Beauty for Ashes and Joy for Mourning

This was one of those weeks.  You all know what kind of weeks I mean, the kind where you find yourself literally at the edge of your ability to make it and you wonder how things can ever possibly work out.  In addition to the regular stress associated with my life as a student preparing for qualifying exams, I got news that my nephew Max was having some very challenging health problems and even needed to take a ride to the hospital in an ambulance.  I won't go into the details, but my family was very worried and spent a lot of time on our knees praying for him.  Events like this are never easy.  Events like this when you hear about it via text messages and over the phone because you are too far away to be able to be there at home lending aid and comfort are downright miserable and depressing, leaving you feeling utterly helpless.

Consolator, by Carl Bloch

As painful and depressing as these moments are in our lives, and as much as we would all rather not drink these bitter cups, they serve a powerful purpose for us.  In moments when we feel this way, we come to the sweet realization that there is only one source of comfort and healing that we can turn to and receive the help we need, our Savior Jesus Christ.  Of course we trust in medical professionals and we do what we can to make the situation better, but in the truly important moments of our lives we will be struck with the realization that He is, has always been, and will always be the only lasting answer to the challenges in our life.  He is the only one with power over life and death, the only one with power to break the chains of sin, and the only one who can give us "beauty for ashes" and "joy for mourning" (Isaiah 61:3).  He knows, as Elder Holland declared, "the way out and . . . the way up. . . . He knows the way because He is the way" (April 2006, General Conference).

When I got the news about Max being taken to the hospital, I was devastated and heartbroken and in tears.  Max had gone through much when Lynley was pregnant with him and then again in the first couple weeks of his life.  And here I was, once again, 1000 miles away from home able to do nothing to help but pray.  Suffice it to say, Friday was a very long and difficult day for me filled with prayers and little comfort.

I've learned being in Texas that one of the things I can do when I am lonely and missing home is to work on some family history.  Often I've felt the comfort of home while reading through old letters or diaries from family members.  If I can't enjoy the presence of my parents and brother and sisters, I can enjoy the comfort of departed loved ones who are still very much alive, reaching out to me across the decades.  On Friday night, I went to work transcribing a small diary that my Papa wrote in 1953 when he was alone in Washington D.C. working as a secretary for Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson.

He described himself as having been "more lonely and homesick than I have ever been in my whole life." with workdays often extending from 8 am to midnight.  In these circumstances, he was blessed to be able to attend a Stake Conference for the Washington D.C. Stake with a visiting authority, then Elder Harold B. Lee.  Elder Lee had been my grandfather's seminary teacher at South High School during the 1930s, and the two had maintained a relationship when they were working in the Church offices during the 1940s and early 1950s.  In the conference, Elder Lee spoke about "suffering, sacrifice, [and] heartaches that come out ok" (DAH diary, 1 March 1953).  The following day, my grandfather went to the office early to have a visit with Elder Lee.  Elder Lee assured him that "things will work out ok" and encouraged him to "just keep plugging" because that opportunity would give him "background and experience [that he] can't get otherwise" (DAH diary, 2 March 1953).

These words brought me comfort and reminded me that things would work out.  But they became even more powerful the next morning, as I opened my scriptures to study and the first verse I read in Alma 5 said, "And moreover, I say unto you that it has thus been revealed unto me, that the words which have been spoken by our fathers are true, even so according to the spirit of prophecy which is in me, which is also by the manifestation of the Spirit of God" (Alma 5:47).  On that morning, Alma's words were literally the words of the Lord to me.  They were about my grandfather's diary and they were about me and my family and about Max.

Comfort had indeed come, just as the Lord promises.  Later that day, I received word that Max had been released from the hospital, and that even though he was still not feeling well and needed continued prayers and fasting, he was doing better than he had been on Friday.  I am a witness that there is healing power and comfort in the gospel of our Savior, that He can and does lift us when we are down and ease our heavy burdens.  When all other things fail, His pure love which He bestows so willingly "never faileth" (Moroni 7:46).  For that truth, I am eternally grateful.

Brett