:Naiahdot

The word’s out in my ward that I’m a writer, and so I’ve had the opportunity to have my hand in a couple of little assignments so far from that quarter. This latest one was really great. In August, President Hinckley (the leader of our church, for those of you who are not LDS) issued a challenge to the membership at large to read the entire Book of Mormon before the end of the year. I took that challenge, like most members, and have had obvious blessings come from it. In our upcoming ward conference, the stake Relief Society has planned a lesson around this challenge and its effects in the lives of the sisters. So, an assignment went out, and in my ward, it was delegated to me. I sent these off tonight, and I thought I’d throw them up here before I logged out and hit the sack. The first is about Grandma Frieda who was one of my first real friends in the ward. Ok, so she’s like seventy years older than I am, but I love her to pieces, and am so very grateful for her friendship. She’s been an amazing boon to me, personally, over the last few months. The second is about me. Yeah, it’s in the third person, but I wrote it. It’s weird to do, but I like how it came out. Enjoy.

Grandma Frieda

President Hinckley’s challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year had a special blessing for many of our ward, and one sister in particular–Sister Frieda Foxton. In her last ward, Sister Foxton was very involved. She was a sacrament meeting greeter, and as such felt very connected to everyone in that ward. Since being a member of our ward, though, her age and health have prevented her from being quite so active, and until now, to her chagrin, she has had to accept that position.

When President Hinckley’s challenge came, it was embraced by the young men. Each night, a pair of them would visit her at the nursing home where she lives. They would open with prayer, and take turns reading 5 or 10 verses each, being so considerate and making sure that Frieda always knew what verse they were on so that she could follow along. They’d also close with a prayer, and take the time to sign a little notebook that Frieda kept for just that purpose. Sometimes, even, it wouldn’t be just young men. Occasionally a mother or a father would come along, or even a whole family. Every time, Sister Foxton was so touched. She could not get around to get to know the ward, but, in this, much of the ward came around to her.

It has been an outpouring of love that has brought Sister Foxton much more into the center of things and has made her feel like a true member of our ward family. She is not the only one who has been blessed by it, though. Many of the mothers of the young men expressed in Relief Society just how this service has blessed their boys and their families, as well. One of the mothers expressed to Sister Foxton that, prior to helping her, her son had not touched his scriptures outside of church in months. Others mentioned that their boys never had to be made to go, and, often, were enthusiatically ready and waiting even before their parents were. Truly the compassion of thier service had blessed their own hearts, as well.

The greatest part of this blessing is that, even though the challenge was met a couple weeks ago, it will go on. Neither the boys nor Grandma Frieda wanted to stop, and so they are not going to. They are going to pick another book of scripture and continue.

This challenge has taken Sister Foxton from feeling somewhat isolated from the ward to the very center of its heart. What a blessing to Sister Foxton, what a blessing to the boys, and what an extra blessing to Sister Foxton to feel like she’s been a blessing to the boys.

Naiah Earhart
Sister Christina Earhart could not be more grateful for the timing of President Hinckley’s challenge to read the Book of Mormon. After three years of strict inactivity, she found herself one day at church unwittingly caught up in the spirit and very confused. Years ago, some people did some things that had driven her away, and she thought that she was away to stay. There she was, though, sitting in church that sunday, only there because her daughter needed a ride, and the Spirit was so present, so real, so evident that she didn’t know what to think. She knew what she felt, though.

The gospel is vast, and to take it all in one bite is somewhat impossible. With her heart heading in this new direction, her mind needed a starting point to get on the path to catching up. In Relief Society that first sunday, President Hinckley’s challenge was mentioned. Being the cornerstone of our religion and all, Christina decided that the Book of Mormon was as good a starting place as she could ask for. She decided to take President Hinckley’s challenge, and little did she know that the blessings that he promised would come forth from the very first page.

Naiah almost dove right in to First Nephi, but, somehow, that felt like cheating, and so she backed up to the testimonies of the witnesses. Even that did not feel right, and so, starting at the cover, she turned to the title page, and there, all her reasons and justifications that she had built around why she had been gone from church were swept away. The last sentence of the title page reads, “And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgement-seat of Christ.” Those words resonated in her mind–”they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God.” The things that those people had done were just that, things that people had done, and not anything on which to go on condemning the things of God as she had been doing for the last three years.

From that moment on, rather than an investigation of her faith, her reading became a rebuilding of her testimony. Three and a half months later, she is very definitely ‘back,’ and she has not come alone. Her husband, through her interest and investigation, had begun meeting with the missionaries almost as soon as she had returned to church. He, in a miraculous conversion, went from being an agnostic to being a man of faith, and has since been baptized, and is currently preparing dilligently to receive the priesthood. Their home has taken on a beautiful new, sweet spirit, as they join with their children in family prayer every evening, and seek to raise them up in compassion and faith based on the gospel.

President Hinckley promised an increase in the presence of the Spirit in our homes through this challenge, and, even though she is still in the Book of Ether (There’s 2 days left! She’ll still make it!), the increase in the presence of the Spirit in their home has been infinite. The light of faith has been lit, and its soft, abiding warmth has been an immeasurable blessing.

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Being active in the church has had the unexpected side effect of pointing out just how much time I was spending blogging. All the time that I’m now spending on all the various actions and activities that go along with LDS life have all swallowed up the apparently copious free time that I used to spend blogging (ok, hardly copious, but still…). Sure, I’ve dinked around on the site here and there when I get a second. You’ll notice the new “Recent Comments I’ve Made” category in the sidebar, referring people to discussions on other sites that I felt to chime in on. Granted, it’s pretty underutilized right now, as I haven’t had any time for blogging, on my site or others’, but it’s still pretty cool. Props to my husband for thinking of it.

As much as I miss the intellectual stimulation from these discussions, I have to say that, staying present in our life here has been beautiful and fulfilling and rewarding in a much more tangible way. There have been some really big changes of late, here, and, well, I’ve mentioned more than once that I never handle change well, even good change. The changes around here certainly quialify as good change, no doubt. Make that ‘the very best kinds of change.’ Alas, that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve spent the last few months feeling a little like I’m treading water in a pool being filled ever deeper from a stream pouring right over my head.

The rewards for my efforts have been coming in a stream just as steady, and so the whole equation has maintained a certain balance, and, as I always do, I am beginning to find my feet, strike a balance, and dance to the new rhythm something beautiful. For weeks, I avoided mentioning it here, perhaps for fear of jinxing it in some way, I don’t know, but the most profound change has been a reward unto itself. It has necessitated some really fundamental changes in our marriage, in our modes of communication, and even in my very picture of who he is. My husband, who had been meeting with the missionaries for months (pretty much since right after my return to the church in early September), was baptized.

It has been a sweet, sweet gift–one that I never actually believed I’d be given. Upon returning to church and looking toward the future, I never really thought that I would be standing there hand-in-hand with Robert from a common place of faith. I have known him for so long, and he turned down the church ten years ago when I approached him about it and gave him a Book of Mormon. (I believe there may even have been a “Have you lost your mind?” in there somewhere.)

I regret those doubts now, as, in retrospect, they feel like a lack of faith. Heavenly Father can change any heart. Sure, it takes a level of humility and openness on the part of the heart seeking change, as we learned, but that seeimingly small effort allows a huge work to be done by the Spirit. Watching the ‘Natural Man’ be swept away has been an astounding sight, for all that I’ve done it myself (twice now, I guess). It is so different watching someone else go through it, as, from the outside, I can’t see their spiritual certainty like they can. I do not hear the answers to the prayers that they get. When I went through it (as I will continue to write about in my various ‘Adventures in Mormonism’ entries as I have time), it was so blatantly obvious to me, even though it defied the senses and rationality of those around me and close to me. I never realized how sharp a contrast that is, until now, when viewing the same process from the other angle.

One day, all of a sudden, there he was, in a different place, and then, the next morning, he was a different man, even. The change has been fundamental and profound. Even then, it has been welcome and easy, and so very right. Of course, it has meant a few shifts in our relationship. Those shifts, though, have been effortless save for the mental moment afterward of ‘oh, I guess that was a change’. Yeah, it has taken my mind some time to catch up on a few fronts, and I am still shaking off some of my doubts, but here we are.

We are praying together. Our children are loving it as much as I am. After my three-year drought, prayer, both personal and family, is like the most exquisite draught of cool water, sipped from a delicate, tiny-yet never-emptying crystal glass. It is a moment of intense, quietly reverberating beauty, and I am so grateful to have it in my life again.

Prayer was one of those aspects of the church that I always missed. The temple was the other. I never denied missing those, and I couldn’t hardly drive down I 90 without tearing up as we passed the temple. I kept trying to take those parts of the church that I missed so much, that I remembered being so touched by, and recreating them in my own contexts. There are some things, I am finding, that simply defy immitation, counterfeit, or copy. It’s not just bowing my head; it’s knowing that He is there and listening, loving, and caring. It’s not just having mutually meaningful ritual; it’s feeling that breeze of the eternal, the celestial übereality of the actions and words.

Then there’s the overarching sense, in both of these aspects of certainty, of knowing that I am, in fact, doing the right thing. Moral certitude, my husband once called it. It’s what a lot of people are looking for, in a lot of places, other churches, even. No matter how I tried to piece the parts togther on my own, I could never come to that place in the end. As long as it was just me, or even me and a handful of friends, that’s all it was. There was a level of play or make-believe to it all.

Sure, I feel a little like the Prodigal Daughter, but regardless, I am home, and it feels good, even with all the change that it took to get here..

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