Simply and Satirically Me

My papa (grandpa) wasn’t a member of the Church, but my grandma had been a seminary teacher for decades. This created an interesting combination in which my papa would often take me aside to teach me in private things like how to gamble on horse races. My grandma, on the other hand, would pull me aside for gospel discussions. She loved to talk about the scriptures. I could see it in her eyes. Most of our conversations were probably during my Senior year of High School, because I remember studying the New Testament. My grandma loved to help me learn new things from each scripture. In the middle of one such discussion, she beckoned for me to follow her into the study. The entire side wall was lined from roof to floor with books of all kinds. She pulled a thick, red book off the middle shelf and extended it toward me. The cover read Jesus the Christ . “I have a friend who I have been talking with about the Gospel,” she explained. “I’ve been meaning to give her this book, but…I ...

The old, faded purse meant everything to me. I had bought it a few months prior to leaving on my mission. Normally, I’m not too attached to my possessions, but the purse had come to be a sort of symbolic representation of survival to me. Through the first months of my mission, while serving in South Dakota, many sisters talked about how many different bags they’d had to buy, how the straps often broke. For some reason, I always asserted that mine wasn’t going to break. I’m not sure the source of such determination, but I hoped to will my purse to survive the 18 month experience in a way that felt reflective of my hopes for myself.  The first third of my mission had been brutal. I went through experiences that included the loss of a grandparent, intense depression, multiple hospital visits, physical sickness, and a companion who nearly died. Seven months into my mission, I was sent to Brazil, where things remained difficult for me.  Yet through it all, my purse rem...

“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...