From Pirate to Parent

No one can deny the power of a good book. Every once in a while some of us are lucky enough to come across a book that changes the way we see the world and what we want from the one life we’ve been given on this crazy planet. I became one of the lucky ones when, as an eleven-year-old girl, I came across just such a book. 

“The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” (Avi 1990) is the story of the daughter of an upper-class American family. The book begins in 1832 when, after studying at a private girl’s school in England, Charlotte is about to board the Seahawk and make the long voyage back to America. Despite warnings from the ship’s crew that have scared away the other passengers, Charlotte’s escort insists that she board the ship and, so, the obedient, proper young lady ends up as the only passenger (and the only female) aboard the ship. She eventually learns why the crew did not want any passengers on the voyage as she discovers their plans for mutiny. The story follows Charlotte on her adventurous journey across the ocean as her cultured world is torn apart by the realities of the world outside her sheltered, sophisticated upbringing. 

I read and reread that book time and again. Every time I would follow Charlotte through her journey as she insisted in the beginning to maintain her cultured dignity in the face of so many dirty, vile, mutinous sailors. Then I would struggle with her as time, experience, and confrontation with stark reality began to change her view of the sailors she had once loathed and the captain she had previously clung to as her only connection to her cultured world. And then I would feel her exhilarating new freedom as she left behind her pretty dresses and sophisticated (yet naive) notions and joined the mutinous sailors and became one herself. And I would always end the book with a burning desire to “be a pirate” too and live a life of true adventure.

Over time, “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” changed the way I saw the world in two ways. First, it cemented in me a desire to pursue the unconventional and adventurous. Second, it gave me a healthy desire to question . . . everything! It made me look at my life, my culture, my religious beliefs, and my hopes and dreams for the future with a new, more critical perspective. I was determined to do as Charlotte did and see the world and myself with open eyes. I wanted to know people for who they really were, not just the image the world expected me to believe. I wanted to gain the kind of knowledge that would allow me to have my own educated political beliefs. I wanted to know how much of what I wanted out of life was simply a result of my environment and culture; and I wanted to make sure that in the end my hopes and dreams were based on decisions I made for myself because I knew why they were important. More than anything, I wanted to know if the beliefs I held closest to me were based on true doctrine, or if they were simply a product of my culture. In essence, I wanted to understand and make my life and beliefs my own.

After my third or fourth reading of the book I was at the interesting age of 13 when boys were suddenly something other than those annoying kids on the playground I sometimes had to beat up. By thirteen I’d experienced my own crush or two, but my little Charlotte heart had also recognized that middle-school love was a very superficial business (especially since I had recently faked a crush just to have something to talk about with my friends). Now, with a fresh dose of “pirate perspective” from my most recent reading of the book, I was determined to conquer the superficiality of middle-school love and discover the world beyond teenage dreams of Prince Charming and magical prom nights. 

One of the first things I locked onto in my inquiry of the culture of love was what seemed (to me, at the time) to be the typical life trajectory of the average Utah female: grow up, get married, have babies. To a thirteen-year-old girl bound and determined to live an unconventional and adventurous life, this seemed to be the antithesis and the great adversary to all my dreams of adventure. And so it was that at 13-years-old I came to the conclusion that I did NOT want to just grow up, get married, and have babies. I can still remember the moment I chose to confess my feelings on the matter to my mother. We were in the car—in-between stores as we ran errands on a Saturday—and I decided that was the best time to bring up the fact that I wanted to be a “pirate” and live a life of adventure . . . and I simply couldn’t see how marriage and babies would ever allow me to achieve that. I wanted the world to expect more from me than a pretty face, good cooking skills, and a perfectly organized home full of children and a successful husband. It seemed to be a hollow cultural expectation and I didn’t fancy the idea of doing something so unadventurous simply due to cultural motives. I wanted to be a “pirate” and to explore the world and all my potential. 

After hearing me out my mother did something I will never forget—she didn’t say I was being silly or that my view of motherhood was a bit immature; she didn’t even tell me that I could live a little before I settled down—no, my mother simply shared her testimony with me. She did so by painting a beautiful picture of the life she had lived, including her adventures of swimming in the Red Sea, touring the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and walking down the streets of Italy. All these activities, she pointed out, she had done once she was already a mother. Motherhood, in other words, would not equal an end to all my adventure. In fact, even in comparison with these adventures, motherhood had been and forever would be her greatest adventure. I cannot put into words exactly how she said it all, but the power and commitment with which she humbly testified of motherhood spoke to my soul in such a way that I have never been able to forget that moment, nor her message.

My mother’s testimony made a subtle, but very important, change to the way I approached my motherhood investigation. I was still very much an adventure-bound teenager with a determined desire to do more, see more, and change more in the world than what I judged (and forgive me for my adolescent prejudices) to be the aspirations of the average boy-crazy, motherhood-anticipating female. However, now I had not only heard my mother’s powerful testimony of the importance of motherhood, but I had also felt the truthfulness of it and I could not deny it. Plus, her claim that motherhood was an adventure had piqued my interest. So, despite my continued desire to exceed the perceived cultural expectation for me to marry and produce as if it were my only purpose in life, my mother’s testimony made me stop and ask myself if and why motherhood was so important. I was reminded that Charlotte Doyle had been able to achieve an adventurous life, not because she initially sought adventure, but because she had sought the truth. Truth gave her adventure, and suddenly I wanted the full truth about what it meant to be a woman and a mother.

I already knew what the world thought about the two topics (and, to be honest, I found the world’s objectification of women even more unappealing than the cultural belief that a woman’s only purpose in life was to reproduce and raise children); now I wanted to know what God had to say about the topic. In the years to come I listened intently to the words of the prophets and scoured the scriptures for evidence of God’s opinion on the matter of women and motherhood. Nowhere in my study of the doctrine did I find support for the cultural attitudes I loathed. Nor did I find anything that remotely hinted at a “thou shalt grow up, get married, and make babies.” Instead I heard the prophets teaching me to “Be Smart” and get all the education I could get. I heard message after message teaching me that I had a worth beyond my fertility and domestic skills. I found confirmation that women are equal to men and that not only could I make valuable contributions to the kingdom of God, but that those contributions were not dependent on how young I got married or how many children I had. God didn’t just have an opinion about womanhood, he had a powerful doctrine that made the case for strong, educated women of God who could change the world and build up His kingdom.

I was excited. God valued me as a woman. I had gifts and talents that were needed and that I could offer him because I was a woman; and that value was independent of marriage or children. However, my studies also brought forth undeniable evidence for the case my mother had made about the eternal importance of motherhood. While my worth was not determined by my ability to marry and have children, that in no way ruled out the importance of motherhood. In fact, what I found brought about an entirely new perspective to my investigation of the topic. I found that because God understands the power of women and respects and values them for who they are, he has offered them one of THE most important roles in his plan for the salvation of his children. He offers them the opportunity to be mothers. He gives us that honor. He gives us that choice.

Indeed, one of the most powerful influences on my testimony of motherhood was when my oldest sister and lifelong hero made that very choice. My sister—the one who bungee jumped off the highest bridge in the state of Washington at age 14, slept in snow caves she helped build on Mt. Hood, beat an entire group of teenage Boy Scouts to the top of the highest mountain in Utah, preached the gospel in Eastern Europe just years after the fall of communism, and studied and worked as a microbiologist—made the decision to become a mother without any hesitation or doubt. She did not fit the stereotype of the boy crazy, baby hungry female I had imagined up over the years, causing me to question my original prejudice. What is more, our family has a tradition of sending weekly emails that began right about the time my sister had her first little girl. I would drink in every email she would send from whatever part of the country she was living in to learn of her incredible adventures. Those emails changed my life. This amazing, powerful, opinionated, adventurous woman I had looked up to all my life would write of her children and the challenges and adventures of motherhood with so much love and excitement that I became infected with her testimony. My mother had been right: even in comparison with the adventurous life my sister had lived before she got married and had children, it was easy to see that marriage and motherhood were her greatest adventures.

My quest to understand the truth about being a woman and mother had changed my entire perspective on growing up, getting married, and having babies. It was not a mindless, culturally dominated practice that had to be avoided. It was a divine adventure I wanted. Nonetheless, neither my quest to fully understand the power of being a woman and mother, nor my quest for an unconventionally adventurous life were over. As the years passed, my pursuit of adventure drew me to the field of International Relations and Development. I studied political science, economics, quantitative research methods, the realities of war and oppression, and the millions of different possibilities for development throughout the world. My studies also lead me to real world experiences like traveling to an indigenous village in Guatemala, working for an international humanitarian organization, developing and conducting my own field research in Mexico, and actively participating in political and development-related clubs and competitions.

Incredibly, everywhere I went in pursuit of adventure and everything I studied in an effort to understand and solve the world’s numberless problems always brought me back to the critical role of women, marriage, family, and motherhood. (Though I cannot cram everything I have learned into one blog post, a good starting point—if you are interested—is the work of Professor Valerie Hudson. Look her up!). And then something even more incredible happened, I served a mission. When I opened my call and read “Chile, Santiago North Mission” I felt two powerful confirmations: 1) Chile truly was the place where the Lord needed me to serve and 2) God was on board with where I was directing my life—adventures and all. What I could not know then was the profound impact my mission would have on my testimony of the family. As a missionary, you are not only privileged to preach the gospel, but you are also given the unique opportunity to enter and observe hundreds of different homes. From the rich to the poor, the strong to the broken, the religious to the worldly, every home told a story and spoke to the undeniable truth that family is at the root of it all.

Upon returning from my mission, I wanted marriage and family and—as I had longed for all those years ago—I knew exactly why I wanted it. Not only that, I also knew that it would be the greatest adventure and challenge of my entire life. As I have documented on this blog, finding those things has truly been an unconventionally adventurous journey. I think God knew that even though I had come to develop a powerful testimony of marriage and motherhood, my Charlotte heart still longed to “be a pirate” in one way or another . . . and so he lead me to Mexico where I fell in love with the most amazing man (who actually proposed to me dressed up as a pirate!). Together, we have experienced more adventure than I could have possibly imagined as a 13-year-old girl dreaming of adventure on the high sea. Growing up and getting married turned out to be a bigger adventure than all my wildest dreams. It humbles me to know not just how well God knows me and the desires of my heart, but also to know that he has granted me the fulfillment of those desires.

And now, together, my husband and I have made the choice to bring a child into the world. Now I am going to be a mother. Of all the things I have ever done, becoming a mother has been the most physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually demanding thing I have ever done (and I have not even given birth yet!). It is an adventure words fail to describe and that a lifetime of adventure-seeking would never find. There is nothing like the moment I heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time or saw his little body moving around on the ultrasound screen. There is nothing like knowing that there is another life inside of me and that this little boy will soon be mine to love and teach and raise up to the Lord. Really, I have yet to begin the incredible and demanding adventure of motherhood, and I know I have no clue what I am in for (and maybe that's a good thing!). However, what I do know is that the decision and lifelong commitment to be a mother is one of THE most important things I can EVER do in my entire life. It will be one of my greatest contributions to the world and to the work of God. I know that. 

Perhaps this has been too long of a story to make a such a simple point, but for all its simplicity it is also profound and it has taken me all these years to understand it at this depth. So here it is: truly intelligent women recognize the divinity of who they are and what they are capable of doing as righteous women and mothers. We know these things, not because we have been culturally brainwashed to believe it, but because experience and investigation of the truth have brought us to this undeniable conclusion. I pray that the world can one day understand the true value of women and their phenomenal power to shape the fate of nations and the destiny of God’s children now and in the eternities. 

Why We All Need To Fail

Because of a combination of various factors, I have been thinking a lot lately about failure. I know that sounds like a rather depressing topic, but it has actually been a very positive experience for me. In fact, it has been so positive that I have been telling people on a regular basis for the past month or so that they should fail. I wish I had learned this lesson earlier on in life, but since the past is in the past, I’m doing the next best thing I know how to do and I’m letting everyone else know why we all need to fail.

The first (and really only) person who has ever told me that I should fail was my boss during my years as a college teaching assistant. She was, and is, one of my great heroes in life; but I still remember wondering exactly what she meant when she told all 40+ TAs that she wanted us to “fail and fail big” throughout the next school year. She went on to explain that the only way we were going to improve as TAs was if we tried new things and went above and beyond our past teaching experiences . . . and she knew that taking on that kind of a challenge meant we would probably fail in many of our attempts, and she was more than okay with that.

I immediately liked that perspective, but I had never been okay with failure before. As a result, it took me until just recently to fully accept that perspective and make it my own.

To explain how my perspective finally changed, I feel I should share a few of the moments in my life when I have felt like a complete failure. I do so in the hopes that my readers might find some commonalities between my experiences and their own.

1) Learning Spanish. I HATED my Spanish classes. Hated. Them. Looking back now I realize that that loathing may have stemmed from the fact that Spanish didn’t come to me as easily as most other subjects. In my mind I was a failure at Spanish because I couldn’t speak without a gringo accent. I was a failure because I couldn’t fully express myself. I was a failure because I couldn’t understand the Chileans when I first arrived to the mission field, (even after four solid years of studying the language in high school and college). I was a failure because I lost my personality in Spanish, I couldn’t teach in Spanish, I couldn’t tell stories in Spanish, and many times I got so lost in translation that I couldn’t even remember what I wanted to say in English. Failure. Failure. Failure.

2) Being a Missionary. If a returned missionary tells you that they never once (not even for a split second in their entire 18 or 24 months) felt like a failure on their mission, they are lying to you. The list of seeming failures in the life of a missionary could go on and on: You failed to get into a home. Your star investigators tell you your message is from the devil and you should never come back. You struggle with the language. You’re afraid to talk to people in the street. Your companion is mad at you or you’re mad at your companion. Investigators don’t come to church. You don’t have a baptism for a considerable amount of time, etc., etc. Failure. Failure. Failure.

3) Being a Grown-Up. After I graduated from college I couldn’t get a real job because I was moving out of the country in five months, so I lived at my parents house and got a job working a grand total of eight hours a week. Failure. When we got married and moved to Mexico, we lost our dream job and my visa was rejected. Failure. We bought a car that turned out to be a lemon. Failure. I made some bad travel decisions and had to spend the night at a Greyhound bus station . . . twice. Failure. At my current job I don’t always get my work done on time, I lose my patience with my students, and I’m not as organized as I know I could be. Failure.

So why did I just tell you all of that? Besides hoping my honesty about how many times I’ve failed in life helps me to identify with others’ experiences, I also shared those experiences to compare what I felt about myself and my failures then, to how I feel about them now (explanations to come).

Perhaps the biggest factor that has changed my perspective on failure is that I recently began offering free English classes at our church building. The curriculum that I am using is the same curriculum that they use in the MTC, so in much of my teacher training my mentor and I talked about the importance of getting students to speak from day one. As I have focused on this goal I have recognized in my students the same fear I once had when learning Spanish: the fear of failure. 

Some students are so afraid to try a new word or phrase because they know that they will say it wrong. Then, when they do give it a try and mispronounce a word or mix up the grammatical structure, they apologize so profusely you’d think they had committed a serious crime. So I have started telling my students to fail. I tell them that I want them to fail—that they have to fail—because if they are not failing it means they are not trying. After ten years of trying to master the Spanish language, I know that if they are not willing to fail, they will never learn English. True learning requires failure.

So how does this translate into real life? First of all, I want to highlight the difference between “failing” and “being a failure.” Many times, during those crazy months after arriving in Mexico when it seemed our life was one long chain of failures, Beto or I would say to the other, “I feel like a failure.” One night, after I had admitted that very thing, Beto looked at me and said, “There are a lot of times when I feel like a failure too. And then I remember the miracles God put in our lives to bring us together—and I think about how you are mine forever—and that’s how I know that I am not what I am feeling. I am not a failure.” We might have failed, but we were not failures. Along those lines, President Uchtdorf once stated:

Satan would rather that you define yourself by your [failures] instead of your divine potential. . . Don’t listen to him. We have all seen a toddler learn to walk. He takes a small step and totters. He falls. Do we scold such an attempt? Of course not. What father would punish a toddler for stumbling? We encourage, we applaud, and we praise because with every small step, the child is becoming more like his parents. . . . Compared to the perfection of God, we mortals are scarcely more than awkward faltering toddlers. . . . God understands that we get [to our eternal goal] not in an instant but by taking one step at a time. I do not believe in a God who would set up rules and commandments only to wait for us to fail so he could punish us. I believe in a Heavenly Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him. (Four Titles)

God is not worried about our failures as much as He is worried about whether or not we get up after we fall. Society, on the other hand, is very worried about failure and makes us believe that the only acceptable outcome of our actions is perfection. God is focused on perfecting, and that process requires failure. As Brother Willcox so masterfully depicted in his analogy of the piano student, the student is not just presented with the options to either “be a concert pianist” or “never play the piano.” The student becomes a concert pianist over years of practice, and errors are expected in that learning process. 

So too, we are not left with the options to either be perfect or to be eternally condemned. Errors are expected in our learning process. Or, put a little differently, errors are  the learning process. We learn from opposition and often times that opposition comes from our failures, allowing us to juxtapose actions and consequences. Borrowing from the words of Adam and Eve, because of their failure their “eyes [were] opened, and in this life [they had] joy, . . . Were it not for [their failure they] never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of [their] redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 6:10-11). 

If I had given up on Spanish anywhere along my failure ridden path I never would have known just how well I can communicate in this beautiful language. I would have missed out on relationships with hundreds of incredible individuals, including my angel husband. I would have missed experiences of a lifetime that have had eternal consequences. I owe much of the events of the last five years of my life to the fact that I was willing to fail when it came to Spanish (even if I didn’t like it).

If I had given up the first time someone refused to listen to the message of the gospel on my mission, I never would have met the people I was sent to Chile to find. If I had refused to teach after the first time I totally slaughtered a lesson, I never would have learned to truly teach according to the Spirit and touch people’s lives. And if I had lost hope during the months and months without a baptism, I never would have had the chance to sit across from a very special daughter of God and testify to her that God loves her; and she most definitely would not have been baptized the last day of my mission.

Finally, if Beto and I had given up anywhere along our crazy journey . . . who knows. I used to think that if I failed at anything I would somehow compromise any possibilities for future success or opportunity . . . for the rest of my life. Life would somehow be over. It was silly of me to think like that. As President Uchtdorf puts it: “We can feel so burdened by our failures and shortcomings that we begin to think  we will never be able to succeed. We might even assume that because we have fallen before, falling is our destiny” (You Can Do It Now!) But it’s not!!!! As I look back at our crazy adventures this past year, there really wasn’t anything else for Beto and I to do but to keep going. Life didn’t end and, believe it or not, our failures brought us to a place with more opportunity than we could have imagined. We may have suffered quite a bit, but our entire future was definitely not jeopardized by the fact that life didn’t go exactly as planned.

So why do we all need to fail? To put it one way, we need to fail so that we can accomplish the things that truly matter. Anything that is worth our time and effort will come with the risk of failure. That risk and the consequences of our failure are the price of our eventual victory—and we will be victorious if we persevere. We cannot content ourselves at being perfect in mediocre goals that we know we can achieve; we need to push ourselves and risk failure in the pursuit of higher goals. Once our vision is on that higher goal, our lack of perfection becomes obsolete because we know we are participating in the process of perfecting who we are. And we know that that process requires failure. 

And that is why it is so important that Christ offered himself to be the Savior of the world, because We. Need. To. Fail. And HE is the reason we can fail and still achieve the highest goals of all. As President Uchtdorf explained, “Without the Atonement of Jesus Christ, life would be a dead-end road without hope or future. With the Atonement, life is an ennobling, inspiring journey of growth and development that leads to eternal life in the presence of our Heavenly Father” (Four Titles). May we all learn to love ourselves a little more as we embrace a positive perspective on failure and continually trust in Him who helps us overcome and triumph every time we fail.

Applying the Atonement

Growing up, I often struggled to understand the phrase commonly used in the scriptures and church meetings indicating that we should “apply the Atonement” in our lives (see Mosiah 4:2). I recognized that comprehending the magnitude of the Atonement is a feat we cannot fully realize in this mortal life, but I always felt my attempts fell short of even mortal expectations. 

It was easy to notice the significance of the Atonement in my life when I considered the fact that, because of the Savior’s sacrifice and resurrection, I would see my grandmother (who died of cancer when I was eleven) after this life. And it was beyond relieving to know that I could be forgiven of my sins--big and small--because of the Atonement. But I could not content myself with an image of the Atonement carefully placed in a glass case with a “Break in Case of Sin or Death” sign.

Perhaps it was because I was raised by two very practical parents, but I felt I could not truly discern the enormity of the Atonement until I found a way to practically “apply” it as the scriptures say into every potential situation life might throw my way. And for a long time I wasn’t really sure how to do that. Yes, I loved my Savior. Yes, I felt and experienced the blessings of the Atonement in my life. But I lacked an understanding of how the knowledge of the Savior’s suffering, death, and resurrection could be an active component of my every-day life.  

My testimony of the Atonement continued to grow throughout my first two years of college, but I still felt I was missing something. Elder Bednar once stated that “Knowing that the gospel is true is the essence of a testimony. Consistently being true to the gospel is the essence of conversion.” I knew that the Atonement was real and powerful. I had a testimony of it. What I lacked was conversion. How could I be consistently true to the Atonement of Jesus Christ? How could I consistently put it into practice? I was half-way through my mission before I finally discovered how to “apply the Atonement” in my life and turn a testimony of the Savior’s sacrifice into conversion to the Atonement. 

At the mention of my mission, it is likely you are thinking my big "aha" moment came as a consequence of an incredible experience with a particular investigator, or an amazing talk by a visiting General Authority (and, undoubtedly, all of those experiences had an impact); but, in reality, my big "aha" moment came after four days of being shut up inside our apartment with a flu so nasty I had lost the ability to speak. The mission nurse had prescribed several medications I could take to get me back on my feet and preaching again; but, for some odd reason, I had left the bottle of medicine and its instructions on my study desk. 

Wednesday morning came around accompanied by our regular morning study time. Wednesdays, however, were not really regular. Wednesdays were extra special in my mission because it was the day that our mission president had asked every missionary to specifically study the Atonement. So, despite my shivering, sniveling, shaking body, I sat down at my desk and began to search the scriptures for a greater understanding of the Atonement. I don’t remember exactly what scripture I was reading at the time, but I happened to glance over at my bottle of medicine and the instructions lying next it as I pondered on the meaning of the Atonement--and that’s all it took. In an instant an entire analogy popped into my brain and I scrambled for my scripture journal so I could write it all down before any detail was forgotten. The analogy goes something like this (please keep in mind that no analogy is perfect):

You get really sick so you go to the doctor. The doctor tells you there is a remedy for which he gives you the prescription. You go to the pharmacy at which time the pharmacist asks for the prescription and checks the doctor’s signature before giving you the medicine. Once you have the medicine in your possession you carefully read the instructions which explain how to APPLY the medication. You apply the medication and you get better.

This simple sequence of events takes place basically every day of our lives--only spiritually--and it goes something like this:*

We sin, lose hope, feel lonely, face heart-wrenching trials, make big life decisions, and go through any number of emotions and experiences every day, so we turn to God. God tells us there is a remedy--the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We obtain full access to the Atonement of Jesus Christ through His Priesthood Power. (For example, the words of the prophets of God, both ancient and modern, guide and uplift us along our path. The prophet also holds all the priesthood keys that enable us to receive a valid baptism, be given the gift of the Holy Ghost, make additional covenants in the temple, and be married and sealed to our families for time and all eternity, etc.) 

Thus, the priesthood is the proper authority needed to validate access to the full remedy of the Atonement, just like a doctor’s signature on a prescription allows us access to physical remedies. And just like the pharmacy and the pharmacist are there to help us when we need a particularly powerful remedy--or simply need help understanding the doctor’s instructions--we have the Church and church leaders to help us  to better understand and apply the instructions given to us by God. 

Most importantly, God has provided us detailed and personal instructions in the scriptures about how to apply the Atonement of Christ in our lives. Those instructions can be summed up and practically applied by living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As taught in the scriptures, living the gospel includes having faith in the Savior, repenting of our sins, making and keeping sacred covenants with Him, receiving and seeking the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end (see 2 Nephi 31 and 3 Nephi 27:19-21). As we apply these steps to our every-day actions we are literally applying the atoning blood of Christ into our lives and we will be healed.

In essence, to apply the Atonement we must live the gospel Christ taught. His life and ministry were not a mere lead-up to his sacrifice, death, and resurrection. His life and teachings are the way to apply His Atonement. He came and taught us how to make his sacrifice a practical and living reality in our every-day actions and choices. He is the great remedy and His life was the grand explanation of how to apply His sacrifice to every aspect of our lives.

Finally, the word ‘apply’ has two definitions that bring greater light to this analogy. The first is to “bring or put into operation or practical use.” This was the definition I had been trying to understand and implement for so many years. I had wanted to know how to put the Atonement into practical operation and I have finally come to understand how to do just that: live the gospel! Every time I face a trial I look to the “instructions” and I realize that I can more fully live one of the principles and/or covenants contained in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, maybe I just need to have more faith in God; or maybe I need to change and repent of certain habits or beliefs; or perhaps I need to remind myself of the covenants I have made and trust in their promises as I better fulfill mine; and it is always likely that I need to more actively search for and use the gift of the Holy Ghost. Doing any one of these things is to apply the Atonement.

The second definition of 'apply' is to “give one’s full attention to a task.” As such, it is no mistake that the final "step" of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the task to endure to the end. Indeed, the task of living the gospel by faith, repentance, making and keeping covenants, and receiving the Holy Ghost is a task that we must use over and over again throughout our entire life. This is the process we must use to apply the Atonement for it is the only way that He can enter into our very being and cast out every malady and imperfection. Living the gospel to gain access to the full blessings of the Atonement is the task that requires our full attention. It is why we are here. There is no other task that merits our total application and hard work as does the effort to live the gospel Christ has showed us how to live. 

*Analogy Reference:

Sickness = Sin/Trials/Decisions/Situations XYZ

Doctor = God 

Remedy = Christ & His Atonement 

Prescription Signature = Priesthood Power 

Pharmacy = Church 

Pharmacist = Church Leaders 

Instructions = Scriptures 

Application = The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, Repentance, Making & Keeping Covenants, Receiving & Being Worthy of the Holy Ghost, Enduring to the End). 

The Benefits of Affliction

A couple weeks ago my husband and I had a part-member family in our home for a Family Home Evening. As we thought about what we would share for our lesson, we both felt it would be a good idea to go over the Plan of Salvation (especially since there is so much to learn about it that it didn't matter if they had received the same lesson from the missionaries the day before). What we had originally planned to be a 15 minute overview turned into an hour plus lesson as the husband and wife (both investigators) asked question after question and marked every scripture Beto and I mentioned as we testified of the doctrine of our Father's plan of happiness. At the end of the lesson, we all felt like we could have continued teaching and learning, but it was already 10pm! 

One thing I drew from that experience is that we take our knowledge of the plan of salvation for granted. The truth about who we are, where we come from, and who we can become is LIFE CHANGING. I saw it over and over again on my mission and I saw it during our little Family Home Evening just the other day. But it's not just life changing for investigators and new members. Several days after our awesome FHE, I went through one of the hardest weeks of my life. It seemed like one tragedy after the other added to disappointment after disappointment until I was so emotionally sick I didn't get out of bed one morning to go to work (which I don't think I've ever done before) and told my husband I didn't want to deal with life that day. 

Thankfully, I have been blessed with the best husband ever. Before he left for work, he encouraged me to think about what I had taught at Family Home Evening and apply it to myself. Later in the day, since I was still in emotional paralysis, he sent me a message to tell him everything for which I am grateful (i.e. apply
my other post about gratitude!). And, as always, the miracle of gratitude did not fail me. As my emotional paralysis turned into an attitude of gratitude, I felt the Spirit return and life started to get better. I decided to keep the spiritual momentum going and turned to the scriptures, my patriarchal blessing, and the words of the prophets to buoy me up. As I did, I came across several quotes about affliction from Elder Neal A. Maxwell, whose own afflictions took him beyond this life. Several of his quotes spoke of the vital role of affliction in giving us the experience God's plan was designed to deliver. He states:

The sobering indication "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7) tells us that while we are doctrinally rich, we are usually experience poor. Gods's plan is designed to correct the latter deficiency; one's soul shivers, however, as one contemplates the implications. (Faith, 34-35.)  

God said he would structure mortality to be a proving and testing experience (see Abraham 3:25; Mosiah 23:21). Clearly He has kept His promise and has carried out His divine intent. Therefore adversity must be part of the pattern rather than always an aberration. Therefore even our fiery trials, as Peter said, should not be thought of as being "some strange thing" (1 Peter 4:12). Hence, throughout the varying lengths of our lives there is rolling relevance contained in the counsel to endure it well. (Endure, 2.) 

And if regular experience alone is not enough, some afflictions can be designed to mold us to a greater degree than we ever imagined possible; as Elder Maxwell explained, 

Exceptional souls are not developed . . . by being made exceptions to the challenges that are common to mankind. (Prove, 116.)

We undergo afflictions such as are "common to man" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Additionally, God will deliberately give us further lessons and experience which take us beyond the curriculum common to man and on into uncommon graduate studies or even postdoctoral discipleship. (Not My Will, 4.) 

As I digested all of Elder Maxwell's teachings, every word hit home, but the following two quotes are the ones that shot bright rays of light and truth right through my heart: 

How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life as if to say, "Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!" (Ensign, May 1991, 88.) 

Like his Master, the true believer loves his life but is willing to lay it down or to see it slip slowly away through affliction. If he is given a "thorn in the flesh," he does not demand to see the rose garden. ("'True Believers in Christ,'" 139.)  

Let us not forget why we are really here. Yes, "men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25), but we did not leave the presence of the Almighty God for a simple pleasure trip. We came here to prove ourselves. We chose to leave the presence of our heavenly father, the God of the universe, to experience this life and demonstrate our loyalty to Him, despite all that we knew could happen as part of our mortal experience. Why? So that when we returned to his presence after this life, we would be worthy of the eternal joy that awaits us.

In fact, true joy has nothing to do with our house, our job, our things, worldly approval, or life running smoothly. Nothing at all. True joy is the joy rooted in eternal things that cannot be taken away by mortal circumstances. True joy can be present even in our darkest hours; we need only to remember its source, our Savior.

As I worked my way out of my emotional fog, I found another ray of light in my patriarchal blessing. I had often read the part of my blessing that talks about how I will face trials in life and will overcome them because I know it is the Lord's way of helping us to learn and progress. What I had never noticed about the phrasing before was that it actually states that I will overcome my trials because I understand the Lord and his way of helping us to learn and progress. "Because I understand the Lord." Isn't that so interesting?! It had never occurred to me that I understand the Lord, nor that understanding Him could specifically help me through my trials, but as I read those words I realized that I do understand Him (if only to a small degree) and that that understanding makes all the difference.

Most importantly, I understand that God loves me. I understand that He loves all of us and He wants the best for all of us. What is more, He has allowed us the chance to really understand what "the best" truly is. In fact, He wants us to understand Him so intensely that He has invited us to His home, the temple, so that He can personally teach us. As I thought about this truth, my mind immediately went back to the incredible experience I had less than a month ago as I sat in the house of the Lord and witnessed one of the most sacred ordinances being performed--the sealing of my best friend to an incredible young man, her companion for time and all eternity. Witnessing a temple marriage has always been a powerful experience for me. It is one of those crystalline clear moments when eternity is so tangible you can actually see it. As the sealer gave the couple advice, I was overwhelmed by the Spirit and touched by the truth of his words. It was the first sealing I had been to since my own and I could not deny the absolute beauty of eternal marriage and the power of temple blessings. 

In the presence of eternity, it was easy to understand everything Beto and I have been through in the first ten months of our marriage. The overwhelming blessings and the vision of who we can become that Gad so openly shares with us in the temple not only make our earthly experiences worth it, they also give purpose to all the sorrow, grief, pain, disappointment, tragedy, betrayal, and opposition we could ever face in this life. As Paul taught the Romans, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if it so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Romans 8:16-18.)

Do we get it? Do we really get it? We are children of God. We are divine. We are joint-heirs with Christ!!!! We have been promised all that God has. All. Of. It. Those are not just nice words of comfort offered by a caring friend who knows nothing of our sufferings. Those are words of truth spoken by God himself, the creator of the universe. He has promised us all that He has. And He knows what we are going through. He is suffering it all right along with us. Why? Because He loves us, He wants us back, and He knows that we need the benefits of affliction to make it there.

Grateful for Gratitude

About a month ago I took a bus from the State of Mexico (where Beto and I currently live) back to Irapuato, where we met--and where we thought we would spend a great deal of our life together fighting poverty in the rural villages surrounding the city. Upon arriving in Irapuato I was met by a team of BYU students and their program director who had hired me to show them around the city, find them housing, and be their guide in the rural villages where they would be working as literacy instructors throughout the summer. I was in heaven!!! It felt incredible to be involved in “development” again, I was so at home in the rural communities, and my academic cravings were beyond satiated with endless talks of Mexican culture, history, and development.

I returned home buzzing with enthusiasm, only to come crashing into the hard wall of reality. Life in Mexico had turned out to be nothing like I had planned or imagined it to be. The weekend excursion into the villages was only that, a weekend, not my life. To ease out of my development high I decided to go back and read one of my favorite books from my economic development class. The book did nothing to pacify my development cravings. To the contrary, my desire to pursue what I am truly passionate about began to consume me. And with that growing desire, I came to the sad realization that my current job is everything I loathed most in school (and I loathed very few things, so it’s actually quite impressive I managed to get a job doing something I like so little!).  A new kind of frustration started creeping into my life and I became obsessed with finding a way to make my life in Mexico exactly what I had dreamed it would be. But the harder I pushed, the more dissatisfied I became and the more my vision of what I wanted began to blur.

And then one day it hit me: I had pulled a classic Ashley mistake. Once again I had started pushing so hard to achieve something that I knew was so good (and I mean, really, what could possibly be wrong with wanting to help the poor?!) that I forgot to ask the most important question of all: What does God want? And once I realized I’d forgotten to put God in the equation, I knew I had to put Him back in. In reality, what I needed to do was repent, to reconcile myself with God and put my will back in line with His. 

Now you may be thinking, “how do you know that pursuing humanitarian work isn’t God’s will?” And I would have to say that this was exactly my line of thinking. I assumed that since it was a good thing to do, it was God’s will (and I make that mistake all the time). But, as Elder Oak’s has so nicely put it, there is a difference between good, better, and best. Putting our will in line with God’s assures that we are not only doing something good, but doing the best work God has for us in life. In my case, I discovered that it was less about what I was (or wanted to be) doing in life and had more to do with my attitude about my circumstances that had misaligned me from the will of God. To be completely honest, though, it took me a while to figure that out.

When Beto and I talked about where we were going to live once we got married, I was all for the idea of living in Mexico. Not only were we going to have a chance to spend our lives working for a humanitarian agency, life in Mexico sounded like a challenge. And I love challenges! I’ve always embraced the idea of challenges (and I often deliberately put myself in challenging situations) because I believed that challenges are what make you stronger; but, just a few weeks ago, the only thing my challenges were doing was making me bitter, frustrated, and unsatisfied with my life in Mexico.

Without God in the equation, I looked at life in Mexico and all I saw was the disappointing loss of a job (and opportunity to work in rural development), visa rejection, extreme loneliness and home sickness, moving three times in the first six months of our marriage, boredom, low wages, three robberies, endless immigration paperwork issues, car failure galore, unmerited debt, a job I didn’t like, and every once in a while, culture shock. So I figured I had a right to feel miserable.

The problem with that line of thinking was that it was getting me nowhere and I knew it was not of God. So I had one of those conversations with my Heavenly Father where I owned up to my bad attitude and sincerely asked for his forgiveness and guidance. As I prayed, the scripture “all these things shall give thee experience” came to mind.  With that single line of scripture, I knew the Lord had given me my answer. The only problem was that it wasn’t the answer I wanted; and the answer felt a little incomplete. To make a long story short, I kept asking for more direction until one day when I realized that, if I was going to receive any more revelation, I needed to act on the revelation that I had received, which was that God wants me where I am because I need the experience.

So how was I to act on the revelation to to keep doing what I was doing? Was the answer I had received really to do nothing? In my opinion, the word act automatically connotes change. So if acting on the revelation I had received did not include changing my situation, what was it that needed changing? In reality, I didn’t have to think long to figure out what my real problem was, I needed to change my attitude. It really stunk. And I knew that the best place to start when you need to change your attitude is always gratitude. President Uchtdorf stated it better than I ever could in the April 2014 General Conference when he said:

Some might say, “What do I have to be grateful for when my world is falling apart?”

Perhaps focusing on what we are grateful for is the wrong approach. It is difficult to develop a spirit of gratitude if our thankfulness is only proportional to the number of blessings we can count. True, it is important to frequently “count our blessings”—and anyone who has tried this knows there are many—but I don’t believe the Lord expects us to be less thankful in times of trial than in times of abundance and ease. In fact, most of the scriptural references do not speak of gratitude for things but rather suggest an overall spirit or attitude of gratitude.

It is easy to be grateful for things when life seems to be going our way. But what then of those times when what we wish for seems to be far out of reach?

Could I suggest that we see gratitude as a disposition, a way of life that stands independent of our current situation? In other words, I’m suggesting that instead of being thankful for things, we focus on being thankful in our circumstances—whatever they may be.

President Uchtdorf’s words spoke to my soul the very first time that I heard them, and they came flooding back into my heart when I finally realized that my unhappiness was not a result of my circumstances, but rather my attitude. What is more, I finally learned that it is not the challenges in and of themselves that make us better disciples of Christ, but the way we choose to deal with them that actually makes the difference. Having an attitude of gratitude in our trials is what turns challenges into opportunities for discipleship growth. As President Uchtdorf explained, 

Being grateful in our circumstances is an act of faith in God. It requires that we trust God and hope for things we may not see but which are true. By being grateful, we follow the example of our beloved Savior, who said, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

True gratitude is an expression of hope and testimony. It comes from acknowledging that we do not always understand the trials of life but trusting that one day we will.

"True gratitude is an expression of hope and testimony." I love that! As I sought to be more grateful in my circumstances, I began to feel real hope for the future again. Not only that, I began to appreciate the present as well. I even started to enjoy my job! With that added measure of hope and gratitude, another little miracle occurred, I started to feel the Spirit more abundantly. And with the Spirit as a constant companion, I began to see what I couldn’t when my attitude was on the wrong end of the spectrum: I could see what I can do now to help those around me. Suddenly everything was possible and beautiful. Life in Mexico could be that incredible adventure I always thought it would be. In fact, it had been an adventure all along! I simply had not been using the eyes of gratitude that would allow me to see it. Gratitude builds hope by allowing us an optimistic perspective of life. Gratitude brings the Spirit simply by the pure nature of the act. And most importantly, a testimony built on gratitude is a a testimony built independent of our circumstances. As President Uchtdorf stated,

It must have been this kind of testimony that transformed the Savior’s Apostles from fearful, doubting men into fearless, joyful emissaries of the Master. . . . They accepted with courage and determination the torture, humiliation, and even death that would come to them because of their testimony. They were not deterred from praising and serving their Lord. They changed the lives of people everywhere. They changed the world.

How blessed we are if we recognize God’s handiwork in the marvelous tapestry of life. 

How grateful I am for gratitude and the incredible power it has to bring hope, build testimony, and create a space in our heart where the Spirit can come and help us envision all that God knows we can accomplish in this crazy beautiful world. When I finally put my will in line with the Lord’s, I remembered that the reason I had always wanted to be involved with humanitarian work was so I could be a force for good to change the world. When I let gratitude become my attitude, I realized that I will never be limited by my circumstances to achieve such a goal because the Lord is mindful of me . . . and he wants the same thing.

The Allegory of the Rejected Visa

Happy New Year to all!! Almost one year ago, to the date, Beto and I drove through the snow to the U.S. immigration office in Salt Lake City to begin investigating what paperwork would be needed if Beto and I were to live in the U.S. After that, we were sent to the Mexican embassy to figure out how the same process works in Mexico. And thus began the adventure!

Throughout the months leading up to our wedding, I made many a visit to the Mexican embassy (even more than I would have liked, actually, since the embassy does NOT answer their telephone . . . EVER.) After jumping through one hoop after another, checking and rechecking we had the right paperwork, rescheduling (and re-planning) the wedding, and sitting through one short interview, I had my visa. Then, after a little confusion at the airport (the customs official didn't know what to do with a gringa entering Cancun whose paperwork said she wasn't coming as a tourist! hehe), I was finally in Mexico. The customs official informed me that I had 30 days to present myself at the Mexican immigration office to finalize the visa paperwork.

Due to some crazy circumstances, Beto and I were not able to make it into the immigration office until Friday, October 25, three days before my time limit would be up. Unfortunately, we did not have all the paperwork, nor the time, we needed to officially submit my visa request that day and had to return on Monday (the very last day before my temporary visa expired). On the upside, we were able to turn in the paperwork on Monday. On the downside, in our rush to get everything done, I accidentally put that my passport expires May 14, 2017, when really it expires the day before. And, of course, I didn't catch the error. In fact, I didn't know that I had made the error until two weeks later when I received a letter from the immigration office informing me that my request for a temporary residence visa had been rejected because of the mistake.

At our next visit to the immigration office I confess that I did not try too hard to hide my frustration from the immigration officials. The poor man at the front desk (who really had no part in the whole situation) received the worst of my grievances as I told him of the money and time spent, the inconveniences suffered, and the countless trips made in the months-long process I had gone through just to get the visa that had now been rejected because of one error of one date by one day! As unfortunate as my situation was, however, the man would not budge and simply continued to show me the list of new documents that would need to be obtained, created, translated, sealed, presented, etc. in order to obtain a new visa.

My blood froze when he came to the fees section. There was a sanction to be paid for messing up the first visa; then there would be a fee for the new visa; and there were the fees to seal and translate my birth certificate and our marriage license; and on top of it all there were shipping fees! My mind went numb as I began to add everything up and little tears began to leak out of my eyes as I stared angrily at the government official behind the desk. Couldn't he have just a little mercy on me? I mean, really? I thought. All those documents and fees and the time and the travel and . . . and . . . everything . . . for just one little error? It simply couldn't be.  

Yet, as I rode silently back home in shock that day, I began to recognize that things had to be that way. I could not ask mercy of the law for the law does not know mercy, only justice. If I were to ask the law for mercy—and it gave in to my wishes—it would no longer be law. Why? As I so often taught my students in BYU's infamous class on the principles of America's founding, the efficacy of law depends entirely on the clarity and consistency of the law's implementation.

The philosopher Michael Mullane explained it in a rather interesting, but simple, way. The rule of law, he states, is like the "Tinkerbelle Effect"—which, as anyone who has seen Peter Pan (or especially Hook) should know—if you say you do not believe in fairies, somewhere in the world a fairy will die. The only way fairies can exist is if people believe in them. According to Mullane, it is the same with law: if we do not believe in the law, it has no significance and no power. If, however, we do believe in the laws that are instated, laws will become the backbone of an orderly and industrious society.

So, how do we go about believing or not believing in the law? First, if the law is not consistently implemented, no one will ever expect it to be implemented and will have little incentive to obey. Second, if no one obeys the law, it is as if the law did not exist. Conversely, if a law is consistently implemented, there is every incentive to obey said law because it is clear that the consequences are real. In this way, as Mullane explains, the law is both "wonderfully strong and terribly fragile.” They can empower and govern the universe if they are believed, but if they are not believed . . . they are nothing.

So, I realized, if I were to ask mercy of the immigration office (the law), I would essentially be asking the law to be what it is not. The immigration law is this: if you make an error in your documents, you must begin the process over again and pay the fees. Mercy would be forgiving the mistake and giving me my visa without asking for any other payment or paperwork. Therefore, in asking for mercy, I was basically requesting that the immigration law change its very character and no longer be law, but rather mercy—and the immigration office (the law/the Mexican government/whatever you want to call it) is not mercy.

By now you might be wondering where am I getting with all of this. Perhaps to give deeper meaning to my frustrating situation, I began to see my little encounter with the law as an allegory in the justice and mercy of God. In James 2:10 we read, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." In my case, I had done everything right up to the point when I wrote May 14, 2017 on my paperwork. I had kept the whole law for months and months, and yet I 'offended' in one point and, in the final analysis, had my visa rejected. In the eternal scheme of things, those who offend in one point (i.e. all of us) face the consequence of sin: misery due to being cut off from the presence of the Lord (Alma 42:11). One mistake. One teensy-weensy mistake and the law that states that no unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God demands our eternal damnation. Pretty tough.

Fortunately for us, unlike governments, God can be both just and merciful. Why? Because Heavenly Father is the most incredibly loving and all-knowing father and he wants us back home. He saw "that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence. And now the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also" (Alma 42:14-15).

So what exactly does this mean? If my little visa situation could truly be compared to the eternal plan of salvation, this is how it would look: I offend in one point by putting a 14 instead of a 13 and Mexican law (justice) demands that I do the whole process over again, including paying the fees and the additional sanction for my mess-up. I look at the situation and wonder how I'm ever going to be able to pay for my one mistake. The Savior steps in and pays the price in full. In return, He asks me to complete all the required paperwork so I can learn to do it right (perfectly, in fact, as He would). If I mess up again, He pays the price again and I go back to trying to do it right. It doesn't matter how many times I mess up, nor how big my mistakes are, the Savior will continue to pay whatever the Mexican government (justice) asks for my errors. Pretty incredible. What matters to the Savior is that I'm trying to get it right.

And so it is with the eternal plan of our God: "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Nevertheless, through His atonement, Christ paid the price for our sins. In return, he asks us to repent and follow him. If we mess up again, His atoning sacrifice continues to satisfy the demands of justice. It doesn't matter how many times we mess up or how big our mistakes might be, the Savior's atonement covers it. However, if we decide we no longer want to repent and follow Him, we will be subject to the demands of justice once again, for it is only by the power of the Savior that we can be saved. And what matters to the Savior is that we are trying to get it right.

In a way, we are all working on our immigration papers. Only, in this case, we are trying to immigrate back to our heavenly home. We have been given this time on earth to figure out how to "do the paperwork right" so that we may, when we leave this world, obtain heavenly citizenship. It is most likely that, when we arrive, we will be fully aware of all the mistakes we made along the way. That is when, with eternal gratitude in our hearts, we will be greeted by "him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading [our] cause before him—Saying: Father behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou was well pleased; behold the blood of the Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life" (D&C 45:3-5).

How grateful I am for a Savior who has paid the price so that we may all obtain this heavenly citizenship. May we all remember Him and continually strive to be like as we begin this new year Him so that when—through Him—we obtain that heavenly citizenship, we will know and feel that we have come home at last.

My Ponderings: Merry Christmas from Mexico!

It has been a while since I have posted anything on the blog, but I hope I can say that I am back to stay. The transition to life in Mexico has been . . . entirely different from what I expected. Living in a foreign country is a completely distinct experience from doing research or serving as a missionary in one. While in both previous circumstances I was in a foreign country for a longer period of time than I have so far lived in Mexico, knowing that I am here to stay has changed the experience in a way that I could have only begun to imagine before I boarded the plane to Mexico on September 29th.

While one excuse for not writing these past three months has been my limited access to internet, the main reason I have hesitated to write is that I simply have not known what to write. Some days I wanted to write about everything that was happening, but then there were so many things that were happening that I couldn't pick just one thing to write about. Other days, my thoughts wanted to tumble out all over the page, yet the next day I wanted to keep all my thoughts, hopes, and fears inside me where no one could see them. Today, however, I have determined to put on paper at least a little of what I've been up to and share, once again, the lessons that God is teaching me through this crazy adventure we call life.

And, so, I pick up where I left off (sort of). Beto was baptized in September (2012), he surprised me in November by coming to Utah to propose (and, of course, I said "Yes!"), he came back in December to spend Christmas with and get to know my family, and then he headed back to Mexico and we settled in for the long haul of maintaining a long distance relationship. The distance was only interrupted once, in May, when I flew to Mexico to interview for a couple jobs and we got engagement pictures done. The remaining months were filled with daily text messages and Skype conversations—our only way to be together across the distance.

While we found fun and significant ways to build our relationship during those months, I was beyond grateful and so happy when September arrived and Beto and I finally knelt across the altar of the Logan temple and promised ourselves to each other for time and all eternity. I was finally with Beto! And not only was I with him then, but there were no more long-term goodbyes for us in the future! I almost couldn't believe it! For two individuals who had spent so much of their time apart, this was absolutely incredible. In the days that followed our wedding we often turned to each other and exclaimed, "We never have to be apart again!" Even more, because of the covenant we had made, we could be with each other for forever. Forever! We were both filled with gratitude for the incredible gift God has given to allow us to be with each other, both now and in the eternities.

Too soon, however, it was time to say goodbye to my family. I cried as I hugged my parents and siblings and then watched them disappear from view as we pulled out of the driveway and slowly drove away from Paradise; I held back the tears as I hugged my sister and kissed my nephew and nieces goodbye when they dropped me off at the airport; and then I was on the plane, watching Salt Lake disappear below me. And now . . . over two and a half months later . . . I am here in Mexico, learning to live a life as foreign to me as the country I live in.

While I knew it would be difficult to leave my home and family, I had always thought that I would be able to stay connected, despite the distance—just like Beto and I had stayed connected. However, life has taken some crazy twists and turns since our arrival in Mexico and I haven't been able to communicate with those I left behind as much as I had hoped or planned. The result was an unexpected kind of homesickness that left me thinking about why we decided to come to Mexico, the purpose of our present circumstances, and the significance of being with those we love.

In particular, I have thought about a talk that I heard my freshman year of college the week after President Hinckley passed away. Elder Bruce C. Hafen began his talk by remembering President Hinckley and then sweetly reminding us that he was now with the girl of his dreams, Sister Hinckley. He went on to give one of the most amazing talks I have ever heard about being a disciple of Christ. He spoke of the disciple's journey and the many efforts we must make to leave Satan's sphere of influence and break into the sphere of influence of the Savior.

Two points Elder Hafen made in his talk have stayed with me ever since I first heard them, as if they have been written in permanent marker on my heart. The first is that discipleship requires sacrifice and will often lead us directly into the trials of life, rather than around them. He stated, " If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are the most difficult for us to do." He then shared the story of Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who dedicated his life to the service of the Lord on the muddy battlefields of Okinawa during World War II. Throughout his life, Elder Maxwell sought to become a fully consecrated follower of Jesus Christ, no matter what the price. Above all, he desired the gift of charity, to love as Christ loves. When he was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually take his life, Elder Maxwell said that he should have seen it coming, for the more he had desired the gift of charity, the more he had come to sense how dear the price might be. He explained:

Christ’s love is so deep that he took upon himself the sins and afflictions of all mankind.  Only in that way could he both pay for our sins and empathize with us enough to truly succor us—that is, run to us—with so much empathy that we can have complete confidence that he fully understands our sorrows.  So to love as Christ loves means we will somehow taste suffering ourselves.  For the love and the affliction are but two sides of the same coin.  Only by experiencing both sides can we understand and love other people with a depth that even approaches Christ’s love.

Seen in this light, any suffering I have felt because of the distance, or the difficulty of life in Mexico, is truly a blessing. Ever since I first made friends with people like Manuela and Miguel in elementary school I have wanted to understand the Mexican people. In high school it pained me to see so many students from Latin America who I couldn't even talk to because I didn't know their language or understand anything about their life and the circumstances in which they lived. Over the years I have learned their language and studied their history, but until recently, I knew nothing of what it is like to leave your home and family in order to work in a foreign country, nor the daily battle that it is to earn a living in a developing country. I am learning now, and I am grateful for the opportunity. Perhaps the Lord can teach me to have more compassion and understanding of these people I have come to love over the years and I am learning to love even more now that I am living, suffering, learning, and laughing with them.

The second point from Elder Hafen's talk that has stood out like a bright shiny star in these past months is the ultimate promise and blessing of the gospel: to reach the end of the disciple's journey and forever be with God and with all those we love. Elder Hafen teaches:

For me, the words with you capture the Atonement’s meaning in its simplest terms. If we do our part, Christ makes us “at one” with God, overcoming whatever separates us from Him. He is with me, with you, not only at the end of our lives but every day of our lives. And without Christ we could not be “with” our family and our friends. Once our daughter Emily had to leave her three-year-old boy Clark with a babysitter. As she began leaving, little Clark ran to her and cried poignantly, “Go with you, Mom. With you.” No longing runs deeper in us than our desire to be with those we love.

As these past months have taught me, there truly is no longing deeper than the desire to be with those we love. I look forward to the day I can be with my family again. I cherish every moment I can be with Beto. Truly, just the simple act of being with Beto can fill my entire day with happiness. I have learned, as well, that I need to give of my time to pray and study the scriptures and teachings of the prophets—to be with God—so that he can be with me all day long. Instead of turning from Him as life gets hard, the power of Christ's atoning sacrifice has taught and enabled me to be at one with God and enjoy his Spirit and peace now, despite the distance between heaven and earth. Indeed, because of the love of the Savior and his sacrifice, that distance does not have to exist.

During this Christmas season, may we celebrate with our family and friends the birth of Him who has given us the power to be with each other for forever. May we glory in the trials that come with the path we walk as disciples of Christ. May we allow those trials to change and purify us so that when we are once again with God, we may also be like Him.

Merry Christmas! I love you all!

Ashley