My husband’s Grandpa Doxey holds a special status in our home. He unknowingly helped name me when as a stake president in my parents’ married student stake he gave a talk on Rebekah of the Old Testament. After meeting him in my early twenties, he introduced me to my husband and was the sealer at our temple wedding. Ten years ago this month, his family gathered to share the many ways he contributed to all of our lives as he passed from this life to the next.
Near the end of Grandpa Doxey’s life, he was diagnosed with cancer. His body was not strong enough to endure treatment. We all knew his days on earth were limited and so there was time to share experiences and memories. During that interval, his children took the opportunity to ask him questions. One asked, “When did you gain a testimony of the gospel?” They expected that he would have a specific experience to tell, a turning point in his life, but his answer was simple, “I just followed the pattern set by my parents and kept following it.”
He began each day with prayer, he went to work, filled his priesthood responsibilities and callings and each night he read the scriptures with his wife and family. It was the quiet acts of daily faith. In a quote shared at his funeral, Grandpa said, “I may not be a scriptorian, I may not be the most talented or the brightest, but I can be where I am supposed to be, when I am supposed to be there, doing what I am supposed to do.” That was the pattern, a pattern of holy habits and righteous routines, a pattern of faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ, a pattern of repentance and change, a pattern of diligence and service, a pattern of obedience and hope.
Paul testified “…for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” (1 Timothy 1:16). We can trust His pattern. He has the power, the mercy and the longsuffering to work His plan in our lives as we come to Him and follow Him.