Simply and Satirically Me

“Why would I leave the God I love to come to a place like this?” I was always nervous to the teach the Plan of Salvation to investigators on the mission. I felt like there was something about it I was missing. There seemed to be too much information mashed together that I was never going to be able to explain simply, rationally, or even truthfully. I wasn’t even sure how to begin telling someone without a Christian background about the significance of Eve and Adam eating a piece of fruit. So, my investigator’s question burned a little whole in my conscious. Not only was I unsure how to answer his question, I felt like it somehow summarized everything going on in my head – my own questions and concerns. His life hadn’t been easy. Milton not only struggled with addiction, his wife had left him and took their child. From what I gleaned from his mother, it didn’t seem like any other religion or method they had tried before was able to him break his extreme alcoholism. And he was...

“Hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light that ye should hold up – that which ye have seen me do.” I’ve never thought much about why. Honestly, prior to serving a mission, I never thought much about the what either. What was going on inside my mind. Terms like anxiety, depression, mental illness, obsessive compulsive disorder and the like felt like taboo topics growing up. Those people have problems. Get yourself together. Choose to be happy. Let go of stuff that bothers you. Get over it. And learn to control your thoughts. Not bad advice. Frankly, it’s good advice to actively take control of your mind and body and walk the path of emotional, physical, and spiritual stability and health. Until you realize that, for some people, they just can’t. One of my first times recognizing a panic attack remains critically imprinted on my memory. Waking up in a cold sweat. An impending sense of doom. My heart racing. The feeling that I was defi...

One. My coworker and I always tried for the same seats on the first level balcony overlooking the stage. Every summer at BYU, the Tuesday Morning devotionals were moved from the large Marriott Center to the much smaller De Jong Concert Hall. And the best part about being a full-time BYU employee is that you get paid to attend. That meant we’d both take a book we were reading and get through a couple pages before the speaker began, or else one of us might take a little nap through the whole thing– which was my preference.  One of these Tuesday mornings, when we’d gotten the seats nearest the edge of the balcony, I noticed that one of the men sitting on the stage below was looking up at me. I thought maybe I was wrong at first, but every time I looked down, I’d watch his head move away from the speaker and back up at me. Typical of the girl that I am, I went through various possibilities: was I weird looking? Was I pretty? Did he think he recognized me? Did I know him? I...

We’ll call this more of a rambling string of only partially-coherent thought. But it’s been on my mind more and more. It seems like everybody’s out to fight against somebody somewhere. We’ve all got our own enemies in some form or another from the less-than-serious “I hate that girl who always comments in class” to the more dramatic “everyone in [insert political party or organization] is so immoral and going to ruin the world.” I’ve spoken about dichotomies before as well as stereotypes. We all hate being defined unless it’s an “us” v “them” situation where we suddenly see our friend group as the brothers on the battlefield courageously fighting against the fray of people different than us that we sometimes just don’t like and generally think are either “too cool for us” or maybe a little too awkward. I’m guilty of this. Memes don’t help with this, either. I guess that’s where this rant begins. I've recently noticed that every time someone posts something slightly a...

“What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” The words were spoken by the Savior in what James E. Talmage called “the hour of His deepest humiliation. [1] ” Peter, James, and John had accompanied the Savior into the garden of Gethsemane. He had instructed them to watch with him. Yet, as he went and prayed and suffered, all three of them eventually fell asleep. The words feel almost like a stinging rebuke. Here the Savior of the world was suffering under the weight of a world of sin, and his closest friends and disciples couldn’t even stay awake to watch. Someone in my Relief Society made reference to this scripture during the lesson on Sunday. In a touching way that rang true for probably everyone, she mentioned an experience when she struggled with listening in church, or something to that effect, and the words came to her mind, “could ye not  watch with me one hour?” It helped her realize how little she was being asked, and how much she owed the Savior more of her att...

The look on her face nearly broke my heart. Probably because I felt like I understood her. On one couch was a sister missionary overwhelmed with expectations she now believed were unfulfilled. In a moment of stress, she had vocalized suicidal thoughts to her trainer. The mission had decided to send her home with an official escort. She didn’t have a choice. Even if she didn’t mean what she said. On the opposite couch was me. A sister who hadn’t vocalized those thoughts, but they had come and gone in a similar vein. But keeping them to myself, I was allowed to stay. The difference between us, however, seemed infinitesimal.     Living in the same area as the Mission President, my companion and I volunteered to take the sister out for her last few days in the field. I felt like she needed to talk, and I wanted to let her. After we worked for much of the day, we went home and I asked her questions and let her tell me everything. That’s when I learned that her real ...

When I was younger, I remember asking my Dad a question. “If Heavenly Father knows everything that is going to happen, does he know whether or not I am going to make it to the Celestial Kingdom?” “Yes, of course he does.” “Then, why doesn’t he just send me wherever now, instead of making me live through it all?” “Well, because it hasn’t happened yet.” Meaning, of course, that God wasn’t going to send me to Heaven or “hell” until I proved my character through my actions. I guess it took a while for the lesson to sink in, but I think the sum of it is this: Foreknowledge cannot rob justice. If God were to assign judgement before the offense, it would be unjust – despite the fact that he knew what was to come. That is the point of agency. Our choices are just as much an evidence to ourselves, as well as to God and the world, that whatever result we attain in the next life, it was dependent on our choices and desires in this one. Shortly after his life-changing expe...