Author Archives: Rebekah Richards

About Rebekah Richards

Born before the internet age, I recall reading my way through the set of encyclopedias in my parents home. In addition to non fiction, I also enjoy a good novel and love the written word. Music was a staple in my childhood home, I love to sing and often sing too loud. When I was 11 years old I went with my grandma and dad to visit Grandma's family in West Virginia where they had lived for generations. I fell in love with "my" people and have spent a lifetime learning their stories. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in History and am passionate about people and their stories, those who have paved the way for the life we live, those who impact our lives daily and those whose lives our decisions will affect. I am the sister to six wonderful siblings, the wife of my best friend and the mother to four very above average children. Most of all I find deep hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to follow Him.

Take My Hand

Our neighbor does triathalons, running, biking, and swimming.  He’s been an Ironman multiple times so he’s in pretty good shape.  A few years ago, his daughter decided that it would be fun to do an obstacle race so she signed him and her brother up and the three of them ran it together.  One of the obstacles was an A-frame structure that had ropes hanging down to help you climb up and over. 

By the time they reached the obstacle, they were wet and muddy and tired.  His daughter went up and over making it look easy but as he began climbing, he found it wasn’t as easy as she made it look.  As he got closer to the top, he found that because the rope is attached to the top, you have to reach up and over without the rope.  So he let go of the rope, reached for the top and found himself sliding back down the slope to the bottom.  His son came to him with concern, as did many others who had witnessed his fall.  He was fine, but embarrassed and discouraged.  He told his son to go and he would consider his options.  He knew that he would have the same problem the second time and to try again would risk falling again, something he didn’t want to repeat. 

As he contemplated, he moved further down the A frame and then made another attempt.  It was harder the second time than it had been the first but soon he was almost to the top and faced with the same challenge when he heard a familiar voice, “Take my hand, Dad”.  His son had gone up and over, but he hadn’t gone down.  He had stayed on the other side and worked his way down as his dad moved his position so that when he came up the slope his son was there to help him over the obstacle.  

There are some things in life that are more than we can do and while the Savior walks with us always, He sends additional help as we keep trying.  His eye is always upon us.  “For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled…and as the Lord liveth He will remember the covenant which he hath made with them…He knoweth their prayers….He knoweth their faith…”  (Mormon 8:22-24)

He knows you, He knows me, His hand will be there to lift and sustain us.

Hope for the Shattered

It is football season which brings great joy to some of the members of my family.  With football season, came a memory of my maternal grandma.  Grandma was a tiny woman standing 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighing about 100 lbs.  She had beautiful skin, platinum blonde hair, and looked like a porcelain doll.  A smile most often graced her features and perhaps it hid the fact that my grandma was as tough as they come.

Grandpa and Grandma had a cabin in Island Park, Idaho and I have so many happy memories of spending time with them there.  One year they had stayed at the cabin into the early fall and on a trip into town had noticed a preseason nine on nine football scrimmage of the local high school team.

They thought they would stop and watch for awhile.  As they made their way to the grandstand, a play ran out of bounds and my little grandma was hit in the knee by the helmet of a teenage boy running at full speed.  The medical care she needed was not available there so Grandma’s leg was put in a splint and they began the painful drive back to Salt Lake City, Utah.  The doctors told her they could do surgery to mitigate the pain and part of her knee would heal, but the damage was too extensive, she was too old and most likely she would never walk again without assistance. 

She came to stay at our house through her surgery and recovery and though I am sure she had her moments of fear and heartache, I never heard her complain or whine.  What I do remember is the constant whir of the machine that kept her knee moving after the surgery to promote healing.  I remember the set of her jaw as she did the physical therapy sets she was assigned without shirking a bit.  I remember her listening to cassette tapes of the Book of Mormon while she alternated ice packs and followed her doctor’s regimen with precision believing that God would magnify her efforts.  And a year later and for the next twenty years, I watched her walk without any sign of a limp or injury.

Sometimes we pray for immediate healing. Grandma had fervently believed that she would walk again and clearly a gift of healing was granted to her, but I am grateful that the healing of her shattered knee was not immediate, not so much for her, but for me and for those of us who got to watch her and learn what the daily effort of faith looks like.  Daily faith requires consistent effort in little things, trusting God, focusing on what is and can be and not on what has been lost. When we move forward with faith, the results are often not immediately seen and yet they come.  There is hope in consistent effort and the power of our Creator who knows how to help us grow and heal.  

Discover stories and memories of your ancestors at Familysearch.org

The Blind See

My mother took me to the eye doctor in third grade.  I was not seeing well and was fitted for my first pair of glasses.  I was not enamoured with them but I did see better.  In junior high I traded my glasses for contacts and have been wearing them ever since.  My prescription hasn’t changed much over the last few decades and I just keep ordering new contacts.  However, as I age, the words on the pages in front of me are getting harder and harder to read so I made an appointment with the ophthalmologist to see if we could adjust my contacts to help me continue to read better without reading glasses.

Over the years, I have taken my children in for regular appointments but apparently hadn’t been as careful about  my own appointments as my prescription was not found in their system.  For the first time in a long time, the technician started at ground zero to get an accurate prescription.  As I sat staring at a white screen, the technician kept asking me which was better 1 or 2 and I had to explain that I couldn’t see anything.  She finally presented a capital E that was as large as the screen and I could see a faint shadowy outline of it.  

As she honed the machines and my vision cleared, I realized again that I am a blind woman who can see because of the miracle of modern medicine.  There are so many miracles in our lives:  Bodies that so often move and act in accordance with our will, faces transported to a device across the world to see and communicate with those they love, hearts that change and are softened by love and kindness.  We live in a day of miracles!

“Each of us has received gifts that we could not provide for ourselves, gifts from our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, including redemption through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  We have received life in this world; we will receive physical life in the hereafter, and eternal salvation and exaltation-if we choose it-all because of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  Every time we use, benefit from, or even think of these gifts, we ought to consider the sacrifice, generosity, and compassion of the givers.  Reverence for the givers does more than just make us grateful.  Reflecting on Their gifts can and should transform us.” (Elder Dale G. Renlund, April 2020)

I can see and when I pause to be grateful, I am changed.

Conflict can be Temporary

This week I attended the funeral of our longtime neighbor and friend, Daryl.  As I listened to the stories told by his children, I was once again struck by how much the gift of our time and presence means in the lives of those we love.

As his children recounted a few memories, Daryl’s oldest son, Russell, told that one of the things he learned from his dad was the principle of forgiveness.  During Russell’s teenage years, he and his dad had many occasions to butt heads.  It would usually end with Russell grounded but after an hour or so, his dad would come to his room and say, “Do you know why you are grounded?”  If Russell understood why he was grounded, he said his dad would look at him and say, “All is forgiven.”  The grounding was over and his dad really did forgive.  It wasn’t brought up again.  He learned that conflict didn’t need to be permanent because of forgiveness.

Similarly, his son, Brent, shared how his dad loved to tease, whether it was about his imaginary pet rhinoceros or something more real, he was a “tease.”  One night Brent and his wife returned from time with family and he found that his wife had been hurt by the teasing of his dad. He mustered his courage and called his dad to tell him the teasing had gone too far.  His dad immediately apologized and the next day when he returned from work, he found a box of Krispy Kreme donuts on the counter, a gift to his wife from his dad who had left work early so he could apologize in person to his daughter-in-law.  

Quick to repent, quick to forgive.  It is the little things that are the big things in life.  When we practice repenting and forgiving we open our hearts for the Savior, Jesus Christ, to show us “a more excellent way”. (1 Corinthians 12:31)

Friendly Rats

On a trip to West Virginia, my family and I took a tour of an old coal mine and town that have been turned into a museum.  Our tour of the underground mine was done by a former miner.  He showed the progression of mining from the early days when a candle on the front of a helmet provided light and a pick harvested the coal to the machines they use today.

Seeing a vein of coal and knowing where to blast and where to shore up as the coal is removed takes skill and nerve but there were a lot of other things I had never considered.  

The men in the mine usually had a place where they left their lunches, an area where it was high enough to stand up.  They didn’t bring their lunches in plastic lunch boxes.  They were metal because they weren’t the only ones in the mines and rats eat through plastic.  Before we could be properly horrified over the rats that would eat through a plastic lunch box, the miner said that every miner makes friends with the rats.

If you have any leftovers or a burnt part of a biscuit or roll, you take it off and throw it to the rats.  As annoying or filthy as the rats might be, every miner wants to see them in the mine, and every miner keeps an eye out for any strange movement among the rats.  

Even with the growth of technology and monitoring, the rats can smell a gas pocket better than the sensors, they can hear the rumble of the earth long before a cave in and so if a miner sees a group of rats start to move, the smart miner will follow without wondering where they are going, he just follows them to safety and then looks back to see what he’s missed.

I’ve been wondering what the “rats” in my life are.  What are the things that have been annoying, uncomfortable and sometimes just plain vermin-like in my life that have been a blessing and led me closer to safety.  As I have thought, I have felt to be grateful for some of the most long running difficulties of my life, the kind that are always present and aren’t going to go away and which I can do very little about.  But perhaps it is the very long term nature of their presence that has opened my heart, given me more compassion, caused me to focus and see more as the Savior sees and therefore, led me closer to safety.  As the miner conveyed, only the foolish would wish the rats away.  

I get off now!

Several years ago, my sister and her family who live near Boston, Massachusetts were planning a trip to Utah.  My then two year old nephew was so excited at the thought of flying across the country.  He pulled a roller suitcase around their home and took it out to the car, ready to go on this journey.  They boarded the plane, took off, and about ten minutes into the flight, he announced, “I get off now!”  The flight was not the experience he anticipated.  He was strapped into a seat, unable to move at will and it was so much longer and more uncomfortable than he wanted it to be.  I feel that way sometimes as I face certain challenges and I want to call, “I get off now!”  Yet, every challenge is a chance to take a journey to a new place to learn and grow.

As my sister was planning to visit, we were grappling with my dad’s stomach “issues” when a biopsy came back showing cancer cells growing in his stomach, killing the tissue and creating a “giant” ulcer.  Her visit coincided with his surgery to remove half of his stomach.  No one likes to hear the word cancer and I still don’t but through the process of his surgery, chemo and recovery, I spent many sweet days with my dad on drives to the hospital where we often spent time sitting and waiting.  My siblings and I connected in a different way as we tag teamed our efforts to provide Dad and Mom with the support they needed.  One early morning, I was in the waiting room while Dad had a PETscan.  I was the only one there until a woman walked in, clearly anxious.  We began to talk and in that waiting room, I put my arms around a complete stranger.  Our shared experience connected us in a way nothing else could.  Blessings come even and especially in difficult days.

So often, when our experiences are not what we anticipate, we want to call out, “I get off now!” but that thought does not help us see the vision of where this uncomfortable journey may be taking us.  Staying on the plane was the safest, most effective way to get my nephew where he was going and though it was uncomfortable for him, the pilot knew exactly how to get him there.  “I testify that you are beloved.  The Lord knows how hard you are trying.  You are making progress.  Keep going.  He sees all your hidden sacrifices and counts them to your good and the good of those you love.  Your work is not in vain.  You are not alone.  His very name, Emmanuel, means, ‘God with us.’  He is surely with you.” (Sister Sharon Eubank, April 2019). Jesus Christ is our pilot.  Though we may not see Him, or understand the flight path, He is with us and taking us to our destination.