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.

Greatest Gift

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14)…”which being interpreted is, God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)

“And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.  He is despised and rejected of men…He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed….he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:2,5,12)

“…Now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you…come unto me and ye shall have eternal life.  Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me.” (3 Nephi 9:13-14)

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more…For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17)

“We solemnly testify that His life, which is central to all human history, neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary.  He was the Firstborn of the Father, the Only Begotten Son in the flesh, the Redeemer of the world…

“We declare in words of solemnity that His priesthood and His Church have been restored upon the earth- ‘built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone’ (Ephesians 2:20)…His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come.  God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.” (The Living Christ, The Testimony of the Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

Angels Sweetly Singing

I grew up in a home where music and singing were encouraged.  Some of my favorite family home evenings were nights when we opened the hymn book and just sang, song after song as they were requested.  I love to sing and though I don’t mean to, singing quietly does not come naturally to me.  Perhaps that is one reason that in a December sacrament meeting all my children, who were then quite young, came in with great enthusiasm to sing “Angels we have heard on High”.  Their voices echoed through the chapel as they sang with all their hearts.   At a time when fatigue was a common companion for me, tears came streaming down my face as I heard their testimonies of our Savior in the music they were singing and it  filled even the weary corners of my heart.  As the song ended, my son asked, “Mom, why is everyone smiling?”  “Because your singing makes them happy,” I responded. 
 
It was not a planned performance, the voices were not trained but the testimony and the joy were real and that testimony and joy radiated to all who heard it.  Our voices may not be trained, our words may not be eloquent but as we give our efforts to sing our own song of the redeeming love we feel from Jesus Christ, His love can radiate to those around us and expand to the corners of our own hearts that are too heavy to feel like singing right now.  
 
I am grateful for the heavenly choirs, seen and unseen, who “sing the matchless love, Of Him who left His home above….Let heav’n and earth His love proclaim.” (Hymns, no 177)
 

All She Had

This morning a friend reminded me of the Savior who noticed a “certain poor widow”  cast her two mites into the treasury and taught his disciples, “Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all…she…cast in all the living that she had. ” (Luke 21:2-4).   As she cast in all she had, the widow was most likely not in the group that heard the Savior tell that hers was a larger gift than all the rich men.  She was simply doing her best, giving her all.  She went home to nothing.  No praise, no help that we know of, no money, she had given it all.  But the Lord did notice and  her effort blessed those who heard the teachings then and blesses all the rest of us who have ever read and pondered her story since.  

Throughout our lives, there will be moments, days or weeks when we say, “There is nothing left.”  Whether we are drained emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually, we all reach points in our lives where all we have is our very last “mite”.  We know our “mite” isn’t anywhere close to what we desire to give or even close to what is needed.  They are usually very quiet offerings, ones that are so small that no one else would ever notice, but the Lord does notice and just as He did with the widow, He can take our “mites” and make them into gifts that have eternal importance and impact.  Every effort, especially our last “mites” matter to the Lord.  Whatever we can give, He can make holy.

 

Beautiful Babies

Twenty five years ago on Christmas Eve, my husband and I held our first born son for the first time. It wasn’t a stable and this was not the Son of God whose birth we celebrate this season, but as we held him and basked in the glow of his immortal spirit “trailing clouds of glory…From God, who is our home” we were certain that this little boy was a son of God and had been sent by Him to us. Christmas carols came from a small cassette player and as we heard the strains, we felt that just as the angels sang for the birth of the Son of God, there were angels rejoicing in the life of this boy.

In 1809, the eyes of the world were on Napoleon and the wars of Europe but there were other momentous events that brought little attention at all. “[In] 1809, . . . Gladstone [future British Prime Minister] was born at Liverpool;  Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby rectory; and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance at Massachusetts. . . . Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath at Old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. . . . Elizabeth Barrett Browning [from] Durham. . . . But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet . . . which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809?….We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions . . . , when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies. . . When a wrong wants righting, or a work wants doing, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it.” (Frank W. Boreham as quoted by Elder Paul V. Johnson, March 14, 2023, BYU Devotional)

Though the angels sang at His birth, very few took notice of the Baby born at Bethlehem. Every day in quiet corners of the world, children are born, sent by God to bless the world. Most of their names will never be widely known but the Lord knows them. “Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you’…God sends His Son. The Son sends His servants- mortal men and women- to accomplish Their work.” (President M. Russell Ballard, April 2018). He sent you, He sent me to assist in His work “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39) This season and throughout the year, we join the angels in singing His praise and doing His work.

Muscle Memory

My dear friend and neighbor, Katie, and her husband cared for Katie’s mother for many years. Her mother struggled with dementia and sometimes that care was very difficult to give.  Katie’s mother grew up in Ogden, Utah in a proud Scottish family that danced and performed the Highland Fling and the Scottish sword dances at cultural celebrations.  It was part of her childhood.  The Christmas just before her mother’s death, they bundled her up in a wheelchair and took her to see the lights display in Ogden.  As they wheeled her through the lights, they came to a man playing the bagpipes and stopped to listen for a few minutes.  As they listened, Katie noticed her mother’s feet begin to move. 

She wasn’t just tapping her feet.  Her toes were pointed, her feet moved in precise movements and continued throughout the song.  She couldn’t remember Katie’s name or their relationship, but something deep inside of her remembered what she had learned in her youth and came back to her when nothing else would.

President Joseph F. Smith taught, “Jesus had not finished His work when His body was slain, neither did He finish it after His resurrection from the dead; although He had accomplished the purpose for which He then came to the earth, He had not fulfilled all His work.  And when will He?  Not until He has redeemed and saved every son and daughter of our father Adam that have been or ever will be born upon this earth to the end of time, except the sons of perdition.  That is His mission.” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church, Joseph F. Smith, 410)

Our Savior, whose birth we celebrate, was sent to save His Father’s children.  He waits with patience and mercy we do not comprehend for us to remember who we are and Whose we are and what we were intended to be.  He calls for us to be better, to forgive, to learn, to change, to try again and to remember how much our Heavenly Parents love and believe in us.  The veil over our minds may allow us to forget many things, but we can never fully forget the love of our First Estate and its imprint on our souls.  As our hearts turn, then in His time and through His atoning power, He “glorifies the Father, and saves all the works of His hands.” (D&C 76:43)

No Endings

A now deteriorating cemetery in Ripley, Oklahoma is the final resting place of many of the family of Richard and Elizabeth (Patton) May.  The younger sister of my great great grandpa, Elizabeth was born in 1853 in western Virginia on a prosperous farm to a large family.  Her childhood was interrupted by the Civil War and family members enlisted, fought and died, some just miles from her home.  Likely, however, the most difficult loss occurred when she was eleven years old and her mother passed away after delivering a baby girl who lived a month and then died as well.
 
Married in 1869, Elizabeth and her new husband followed the migration of many neighbors and family including her two brothers first to Kansas and then further west to Payne County, Oklahoma where they put down roots creating their own successful farm. While economically stable, Elizabeth’s losses continued.
Bend Cemetery
The mother of six children, three had died by 1900 and a year later another son, Lewis, succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of twenty.   Perhaps it was the death of her oldest son in 1908 that broke her, for when her husband’s will was probated in 1909 he left everything to her in the event that she was cured and released from the state mental hospital where she was currently residing.  Her last surviving daughter passed away in 1913 and in the 1920 Census, Elizabeth is living on the family farm with her single brother.  She had outlived her husband and all six of her children.  So many endings, so much loss.
 

On Friday, I was privileged to be in a sealing room of the Bountiful Temple with a lifelong friend who five years earlier had faced the crushing pain of the sudden death of her husband. Now she and her sons knelt at the altar of the temple, a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and were sealed to their husband and father.  Afterwards she stood with her sons in front of the mirrors that go on forever and shared her witness that her family could go on forever and there never had to be an enduring end.  Because of Jesus Christ, everything that is broken can be healed, everything that is wrong can be made right and everything that is good can go on forever and ever.  Because of Him, no end, no loss, no sorrow needs to be permanent but can be replaced with joy. “I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains.

 Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.” (Alma 36:21).  Jesus Christ can and will “wipe away all tears from [our] eyes” and turn our pain to joy as we come unto Him.

Link to Generations

Charles William O’Brien, age 80, passed from this life to the next on November 15, 2023, though I didn’t hear of it until this week.  Charles is my dad’s cousin, the son of my grandma’s sister, Myrtle, and for as long as I can remember, he has been the owner of the “home place” of our family in West Virginia.  A long haul truck driver and veteran of the Vietnam War, Charlie wasn’t a man of many words, but he did love the land and home of our ancestors and along with his brother, Rodney, who lives down the lane, has cared for that piece of our history. 

I was eleven years old when my dad and grandma took me to visit her family in West Virginia.  It was dark as we drove up the winding road from the Greenbrier River to Aunt Myrtle’s house that sat in the bend of the road that led to the “home place”. 

It wasn’t until the next morning that I saw the land and the hollow where my family had lived for generations.  It was the home where my great great grandparents raised their only child, Charles.  It was the home where he brought his new bride, Gracie, and where their oldest child, my grandma and her eight siblings were born and raised.  I recall standing in front of it while my grandma and her sisters laughed about how often my grandma, a tomboy, used the towering tree growing next to their second story bedroom window to descend to the yard below.  I could see them in my mind as they described the long walk up to Aunt Willie’s house or to the crest of the ridge to work for Aunt Sally. The hollow where Myrtle and her sons lived was like a beacon of my family pulling me in and each time I crossed the Greenbrier River and turned right on River Road, I had the feeling that though I had never lived there, I was home. 

Grandma died my freshman year of college and Myrtle passed away ten days before I got married, but the home still beckoned and when I went, it still looked the same thanks to his meticulous care.  With the generation before gone, Charles started to share stories of helping with the chores, of how many biscuits Grandpa Patton could eat for breakfast and the full pie he would eat for Sunday dessert.  He told me about the wind storm that finally brought the aging barn down and the story of Grandpa Patton’s closest cousin, Ira, who before Grandpa and Grandma Patton were married, proposed to Grandma Gracie and was never quite forgiven. 

I was not a big piece of Charles life, but he played a vital part in mine.  In so many ways, he was a link to the generations that went before me attaching me to them and helping our past to live.  “Each of us is a link in the chain of our generations. You, each of you, are a link to the past and a link to generations yet to come….” (Elder David A. Bednar, Twitter, October 28, 2019)

She Was There

As a child, my husband lived within walking distance of his grandparents. As the oldest in a large family, my husband’s favorite place to be was reading in a sitting area of his grandma’s kitchen. Knowing that Grandma was a wonderful cook, I thought he might have been drawn by the food she most likely fed him but when I asked why it was his favorite, he responded simply, “Because she was there.” Her presence brought safety, security, peace and love.

The Savior invites us to ‘Come, follow me’ and ‘walk with me.’  He entreats us to abide in Him and He will abide in us. Our desire to feel His love draws us, like my husband was drawn to his grandma’s kitchen, to be where He is. 

 “Come with conviction and endurance…Christ is everything to us and we are to ‘abide’ in Him permanently, unyieldingly, steadfastly, forever.” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2004) With all the presents we buy this year, our efforts to be in His presence will bring the safety, security, peace and love we long for and will be the gift that will matter most for generations to come.

Give What You Have

My great grandma, Gracie Mae Caldwell Patton, lived a quiet life rarely leaving the hollow where she and her husband farmed and raised their family.  Her granddaughters recalled at her home, “we always got up early to do the chores that had to be done- but always, Grandma was already up preparing for the day.  We started by bringing in wood and coal for the cook stove…because grandma started cooking early…She baked her own bread 2 to 3 times a week and biscuits daily….then she would always bathe Uncle Harry [her son who was born with special needs] and change his sheets every day and give him a good shaving….We fed Uncle Harry if Grandma was busy then we would go out to the chicken coop and gather fresh eggs for breakfast and for cooking later….

“Then we would go down to the sulfur spring and tote back two large pails of ice cold sulphur water that was placed on the back porch to stay cold for everyone who came in the back door from working outside…it had a dipper that everyone drank out of.  I guess the good Lord looked out for us cause no one got sick….Grandma and her daughters worked together to preserve the garden harvest…putting up tomatoes, green beans, pickles, beets, relish, and apple butter in the fall in a big kettle over an open fire- stirred for hours with a long handled wooden stirrer-I do recall fall Hog Butchering- Big Pigs strung up to be butchered.  Grandma used all parts of the pig- no waste…

“On Sunday morning she would be sitting in HER CHAIR by the window listening to the preachers on the radio all morning.  Grandma never went to church with all of us in the hollow- her responsibility to Uncle Harry, to be there always for him, kept her at home.” (Memories of Anita Shaver and Nancy Brown)

Grandma Gracie lived in what might be called a limited sphere yet she used that opportunity to teach her children an oft quoted line, “If you don’t give what you have, you’ll never have anything to give.” What she had, she gave. She gave the gift of hard work, teaching her children and grandchildren to contribute. She gave the gift of her steady presence that helped create security and peace for her family. She gave the gift of preparation in the fall that brought meals in the winter. She gave the gift of caring for her family. She gave the gift of happy memories to children and grandchildren who worked and played under her watchful eye. She gave the gift of faith, worshipping even as she stayed at home to care for her vulnerable son. Those gifts have rippled out through her posterity far from the hollow where she lived her life.  What she had, she gave.

In our efforts to give, there are days when we feel empty, that we have nothing left to give. This season allows us to pause and reminds us that at all times we can give thanks. Give thanks for the opportunity to work and grow. Give thanks for the gifts of life, breath and thought. Give thanks for our Creator who made all things “for the benefit and use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;” (D&C 59:18). Give thanks for the opportunity to learn to see as He sees and to love His children. Give thanks for the gift of His Son, who enables and redeems us. Give thanks!

When I look at the Savior

For nearly fifty years, Elder M. Russell Ballard has served as a general authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In August of 2013, he visited our stake conference.  During one of his talks, he stood at the pulpit, opened his scriptures, paused, and then shared that just like everyone else in the congregation, he had days when the demands of his life were overwhelming and he wondered if he could do it.  Then he pulled a small picture of the Savior from the pages of his scriptures, observed it for a moment and related that when he felt overwhelmed, he stopped, looked at the Savior and found the strength to continue. 

While I have forgotten the topic of the remainder of his talk, I have remembered his tender and personal witness that strength is gained when we “Look at the Savior.”  His life was a witness of the power of Jesus Christ in the lives of the children of God.  “Wherever you are in this world, may God bless you…I leave you my witness and testimony that I know that Jesus is the Christ.  He is our Savior, our Redeemer.  He is our best friend.” (President M. Russell Ballard, October 2023)