Mountains to Climb
If you carefully watch all the Star Wars movies, you will most likely notice that Threepio is often saying something the effect of, “What did I do to deserve this?” You may notice that many people, when they stand where I am, have a tendency to do the same. I am not one of them because I do like to give talks although I’m not sure why. It might be that I like writing them or that I like reading in order to prepare for them. Whatever the case, this one gave me an excuse to watch all six Star Wars movies over the course of the past week. In spite of the fact that I basically done by Tuesday morning after having only watched episodes four and five, I continued on just for fun.
So, Star Wars—When Princess Leia is faced with the choice of divulging the location of the rebel base so that it might be destroyed or see her home planet of Alderaan destroyed, she gives the location of the no-longer-used base on Dantooine. Because this is too far away to give an adequate demonstration, and the Death Star is close enough to Alderaan that people on board will see the destruction, the order is given to obliterate Alderaan rather than Dantooine. Leia is dismayed and shocked as she watches the planet she grew up on, including all the cities, forests, bodies of water, and even people, reduced to so much rubble. What a burden to carry; what a mountain to climb.
And The Book of Mormon—recall that Alma and Amulek went about preaching the word of God in the land of Ammonihah. In one city, the believers and those who had been taught to believe the word of God, were taken by the unbelievers and cast into a fire along with all their scriptures. Alma and Amulek were made to watch this debacle. What a burden to carry; what a mountain to climb.
We all have burdens to carry, do we not? We all have mountains to climb. Sometimes, it is true, we climb mountains because they are there or because we want to. One of my mountains, Mount Shasta, is one of those. It dominates the landscape of northern California and draws people from across globe. People go there to hike, to climb, to ski. I went there because my grandparents went there and they went there because we already lived in the foothills. Because I went with my grandparents, I came to love and appreciate the mountain in ways I never could have had I not ventured up its slopes in every season. The time I spent on the mountain taught me some things, most of which I didn’t realize until later. Sometimes it is hard work to climb the mountain. Sometimes it is dangerous. I have seen the destruction of an avalanche in the winter and I have seen people sick because they could not handle the lack of oxygen. In order to successfully climb our mountains, it is best to have the proper preparation.
For many years, the hardest thing I had ever had to live through was losing custody of my oldest daughter, Alisha. Over the course of five years, four court battles were waged. It was very hard watching during those years as she changed from my innocent little girl to a child so influenced by her very worldly father. During this time, a dear friend said to me, “How do you do it?” Well, at the onset, I received a blessing from another friend in which I was promised that she would be returned to me. The blessing did not tell me when, just that it would happen. How did I live through it? By knowing that one day, in this mortal existence or in the one to come, she would be returned to me.
It was also very hard when we first came to Massachusetts and I had to send Joanna back to Idaho. I did not know when or even if she would ever be back. I had to hold on the fact that she is my daughter and that I love her even though the most I felt I could really do was to pray for her and for us.
However, it wasn’t until last August that I experienced the most difficult thing I have had to do. Losing Daniel was awful. There are not words to describe the change that was wrought in our lives that day; change we must live with for the rest of our lives. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of him and miss him. I think that there has not been a day go by since then that I have not cried because the hurt is so deep. But I know that one day, as long as I live my life to best of my ability, I will see him again; I will be with him again. Laying on whatever hard surface I was on in the emergency room at Sanford Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, hearing that Daniel was dead, was difficult. How could that be? I knew that we had been in an accident. My memories of it were sketchy, even though it had only just happened, but I knew, I knew that everyone was either okay or would be okay. Our family has not had an easy existence; this was just another difficult thing. Besides, I had heard Daniel comforting Cedric when I could not move to reach him. Dead? Not possible. That was hard.
Harder yet, the most difficult thing I have ever had to do, happened on August 9th. Cedric asked the simple question: “Where’s Daniel?” I sent everyone out of the room and managed to climb onto the bed with him. Then I explained what had happened to each of us in the accident and that Daniel’s body had been hurt so badly it could no longer function properly, so his body had died. His spirit, however, was, and is, still alive and with us. I held him as he sobbed and we cried together.
In the ensuing days, and now weeks and months, I have had to work on coming to terms with the part that I played in Daniel’s death. Joanna, Amena, Cedric, Seth, and Joseph have all been attending the Carriage House in Worcester with either Paul or me. The people who meet there have all experienced the loss of a family member. The children meet together with facilitators and the adults meet separately. The brother and son of one family was killed in an accident involving more than one car. I recently asked the mother if she felt it was a good thing that she had someone she could be angry with or that she could blame for the death of her son. I asked this because there are times when I wish I had someone to be angry with or someone I could blame. However, as we were in a one vehicle accident and I was the driver of that vehicle, there is no one else. It falls squarely on me. After talking to this woman, it became obvious that while she does place much blame on the driver of the other vehicle, she takes a lot of blame herself because she feels that she should have not let her son go out that night or at least should have done something differently.
I do not know everything. I am pretty sure that I do not want to know everything, at least not yet. Nevertheless, I have put a lot of thought into our situation and have determined that I can take comfort in these words from D&C 122:9: “Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.” We had a reservation in Sioux Falls. I wanted to get us there. From there we would have had one long day to Idaho or two shorter days. Should I have stopped sooner? “Thy days are known.” The conclusion I have come to is that Heavenly Father does know everything. If it was Daniel’s time, there is nothing I could have done to prevent it, like it or not.
What a burden to carry; what a mountain to climb.
In our last General Conference, President Henry B Eyring gave a talk entitled “Mountains to Climb.” As I mentioned earlier, we all have mountains to climb. My mountain is not the same as yours. Yours is not the same as the person sitting in front of you. That persons is not the same as the person they are sitting next to. And so on. President Eyring gives us some principles we can use in order to successfully climb our mountains. They include having faith, believing, developing patience, carefully preparing, choosing the right, judging correctly and serving God and others.
As President Eyring says, we must “have faith that the way to rise through and above trials is to believe that there is a ‘balm in Gilead’ and that the Lord has promised, ‘I will not…forsake thee.’”
We must have patience. Patience, I believe, is a two edged sword. The scriptures are full of examples of when we should have patience. Mosiah tells us, “Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith. (Mosiah 23:21)” If the Lord is trying our patience, it must be a good thing to have. Alma says that “they were steadfast and immovable in keeping the commandments of God, and they bore with patience the persecution which was heaped upon them. (Alma 1:25)” In the Doctrine and Covenants, we are told to “continue in patience until ye are perfected.” So, patience can be a very good thing. We all want to be perfected, right? However, if I am too patient with a brick of soap, letting it cure for too long before I cut it, I might not be able to cut it. So patience is something we need to cultivate, but we don’t ever want to let it become procrastination.
We must be prepared. There are myriad ways to do this. We must prepare physically, spiritually, mentally. If you recall last week, Brother Rich Goguen mentioned in his testimony that it used to be that 90 percent of the users of the cannery were members of the church but now 90 percent are non-members. These people are getting the idea that they need to be physically prepared; are we getting it? How do we prepare spiritually? While we were in Idaho, our stake had what we called the Sandpoint Seven which includes the patent answers to the question of spiritual preparation.
Sandpoint Seven
1. Personal Prayer
2. Family Prayer
3. Personal scripture study
4. Family scripture study
5. Family Home Evening
6. Regular Temple Attendance
7. Meaningful Service
If we do these things, we will be prepared.
We must choose the right. How many choices do we face each day? Dozens? Probably more likely in the neighborhood of hundreds and maybe even thousands. We have discussions about choices at home often. Fairly recently, we were debating happiness. Do we chose to be happy or is it something that happens to us? One family member insisted that happiness, or the lack thereof, is the effect of various causes. Most of us believe that happiness is something that we choose. Generally, I think that we all have a great capacity to make correct choices. President Eyring said, “Our choosing the right consistently whenever the choice is placed before us creates the solid ground under our faith. It can begin in childhood since every soul is born with the free gift of the spirit of Christ. With that Spirit we can know when we have done what is right before God and when we have done wrong in His sight.” What a great gift that is.
We must judge correctly. This does not mean that we are obliged to pass correct judgment on others; it means that we need to judge correctly for ourselves when we ought to be doing certain things. Just as I must correctly judge when it is time to cut soap, we need to correctly judge when we are ready for something. President Eyring mentions that he was unwise in praying “so soon in my life for higher mountains to climb and greater tests.” Are you ready to pray for more patience? Are you ready to pray for more faith? Are you ready to pray for more endurance? Prayers are answered and if you are not ready for whatever it is you pray for, you are likely to get it anyway.
We must serve God and others. This sometimes seems like the answer to all questions. How do we gain greater faith? Serve God and others. How do we learn to judge correctly? Serve God and others. How do we learn to consistently choose the right? Serve God and others. How do we rise above our own trials and troubles? Serve God and others. What is the greatest commandment? Do we not learn from Matthew that “Thou salt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37,38)”? How do we accomplish this? By serving God, which includes serving others.
President Eyring said, “I cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop.
“There are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of patience. Those reasons come from this one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly Father and the Savior want you fitted to be with Them to live in families forever. Only those washed perfectly clean through the Atonement of Jesus Christ can be there.”
This is something I had never thought of before in quite this way. If we sail through this life without ever experiencing the bittersweet taste of trials, how can we ever hope to go where Heavenly Father and Jesus dwell? We all are aware that Jesus suffered and died for each of us, but how many ever consider that Heavenly Father had to pass through trials in order to gain his exalted station? Why should we expect to experience anything less?
In spite of the general awesomeness of Star Wars, it is a work of fiction. The only reason Princess Leia had to witness the destruction of Alderaan is so that I could use it in a talk. However, there is purpose behind the scene of carnage Alma and Amulek were made to witness. There is purpose behind the accident that took Daniel’s life. It is a trial through which we must tread. If we are successful, we will emerge on the other side triumphant in accomplishing what we were meant to; we will be stronger, we will have greater knowledge, and we will be not only with him and hopefully all of our other family members, but our heavenly parents and elder brother, Jesus Christ.
It is my prayer that we will all be successful in climbing our own mountains, whatever and wherever they be.
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