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Given All

On August 26, 1970, my parents and their families stood on the grounds of the Salt Lake Temple taking pictures after my parents were sealed for time and all eternity in the House of the Lord.  Dad had recently returned from a six week summer training camp at Fort Lewis, Washington with the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps and Dad and Mom would spend the first few years of their marriage in the United States Army.

As they stood on the temple grounds, half way around the world Dad’s cousin, Dwight Preston O’Brien, was serving our country in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam.  Operation Elk Canyon had been launched two months earlier in an attempt to clear guerrilla strongholds from the Quảng Tín Province.  On that summer day, Dwight was among the soldiers on a CH-47 cargo helicopter transporting men and ammunition that was hit by enemy fire killing 30 men, including Dwight.  

I never knew Dwight and don’t remember his father well, but I love his mother and his siblings.  

Dwight was the third of Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Mike’s sons to be drafted and to serve during the Vietnam War.  The family was participating in the West Virginia State Fair held just a few minutes from their home when the officer arrived to share the crushing news of Dwight’s death.  They were not ones to speak much of their pain but I often heard Aunt Myrtle share her faith in God and His plan.  The Savior of the world knows us, He knows our suffering.  “Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.  Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands;” (Isaiah 49:15-16)

We don’t deserve the gift of His life and the freedom and agency His suffering provides us. Yet He gave His life to grant us peace in our turmoil and hope for everything we cannot mend or heal.   Likewise, we gratefully acknowledge that we do not deserve the unprecedented freedom and opportunity that are ours and we reverently honor those who have served, fought, suffered and like Him gave their all for us.

Grow up in the Lord

This month I began serving as an ordinance worker in the Bountiful Utah Temple and am seeing the temple with new perspective.  It reminds me of the first time I went to the temple for my own endowment. I had graduated from college, I was working full time, serving as a young women’s advisor in my ward, and in my free time I indulged in my passion for family history. 
 
As I learned about my ancestors and pieced together their families, I felt their desire to receive the ordinances of the temple.  While I could submit their names and perform proxy baptisms, I had not yet been endowed and could not help them beyond that point.   At the time, it was common to go to the temple when you were going on a mission or getting married.  I was doing neither but as their desire continued to be impressed on my heart, I pondered whether it was time for me to make covenants of my own so I could then reach out and bless them.  I studied Elder Packer’s book, The Holy Temple.  I read the temple preparation manual and tried to understand the covenants I would be making.  Though I knew many of my weaknesses, I felt I was ready to keep covenants.  I talked to my bishop, expressed my desire and he sent my recommendation to the stake president.  
 
As I entered the temple, my focus was so intent on what I would commit to the Lord that I was completely unprepared for what the Lord would promise to me.  I felt awe at the promises I heard and began to glimpse in greater measure the dreams of God for His children.  I felt the prayer that “…in the Lord’s holy house, the Saints would be armed with the power of God, that the name of Jesus Christ would be upon them, that His angels would have charge over them, and that they would grow up in the Lord and ‘receive the fullness of the Holy Ghost.'” (Elder Neil L. Andersen, April 2024)
 
Through the grace and merits of Jesus Christ all that the Father has can be ours as we “grow up in the Lord.” (D&C 109:15)

Rays of Light

As we entered Relief Society, we were handed a yellow ribbon tied to a button and soon discovered that the ribbon represented a “ray of light” from our Heavenly Father.  The Relief Society president invited us to remember and share experiences we have had in receiving “rays of light” from heaven.  Through the lesson and day, my memory ranged from my childhood to recent experiences, some of my most enduring “spiritually defining moments.”
 
As a young mother feeling stretched with a three year old and a one year old, I had the feeling that another child was ready to come.  Like Peter jumping out of the boat, we were soon thrilled to find that I was expecting our third child.  Morning sickness began, tears came easily, the fatigue was overwhelming, and like Peter walking on the water, doubt came and I began to sink.    My prayers intensified but there was no hand to lift me out of the water and day after day, week after week, month after month, I felt like I was treading water with my head barely above the surface.  Just weeks before the birth of our baby, the young women in our ward were performing a musical number in our sacrament meeting.  I listened to their strong voices and recalled the confidence and testimony I had felt as a young woman.  Tears streamed down my face as I wondered what had happened to that young woman who was now just barely hanging on.  I do not know how it happened.  It wasn’t a burst of strength, peace, clarity or understanding, rather it felt like the slow lifting of the fog, day by day, week by week, until I was once again standing in the sun with enlarged capacity,  more confidence, and increased strength.
 
“Rather than sending us a pillar of light, the Lord sends us a ray of light, and then another, and another….Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a ray and there a ray-one small, treasured spiritual moment at a time-there grows up within us a core of light-filled, spiritual experiences…[and] together they can become a light that the darkness of doubt cannot overcome.” (Elder Alexander Dushku, April 2024). We can gather rays that will sustain us, lift us and form a pillar to give us faith and hope in the darkness of our days.

Kindness

On a Southwest flight from Denver to Columbus, Ohio, I found myself seated next to an older gentleman.  As the first flight attendant came down the aisle to collect drink orders, the man took a Starbucks gift card out of his pocket and thanked the attendant for taking care of us.  He handed one to the attendant who brought our snacks and another to the one who collected our garbage.  As his neighbor, I got to witness each face light up with surprise and appreciation.  I commented on the thoughtful gesture and he replied that he had spent his life in the service industry and knew how much it meant to be noticed and appreciated.
 
Earlier in the week, I attended a Sunday School class where a man told a story from his childhood.  Growing up in a large city, he was the child of a single mom who often worked Saturdays and looked for opportunities for her son to stay busy.  He recalled her signing him up for art lessons at a local museum.  Each Saturday morning she would give him the fare to ride to the museum and back, including a small amount to purchase a little treat.  One Saturday, as he picked his treat, he gave into his desire for the large candy bar which was delightful until it was time to go home and he didn’t have enough money for the fare.  He recalled the panic that seized him, the tears that came to his eyes and the well dressed woman who stopped, listened to his story, cried with him and gave him the fare he needed to return home.  He ended by saying that the woman probably doesn’t remember him, but now fifty years later, he still prays for her in gratitude for her kindness.  
 
Kindness changes us.  It brings joy to those who give it,  wonder to those who receive it, and kindness becomes sacred to those who remember it with gratitude.  
 

To Love Another Person

Growing up in a family of golfers, our summers revolved around the local and national junior golf schedules. Our annual family vacation found us heading, along with our cousins, to San Diego, California the second week of July for the Junior World Golf Tournament. There, my siblings and cousins would play at multiple different courses with varying tee times and the logistics of having everyone in the right place at the right time were complicated. I loved the whirl and enjoyed the trips but as a non golfer I never participated in the tournament so my parents tried to find opportunities for me. One year, my dad and I and two siblings left the course and headed to Los Angeles to watch the stage production of Les Miserables. I had read the book, I knew all the music and was particularly impressed as the characters played out the theme echoed in the line, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

On Thursday night, my twenty five year old son was visiting with my parents when a call came from an elderly neighbor who wasn’t feeling well and wanted a priesthood blessing. Together, my parents and my son went to the apartment of this dear friend. My mom sat near and held her hand as they all listened to her concerns and ailments. They called her family and Dad and my son laid their hands on her head to give her a blessing from her Heavenly Father. In a quiet moment, in a quiet room this woman reached out, my parents and son responded and all felt the love they had for each other and the love of God for all of them.

They learned again the truth, “…to serve in this Church is to stand in the river of God’s love for His children….[it is] a work party of people with picks and shovels trying to help clear the channel for the river of God’s love to reach His children at the end of the row…Help carry His love to His children, and some of it will splash on you.” (Elder Robert M. Daines, October 2021) Sometimes we serve, sometimes we are served, at different times we each play a variety roles in the “river of God’s love”.  Yet in His infinite wisdom, no matter where we stand, in the process we are all cleansed, refreshed and drenched in His love.

Tell Me the Story

Primary children sing, “…Tell me the story that I love to hear.  …Tell me of heaven and why I came here.  Tell how you love me and gently speak and then I’ll go to sleep.”  One of my early memories is sitting on my daddy’s lap in a big overstuffed yellow chair in the front room of our home.  It was bedtime and he was rehearsing the story of the day I was born.  Like the Primary children, it was my favorite story.  He shared how nice I was to come in the afternoon, not the middle of the night.  His mother, on a flight from Salt Lake City to our home in Virginia, landed without knowing she had a new granddaughter.  He and Mom had taken a class so he could be in the delivery room and when I came they counted my fingers and toes and were in awe of the precious gift that had been given to them.  

 
As my father could recall the day I and each of my parents’ children was born, our Heavenly Father remembers the day, the hour, the moment when we left His presence “for the express purpose of providing an opportunity…to have the stretching and refining experience of mortality.” (Elder Patrick Kearon, April 2024) He knows our strengths, He knows our weakness, He knows our past, He knows our future, He cries at our sorrow and rejoices in our every choice to turn towards Him.
 
“Our Father’s beautiful plan…is designed to bring you home, not to keep you out.  No one has built a roadblock and stationed someone there to turn you around and send you away.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  God is in relentless pursuit of you.  He ‘wants all of His children to choose to return to Him,’ and He employs every possible measure to bring you back.” (Ibid) Turn to Him, know He is there and feel His peace.  He wants gently lead, guide and walk beside us until we are safely home.

Lady Liberty

Following the Civil War and the end of slavery in the United States of America, a French anti-slavery activist proposed a statue representing liberty be built for the United States to honor their centennial of independence and their friendship with France.  This idea grew and in 1875 the Franco-American Union was established.  The French would pay for and create the statue, the Americans would create and pay for the pedestal.  The money was not pledged by the government or a large corporation but was raised primarily from the small contributions of individuals in both countries.

I recently visited New York harbor and saw the Statue of Liberty up close. As the ferry circled the statue the first thing I noticed was the back foot of Lady Liberty. It wasn’t firmly planted on the ground, rather the foot stood on its’ toes as though walking forward, inviting us to follow. Liberty isn’t perfect in our country or any other, yet there she stands, urging people everywhere to make their own donation to liberty, hold up its light and law in every dark corner and keep moving forward until liberty reigns everywhere.

 

As we seek to move liberty forward, we can look to the author of agency, Jesus Christ, who rescues us from bondage, mends our broken hearts, and provides the light that penetrates every kind of darkness.  Like those who donated to the building of the Statue of Liberty, we can also contribute to liberty with our daily efforts to walk in His law, His gentleness, His faith, His longsuffering, His truth, His meekness and His love. Though small and imperfect, our contributions will invite the Spirit of the Lord “…and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)

Sing Redeeming Love

On Easter Sunday as I listened to my sister sing in church, a memory came of holding her crying child.  Unable to calm the tears, I turned the baby away from me and began to sing.  Her mother and I do not sound the same when we talk, but when we sing, there are so many similarities in our voices that her child stopped crying to listen.  The sound of mother’s voice brought safety and peace.

We live in a world with many voices and endless noise competing for our attention.  The cacophony can cause confusion and tears.  As His children, we may not all sound and look the same, but when we “sing the song of redeeming love” we sound like the Father of us all.  Whether that song is sung in the power of His word, in our witness of His Son, in an act of kindness, with patience or long suffering, rejoicing in forgiveness and truth our voice can echo the familiar notes of our heavenly home resonating in our hearts and the hearts of our brothers and sisters.  “We are…children of the living God who loves us, who is always ready to forgive us, and who will never, ever forsake us….We have so much to be glad about.  We have each other and we have Him.” (Elder Jeffry R. Holland, April 2022)

He is Risen

Ezekiel recorded being shown a vision of a valley full of bones.  “…Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost:”  I’m not sure how long a body must be dead for its bones to be dry, but it seems that it would be a very long time, so long, their “hope [was] lost.”  Mary and Martha wept at the death of their brother, Lazarus, and stated, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died,” and others questioned, “Could not this man…have caused that even this man should not have died?” (John 11:21,37)   

In this world we all experience the pain of separation, spiritual and physical, from those that we love. We feel pain and sorrow from too many sources to be listed and yet, as Lazarus rose from the tomb, so did Christ.

Long before He was born, He promised Ezekiel “…And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live…then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it,“ (Ezekiel 37:11-14)

Easter morning Stephen and I spent some time among the graves of our ancestors who settled Windsor and Hartford, Connecticut in the early 1600’s.  As we explored the graves of the Ancient Burying Ground in Hartford, Connecticut, I smiled at the plastic Easter eggs “hidden” among the tombstones, evidence of faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ to bring resurrection, hope, healing and new life.  We celebrate the hope of that resurrection morning when bodies and spirits will be reunited, healed and made whole.  Likewise, this outward healing is a shadow of what He is doing and can do for our hearts and minds, changing, renewing and reuniting our desires and will with His.  And as He changes us individually, He will also fulfill the “promises made to the fathers” that the hearts of the children will turn to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers will turn to their children and families will be united in a never ending chain of love and priesthood power.  He is risen with healing in His wings, healing for us, healing for our family, healing for the world.

 

Dark Nights

Albert Merrill and Margaret Richison, my husband’s fourth great grandparents, married in 1836 in New York City.  Settling in Connecticut, where his family had lived for generations, they met missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were baptized and several years later with their family of four young children they headed west. 

Arriving in Nauvoo, Illinois on May 18, 1844 they bought a lot for their new home. Margaret joined the Nauvoo choir and gave birth to a son, Austin, who they buried eight months later.  One month after their arrival, the prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were martyred at Carthage.  Albert joined the Nauvoo Legion to protect the city and in the summer of 1846, Albert and Margaret left Nauvoo, traveling west across Iowa.  

During a terrible rainstorm on the plains, Margaret gave birth to their son, Alfred.  Attempting to move on after his birth, Margaret could not endure the jolts of the wagon and they remained alone on the trail to give her time to heal.  Albert and then Margaret became sick with chills and fever.  Men sent to rescue them, took them to a few log cabins called “Lost Camp” where Margaret continued to grow worse.  The children became ill and their seven year old son, Alonzo, died.  He was followed a month later by their baby, Alfred, and their nine year old daughter, Amanda.  In his grief, Albert buried them, building a miniature log cabin over their graves to keep the wolves from their bodies.  Their food had run out and Margaret remained so ill she could not turn over in bed for seven months.  Their situation was beyond bleak and it would be hard to hope, but this was not the end.  Margaret recovered and would live to see her numerous posterity of grandchildren and even great grandchildren grow in the Salt Lake Valley and she and Albert bore witness of the miracles that accompanied them in their struggles.


This week we give thanks for a night darker than any night faced by Albert and Margaret when the Savior of the world bore our sins and sorrows, making it possible for Him to know every corner of our dark nights, giving Him the capacity to succor, sustain, redeem, heal and sanctify us.  His sacrifice makes it possible for us to call upon His power and testify, “…And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!…And I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, and in all manner of afflictions, yea God has delivered me…and He will still deliver me….and I will praise Him forever.” (Alma 36). In every dark night, because of Jesus Christ, there can be hope and light.