I purposely made this painting a dark skinned woman and I gave her an afro. I don't know if a lot of people are aware, but a lot of Black women struggle wearing their hair naturally. I have sisters who struggled wearing their hair naturally, so I remember I'm like I need to do this painting. I really felt like I needed to do it.

And after I had made this painting, I had three different women – probably like the week after – reached out to me, and they were a Black women, and they had dark skin. And they had messaged me, and they had pretty much said, "Thank you for creating this. I've never seen a piece of art that has made me feel so beautiful. And I've never seen a artwork that has showed my skin tone as being divine." And it just like touched me, like I felt like I knew that I was meant to help people feel loved and seen and worthy. And their reactions just confirmed that for me.

I think the more I painted people with skin tones similar to mine, I actually started to feel more confident and more beautiful because I felt like there was a truth in that. Being able to paint people outside of the norm, outside of our society's norm, being able to equally represent people of color has made me redefine in my mind what divinity is and how Christ sees me and all His children.

It's shifted my perception of what God is and who Christ is, because I know God loves everyone the way that they are. I learned that you know, dark skin is divine, and is purposeful, and is beautiful.

I think God sees me as divine, and as enough. And I feel like when I'm in the right mindset and I value myself I can truly value and love others and I can use my gift or talent – which I'm still learning and developing – to be used for good. I can use this talent God gave me to help redefine what divinity and redefine what beauty is.

KaRyn Lay 34:49 That was artist Melissa Tshikamba. I first met Melissa because of work. Deseret Book had just added one of her gorgeous paintings to our flagship store in downtown Salt Lake and I was so excited to have something so moving alongside all those other celebrated makers of sacred images. When I learned more about Melissa's journey as an artist in the sacred space, I was even more inspired by her.

I feel really humbled and grateful to her for sharing her gifts with all of us. And I think it's so amazing that she was able to recognize that the ignorance and the silencing that she has encountered aren't fair, and still she chooses to be part of the body of Christ. I also really love that she followed that Spirit that led her to heal and be healed as she puts our brothers and sisters of color back in the pictures of a heaven that, frankly, I want to be a part of.

From Melissa story, I think we all learn the truth that beauty is not actually in the eye of the beholder. It's really in the eye of the Creator. And that as disciples of Christ and Latter-day Saints, it's our privilege to seek out beauty from all corners of the earth, and in every person we meet as evidence of God's goodness.

And if we can, as Melissa does with her talent, help to make space for a diverse representation of that beauty, so that everyone can see themselves in the picture. I really believe that that will be the means of healing for ourselves, and others.

You know, as we've listened to these stories today, this line from the hymn, "Oh God, the Eternal Father" has been just popping up in my mind. "With no apparent beauty that man should him desire, he was the promised Savior to purify with fire." It's a reference to Isaiah chapter 53, verse 2, where he's foretelling the life and the work of Jesus Christ.

I keep thinking about that phrase, "Apparent beauty," and what it means for those of us who are watching anxiously for the Savior today. When Christ came to the earth, the first time, those who were expecting a Savior who conformed to the standards of the day were deeply, deeply disappointed. He was neither obvious, nor clearly recognizable, as beautiful to the people who didn't look close enough. But that didn't stop His work. It didn't matter if people could see who He was and the beauty He possessed. He had a job to do. And His true beauty would soon be apparent across ages, and universes, and the quiet transformation of individuals.

For those of us who seek to emulate the Savior, that's some really, really good news, because it means that like Him, we can let go of expectations of apparent beauty in our own lives right now. We can see ourselves as valuable and capable disciples ready to fulfill our mission without distraction.

It means that we can raise our children to see their own possibility and purpose and we can put out fires and stoke new ones in hearts that have grown cold from feeling unseen, and unrepresented. So what's the big thing that I've learned from these stories today about beauty? It's this: I've got work to do. We've got work to do, and there is no time to let the pressures of Satan's half truths, his smoke and mirrors about beauty and worth stand in the way of accomplishing that mission. And for those of us watching for our beautiful Savior's return with a faithful spirit, it's an invitation to practice now to understand and see true beauty where it exists in others and ourselves. So that when He comes again – this time in full glory – we will recognize Him and His beauty without delay.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel" thank you to our storytellers, Wendy Cassidy and Melissa for sharing their stories and their true beauty. We'll have so much good stuff in the show notes this week, you guys, Melissa's paintings, Wendy's books, pictures and more info about each of these storytellers at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel.

You can also find more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook at @Thisisthegospel_podcast. A huge thank you to everyone who takes the time to write a review of this podcast not only do they offer us great feedback about what themes and types of stories have blessed you most, but they also really buoy us up when we work under these unusual circumstances. We love to hear how this podcast and specific stories that have stuck with you. You can leave a review of the podcast on Apple stitcher or whatever platform you listen on.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers, and we find a lot of our stories like Cassidy's through our pitchline. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and they'll have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay with additional story production and editing by Erika Free and Davey Johnson. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and all the other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com slash podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: A quest to solve the mystery of bees flying through cracks in their walls lead Kristen and Matt to discover important truths about God's laws of nature; Spencer's childhood memories of catching bugs under yellow street lamps teaches him what it takes to recognize God's hands in our lives.

To view shownotes for this episode, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay 0:03

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

There is something that I have suspected about this podcast for a while now. And this week it was 100% confirmed to me that when we decide on a theme, heaven conspires to put that theme and all of its lessons in my face.

So maybe you'll think I'm being melodramatic, and the reality might be that I just notice things more, but listen to this you guys. This week, our theme is about the way the natural world teaches us principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we have jokingly called it "the bug episode" for months now, because both of our stories somehow revolve around insects.

So, not two days ago, my husband and I were coming home from a little jaunt – sometimes you just have to get out of the house when it's COVID times – and when we pulled into the carport, our headlights illuminate the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a terrarium.

It's just dangling there – suspended in midair as though it was hovering. And luckily, we saw it in enough time to roll the car in a little bit slower than we normally would so that we didn't hit it. I hate spiders. And I guess it would be more accurate to say that I "fear spiders" since hate is a secondary emotion.

Ever since I saw a documentary about jumping spiders, I'm positive that every spider knows how to jump and they're just waiting to leap onto my body. So the added protection of the windshield of the car made it so that we could actually observe the spider without my anxiety taking over and we sat there for probably 10 minutes in total awe.

As we watched that spiders body twist in eight legged arabesques while she worked her magic spinning silk, it seemed like she was creating it out of nothing at all. Also, I don't know why I keep saying "She," – I assume it's because of Charlotte's Web.

Anyway. It was interesting to me that she was multitasking. That she was climbing the ropes and she was building them at the same time. And I thought, man, if that doesn't describe the work of discipleship, I really don't know what does.

Because sometimes moving along the covenant path can feel like we're dangling in midair with eight busy legs trying to build something just so that we can put one foot in front of the next.

But also – like my buddy, the spider – we can ignore the headlights trying to trip us up and the busy bodies staring us down through their car windshield, if we carefully focus on the task in front of us. Because as children of Christ, we've got it all in us. The tools, the spiritual DNA, the capacity to learn new patterns to harness the power of God here on earth to move his work forward.

See what I mean? One giant spider in the carport at exactly the right moment for today's theme, I feel like it's a little wink from Heavenly Father that He's on the job. And don't you worry, I have not taken out the garbage since we saw that spider, because I am sure that the minute I walk into the carport, it's going to leap on me.

But I also haven't forgotten that image of that spider, and the connection between us and the natural world. It's real. And I think it's a part of our gospel practice. And today's stories promised to give us just a little bit more insight into the ways that nature here on Earth brings us all just a little bit closer to heaven.

Our first story in this episode comes from Kristin and Matt who tag-team their tale of a time when the outside world made its way inside. Here's Kristin and Matt.

Kristen 3:36

Earlier this summer, our neighbor – we have a lovely, lovely neighbor next door who had been furloughed from her job, and so she would be outside all day every day working in her garden.

And one day I just went to say hello to her. And she said, "Hey, Kristen, I think you have some bees. I think you have a beehive." And I went, "What?"

She pointed out to me where some bees – and there wasn't a lot of them, it was just a couple, were walking in and out this little tiny crack in our siding. We have an older house, and it has brick and then it has some siding and it was just kind of this teeniest little space.

Matt 4:18

So we start to check every day, and sure enough, you can see little bees coming in and out of this crack, but I don't know. I don't know what's behind there, right?

Kristen 4:25

Yeah. And we weren't quite ready to peel off the siding or anything. By this time we are we're pretty sure – based on our oh-so-scientific knowledge, that they are indeed honeybees. Because they weren't trying to kill you they weren't wasp-y, they looked more like honey bees.

Matt 4:42

You know, the first reaction we had was, "Well maybe, let's call an exterminator and see what it would cost." And I was ambivalent about it because I really like bees. Bees do – bees do important work. They pollinate, they make honey.

So we got – I think we had an estimate for an exterminator, and it was already a lot of money. So I was like, why not – let's let's pursue the avenue of maybe somebody who's a beekeeper, or who specializes in removing bees –

Kristen 5:17

– What do you even call that bee guy, that would help remove a hive and find it a new home? And so we just kept googling like, "bee relocation," whatnot. And I stumbled on this guy, he finally comes out, and he busts out electronic tools like a little radar thing, a stethoscope,

Matt 5:37

Infrared like heat seeking like camera.

Kristen 5:42

He first starts using the infrared thing to kind of identify where the bees are, and how hard would it be to get to them. And then he uses a like a regular doctor's stethoscope to like listen in on their activity, and whatnot. And it was just fascinating.

Matt 6:00

As we were standing outside with him and looking at, you know, the one place where we knew that they were coming in and out, and I think he just kind of casually said, "Oh, I think you have a second one, too." And sure enough, like 10 feet to the left, there was another crack in the, in the sort of the older brick part of the house.

Kristen 6:17

Right by the fireplace.

Matt 6:18

Right by the fireplace where we saw bees coming in and out, and so then we're like, "Oh, great."

Kristen 6:24

So then he said, "Alright, well, let me think on it. And just watch it. You guys just watch it and let me know." And so for next few days, we're watching and I'm taking photos and videos and things. And one day, it was nuts. It was like the beehive . . . the bee highway, like it was rush hour. And it was just swarms, thousands and thousands of bees.

And we went, "Are you kidding me?" It was crazy how many there were, and we went outside and I'm filming it. And we couldn't believe our eyes. Like we had no idea there would be that many in there, or if they were all in there, or was it like a convention that they were suddenly coming?

And so we thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do now? Now, now it's getting serious, because we have just seen that many thousands of bees flying in and out different parts of our house. And that's when we did start getting a little nervous about it.

We're thinking, oh no, like, this can be a lot of damage. This could be really serious.

Matt 7:29

Yeah.

Kristen 7:29

And so then as soon as I you know, stop the video, I text the bee guy the videos, and we hear nothing, nothing at all. He just ghosts us. We never hear back.

I started looking again online, and I happened to tell a co-worker about it. My co-worker tells me about a friend who happens to have bees on the side just as a hobby. He happens to be a roofer by trade, so I call him and talk to him and he's like, "Nope, not what I do." He actually puts it out on a beekeeping group within Western New York.

And somehow one of the guys that's on this Facebook group is interested. That he would like to come relocate it for us. He works with the public gardens that are around town that are trying to establish bees at these different community gardens. And he wants to do this.

Matt 8:28

Like urban, urban community gardens.

Kristen 8:30

Right. And so we thought this is outstanding, how great! These bees could be useful to our community, we'll be giving back, they'll have a purpose, but we still we had no idea what it would entail.

And side note, this guy's like a hobbyist beekeeper person, like –

Matt 8:49

Yeah, it was clear that he was trying to break into this, profession, whatever you call it.

Kristen 8:56

So another interesting component is that this beekeeper that decided he wanted to come and help is deaf. And we don't know sign language, so mostly we're trying to explain the situation via text.

Then we kind of decide a game plan on how we're going to do this. And he kind of talks us through it – texts us through it – you know, and kind of shows us, we're in our family room and he's kind of marking it out. And he says he's going to get all the supplies and he's going to come back another day and it should only take a little while.

Matt 9:30

I was a little bit hesitant, right?

Kristen 9:32

Yeah, well cause he was saying he's gonna cut open the ceiling.

Matt 9:35

Yeah.

Kristen 9:36

And Matt's going, "Are you kidding?"

Matt 9:38

Originally, when the first bee removal guy came, I was under the impression that, yeah, it would work like a Pied Piper. That he would set up a hive, a new hive, outside the house, he would do something to you know lure the bees out of the house and into this new hive, which – great! You know? The you know, minimal damage to the house.

I was never very clear, so you know, maybe that was always a completely naive idea of how it's gonna happen, but I thought – right? – that he'd explained it, something like that. So then when the second bee removal guy was here, and he was telling us, "Oh yeah, I'm just gonna cut your ceiling open," Yeah, that – trepidation would be the right way to describe what I was feeling at that point.

Kristen 10:27

But by this point, we were kinda like, what else do we do?

Matt 10:30

Yeah. And he – the other thing that, you know, sort of was setting up expectations, at least for the timing, is the second bee removal guy would send us these YouTube videos of people demonstrating how they remove bees, and the people in these videos, of course, we're very professional at it, and you know, from what it looked, at least to the way in the video, right? Looked like it was a – you know – maybe a three hour job or something, right? They come in, cut open the ceiling, vacuum the bees out, and then patch it up, too and that was it.

So that also gave us the impression that – right? – It would just be a quick and dirty job.

Kristen 11:11

It didn't happen that way.

We set up a day and a time for him to come back, and he came with a bunch of plastic and duct tape and a shop vac and some really rough tools.

And just started going. He kind of taped up all of this plastic, he encased himself in this plastic, like a whole corner of the room –

Matt 11:38

Almost like it was a shower curtain or something

Kristen 11:40

Like uh – exactly, like a shower curtain taped to the ceiling, and draping down to the floor. And then he would get in there, and just started cutting open the ceiling.

And little by little he starts breaking it open, and we're watching. Like I'm sitting there in the family room outside of the plastic, because I can't turn away. And he cuts it open, and then kind of motions to us to come see. And sure enough, you can see these little bits of hive.

Matt 12:12

Like uh . . . almost like curtains of honeycomb, right. These layers. It's – I call them curtains because they're the – the honeycombs would sort of, they would hang down from the top of the the cavity, you know, like they were curtains or something, hanging down, but they were just like rows and rows of them.

And they were very orderly. Yeah, it was kind of – to me, I thought the whole – I thought it was fascinating. And it was, there was a kind of beauty to it.

Kristen 12:41

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Matt 12:42

Just seeing all these, you know, almost these perfectly maid rows of honeycomb. And then they were just chock full of bees, right? I mean, it was just covered in bees, every – almost every square inch.

Kristen 12:57

Yeah. He texts us something like, "It's bigger than I thought." And so then he shows us that he's gonna have to cut a lot more, because it's a lot bigger. He's kind of showing us up in there. With his phone.

He takes his phone up in there and takes some pictures and you can see how deep it is, and how big these hives are. And we're going, "Are you kidding me?" And this is just the part in the family room.

These particular bees weren't super aggressive. They were just busy, busy, busy working. Just like you jokingly hear – busy bees. They were doing their work and they just kept on trucking, but it was beautiful to watch. It was beautiful.

It was right in front of all these windows in our family room, and so the sunlight was coming in and you could see the intricacies of the beehives and you could see which ones had little babies, little eggs in some of the hives and you can see where there are honey pockets and you can see – I mean it was natural geographic, right in our family room.

And then the beekeeper goes in with this shop-vac type thing, so he's inside the plastic, up in the ceiling, up above the bookcases, and he takes this shop–vac and just starts vacuuming up all the bees, and –

Matt 14:18

Yeah, he's got, he's got a long tube and sucks them through, and then it puts them in a big bucket, where then he can then carry to, you know, whatever place he wants to go.

Kristen 14:28

Yeah. And then – interestingly – so then he takes little by little, would break out really carefully the different curtains of honeycomb and put them in these wooden frames. And then once he got all of their hives back into these little bee boxes, and so he moves the whole bee box, all the new hives that are now in these screens and moves them all out, just outside that family room, so it's kind of right at the entrance to where the crack was.

Somehow he knew he had gotten the queen. He could identify the queen, and knew that she was in the new box and so that eventually all the others would come follow. Then he kept that bee box outside of our house for another 24 hours or so.

Matt 15:19

So that process took, what? All day.

Kristen 15:21

All day. I mean, early in the morning till late that evening, and he was just drenched in sweat. And he – and it was just a long, extensive, very – was a lot more than he had anticipated.

Matt 15:37

It was dirty, too. Not gonna lie, right? There's, I mean, whatever, you know, was in that old ceiling, you know, and then, and the honey everywhere, dripping everywhere.

Kristen 15:47

Everywhere. And anything you touched, got it. I mean, we were cleaning bee guts and honey off things for a long time.

And so that was just one. And we kind of had to do the whole process again, with the bees that were in the living room.

Only this time, they were much more aggressive. The hives looked the same, but they were so distinctly different. Different temperaments, and different everything.

It was, it was a lot. And I kind of hit a breaking point, at one point where I was just like, "I can't do this again. Our house is gonna be a mess," it just takes so much work. So much time.

And so that process, it did take a lot longer. We spread it out over a couple of weeks trying to get those removed.

And then he was, a beekeeper was able to relocate it to one of the urban gardens in downtown Buffalo.

And hopefully, they're living happily ever after. He brought us some of the honey from it a few weeks later.

Matt 17:00

You know, we could have, we could have maybe actually paid a little bit more for an exterminator, but probably would have had the job done a lot quicker.

If we just, you know, just killed them, got rid of them. But I just, I just never felt comfortable doing that, you know. It seemed like if there was a way to keep these bees alive and just move them to some other location, that would be the better thing to do. Even though doing that ended up taking a lot more time, probably produced a lot more stress for Kristin.

But, you know, to treat life the way we do sometimes, you know, it's just an obstacle to our own sort of whatever goal we're trying to get out seems to be not compatible, not respectful with God's creations.

Kristen 17:54

It was awe inspiring to see this happening because even as the beekeeper was cutting open the ceiling and tearing things apart and trying to get to the bees, they just kept on working and kept on doing their thing. You know, they kept producing, they kept building, they kept going for the good of their group. And they were so fascinating to watch.

And I remember thinking, and I don't know where I've read this, I know several Church leaders have commented on this at some point, but that part of why we're so inspired by nature, or that we often will feel the Spirit when we're in nature is because nature obeys God's commands, period. And that's why we can feel so much of the Spirit in nature. Everything around you is obeying God's commands.

And as we were watching this all unfold in our ceiling, I remember thinking about that, that these bees are doing exactly what they were put here on earth to do. And it was, it was remarkable to watch.

Having lived in Utah for a little while, of course, you know, the Beehive State and the whole pioneer legacy with bees and the symbol and the working together and, and all of those things were really evident as we watch this unfold. It was you know, physically challenging, it was messy, it was inconvenient. It was everything. But it was also inspiring. It was nature at work. It was really remarkable to see the determination in those little bees, and just that they do what they were sent here to do.

KaRyn Lay 19:52

That was Matt and Kristen, in Buffalo, New York, and their description of those curtains of honeycomb in the wall get me every time. And we're actually going to have pictures of that, this crazy phenomenon, in our show notes.

I've been so curious about this. So I asked Kristin if they could hear the bees when they were trying to watch TV or smell the honey. And she disappointingly said that they literally had no idea what was happening behind that wall. But you know, the other thing that gets me is that reverence for all life that the Spirit brought into Matt's heart as he watched those creatures at work. There's a reason for that. In Moses, chapter six, verse 63, the Lord teaches us that, quote, "All things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal and things which are spiritual. Things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and the things which are in the earth and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath, all things, bear record of me."

Once you get past all the prepositions in that scripture, it's clear that every living thing has a purpose, a job to do, just like Krista mentioned about the bees. And that job is actually to bear record of the goodness and majesty and love of the Creator. So when Matt gets the chance to witness the earth, and all her parts, filling the measure of that creation in his family room, of course, the Spirit is going to be there to ratify that testimony, and to fill his heart with love for all of God's creation.

Our next story comes from Spencer.

Spencer 21:19

One of my very first memories of moving to Texas, I was six years old, and my dad take me and some of my siblings, we walked down to the woods that were at the end of our street. And we went and looked at fireflies.

Coming from the Bay Area, I'd never ever seen fireflies and it was this magical moment. It was dark, and all of a sudden these lights popping up everywhere and they're around you. And if you've ever been around fireflies, you know that feeling. There's one right in your face and I'm sure we caught one and held our hands. And it was this amazing moment.

Where we moved, just outside of Houston in 1982, was very much frontier. Deep forests, subtropical, and there were bugs everywhere. My dad had been a fly fisherman and kind of grown up near the mountains. And when we moved, none of the fly fishing was available. And so his attention got turned to catching bugs.

At this time, the streetlights were like these bright white streetlights, they're not like the yellow ones you see now because they've learned that those yellow ones don't attract bugs the same way. But these ones would attract bugs like crazy. And so under every streetlight, you've had this illuminated circle that was filled with thousands of crickets, June bugs, and then, of course, all these other like fiery chasers. And you'd get toads and frogs that were coming to eat all those and then you'd have bats flying around eating the moths and the butterflies. And then, of course, cars would be running over them. So every morning there'd be like flattened and crispy bugs, and that was life.

So we'd just go and catch them. It didn't matter, school night, we'd be out till 10 o'clock. We'd go to the car lots that were close to the freeway because they just had these huge, powerful lights. And you had to wait till those closed and so after nine, we would show up. Security guards initially would question us, but then they got to know us, they became familiar with us. And we were walking around with a bunch of boxes and a big butterfly net. And we just kept some of the most amazing things.

And then he went and bought the bug book: "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders." It had these great color pictures, and really well made. And we would look through that and it would show the habitat and the range of every bug. And you'd be like, "Oh, they're here too." And we'd, kind of almost like birders do, where you're trying to make a list of, "Can we find this?"

One of our favorites were walking sticks. They're so cool. They look just like a stick. And we had like an 8-and-a-half inch, it wasn't a walking stick, it was like a walking branch, right? It was huge. As big around as your pinky and scared to death the first time you see it, and you realize these things, they don't bite, they don't do anything. They're just trying to hide.

My dad got really interested in preserving this. And so he went to the Container Store, which is like we had downtown, bought these clear boxes of different sizes. And he'd carry them around in his car, actually. We'd always have some in the glove box because you never know what you're gonna see. And we would just start catching things. And if we didn't have it, we would collect it and we'd bring it home and we put it into this little display cases that he bought, mounted on the styrofoam, male and female of everyone. Our little Noah's, little bug ark, right? But they're dead, sorry. And we just started growing this collection.

So this became kind of the thing and I was 9, 10 years old. And my older siblings were not super interested in this. You know, they were too cool.

So in seventh grade, we had to do our life science bug collecting project. And you're supposed to try and find 50 bugs. Almost every case, kids would come in with like 15 to 20. And I remember bringing my whole collection and we had hundreds, probably 250 to 300 different things like longhorn beetles, click beetles, large eye, small eye, all the different types of moth, polyphemus, IO. And people couldn't believe that we had caught these right around us. And it was always like, "How come nobody else can see these?" In part, it's because maybe they didn't know where to look, or they weren't really trying. Or you also got things that totally camouflaged in. But if you're not looking, if you don't recognize it, then you won't see it.

As a kid, as a dad, I feel bad like these are beautiful, why are we killing them? He always said, "Look, most bugs don't live more than maybe a few weeks, a few months, especially when you think about a butterfly or a moth like after they come out of their cocoon, they don't live long in that form. So our preserving them, meant other people could appreciate them and be aware of them."

Ever since then, I realizee that we have this all around us. And we can get so stuck up in our own heads, or we can start to see things.

When I learned to speak another language I'd have those moments where you'd learn a new word and all of a sudden, you would hear it everywhere. And it wasn't that that word hadn't been said, every single day. And actually it had been hitting your ears, but until you recognize that knew what it was, your brain didn't process it. And in some ways, the same is true with the bugs.

When you learn to recognize a moth, you would learn to see it and all of a sudden, you would see it everywhere.

And so with spiritual things, they're there. Once we learn to see how much the Lord is trying to bless us and it's constantly blessing us, once we see that pattern and learn it, we'll recognize it all the time, and we'll recognize that it was always happening. But if we don't pay attention to it, or if we don't learn to appreciate it, we'll miss it. And it's not because it's not happening. It's just that because we are failing to see it.

That's why I believe one of the principal values of a journal is even learning to recognize the hand of the Lord in our own lives on a consistent, daily basis. Not just the big, one time this happened, but every day. How do I wake up and learn to have an eye of gratitude and see those things?

When I go back to Texas now, on the same street that I grew up, and if you stand there at night, you don't see a single bug under a streetlight anymore. It makes me sound like a million years old because like how could it have changed so quickly. And it really, this has been true probably for the last 20 years, it's pretty rare to see any of the things that I saw. And I'm worried that some of them are gone forever.

And I realized that the amount of time that I'm going to spend with my dad who's now 76 years old, is probably measured in a number of days. We live in separate states, I might spend less than three weeks of cumulative time with my dad, person to person. That kind of thought is sobering. And so all the more I appreciate every moment we have. Even after he is gone, when I see a bug, it will always connect me back to those moments. And it keeps us strong in its own interesting way.

I think a lot of times as parents, we're told we're a generation apart. And we're just in different places and trying to communicate directly sometimes with a kid is hard. Now that I've got six, and various ages, but in this, my dad and I had a common bond. I know my other siblings like bugs, but my dad and I are the ones that shared this. You know when you're not actually catching the butterfly, like sure that was exciting, but it was 45 minutes of just banter and just conversation where we built that relationship.

We need to have these binding moments with our kids. It's not enough to just be blood anymore. There's so much more things that are more entertaining, more exciting. And so finding ways that we can be in not just proximity, but that emotionally or intellectually, or spiritually, of course, we are teamed up and we are working on something together. I have to find opportunities to create with my kids because that will reinforce who they truly are, and then bind us all together.

These kinds of activities, it's something that we do that becomes part of the fabric of who we are that will always keep us close. It lifts our eyes from the mundane to the more divine. It's pretty cool.

KaRyn Lay 30:08

That was Spencer. If you have been a longtime listener to "This Is the Gospel," you might recognize Spencer from one of our very first episodes. In fact, he was one of the first people that I called when I needed a good story for the pilot of the podcasts because I knew that he'd be able to spin a good yarn and make some really beautiful gospel connections.

Spencer's story and all the many lessons he learned about the world from his enthusiastic study of bugs with his dad made me think that some of the most powerful spiritual teachers come in all shapes and sizes. And some of them might have wings and too many legs, but it's up to us to open our eyes to the wonder of the natural world if we want to learn from them.

There's a little scriptural passage in Job in chapter 12 that kind of sums it up for me. It starts in verse seven, "But ask now the bees, and they shall teach thee. And the fowls of the air and they shall teach thee. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." And then it skips to verse 10, "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind?"

Job was in the depths of his despair when he spoke these words. More trouble was coming for him and, and somehow, he understood that turning his heart to reflect on the natural world could actually bring healing and hope and connection in the midst of his pain.

And I'm not sure if this understanding is what motivated Spencer's dad to turn to spending time in the parking lots under the lamplight with his 10-year-old son after a really big move. But it almost doesn't matter. From those hours that they spent collecting their Noah's ark of bugs, Spencer and his dad internalize the lesson that the earth is trying to teach us all. Life is fragile and fleeting and precious. And we are all, great and small, buggin man, father and son, connected by the truth that we were created by the same master.

I'm a huge fan of the word stewardship. It comes from the Old English and it means keeper of the house or guardian of the hall. It's so interesting to me that the Lord uses this word steward and stewardship throughout the scripture to describe our relationship to the earth and all the things in it. In fact, in Doctrine and Covenants, section 104, verses 13 and 14, he reveals to Joseph Smith, "For it is expedient that I the Lord should make every man accountable as a steward over earthly blessings, which I've made and prepared for my creatures. I the Lord stretched out the heavens and built the earth, my very handiwork and all things there in our mind."

I've been thinking about what it would look like if my gospel gig was to be a guardian of the halls of God's house. If we think about it as a literal house, I can imagine walking some great marble halls filled with God's treasures, and I'd like to think that I'd be a decent steward. I'd like to think that I could be really attentive to the things around me, always looking for ways to protect them. Maybe I'd wear white gloves and check for dust a little bit more often than I do at my own house, or drink a little more caffeine so that I'd stay alert to anything that might be a miss.

Certainly because I love the master of that house I would care for and honor the things that he made because they're a part of him. But I also suspect that like most things that become routine, after a while, I'd probably get used to all that greatness all around me in those halls and I might lose the sense of wonder and awe that would keep me hustling to be good at my job.

If the Lord's house is this earth, then today's stories are a wake up call for me and I hope for you that while we're in the midst of facing uncertainty and certain difficulty, maybe even as certain as Job's, we can still find solace and spirit and God's creation. It's a reminder to go outside and seek wonder and to pray for new eyes so that we can see the spiders dangling in our headlights or be awed by the bees in our walls. It's a reminder to spend time with people you love in places that testify of God by virtue of their very existence. I really believe that this will invite the Spirit who testifies of Christ into our lives more and it will reawaken our desire to be good stewards, keepers of the house and guardians of the halls of this earth. And it will give us more reverence for every living thing created by a loving father for our benefit.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Kristin, Matt and Spencer for sharing their stories and their innate enthusiasm for all the creepy crawly things. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers including a picture of those honey hive curtains in our show notes at ldsiving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll also link to the gospel topics from the Church about stewardship. It's a really good read and there's some great things in there that you can learn. Some of my favorite quotes and thoughts about nature are found there.

You can also get more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. A huge thank you to every one of you who takes the time to write a review of this podcast on whatever platform you listen, we love to hear how the podcast and specific episodes and stories have stuck with you and helped you on your discipleship journey.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers and we find a lot of those stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with additional story production from Sarah Blake. It was edited by Erika Free and Kelly Campbell and scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Anna's teen years are spent in anger and frustration at God for not saving her mom until an unwelcome opportunity sparks a new perspective; Juan is stopped in his tracks on his way into a fast-food restaurant when a sign from heaven sheds new light on an unanswered prayer that haunted him for years.

To see our show notes for this episode, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn 0:04

Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

I wouldn't say I am a huge modern country music fan – I tend to like my country a little bit more dusty, but when I put today's theme into Google, just to see what I could see, only one thing popped up in the search results.

The 1990 Country Music juggernaut of a song from Garth Brooks called, "Unanswered Prayers." It immediately triggered a series of flashbacks to those awkward dances at Rockland Junior High where the only thing bigger than my hairsprayed bangs was all of my anxiety about being asked by an actual boy to dance to a slow song.

And if you're unfamiliar with this particular slow song, let me give you a quick synopsis. It's a story about a teenager begging God for something that he thought he wanted, only to realize as an adult that getting that thing that he wanted, would have precluded him from the gift of his current family and life. The song has all the country feelings – regret, longing, a high school football game, and a nod to a loving Heavenly Father. And it ends with a super catchy chorus.

So if you want to jaunt down American Memory Lane, hit the YouTube give it a listen. But here's the thing, Garth song and its catchphrase, "Thank God for unanswered prayers," is a little overly simplistic for my taste.

It might make for a really great t-shirt at the merch table, but I think that understanding and making sense of our own unanswered prayers can feel a little bit more confusing and even devastating when you're in the middle of the asking and the not getting

Getting to gratitude and thanking God for saying no is sometimes a really long and perilous journey. So today, we're going to dig into the complexity of the spiritual phenomenon with two stories from people whose righteous desires didn't end in easy yes's.

First, we'll hear from Anna, who's wrestle with prayer began pretty early on in her life. Here's Anna.

Anna 2:11

Growing up in primary, I was always taught that if you had a good desire, and if it was a righteous desire, then Heavenly Father was going to answer your prayer, and He was going to give you what you wanted. And I was always taught about the miracles that happened, you would read about it in the scriptures, and I would, you know, hear people bear testimony about the miracles in their own life.

So when I was nine years old – I had just turned nine – we found out that my mom's cancer had come back. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was five, and then had been in remission. and it had come back. And this time, they told us that it was terminal, and that she was probably going to not survive it because it had spread so rapidly throughout her body.

But as a nine year old girl I had, you know, all the faith in the world. And I knew that – I knew that it was gonna be okay. I was like, "No worries. I'll just, I'll just pray" – because I felt that praying for my mom to live and to not die was a very righteous desire.

And so I prayed so hard that she wouldn't die because I didn't want her to, and I really believe that if I prayed that she wouldn't die, that that she wouldn't. That she would survive, that this would be, you know, one of those miracle stories.

But on October 13 2005, I remember waking up and I looked at the clock and it – I shared a room with my little sister – and it was nine in the morning. And I thought, "This is the greatest day of my life, my parents have forgotten to wake me up for school. I don't have to go to school."

And so my little sister woke up and she started making noises and trying to talk to me and I was like, "No, no, go back to bed. Mom and Dad won't take us to school if we don't wake up." But my dad heard us, and he asked us to come out and we went out into our living room and he was there with his mom and his sister, and they told us that she passed away earlier that morning. And that the cancer had taken her life and . . . I was nine and my little sister had just barely turned seven.

And I mean I was just bawling. And I was like, "What?" I was like "No!" like, "My mom can't be gone." And I can remember telling my dad, you know, I said I was like, "You know Dad, I'm not gonna pray anymore." Because I said, "God didn't answer my prayer. So obviously God doesn't love me. And God doesn't answer prayers because I prayed so hard and so many people were praying that she wouldn't die." And yet, here I was without a mom here on earth and I was just so upset and I was so angry. And I held on to that anger.

Anger was like this blanket for me where I would just like wrap it around myself, and anytime I started to not feel angry, I was like, "Whoa, this feels weird, bring it back." And my prayers definitely changed after that, where, when I would pray, it would be very routine, it would be, you know, the "Please bless that I'll be able to sleep tonight. And I'll be able to wake up and go to school tomorrow and do good things."

It wasn't very, it wasn't very heartfelt. I didn't want . . . I didn't want to pray. And I didn't really pray on my own. I would pray in like family settings and stuff. But I just really didn't believe that God answered prayers, because he hadn't answered mine. And that was a pretty big prayer that I wanted to have answered.

My dad got remarried to my stepmom, and I did not like her, um, because I was just so angry. I was like, "No, you don't get to come in here and like pretend to be my mom, I've been raised one way for nine years." "You don't just get to kind of like come in here and try and you know, tell me what to do." And I would always tell her that anytime she would say something to me, I would be like, "You're not my mom." That was like my card that I would pull out all the time.

And I was just so angry. And I really took it out on her, because I felt that if I loved her – if I loved my stepmom – then I would be forgetting my mom. But I was lucky enough to have a dad who, you know, when I told him that I was done praying, he didn't just go, "Okay, sounds good." Like, "You're right. He didn't answer my prayer, either. Let's just like stop going to church and stop doing things."

But he taught me of the plan of salvation and of eternal families. And it was, it was those truths, that kept me going. I had to hold on to that hope that I was going to see my mom again, and that families are eternal, and that the plan of salvation is this wonderful plan that our Heavenly Father has given us. And that's what really kept me going.

Even though I didn't feel like I could ask Heavenly Father for important things at that time. So I would only ask them for like little things like, "Can you help us find this lost toy?" Or, "Can you, you know, help me on this test?" It would just be like, very little things, and I wouldn't put a lot of faith in Him to, like, fulfill it.

Like, I'd be like, I mean, I don't really know if he's, you know, I don't know if he's actually going to help us find this toy, I don't . . . you know, like, I didn't really have a lot of faith during that time that he would actually answer those prayers. But I kind of started to ask him for little things here and there to kind of, I guess, see what would happen.

All of this kind of started to change when I was in my first year of college, and I was praying to tell God, that I was not going to be serving a mission, that that was not part of what I was going to do in my life. I was literally – I was like, "Heavenly Father, I'm not going to serve a mission. I hope that's okay with you. Thank you, amen."

And then I felt that I needed to open my scriptures. So I just like grab my scriptures, opened it up to a random chapter – to this day, still can't even find that chapter in D&C – and I just read a little bit of the headline, and it just talks about missionary work. And I shut that book so quickly. And I shoved it back and I was like, "Nope. Nuh uh."

And I felt so like, deep within me, like, I've never had an experience like that, where it was just instant, like, "No, you need to serve a mission Anna." And I was like, "Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen." And I was so anxious.

But then I went to the temple, and I prayed, and I, and I just had this overwhelming feeling of peace. It was like, "Anna, you need to go on a mission." And like, "Everything's going to be okay. If I'm asking you to do this, I'm gonna help you through it." And I was like, "Alright, I'm going on a mission." And from that moment forward, I didn't ever look back.

On my mission, it kind of came to this point where I was miserable on my mission for the first little bit because I just like, didn't want to be there – that I had to make a choice. Whether I was going to let misery rule my life, or if I was going to choose happiness, and if I was going to choose goodness, and if I was going to choose Christ.

And I decided I'd rather be happy. And so I really allowed the Savior to enter into my heart. And that's really – I know, and I believe that that's really what what healed me was letting him come into my heart.

It took, like the entire 18 months, pretty much where I think it was close to the end of my mission where I could remember just thinking I was like, "Wow," like, I don't feel that literal . . . like it just kind of felt like a very heavy burden that had been on me for all those years because I was so angry and upset at God for not answering my prayer.

And I think it was was just the process of, you know, on the mission and missions aren't for everyone, but I do believe that I, I had to serve a mission in order to heal, because I needed to get out of the environment that I was in at home, and I just needed to get like completely thrown out in a new place. And I needed . . . like in a mission like you really have to rely on the Savior, like you can't do it on your own. And so I really had to learn to really trust the Savior, and to trust Heavenly Father.

That unanswered prayer of my mom passing away hasn't been resolved, in the sense that, like, my mom isn't alive, you know, she hasn't come back to life miraculously. And there's still been, you know, other prayers, maybe not as big as that in the grand scheme of things that have gone unanswered. And I still don't fully understand why my mom had to be taken from me and my little sister when we were so young. And I don't know if that's something that I'll ever fully understand in this life.

But I just know that He hears the unanswered prayers. And He is there for us. And it may just not be in the way that we want, or the way that we recognize. And it may take years to look back and recognize that God was there for that unanswered prayer.

What changed for me was the perspective. That instead of focusing on everything that went wrong, I just started to focus on the things that went right.

And I started to focus on the fact that, you know, my dad got remarried, like, nine months after my mom had passed away. And he married a wonderful woman, who is incredible, and loves me and my little sister with everything. And then together, they had my two littlest sisters who I love, and who I could not imagine life without.

And that I realized that, you know, I had such a great support group around me. Neighbors and family and friends, who were there to help me. And so I think what changed is that I, I learned that I could ask for help from Heavenly Father, during the midst of trials and after them, and that he would be there to help me, and that he would, you know, lift that burden.

You know, Heavenly Father knew that my mom wasn't going to survive, and I know that he heard that little nine year old prayer. And I think when I was younger, I, I think I had more so of an image of God, kind of just being this kind of ruthless, like hard person who, you know, didn't like me very much, and so He didn't answer that prayer, and He was okay watching me struggle.

But as I got older, I started to recognize and realize that, you know, I'm sure that Heavenly Father wasn't sitting around going, "Oh, I'm so happy that, you know, sweet Anna's mom's gonna die," or watching my mom suffer through cancer . . I know that He was probably weeping with us, and that He was probably really sad about it too, but that He knew that it was gonna happen, and so He put things in place that He knew were gonna help me and my family after that trial.

And during that trial, I mean, just the incredible amount of tender mercies, and so that specific prayer of like, "Please don't let my mom die," wasn't answered, but then He puts things in my life to help me so that I would be able to overcome it.

KaRyn 13:51

That was Anna.

I think we might all be able to relate to that feeling she had, I know I can when she ran headfirst into the dissonance of what she had learned about prayer in primary, and what she learned about prayer while living it.

So many things in our spiritual life can feel like a betrayal when the rubber hits the road of discipleship, and we recognize that there's a little bit more variation in the stories than what we were told in primary.

And anger. Anger is a really normal response to this kind of betrayal, whether it's real or perceived. It's what we decide to do with that anger in the long run that really matters.

I happen to know Anna's stepmother, and I know that while Anna's childhood anger response was anything but pleasant. She was really lucky to have two adults in her life who saw it for what it was and held her more closely during her bouts of rage.

And I think while it might not feel like it – that that's what our Father in Heaven is doing for us. For each of us. He's doing that same thing, drawing us closer during our raging as we learn to manage our expectations against the reality of growth in the Gospel.

Anna's story is a lesson to all of us. She didn't stop praying despite the challenge to her belief about prayer. And that eventually led her to an open heart about serving a mission, which is where her healing was prepared all along.

And though parts of her understanding about that unanswered prayer remain totally unresolved, that's the part of her story that gives me the most hope. It's a testament to humanity's unflagging capacity, to thrive in the in-between spaces. To sit with the pain of the unknown, and still have gratitude for what we do know. To feel the rage of that dissonance and still call out to a father we can only hope is hearing us. To experience the loss of a beloved mother and discover a new love in our little sisters. I really think that unanswered prayers magnified this hopeful truth about each of us.

Our next story about prayers unanswered comes from Juan.

Juan 15:57

Way back when I was a much younger man and full of more energy, my wife and I had decided that at some point in the future, we wanted to own a restaurant. But the big problem here in West Palm Beach, Florida is that most of our restaurants business is done on Saturday and Sunday.

Especially with – ironically – the church crowds. Obviously, we couldn't have a business that works on Sunday because of our own religious beliefs, but we found that Chick-fil-A doesn't open on Sundays, so it seemed to me that would be the perfect franchise to get.

You work six days a week like the Lord commanded, and you're off resting on a seventh day. Win-win for everybody. So we decided that's what we wanted to do. And so we prayed about it. We got great feelings about Chick-fil-A, that was it. That was the answer to our prayers.

Early on in our marriage, we made the commitment to be full tithe payers, because the Lord has distinctly said, "If you give your tithing God will bless you." And we knew that that was the way it is, because we've seen it in other aspects of our life.

So as we were paying our tithing, we were expecting that this is what would happen. You pay your tithing, you get blessings, and one of the blessings that we wanted was a Chick-fil-A.

So we contacted the corporate Chick-Fil-A offices and the franchise department and so forth and we were talking to them, and they told us they had no interest at all in opening here in West Palm Beach, because a few years before that, the one that they had here, there was a robbery, and it resulted in a fatality.

It was a real blow, honestly, you know, because we knew that this was what was supposed to happen. How could it possibly not happen?

Two years later, the news opens up that some entrepreneur guy who's already worth millions of dollars really loved Chick-fil-A. So he bought a lot here in the middle of town and told Chick-fil-A, "Hey, I'm going to build a restaurant, would you like franchise fees?" Instead, he decided having a Chick-fil-A in West Palm Beach would be amazing. You could imagine what I'm thinking, right? He doesn't need any more money. Or at least I didn't think he needed any more money because that's what's supposed to be my money. So it hurt. I mean, I was crushed.

And caused me to question several things. I questioned my own thought process about tithing and about how God could be so unfair when I had been so good. I mean, I see other people around me very successful. And I knew a lot about them that they were not, quote, "churchy people." So I struggled a lot to resolve their success with their lifestyle versus my lack of success with my lifestyle, which I thought was better because I was following the commandments that God wanted, and he's not blessing me the way I want.

It just changed my entire outlook. And it changed my relationship with God and with the Church. I stopped asking for things. And instead of asking for very specific things, you asked for the general things in hopes of not being disappointed.

So it was about two years that I just had this horrible bitterness and then our daughter Zoe was born. A couple years went by, and her pre-k daycare gave out bagels with peanut butter on and she reacted badly. It wasn't threatening her life, but it was close.

And that's when we discovered that she had peanut allergies. And so after that, it was all hands on deck. We scrubbed our house of all things peanut, egg, and milk related because egg and milk are two other allergies she had. We didn't go to birthday parties because we don't know what would be in the cake or where it was made or what instruments they might have used to make it that might have come in contact with everything she was allergic to. And we cut our lives down to one restaurant, a barbecue joint that we were made sure had none of her allergies.

We really cut a lot of things out of our life to make sure that she, honestly, that she didn't die. And it was rough on the other two kids, but they eventually got used to it. It was a sacrifice we were willing to make to keep her with us.

Time passed, and I had mostly accepted that I was not going to be a restaurant owner and I was not going to be a Chick-fil-A owner. But I travel a lot around town for work. My job keeps me out of the office in a work truck. And I would pass by that stupid Chick-fil-A three times a week.

And if you've ever been by a Chick-fil-A, there's never a time when there isn't six, seven cars in the drive thru. It's just horribly poppin' and horribly busy. And I was just thinking about all that money that millionaire is getting that I wasn't getting.

So every couple times a week I get a little jab in the side, and I'd move on and try to forget it and then I go past it again. I had mostly let it go, but every now and then it would just get to me a little bit.

One day, I was out in my work truck. And I was driving past Chick-fil-A and my stomach decided to forgive the millionaire guy and go get a Chick-fil-A sandwich. But as usual, there's like 20 cars in the drive thru. And I didn't feel like being in line. So I parked the truck and I went inside. And as I go inside, there's this giant banner across the front. It says, "Celebrating 40 years of cooking with peanut oil."

And I stopped. Everything kind of went blank except for the sign. I stopped breathing. I just felt stunned beyond all belief and just turned to walk back out because going through my head was if I had owned this franchise when my child was born, then possibly the first time I ever held my daughter, my newborn daughter in my arms, having come home from work, a hard day at the franchise. And if anybody's ever worked in a restaurant, you know, you carry the restaurant home in your clothes, it just seeps into you. So I would have carried all that peanut home with me and possibly killed my daughter the first time I held her after work. And that's the moment that I realized that I was being the worst possible son ever. I'd literally been looking at my dad and yelling at him because he wouldn't let me touch the stove, in love.

It made me think about all the other times that I didn't do something because I wasn't sure. Or I didn't get that answer I wanted to the prayer. I prayed and prayed and prayed to get that Chick-fil-A.. And if I had gotten that Chick-fil-A, I would have lost my daughter.

Now, speaking from the future, the science has come out that supposedly peanut oil is processed in a way that it removes the proteins that create allergens. But it has the word peanut in it and I'm not taking the chance. It's one of those things you don't want to "if" about.

And so I was angry at my dad for not letting me touch the hot stove. And all he had to do was let me touch the hot stove and I would have been happy, or so I thought. Instead, he didn't let me touch the hot stove. And my daughter just turned 16 two days ago. So, that was a really hard moment because I realized I was being a complete idiot for the past four years. I was actually upset at God for getting a blessing because sometimes the blessing is not getting what you want.

This experience changed the way I think about tithing and prayer. Tithing, and the blessings you get from tithing, doesn't necessarily mean, "Hey, if I pay 10%, God's gonna make me a millionaire." No, that means that, you know, things don't break as often. Friends help you out. You find sales on items that normally don't go on sale, things like that those are robust, and they're tiny. They're small blessings that add up. And that's what that scripture means: but I will pour out blessings upon you until you can handle them anymore. It's the little blessings that add up, not the great big blessing.

Prayer, for me, and I think for our entire family, has become more of a thank you note. We don't really pray for the giant things anymore. We give more thanks. And then we asked for, we asked for protection for our family, we asked for health for everyone, especially right now.

I used to ask God for things and I quit asking God for the big things when all this happened because I was angry. He's, I'm gonna ask him and he's gonna say no anyway. I mean, how many kids have done that? You know, I asked, and asked and asked, and dad always says no. Okay, fine, then I won't ask anymore. But now it's sort of developed into I don't need those big things because he has given me so many smaller things that actually have ended up being a small part of being greater than the sum of the whole.

It sounds strange, but I know that I'm not destined to be that world changer. There are certain people that come into the world that are destined to change the world. Our family is the family of worker bees in the hive. And we know this, and we don't necessarily look for the big things, but we do appreciate the daily comforts that we have. We're the disciples that weren't mentioned in the Bible, the crowds that follow Jesus and follow His commandments but didn't get the spotlight, that's us. And we're okay with that now. And we're happy with the things that we have. We have three healthy children, we have enough for our needs. And enough for an occasional want, and then it's good enough for us. And we love each other as a family and we will do anything for each other. And we know that we're there for each other every day. And then God has our backs. That is a lesson I got from the unanswered prayer.

KaRyn 27:28

That was Juan.

We first featured Juan's story in our "This Is the Gospel" video series back in 2017, I think. And it was really fun to revisit the details and learn more about how he came to understand the gift of his unanswered prayer.

History demonstrates a really cool trick that many of us already kind of do unconsciously as we hit new roadblocks in our journey towards eternity. It's called cognitive reframing, and let me give you a little crash course. In the same way that buildings have a frame that determines the shape of the rooms we live in, many of our beliefs and attitudes act as the frames that determine the shape of our testimony. So when we choose to renovate our homes or reshape our testimony, sometimes we have to make adjustments to that frame. And how we do that might look different for each of us. But in all cases, it's a choice, a gift of our agency.

For Juan, the remodel started with the idea that God doesn't keep his promises and all that bitterness that seeped into his heart every time he drove by that Chick-fil-A. But then with time and a gentle nudge from heaven in the form of a vinyl sign that showed him that maybe his perspective could use some adjustments, he chose to review, to repent, and to take stock of his framework about tithing and about prayer. The result was a totally new perspective, a reframing of, "God doesn't keep his promises," into, "The promise was not to grant my wishes, the promises to pour out blessings that he knows I need."

You know this reframing, this is hard spiritual work, my friends. Some of us are naturally gifted at it, and it just flows from us. But the rest of us, like me, well, reframing takes time. And it takes humility, and it takes practice and sometimes a lot of help from above. But the good news that we saw in Juan's story is that reframing is a skill that can be learned and mastered in this life. And it's a skill that will help us to draw closer to our Father in Heaven, even in the midst of our trials.

This idea of reframing reminds me of one of my favorite lessons from one of my favorite gospel teachers. S. Michael Wilcox wrote a book called, "When Your Prayers Seem to Go Unanswered," and it's a short little gem from the Time Out for Women classics. So some of you actually may even remember this TOFW presentation.

In this book, he masterfully shows us so many ways that we can reframe our belief about God's seeming silence. And I don't have time to tell you the whole book. It's so good, but the part of his message that has been rolling around in my heart today is this, quote, "Occasionally answers aren't given, or the blessings we desire don't come, or the trials we bear continue because there is no place in our hearts for God to put the answer we need. Life must carve or hollow out this place. The very experiences we are going through helped to create these holding places, yet he still hears our prayers and promises the resolution will come in time."

This concept of time and experience carving out the holding place is so beautiful to me. I often think that if the Lord had granted my petitions and shown me the reasons and purpose for some of the most painful unanswered prayers when I was in the middle of begging for understanding, my heart might have been too smooth, to free of the friction necessary to hold the truth in its place. I needed that time, and, frankly, I needed the heartbreak to crack open space for that new perspective. And when the time was just right so that I could see the answer from all sides in its new home in my renovated heart, that's when the understanding came. And isn't it so amazing to see the creation of that holding place in both of the stories that we heard today?

Beyond the anger and the fear, the resentment, that feeling of unfairness and blame, beyond that lay a new way of seeing the world and God's goodness. But first, Anna had to step out of her comfort zone and into her mission to teach others about the power of prayer and the plan of salvation. And Juan had to step into fatherhood and out of his truck to witness what Brother Wilcox calls the given good from God instead of the expected good. With each step, the holding place was being hollowed out of the studs of their hearts, so that they could reframe their experience with God and His love for them. And if like Anna, the full answer to our heartfelt prayers have not yet found their way to us, well, I have to quote Brother Wilcox again, "May we have the patience to wait for life, measured by the wisdom of God, to carve the holding places in our hearts."

Today, I wish you patience, my friends. There are so many questions that God has yet to answer, but the promise is that he will answer them.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Anna and Juan, for sharing their stories and their wisdom. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers, including a link to Juan's original "This Is the Gospel" video and Michael Wilcox's his book "When Your Prayers Seem to Go Unanswered" in our show notes at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel.

You can find more of the good stuff by joining us over at Instagram and Facebook at thisisthegospel_podcast. All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers.

If you'd like to become one of our storytellers, the best way to throw your hat in the ring is through our pitch line. We find so many of our stories like Anna's from the pitch line. We listen to every pitch and we love to hear how the gospel of Jesus Christ is transforming your lives. The best pitches are going to be short, sweet, and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch it when you call 515-519-6179. So come prepared.

And listen, while we can't get back to everyone who calls the pitch line, please don't give up hope. If you haven't heard from us yet, it can sometimes take months and even years to develop just the right theme for your story.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: A new Christmas tradition challenges Matt to put into writing all the things he has trouble saying; Gracie, Cescily, Paul, & Sheradon call the pitchline with stories of what "getting it right" looks like for them; Leslie's attempt to skip the holidays is thwarted by a wise dad with three poinsettias and a plan.

Find the Pearl S. Buck story "Christmas Day in the Morning" here.

For complete show notes for this episode, please visit ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

We'll be back with weekly episodes starting JANUARY 11th. Merry Christmas!

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn 0:03

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

Don't even say it. I already know that today's theme is a little bit controversial because what does it even mean to get it right? If we take the philosophical route, we'd probably determine that absolute rightness is a construct that it doesn't actually exist because of the sheer number of relative interpretations, depending on our lived experiences, belief systems, cultural norms, and more. And we might determine that it's impossible to ever actually get anything truly, and purely right.

And now that we've collectively had an existential crisis together, maybe we can decide to be a little more generous with the imperfections and inaccuracies of the English language, a little more poetic, maybe, as we tackle this idea of getting it right.

I think if we look at it through the lens of the restored gospel, we might be reminded that our God is eternally interested in us getting it right. And he's been really generous with us as we play the long game of perfection. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the plan of salvation and the Atonement. We do our best with faith and humility and he makes it right.

And of course, when we apply getting it right to this beautiful season of Christmas, that's a celebration of that perfect act of selflessness. I don't think it takes a PhD in philosophy to recognize our own efforts towards true discipleship, and the efforts of others. Christmas is the perfect time to internalize this truth: that we are all on different paths that lead to the same place when our hearts are turned in the right direction.

And today, we've got six really short stories about holiday hearts turned right. These right turns might look a little bit different than your right turns, but that's what's so exciting about storytelling: we get to witness one another's uniquely drawn paths and celebrate both the heartaches and the wins together.

Our first short story comes from Matt, a father who found himself wondering if he could be the change he saw his family needed at the holidays. Here's Matt.

Matt 2:14

I don't remember exactly what year it was how it started. It was a while ago, the kids were teenagers. And I remember, though, that we were kind of getting to that point where you're in the arms race of Christmas, as your kids get older. And so you kind of have to, you know, up it each year to try and make sure that they're excited as they get older because the things that they they need kind of get more and more expensive.

We're going around fighting the battle to try and get presents and I asked the kids about what they had gotten the previous year. And they didn't even remember. And so I was sitting here in the middle of this battle, trying to get all the presents and go into the different stores and they don't have what you want and whatnot. And then to hear that they didn't really remember what they got the year before. It kind of hit me like, "Well, then what's the point? What are we doing this for?"

This is nothing on the kids. They're great kids. But I had, even myself, tried to think back to what gifts I had got the year before. And you just you don't really remember those things, you remember experiences. And so I thought, "Well, maybe this is something that that needs to change."

And to understand, I'm not a very empathetic person. I'm not very good at you know, I mean, I try and understand people's feelings, but I'm not, I'm not very good at it. And I'm especially not good at expressing any feelings. And my wife is very good at pointing that out to me as something that I need to improve on. And she had mentioned before, that – I don't know if it was for a birthday or anniversary but – she said, "You know, you don't need to get me a present, I just want to letter. I just want to know how you feel."

So with that background, in the midst of this Christmas time and the hecticness and not remembering the presents and my wife saying that, I thought maybe this is a good thing that we can do, is to cut back on the presents, the monetary, actual physical gifts, and we can give letters about how we feel for each other.

There was no pushback from the kids, and we didn't cut out presents at all, because it was kind of fun, so what we did is we said – so there's five of us, you know, the parents and three kids – and we said, you know, "Give each other a gift but keep it less than $20." So we still went and found something but because we set that $20 limit, you kind of had to think a little bit about you know, "I don't want to just give him some junk." So I actually got some really thoughtful gifts, and so still kind of fun because we had things to open, but the focus was the letters.

So I'd like to say that, you know, I prepared the whole year and took notes and wrote in my journal about all the wonderful things they did, but I wasn't that good. So it would kind of come down to December. And I knew as it was looming, then you start thinking about, okay, what are some of the things that have maybe gone on this year that I can talk about in that letter? And what are some things that I can say that are meaningful, that maybe I didn't say last year? So that it does doesn't become repetitive, you know, saying the same thing each year. And truly, what is it about them that I love and appreciate?

As I started to think about my family, it took that focus off of me and onto them, and I start to feel maybe even just a teeny little bit, that true meaning of Christmas, which is the gift that our Savior gave us. And it allowed me to then focus on giving a little bit of myself, to them.

You know, each Christmas we hear about, you know, at Christmas, we are the people that we should be all year. Well, I don't even think at Christmas I was the person I should have been all year round, because of this, you know, not being able to express my feelings or not taking the chance. It's something that was always really tough for me to express those feelings. But because it was written, it was easier for me.

And the surprising thing was that once we started doing it, how awkward it wasn't. Knowing that it was expected, and that they were expecting this letter from me, helped me to kind of overcome that. And so I guess the surprising thing to me was how easy it was to get into it. And to be able to write those letters, which before felt like such a difficult, awkward, embarrassing thing that I didn't want to do.

Hopefully, it's been able to help my kids get better at expressing themselves, to do that. I know it's helped me, and I know that now – I actually, not that I didn't look forward to Christmas before, but I look forward to it with a new – I just I look forward to those letters, and I have them all my journal.

I don't know if my kids keep all of their letters, I'm assuming they do. But I know my wife and I keep ours. And it's kind of nice to actually get out and read them sometimes, especially when you're, you know, we all have struggles. And there's times when you feel like you're kind of – "Ah, I made the wrong decisions. And I'm kind of feeling beat down." And you can pull those letters out. And you can look at them and say, "Well, at least there's four people in the world who appreciate me. And I've got proof in these letters."

This isn't something that has turned our family into some super holy family that's ready to be translated or anything like that. We still have arguments as a family, it's just something that's helped us to take some of that negative and commercialism of Christmas out of our house and to make it more peaceful, and it's helped us to get closer to each other and I think in that respect, closer to our Savior.

KaRyn 8:29

That was Matt. I first learned about his adventure and Christmas letter writing from his daughter our story producer Erika. We were talking about the story from Pearl S. Buck that they retold at last year's Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert called, "Christmas Day in the Morning," and it's a story all about getting it right.

If you haven't seen the concert or read this story, I'll give you a really quick synopsis. It's all about an empty nester named Robert who is grappling with the changes in his life at Christmas time. Now that there are no little children to surprise and delight, it seems like the spark of Christmas has gone out for both him and his wife, and he's not really sure how to get it back.

So he remembers a Christmas as a youth when he surprised his father by getting up before him and milking the cows so that his dad wouldn't have to work on Christmas Day. He remembered that that work wasn't a chore anymore, because he loved his father and his father loved him, it was the most joyful cow milking he'd ever done. And that memory awakens in him this truth about getting it right. That when we harness the love that's already been given to us by our Savior, whatever we offer to others with that love will be a joyful, joyful gift. The right gift.

And so, Robert is reawakened to the joy of Christmas and he decides to write a letter of love and gratitude to his wife as a gift to her. It seems almost ridiculous how relevant that 80 year old story is right now in the middle of Christmas 2020.

Change, grief, disruption, those might define our Christmas season this year, and that's hard. And it's worth grieving. But Pearl's fictional story and Matt's real story remind us that even in the midst of all of these hard things, the right gifts will do more than show love to those who receive them. They're going to transform the giver through the atoning power of Jesus Christ. Those gifts given in His pure love will re-animate the light in us that shines in every direction.

Next, we've got four stories straight from the pitch-line from four different storytellers, a high schooler, a missionary, a hiker, and a mom. All with one big thing in common, a desire to get it right at Christmas.

Gracie 10:43

My name is Gracie and I am 17 years old. Christmas time for me is usually very busy. And I remember last year that it was especially busy.

I'm a musician. And so I'm involved in a lot of orchestras in my community, as well as just different music groups with friends and family, and I actually teach private music students. So at the time, I had about 20 private music students that I was trying to teach on top of school and everything else. It seemed like I had a performance for Christmas about every single night.

And so towards the end of the season last year, I was feeling really pretty burnt out. And I just really wanted a break. And at the same time, I kept having a prompting that I needed to go play music for a man in my ward who was suffering from some pretty severe health problems at the time, and I just kind of pushed it aside because I felt like I was too busy. But I have a really good connection with this man, we actually share the exact same birthday, and I just felt like I needed to.

So I talked to my mom about it and we chose one of the only nights that I didn't have anything else going on, it seemed like to go over and played the couple songs for him. And we got there. And the very first song that I played was Jingle Bells. And I remember as soon as I started playing, I looked over at him and he had tears streaming down his face.

I thought, why is he crying? You know, this is Jingle Bells. It's not even like a spiritual, pretty song. But by the end of the night, we all were in tears, because we realized how much this simple little concert meant to him, and it really made me reflect on the Savior. Because when I picture the birth of the Savior, I don't picture a town of busy streets full of people and commotion, I picture a sacred, silent night when a King was born.

And that's really what I felt that night as I played for this man, because it made me realize that during a season that's meant to celebrate the Savior, I should be focusing on these still peaceful moments made while serving others, instead of everything else that I had going on in my life at the time.

And I am especially grateful that I followed this prompting to play for this man that night because it actually ended up being his last Christmas. And so ever since this experience, I really tried to take time out of my busy schedule, to do just simple things, to try to improve the lives of those around me even if they're just really small, because you never know the impact that they will have. And I found that this has brought me so much closer to my Savior than I ever thought that it could, because it's helped me to really forget about myself and my own problems and help those around me and really find out what the true meaning of Christmas is.

Thank you.

Cescily 13:40

Hello, my name is Cescily. And my story is on Christmas 3 years ago. I was six months into my mission in New York City, and I felt like I was thriving. I had the best companion, I have the best district, I was in an area that I was close to the members and I was close to the people that we were teaching. And it was just such a happy time of my life.

Well a week before Christmas, transfer calls came in. And I found out I was the only one in the district that was leaving, and my heart broke. And when I found out where I was going my heart broke even more because I was going to an area with a companion who was also new to the area – we were getting blinded in – neither of us had had been there ever, and I learned the history of the area to know that the members and the missionaries didn't have the best of relationships and there was nobody in the teaching pool – I could sense trial ahead of me, for sure.

Well fast forward, I get to the area, it was about as hard as I expected, if not more. And Christmas Eve comes and we had nowhere to go for Christmas, because like I said the members and the missionaries didn't have the best of relationships and we could just – we only had like five days to mend that and we couldn't do it.

And so we're sitting on our, on our kitchen floor because we didn't have a table at the time. We just had our study desk. And so we're sitting on our kitchen floor, I'm eating mac and cheese, my companions eating tuna fish out of a bowl, because we didn't have time to go to get groceries and I was just feeling so sorry for myself, eating my mac and cheese and just crying.

And then after we were done eating, we were just like, "You know what? Let's make this day better. Let's go and do something about it." And so we went and we got on the train, and we just subway surfed. We got our district together and we just sat on the train and we decided to sing hymns.

We – it was Christmas Eve and we're just all standing together as missionaries, just standing and just singing, singing Christmas hymns. While we're doing that, I pulled out my little tablet and played the "Light the World" Christ just illuminated the screen. And I could just feel the Spirit so strongly in that subway car. I could feel that people in New York City in the subway car, who looked as if – that Christmas had only ever been a getting a gift for them, and as we all sat in that subway and sing Hymns I could feel the lives of them being touched, and that was the moment that Christmas changed for me. It didn't matter that I was 2000 miles away from my family, it didn't matter that I didn't have a place to go for Christmas. What mattered was that the Savior was born, and other people were learning that too.

Paul 16:41

Hi, my name is Paul. In late 2018 after a snowy day, I decided to go for a hike up a local Canyon. I was listening to conference – had been listening to conference on my hikes before and so I started, I was listening to the about the middle of the morning session, Sunday morning session.

The trail up the canyon ends after about two and a half miles. And I didn't want to go back down that same trail. And so I decided to hike up the slope to another trail that came along the ridge. It was a very difficult hike, but I knew that if I got up there by the time of sundown, that there would probably be enough light for me to make my way down that easier ridge trail and make it home.

As I was following that ridge trail, conference was concluding, and President Nelson was talking about temples and I thought about how much I love the temple. And as I did this, he announced locations. There was cheering. And it was as if I was one of those people in those, in those places. And my heart just melted. I felt such love and gratitude for my Heavenly Father.

So I continued to hike along, reveling in those feelings. The lights of the city indeed began to illuminate my snowy, snowy path. And then I noticed that not only were those normal lights, but there were the many colored Christmas lights.

I thought about the shepherd's going to see the Christ child and about the gratitude that they would feel for him. And so I did that, and I was thinking about all of this and looking down this beautiful scene, peaceful scene below me, I realized that this was Christmas Eve. And my heart just burst with love and gratitude and peace and all the blessings of the gospel. And I found a little bare spot under a cedar tree and knelt and gave my Heavenly Father heartfelt thanks for His son and His birth. And then I heard hurried home. Thanks.

Sheradon 19:04

Hi, my name is Sheradon. And a few years ago we had just moved to Dubai and our first Christmas here we decided to take a trip to Jerusalem. We had planned to stay outside of Jerusalem and then over Christmas Eve into Christmas we were going to spend a night in Jerusalem and kind of check out all of the Old City. And so we get into Jerusalem on the 24th. We see – you know – the Old City, we see the Wailing Wall, and the Temple Mount and then we head over to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Now it was kind of a shock to me because there were so many people there. So many. And it was just right by this busy road, and honking and driving and it was quite sad to me. I wanted to have this place by myself and have my kids experience this. You know have their own testimony building or I don't even know – just something, but it just was so crowded and loud and, and I was kind of disappointed.

So I tried to feel the Spirit as much as I could and teach my boys of the sacred spot. On our way back, we got to our Airbnb, and we were locked out. We couldn't get in the building. So we tried to go and talk to the tour manager that was down in front, and he had no idea what we were saying, no one spoke English, we were getting really worried and frustrated, my husband didn't have any way to contact the person that he rented from. And so we were kind of lost.

We finally were able to have someone let us in, we get to our room, and we couldn't get into our room. But it was kind of a fun experience, I was telling my kids that it was kind of like Jesus, not being let in the inn, and so we kind of had fun talking about that. That night, it was cold, the heating wasn't working, but we all kind of snuggled in our blankets and slept.

And in the morning, my husband and I had decided not to do any presents, but the kids woke up and they were so excited it was Christmas. We didn't have any decorations or anything, but they're like, "It's Christmas!" Finally, we headed over to the Garden Tomb.

We were so excited because it was Christmas, it was just a great time to go, perfect day, we get over there and it's closed, even though we had checked that it would be open. So we waited just a little bit, ringing the doorbell, and then people started coming out. And we we're asking them it, "Is this open? Can we come in?" And they said, "No, we're going to, you know, breakfast brunch, and it's not open today." And we were like, "Please. We came all this way. This was our big thing that we were going to do on Christmas." And they're just like, "No, no, no." Finally, this one guy, his name was Glenn, and he was from the Foursquare church in California. And he said, "Oh, I'll take them around." And they said, "Oh, but you won't be able to find where we're going to be, you'll be late, you'll miss out," trying to get him to come and not take us around. He said, "Oh no, it's fine. I can make it, I'll be there."

And so he went and took us around on a personal tour of the Garden Tomb. And it was beautiful. It was quiet and wonderful. And he didn't rush us at all, he walked us through and let us have our time. It was just such a wonderful gift and tender mercy that we were able to have this time as a family and to spend it alone in this beautiful, quiet garden. It just made the Christmas so much more meaningful, and all about what it's supposed to be, which is our Savior, Jesus Christ and His birth and His life and sacrifice. And I'm just so grateful for that opportunity, and it'll be a Christmas that I will never forget.

KaRyn 23:05

That was Gracie, Cescily, Paul and Sheradon. I love when we can feature so many stories in one episode, because it very quickly demonstrates both the depth and the breadth of the way that God is tailoring our individual spiritual curriculums, and what Gracie needs in order to get Christmas right is different than what Paul needs to get it right. And what getting it right look like for Sister Cecily, three years ago in New York City is going to be different than what it looks like for RM Cescily in December of 2020.

So here are some of the questions that I'm asking myself during this strange and beautiful season. How has getting it right changed for me over the years and what is unique to me and the ways that I'm being asked to stretch right now? I'm a little worried because I think that pondering and answering these questions might just be setting me up for some really lofty New Year's resolutions. We'll see. But I still think it's worth doing.

Our final short story comes from Leslie who's experience at Thanksgiving helped her to understand what getting it right could look like year round. Here's Leslie.

Leslie 24:10

Every time I come into a holiday season that's been challenging for me in some kind of way or for others, my heart and my mind go back to one of my most difficult holidays, and really what became the miracle of that holiday season in my life and in my heart.

I'm a single mom, I have three children and I've been divorced for about 15 years and this was the very first holiday after my separation from my ex-husband. And it was my first Thanksgiving without my kids. You know, you don't go into parenting and into thinking about holidays and seasons sort of planning, "What's going to be my strategy if I ever find myself going from one year were my whole world and holidays revolving around my family and my kids, to suddenly finding myself completely alone?"

And I had extended family who live really close, and of course, wanted me to come and invited me to be part of all of the normal holiday activities that our family would do typically on a Thanksgiving. But I just couldn't go. I couldn't join, I didn't want to be around reminders of family. I didn't know how to show up in a way that wouldn't be sad. Because I was just sad. I was depressed, I didn't want to have to pretend. I just didn't feel like I could put a smile on my face.

And I'm kind of by nature a positive person, and I, you know, like to try to bring joy and light to a room and a family and an experience and home setting, and I felt like I had nothing to give. And so I just really respectfully said, "I'm just not going to be able to join," and I turned out the lights – which is not like me to do this – and I crawled into bed, and I decided I'm going to sleep away this Thanksgiving Day.

Holidays, laughter, family, everything that revolves around that was a reminder of what I was missing, and the pain I was going through. And I remember that afternoon, after my dad had hosted our family dinner that day with my extended family, he came over to my house. And what I remember is him knocking at the door, and my not going down to get the door, and getting a text from him saying, "I'm here. I want you to come down and open the door." Which I did. And he said, "I want you to go get dressed. We're going to go get something to eat."

And he told me that he was going to pick up my sister who was also single at the time. And he said, "I'm going to take you guys to dinner. It'll be just the two of you. You need to get out and you need to be with somebody right now." My sister later told me that he had invited her to come so that you know, I wouldn't be completely alone, that I would have some sense of family, but that she also was single, and they could hold space for me.

And so he picked me up, we went and got my sister and we drove to a restaurant. I wasn't dressed up, I didn't have to have a smile on my face. I could grieve. We talked. What ended up with just sadness and no pressure for me to have to answer questions or say anything for things I couldn't yet process. And my dad was also a single dad and divorced at the time. And I think he just knew.

By the end of that dinner time, we were laughing and joking and eating and I was already feeling better. We left, and my dad drove to a grocery store. He left my sister and I in the car and he said had to go in and get something. So he went inside. And he came back out with three poinsettias. He didn't say anything yet, he just came back in.

I didn't know if the three poinsettias were for us or who they were for, and he drove from there to a rest home. I'd never been there, apparently he knew where it was because at one point we'd had a great aunt who had had a stay at the facility that he had visited. He told us to each get one of the poinsettias, so we did and the three of us walked in. And my dad went up to the front desk and he said, "Could we have the names of three people who haven't had any visitors today?"

At that point, I'm starting to realize what we're just about to do. And we went in and we visited with three residents who, on that Thanksgiving Day had had no family. And no one come to visit them. There was a woman and she was lying in bed, I don't know her circumstances, I don't know her condition, she didn't or couldn't sit up. But she was able to turn her head – and her smile. I think that's when something for me shifted, because I completely forgot about everything that I was going through.

I forgot about everything I had lost. And suddenly I was just wrapped up in the Spirit and wrapped up in the miracle of the moment of how happy she was to have you sit and visit with her for a few minutes and to set that beautiful vibrant poinsettia by her and to hold her hand and to just look into her eyes and have that moment of sweetness and Spirit and connection. And it was at that moment that I realized that this was so much less about what I was able to share and give to her and suddenly it was so much more about what I was receiving, and the feeling of hope, the love that was starting to flow inside of my heart.

As I thought and reflected back often on that experience, I'm so grateful that my dad first held space for the pain that I was in, and he held space for my grief. And he didn't make me show up in some certain way, he didn't force that or push that. He kind of honored the place that I was at, and that was really important. I needed to be listened to, and he was so good at listening. He was so good at caring.

I've often said that, you know, I came to know, my Father in Heaven because of how my dad serves. Ever since that moment, I have made sure that I build service into whatever the holiday looks like. Because there is always someone who hasn't had visitors that day. There's always someone who hasn't had a carol or hasn't received a gift or can't afford a Christmas tree. And there are so many ways that we can reach out and bless lives and take a poinsettia to visit someone.

I've often felt that I feel closest to Him when I am in His service. I know that the Lord on Christmas would be seeking to feed the hungry and lift the hands that hang low. You know, He would be putting coats on those who are cold. He doesn't ask questions, He doesn't ask why. He doesn't have to be fancy, He doesn't care what it's gift wrapped in, but He is just constantly seeking to love. And when I have moments where I can choose to go, "Okay Father who needs thy love?" You know, those are the moments I feel closest to Him, to my Savior. And I'm so grateful for the invitation during Christmas time to in fact, seek to be like Him, and for me is that great power and miracle of charity and love, that there literally is no limit to the endless ways in which we can share and give love and bless lives.

KaRyn 32:36

That was Leslie. I learned two things about getting it right from this story. First from Leslie's dad, before we can offer our own life experiences to another person before they can truly feel the balm of our love, and our hope for them, we have to meet them where they are. He didn't lecture, he didn't give advice, even though he was uniquely qualified to do that as both her parent and someone who had experience with being a single parent.

Instead, he came to where she was – he literally came to where she was – and got her. And then he sat with her and her sister at that dinner and he let her cry, then and only then was he able to tend to her wounds by offering his example.

The second thing I learned is that I want to be more intentional about building meaningful service into my holiday plans. In the same way that I obsess over my Christmas baking spreadsheet and plan months in advance for some of the family experiences that we have. I really want the act of asking Heavenly Father where He wants and needs my heart and energy this season built into that initial planning. And I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do that, I have a few pieces of inspiration from today's stories, but I know that I felt the call to do better at this from listening to Leslie's story.

And that's not to say that how I've been doing Christmas all along is bad or wrong or not enough. I really think that it was exactly what it was supposed to be, and that choosing to make some turns in my discipleship journey when I feel that tug of the Spirit doesn't cancel out all the good that was happening before.

Listen, I'm going to sound like a total hippie right now. But it's the only way that I can describe what I mean. And I may have picked up this concept from Marie Kondo and "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up." As we figure out what getting it right looks like for us right now, and as we follow the Spirit into this new, stretching territory, it's not a terrible idea to take a little bit of time to reflect and to offer thanks and gratitude to the years before, in the same way that Mari might invite us to thank a worn out sock for keeping our feet warm before we send them off into the sock drawer in the sky.

We could spend some time honoring the work and the effort that brought us such joy and such movement before we got this new call. Celebrating what was, so that we can be fully engaged in what is, right before us – right now.

I don't know exactly what it's going to look like for you to get it right this Christmas. To bring it back to that PhD in philosophy, there are literally a million ways that rightness can be expressed in your family culture and your country and your discipleship experience. But I do know that making a right turn is required. And it's possible for us as we look toward the right source of all that is holy, and hopeful and good in this world.

As we focus on the Savior who was so much more than just a baby in a manger, we'll know what we need to do. And whether that's climbing a new mountain for some quiet reflection, or slowing down to play the violin for a friend and staying just a little bit longer than you plan to, or persisting at the door of the garden, until you find your way in. Whatever that next right thing is for your growth and the strengthening of your devotion to Him, you'll get it just right. If you let yourself be filled with His love.

That's it for this episode of This Is the Gospel. Thank you so much to all of our storytellers. We are so grateful for your willingness to share your hearts with us. We'll have more information including some links and pictures on our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. This is the last episode until the New Year. We're taking a tiny break so that we can try to catch up and be ahead of the game in the new year.

We'll be back with weekly episodes January 11, and in the meantime, you can find us on Instagram or Facebook at @ThisIstheGospel_podcast to get your fix during the holidays. And this is a great time for you to go back and catch up on old episodes you might have missed or revisit some favorites that you have been thinking about.

A huge thank you to everyone who shared your reviews of the podcast, we love to hear from you. You can leave a review on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen to. Reviews are super helpful in pushing us up in the recommended section of so many platforms, and that means more people can find us.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. And as you saw today, we find lots of our stories through our pitch line. So if you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learned something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you.

The best pitches will be short. They'll be focused on the story and not the takeaway, and they'll have a clear sense of focus. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay with story production and editing from Erika free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find all of the past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS Living.com/podcasts.

Merry Christmas.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Adam is all set for a safe career in engineering when a chance encounter leads him to embrace his true creative calling as an animator; When faced with upheaval and contention in her community, peace-loving Bryn finds solace in repentance and a prompting to fold 1,000 origami cranes.

To see our show notes for this episode (transcript, pictures, links, & more!) go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn 0:03

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

You're gonna have to be a little bit patient with me this week as I geek out over our theme. You know how some people have seen every episode of "Star Trek" and they love it so much that they collect "Star Trek" Christmas tree ornaments and own a dictionary of Klingon phrases? (Is that not a thing? Just something my dad does?) Whatever that thing is that you love as much as a Trekkie loves "Star Trek," that's how I feel about the pursuit of a creative life.

I've read like a million how-to books. I collect quotes about the value and purpose of creativity. And when I can't even make time to do my dishes, I make time and space for my creative hobbies and making things. More importantly, when I think about what makes me feel the very most like who I was always meant to be in this life, the thing that comes to mind is the practice of creativity. And it's not just art, or poetry, or music, or even whipping up a really great chocolate babka a la the Great British Bake Off.

I firmly believe that the pursuit of that creative life is the pursuit of a spiritually connected life. I mean, think about it, as disciples of Jesus Christ, who are practicing to be more and more like Him, the creator of universes and the author of salvation, we are actively and regularly engaged in efforts to create. Deeper relationships, light, connection to heaven, binding covenants, every part of who we are as children of our Heavenly Father requires an amount of creativity.

And we have two stories for you about the way the practice of creativity and that nurturing of our divine creative spark can open up worlds of possibility and power for the forward movement of God's work here on the earth.

Our first story comes from Adam an illustrator who accidentally discovered his passion for creativity when he decided to think outside the box at school. Here's Adam.

Adam 2:03

In 1999, I had the pivotal moment in my life where I had to decide what classes I was going to take fall semester. And so I was sitting there, looking through a newsprint catalog of classes, trying to decide what major I would become when I returned to BYU and therefore determine the course of my entire life and career.

And so as I dialed up on the touchtone phone, I looked over the classes and I said, "Hmm, this one's interesting, something called 'industrial design.'" But I chose the safe route. I was going to be an engineer. And so I signed up for all those classes. And at the end of the summer, when I returned to BYU two weeks after my mission, I started in the mechanical engineering program.

It was a safe bet. That's what good members of the church did, like they had safe and sensible careers. And that seemed like what I was supposed to do. So in that first week, back at BYU, I was fresh, home from my mission, the sky was the limit.

And I had a bit of a moment where I took the time to explore some options. And I looked into this industrial design major, I thought, okay, let me just check this out. And I went through the classes and went through a tour.

And there were three divisions in the industrial design major. There was a automotive design, which I thought was really cool, I always used to draw cars. Product design, where you design shoes and toasters and things. And then I found this strange little division that was so obscure and didn't quite fit, which was called digital design.

And I was told that there was a computer lab going on with one of the professor's teaching. His name was Brent Adams. And he had started this portion of industrial design called digital design. And I walked in and I saw him using a software package called Maya and he was rotating a sphere up on the big screen. And I thought, "This is it. This is what I want to do for a living. And this is your chance, Adam Sidwell, to make velociraptors and dinosaurs for a living."

I signed up for the major. I got so excited about this. This was what I wanted to do. And I left engineering behind and I didn't look back for one second.

There were no teachers besides Brent Adams, so what that meant is that we took a lot of illustration classes, and then we'd have this one big long class that was about three to four hours, three times a week, where we would sit in the class and just learn hands on how to use this software and how to dive into animation. And it was hard. And especially in a world where the internet had hardly any content on it.

And, you know, I was the best artist in high school. My art teachers loved me. But for the first time in my life, I was with artists who were way more talented than I was. And I would put my work up against theirs, and it just paled in comparison. And had my art looked at and somebody would say, "This isn't good." "This is the problem here, here and here."

And I had many, many moments of doubt of if this was something I could do. And I just wasn't sure if I was learning enough. Because we never had known anyone who had actually graduated from BYU, and gotten a job working in the movie industry. The chances of making it in a creative career are really, really slim in a lot of those careers, because you're up against a lot of competition, and some of it is just pure luck.

There was a lot of prayer involved, there was a lot of soul searching, and usually not about "if," but "how." And my antidote to the discouragement and to the feelings of "Wow, this is really hard," – my antidote to that and my answer was, more work. Work harder.

And I remember spending five hour chunks of time in the laboratory. And in the Snell building at BYU was locked away in a room without windows, a computer lab. And they would close the doors to the Snell building at 10pm at night. But that was – for us – the time when we were just getting started, after having already done our other schoolwork and having already had a computer lab session earlier that day.

And so sometimes, if we had forgotten, or we hadn't made it in time to the doors being closed, there was a second story window, that if you climbed up a pillar, and someone gave you a boost, you could heave yourself onto a ledge and shimmy through a window – that was just about as wide as I was – into another computer lab classroom.

Which, funnily enough, was often occupied at 10pm, and then suddenly, a couple of animation majors would come plopping through a second story window, much to the surprise of the professor or students who were then engaged in the class. And we'd walk through nonchalantly waving "Hello" and moving over to our computer lab so that we could get more work done.

It was nights like that where I often found myself emerging as the sun was coming up, having worked all night, and walking back home to catch a few hours of sleep – or a few minutes of sleep – before my next day of classes started.

And I remember just feeling incredibly happy because of the work that I was doing.

There's something remarkable about having an idea, that goes something like this: "Wouldn't it be amazing if –?" and then you go through a process of sketching it, then modeling it and putting it into computer software, and rendering it until you have something that you can put up on your screen, and you can look at and go "Woh."

And as I dove further and further into computer graphics and animation, and I learned the math and the physics – I got this feeling that we were trying to recreate on screen, the process of creation.

We have to study and understand that there is math and equations behind how water flows. We have to understand, you know, how the anatomy of a human being helps us to move the way that we do. We have to examine the physics and the math behind how light bounces off of surfaces and reacts such that the colors come to our eye and we see things like glass and water. And we get a little glimpse into how God created the world.

And I think God wants us to create because that is the divine mission of all of us. We create life. we are destined to become like Him and be co-creators and heirs to all the He has, and to create worlds to come.

And so I didn't know how everything would turn out. But I hoped. And even if I didn't find success in what I'm doing, there was joy in the creation, and the building of a skill that I knew I could take with me into the next life.

And so here I am in year five at BYU, most of my friends from high school had long since graduated and started their careers. And I was starting to become what felt like to the outside world an old guy in college. As were many of the other animation majors with me.

And I came home one day to find that there was something written on the whiteboard by one of my roommates in the living room, and it said, "Pixar called." With a return phone number. And I thought this must be the biggest joke that they were playing on me.

Because I had sent off a little VHS tape with a couple of blue lemmings with – that didn't even have eyeballs bouncing around on a screen that I had created this crowd simulation algorithm and sent off this VHS.

And it turns out that that was a real phone number. And I called and I had what I think was the first interview of a BYU student with Pixar.

And I remember sitting in the basement of my apartment, and I was talking through what I had created with two of the technical leads from Pixar Animation Studios. And this was the coolest moment. And I completely botched the interview.

I tripped all over my words. I didn't know what I was saying. I was too afraid to take credit for my work and be bold in explaining to them the technical aspects of how it worked. And I never got that job.

But I thought for a second, maybe I'm onto something. So I kept working and a few short months later, I showed a similar videotape, with the same lemmings, but this time they walked and they had fur and they had eyeballs and they had very cool animation.

I showed it to the movie studio that did visual effects and animation called Digital Domain. And right there on the phone call – this was a few days after I graduated and I was still in my apartment at BYU – on that phone call I heard the interviewer pause for a second. He said, "Hold on a second" and he covered the phone but I could still hear him and he said, "So do we want to hire this guy?" And they go, "Yeah, let's hire him." And right then and there. They offered me a job.

I was ready to jump in and do it for free. But they'd offered me a year contract. It was an actual paying job, $13.64 an hour. This was the year 2003. And I jumped in my minivan. I drove away from BYU with everything packed up in it. And with the short stop to my counselor and who said, "Yes, you have enough requirements to graduate. You're out of here, buddy."

And 10 days later, I was in Los Angeles seeking my fortune, working on the movie "iRobot."

And since then, animation has taken me all over the world. You know, I got to go work for Peter Jackson for a year in New Zealand, I got to work on some of my favorite films with favorite characters like "Tron" and "Transformers" and "Ninja Turtles."

I even got to work for Industrial Light and Magic, which is just surrounded by all the coolest Star Wars memorabilia, and I loved it. And it was like this dream that came true. And I came to this moment where I realized that wow, sometimes things do work out. Sometimes our hard work does pay off.

Each creation that we make is part of telling the story. And for me, you know at the root of it all is the fact that I like to tell stories.

In many ways I think of God as the master storyteller and novelist and creator. He knows the end from the beginning. And there are moments of doubt and despair in the characters lives. And we as the characters don't always know how it's going to turn out. And in fact, sometimes it doesn't turn out. Even in this life. But in the end, when it's all said and done, justice will be served. All wrongs will be righted.

There was one moment when a reporter asked President Hinckley, "How is it that you're so optimistic all the time?" and he said, "Because I know how it's all going to turn out."

And to me, that's what's amazing, is God has written the story. And so He knows how it's all going to turn out, and the story is going to have a happy ending.

KaRyn 16:07

That was Adam.

My favorite part of his story might be the moment when he realized that becoming an animator could be his one chance to make a velociraptor. I've never really wished I could make a dinosaur. I guess I've seen the movie "Jurassic Park" one too many times, but I do love the connection that Adam made between our divine creative spark and our entire purpose here on Earth.

Though his story on the surface was about creating art, it was also about the call to create everything. To gather the elements of godliness and shape them into a life of meaning. I mean, we birth children, we build ministries, we craft family cultures that can sustain our faith.

Sometimes we even make little blue lemmings that dance and twist and run when we harness an understanding of physics and computers. It is so cool.

Our next story from Bryn is a little like an exciting puzzle that unfolds as she tells it. Here's Bryn.

Bryn 17:02

In order to understand my story, and why I'm so passionate about peace, it's important to know that I came from a family that endured the excruciating effects of divorce. It was difficult to feel peace in our home because of it, as hard as my parents tried. And I became very determined to create a different type of environment in my own home and with my own children.

So the summer of 2020 was very difficult for me. I'm very sensitive to conflict. And it was just everywhere. It was online, it was in conversations. And the conversations around racism in particular felt really personal to me.

I am a white woman, married to a person of color, and I have biracial children. I met my husband in a very unexpected way. A dear friend of ours set us up. And early on while we were dating, I was just amazed by his light and his ability to love and connect with people in a very genuine way. And as a person that longed for connection, he made me feel loved and safe and important.

And so I quickly fell in love with him, and miraculously, he fell in love with me. But because of my fear of divorce, I was really sensitive to a lot of things that I had heard growing up about what can make a strong marriage.

And I took some of these concerns to the Lord. And I said, "He comes from a developing country. And I just had always heard that it's best to marry someone from your same socioeconomic class. He didn't come from an LDS home, and so I was worried that an interfaith family would be harder. He's a person of color. And I had heard that interracial marriages are harder. The children that I had always dreamt of having my whole life were blond haired and blue eyes. And if I were to have children with him, I thought that my kids wouldn't even look like me."

As I was praying about these concerns, I just had this strong feeling of peace and I remembered this moment of personal revelation where I knew he would be my husband and that it would be okay.

And so I went forward with faith and he is without a doubt the greatest gift of my life. We have four kids, three girls and one baby boy. And they're a beautiful spectrum of color and personality. And they carry so much of their father and so much of me in them.

So as I was observing the events of the summer, and watching the way that people were interacting online, as they were discussing issues of race, it brought to light some realities about myself that I had never considered. I became very aware that list of concerns that I took to the Lord – that they were racist. And I felt a lot of shame. Because my life had become so blessed by my husband, and everything that he is.

I also, for the first time realized that because my children are biracial that they were vulnerable to racism, which is something I had never considered before. I don't know why I just hadn't ever thought about that.

As the protests escalated, I spent a lot of time praying, a lot of time crying. I saw so much suffering, and I saw the problems, and I deeply wanted solutions. But I was too scared to really engage much because I didn't want to make any mistakes. I didn't want to offend anyone.

You know, we all have blind spots. And I know that I have them. I had had racist ideas. In my mind. I didn't even know it. I didn't self-identify that way. And so I just was scared to really engage.

I remember one night, I knelt down, and I don't even think I was able to say anything. I just felt so many things. And I just gave the Lord my heart. I asked him to please help me see it the way that He seems to discern to understand because everything felt so messy, and confusing. And all of the feelings were so heavy. I really wanted to believe that there are solutions, I really wanted to believe that I couldn't be part of it. That I could give him my repentant heart. He could do something with that.

I started having a recurring image in my mind of an origami peace crane. And it was functioning as a sort of prism where a beam of white light entered into the cranes triangular shaped wings and fragmented and then dispersed out the other side in the spectrum of human skin tones from light to dark. And I really didn't understand it, but I wouldn't leave my mind.

One of the ways that God speaks to me is through images and vision. And so when I had this lingering picture in my mind, I knew it was from Him. And it made me curious to really try to understand it. So I started to research the peace crane, and I vaguely remembered something about it, but it was all pretty new to me. There is an ancient Japanese belief that healing can come to those that fold a paper crane, and that folding 1,000 cranes will actually grant you a wish. But it wasn't until after World War II that the origami crane became an international symbol of world peace.

There was a young Japanese girl. Her name was Sadako Sasaki, and she was exposed to radiation as a result of the Hiroshima bomb. And she developed terminal cancer at the age of 11. While she was in the hospital, her father told her this legend and so Sadako enthusiastically began to fold cranes from whatever scraps of paper she could find. When folding a crane, she would say, "I shall write peace on your wings and you shall fly all over the world." She wanted to earn the wish to be healed, but as she folded, her wish actually expanded to world peace.

Sadako died three months before she turned 13. And as I learned about her story, I just, I wanted that peace. I really wanted it to fly all over our world, all over our country. So as I learned about this story, I wanted to give it a try, I wanted to try folding a peace crane and see if it would help bring some peace and healing to my heart. And I pulled out a piece of printer paper, watched a tutorial on how to fold a crane, and started folding.

As I held the finished white crane in my hand, I wondered, what is the color of a peace, you know, white has always been the symbolic color of peace. And so I really sat with that question. And it was at this point, that image of the crane as a prism started to make a little more sense. I thought about how Christ is the light of the world. And we are created in the image of God, which is an image of light, then it is an image that is completely inclusive of all colors, and therefore all races. And it made me think that perhaps the color of peace is something more expansive.

And so I ran to the paper store. And I bought paper in as many skin tones as I could find, which weren't very many. There's not a very expensive collection of skin tone colors that the paper store. And so when I got home, I pulled out a piece of black paper. And I folded and I had never seen a black peace crane before. But it was beautiful. And then I folded a brown one, which is the color of my husband, a sandy beige color that is a lot like my children. A yellowish cream, and a white. And they put them all together. And I thought, That is the color piece."

At this point, this made me really curious about peace. And it gave me a different perspective on it. And so I started to study with a new curiosity. I wondered why Christ is called the Prince of Peace. Why is He not called the Prince of Love?

I studied the etymology of the word peace. And it actually comes from the root "to bind or to fasten." And this was really curious to me because it sounds a lot like a covenant. And it made me think about how God's kingdom is a kingdom of peace. It's a kingdom in which we are bound to Him and to one another in unity. And that he sent his Son, the Prince of Peace, to reconcile us to both Him and to each other through the power of the Atonement. I thought about how Christ offers the gift of peace, that passeth all understanding to help us and to sustain us through the trials and pains of life.

As I really internalize these thoughts, I started thinking about how being a Christian is actually being a person that pursues peace. And that service and forgiveness and repentance, all of these are acts of helping us to feel connected with God and connected with others.

At about this time, when I was studying all these things, I saw an image circulating on social media of a sculpture of two massive colossal hands that are making the sign language gesture for to serve, and it's located outside the Salt Lake City Public Safety building. It had been vandalized during the riots with red paint, it was spilled across them and dripping down the sides. And for me, the image was heartbreaking. It made me think, for the first time about the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking.

And as I pondered these things, I thought, "Those hands need peace. They need to make peace." And so it was at this point where I got the crazy idea to fold 1,000 peace cranes to put in those hands so that they could hold peace, as a symbolic gesture. The work that I believe we all need to do. And for me, it would be a visualization of this wish that was growing in my heart, which was peace for everyone.

I told some friends about the idea, and soon we had families around Utah helping to fold these cranes, and it was going to be a collective wish. Soon I had these cranes all over my house. They were these little symbols of peace that are there started making a really big difference on my behavior. They completely amplified my conscience. Nothing will call out your hypocrisy like pursuing peace. If I felt like yelling at my kids, I'd find in me this restraint to hold my tongue. And if not the restraint, the desire to hold my tongue. And if I saw something that was upsetting on social media, I would really try to understand. When I'd feel anxious, those little cranes reminded me to turn to the Lord more often in prayer. It was as if the symbol had embedded itself into my mind and was literally influencing my behavior. It was really powerful and I started to feel like it could maybe help other people as well. If we could spread symbols of peace, maybe it would help all of us to believe in it, and to strive for it more.

And so at the end of the summer, my husband and I decided to start a grassroots peace campaign, and we called it Let's Make Peace. And shortly after we announced it, my brother actually reached out to me and had downloaded this origami crane stencil that we offered on the website and was making tons of stencils to hand out to people in the park with chalk to do chalk art. His enthusiasm first was really surprising to me, but then I understood. He was a small business owner who lost everything as a result of COVID-19. And I think he just really needed to believe in peace.

My brother, his excitement was really encouraging to me because I had had so little interest from other people. And I had told the Lord, "If this is something that you think could help people I need to know. I don't want to invest all my time into something if it's not going to do any good." And so when my brother was just so excited about the project, it made me think, "Okay, maybe there's something to this." So I kept going with the idea and I kept trying to publish peace.

As tensions were starting to rise around the election, it seemed like the perfect time to place those 1,000 cranes. And so we finished them up and took them up to Salt Lake City and a couple of friends helped me to carefully place them in the hands of that sculpture. And I think we were all filled with hope and with the belief that we could unite in establishing and building peace.

So I had written a few press releases, I hoped that someone would pick up on the story and nobody did. And it was a little bit disappointing because I just wanted so much for people to really start talking about peace instead of all the problems. But as I was editing the pictures that I had taken, I put one side by side with image of the hands covered in red paint. And it was a really powerful moment for me as I looked at those side by side, because the hands painted red reminded me so much of the hands of our Savior in the blood that He spilled. And then the picture of those hands that were now clean and filled with these symbols of hope and peace and transformation, made me think of the healing and redemption that we all need can only come through Him. It also became really clear to me that we cannot establish peace without Christ, that we need Him to transform our stony hearts and then our stiff necks and focus our wandering eyes so that we can love Him and we can love His children. And it's in peacemaking that we can do this.

I recently read a memoir about a female peace activists in Africa. During the Liberian Civil War, she had a dream in which she was told to gather the women to pray for peace. This effort eventually became the force that would stop one of the most violent wars of the modern era. And I thought if a group of women could end a war by poaching peaks, I wonder what that means for me? I wonder what it means for the quiet battles that I face? I wonder what it means for my family? I wonder what it means for our country?

I feel so strongly that through us the Savior can do His mighty work of establishing peace. Because I've seen it, I've seen it in myself.

KaRyn 37:17

That was Bryn.

There are so many layers to Bryn's story. It's about a woman and her community creating an art installation of 1,000 origami cranes with the hope that it will spark a desire for peace. And it's about a mother learning to be present to the way she creates harmony and intentionality in our parenting. And it's about a daughter of God who is practicing that imperative part of the spiritual creative process, the one that requires us to break down our old heart through acceptance and repentance, and then hand it over to Christ so we can create a totally new one together with him.

Bryn's story is about the way we take that creative spark all the way down to our core and allow it to change us. It's about being peacekeepers and world makers on every level, and also inviting others to step into their creative powers with us and the Creator of the universe.

Maybe you're listening to all of this right now and thinking, "Yeah, yeah, that's nice, KaRyn. I think it's super impressive when people are creative. But I'm a data entry clerk who does science in spreadsheets and other left-brained activities in my spare time, creativity is just not my thing."

First of all, even though I just got done saying science and spreadsheets are not creative, that's a total lie. Everything at its core is creative if we just expand that narrow definition of creativity to include organization and building and making anything. But I get it, my data entry in the left-brain friend, I totally get it. Admitting that we have a creative spark in us is a daunting and even vulnerable thing because there's a risk in that. If you make things then people cannot like the things you made. Or maybe you're really tired right now and the idea of making one more thing so that you can live up to your divine potential feels particularly exhausting. And maybe acknowledging that inherent creativity is just one more thing to feel inadequate about.

But here's a little quote I've collected about the creative spark from Elder Uchtdorf. He said, "Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something beautiful. The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come."

Every time I read that it feels like a mic drop for two reasons. First, it's clear that we are all born with an inherent creative spark by virtue of our divine parentage, and that our opportunity to practice it in this life is a gift from God to get us ready for what's coming next. And secondly, it's also clear that we aren't in this sometimes daunting practice without help or guidance. The Spirit is our master teacher when it comes to nurturing our creativity from a spark into a fully realized flame. And as President Uchtdofr pointed out, as you rely on the Spirit to guide you, you'll have enough capacity to handle the concerns that you have about rejection, exhaustion, motivation, or self doubt.

So here's the challenge. Think about what you've already created. Write it down, I think you'll be surprised at the many ways that you're already fanning the flames of creation in your life. And then take that growing spark to the Lord. Ask him what He wants you to create right now. And listen, who knows, you might be asked to set aside the sensible career choice and dive into classes about the physics of water and how to recreate a wall of running blue lemmings on a computer screen. You might be invited to start folding origami cranes or gathering people to move towards peace. Or you might be invited to create a new heart with Christ, to repent, to burn down and then to rebuild, to create movement in your own life, to take an organized matter, and shape it into something of beauty. And we can face that invitation with excitement because we know that the Spirit is going to guide us in whatever steps to take next, and the power of God here on the earth will support us as we take those steps will grow in our confidence as creators and followers of Christ to create some really, really beautiful things in His name, with His help.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Adam and Bryn, for sharing their stories and their creative spark. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers including a link to Brian's peace project Let's Make Peace and some of Adam's cool work in our show notes at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. And watch for a shareable version of that Elder Uchtdorf quote this week on our Instagram and Facebook. We'd love to hear what the Spirit spoke to you as you participated in the challenge. Find us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast.

A huge thank you to every one of you who shared your reviews of the podcast this past week and always, we love to hear from you. You can leave a review about the podcast or a specific episode on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen to. Reviews really do help more people to find us.

All the stories in this episode are true and accurate as a firm by our storytellers, and we find so many of our stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch the story when you call 515-519-6179. This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed, and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find all 63 of the past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

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