Modern Day Revelation Saved My Life

While Brent was unemployed I felt like I had to hold it all together, to be strong for him and the kids.  I was treading water and my family was holding onto me and relying on me to keep them from drowning.  It was exhausting.  Brent has been open to friends and family about the fact that his last job lay off was the one that sent him spinning.  He had been hopeful and tried to think positively with the other layoffs he had experienced. This one sent him straight into depression.   I was so proud of him and grateful that he worked to combat it by going to counseling and then eventually including me in the sessions.  Towards the end of the six months Brent was unemployed, I started to tell both Brent and our counselor, Kevin, that my strength was beginning to run out.  I had been struggling for months to stay calm, to keep faith and to hold it together for Brent’s sake. But, after the delivery of our third baby and the trauma that I went through during the delivery, I started having moments of going under and sucking in water.  I would force myself to the top but I desperately needed Brent to take over for a little while so I could regain my strength.  Brent had given me a blessing a couple years before (also during a period of unemployment) that told me the Adversary wanted to take me down.  I was the rock of my family and if he could take me down he could take down the whole family.  I remembered this blessing and it kept playing in my mind during this time. I knew that it applied to my life at that time more than before.   Sometimes we receive more strength when we go under the water and sink to the bottom.  We are then able to push off from solid ground and break through the top of the water and can continue to swim.

Even though Brent was struggling with depression he was still able to feel guided to give me the most remarkable and revelatory priesthood blessings.  He gave them to me often and they were detailed and gave me hope.  Most of the time blessings were my life line.  I have recorded them in my journal and I consider them very personal and sacred.  I have also felt there are small parts of the blessings that I can and should share.  Many of the blessings I received referenced the story of Moses and used symbolic language to the story of the Israelis exodus from Egypt and their deliverance from captivity.  Heavenly Father really does know each of us individually.  He knew that I love that story and find it inspirational.  Weeks before Brent received a job offer, I was told in a blessing that I would soon be delivered but that just as with the Israelis things would get worse before they got better.  Things did get worse.  To be honest I’m not sure how either Brent or I physically survived the stress and heartache we were feeling. I would plead with the Lord to deliver us.   It felt like we were teetering on the edge of certain doom and help was not coming.  Week after week Brent applied to job after job, have interview after interview and nothing would happen.

 There was one particularly difficult moment Brent looked at me and told me how much he wished I could give him a blessing.  He didn’t want a blessing from a home teacher or a friend but from his wife who knew so much of his heart and his mind.  Of course neither of us support nor feel that women should hold the Priesthood but he desired revelation to come and he really wanted it to come through me.  So, instead, I would pray on Brent’s behalf and ask the Lord for the desires of his heart and I would listen for what the Lord wanted us to do and wait for the answers to come.

Brent finally received a job offer in Las Vegas.  He accepted the job and then I fell apart.  I remember physically falling to the floor in sobs with the news.  I didn’t even care that we were moving back to Las Vegas.  I was so very relieved.  Brent left two days later.  We had family coming into town the weekend after he started work for Ethan’s baby blessing, so Brent did fly back.  But, I was a wreck during that first week he was gone.  I was barely able to get the older children to school and I often did not feed them dinner until after their normal bed time.  I remember one time that Parker asked for a sandwich.  Between nursing the baby, trying to prepare for the baby blessing, and working on the move I kept putting his request off until he moved a chair over to the cupboard, got what he needed, and made the sandwich himself.  His new independence was actually a pretty big relief.  I had the overwhelming drive just to get us to Las Vegas and be together again as a family and that was about all I could do. 

The move had gone terribly wrong and it took moving heaven and earth just to get us here.  Shortly after moving to Las Vegas I lost all strength.  I longed for my friends and Relief Society sisters in Colorado that had given me such amazing help and support. The time came that I could no longer swim.  I knew that time would come.  I had seen it from afar, the impending doom of a title wave so massive it was sure to take me down.   I just kept falling deeper and deeper. I was losing the energy and desire to pray.  I continued to pray often but most of my prayers consisted of me asking God how he could have let our suffering be so severe.  I would beg Him to help me get through every minute of every hour of every day.   The unpacking with my children and a nursing baby was a nightmare.  All the hurt and the injustice kept going through my mind.  My patriarchal blessing talks about paying tithing and gives a promise that I would be given more than I could receive if I paid my tithing.   We were honest tithe payers through everything and I was hurt and felt betrayed.   I know it sounds strange that I was experiencing these feelings after Brent had gotten a job and was finally working again but every day I was slowly cleaning up the destruction left behind and it wasn’t pretty.  I was finally letting myself grieve and it felt like I was drowning.  I have always had a closeness with Heavenly Father and a deep, abiding love for Him, but He never felt further away than He did at this point in my life.  I have always loved the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” because it describes perfectly my fear of ever feeling the way I felt at that time.  “O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”

 Brent wasn’t fully healed himself and was also struggling.  He kept telling me that I’ve always been the rock, that our family couldn’t handle me falling apart (that was easy for him to say).  Just before General Conference he offered to give me a blessing.  I was admonished to gain comfort and encouragement from the talks given.  It is an enormous blessing that we have Prophets and Apostles to give us hope and guidance when things seem so dark and it’s hard to find our way out of the water.  Elder Bednar told the story about his friend getting his truck stuck in the snow and it wasn’t until the truck was filled with fire wood and was heavy before it was able to move forward.  Then he said, “It was the load”.  Those words sank deep into my heart.  Then he quoted the Bible, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).  What he said next gave me the strength to begin to change my heart and to find strength in the Savior’s Atonement:  “Consider the Lord’s uniquely individual invitation to ‘take my yoke upon you.’ Making and keeping sacred covenants yokes us to and with the Lord Jesus Christ. In essence, the Savior is beckoning us to rely upon and pull together with Him, even though our best efforts are not equal to and cannot be compared with His. As we trust in and pull our load with Him during the journey of mortality, truly His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”

Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease 

I finally hit the bottom where I could put my feet  firmly on solid ground and brace myself to get a good, solid push up to the top, above the water.  Falling apart was the cleansing I needed.  It caused me to reach out with all my strength towards the Savior’s healing Atonement.

The hurt was melting away.  I then remembered the promise in my Patriarchal Blessing about tithing.  I had been upset, not about paying my tithing but about the lack of blessing being “poured out.” Then I realized the blessing being “poured out” was revelation.  It wasn’t money or cars or even a job that I was being blessed with from paying tithing.  The blessing was sacred, amazing, personal revelation.  Revelation in many forms had been pouring into my life over our seven years of trials - especially during the six months that Brent was out of work.  God had opened the Windows of Heaven and I had been given more than I had been able to receive.   It’s going to take years of reading through my journals to absorb all the revelation that was given during that time and all that I learned.  I have been reading through my journals lately and I cannot believe what I’ve found.

I wrote an entry about a blessing I received on December 2, 2007 that not only shocked me but has brought me great comfort.  It was a blessing that seems to pertain more to December 2, 2013 than it did when I wrote the blessing down.  At the time I received this blessing, I was in the first trimester of our first baby after four years of infertility.  Brent was approaching his first lay off from the job he had at that time.  My parents were also living close by and had moved to Colorado just by chance right before we had.  They were an enormous support to us while we lived there and also seemed to catch us many times when we would fall.  This is what I wrote:  “….I was told that Heavenly Father blessed me with our baby and that it was a miracle.  I was reproved and told that Brent and I needed to be more grateful for the blessings we have received, our baby, our family and our ward.  I was told that Heavenly Father wants to test us to see if we will walk in the darkness like Nephi did when he was sent not knowing beforehand what he should do.  I was also told that Heavenly Father will rescue us like Limhi’s people that were in bondage but not until after a time of suffering and like with Isaac, He will come in at that last moment when we feel all hope is gone.  I was told that we had been blessed to have my parents close by and that the Lord has done this for a reason so they could be instruments in the Lord’s hands to help us in our time of need…”

There are no words…….There are just no words to describe the feelings in my heart.  The shock I feel, the knowledge I’ve gained.  I have no way to describe it.  I remember thinking at the time of this blessing that the darkness would only be a few months.  It was actually years, seven years.  I know that there is no expiration date on Priesthood blessings and personal revelation.  It is so incredibly important to me to keep a journal and to review it.  My journal is a mess.  It’s filled with misspelled words and horrible grammar.  But, it is also filled with priceless, golden personal revelation.  One thing I have learned in my life is if I want to remember the lessons God has given me, I need to write it down in my journal.   If I review it along with the scriptures, talks given by the general authorities, and sincere prayer, l can and will be rescued in my greatest hour of need.

It has been a year since Brent accepted the job he has now.  How he found the job was a miracle and has been a tremendous blessing.  My job has been an amazing blessing as well.  Our lives are so different now, it’s difficult to even compare to where we were last year at this time.  It took about 9 months and a lot of hard work to feel like our finances were stabilizing and the stress was dissipating but I feel so happy and grateful now.  I’m even falling in love with Las Vegas (which is another miracle!)  I do worry sometimes about the inevitable hard times ahead but I can’t help but feel optimistic and hopeful for our future.  A fraction of revelation has come into my life over the last year as it did during those six months.  Believe me that is a blessing as well.  It gives me a chance to look back at what I did receive and to learn from it.  Now that I am healthy and I am healing I can search for the lessons and be even more grateful for the revelation that I’ve been blessed to have fill my life.

A True Love Story

Brent and I met in in a singles ward. I know, it’s so original.  I moved into his ward and the first Sunday I was so sick I barely made it to church.  I only went to prayer night out of pure curiosity and because my roommate Cori really didn’t want to go by herself.  Brent introduced himself to me then promptly started to hug another girl and joke he was going to start a rumor that they were dating.  The next week I was feeling much better and saw him before church.  I said hi to him and he walked right past me without saying a word. He claims he didn’t even see me because I’m a foot shorter than him.    Obviously things didn’t go so well the first couple times we met, until that night at prayer night.  He and his roommates were hosting it.  Cori and I showed up on time which meant no one else had gotten there yet so Brent started a friendly conversation with both of us.  At some point while we had been chatting Cori got a phone call and she went outside to take it, then Brent went in for the kill.  Suddenly his hand was on my knee and he was telling me how pretty I was.  Be still my heart, it worked!  I was swooning and could barely make out complete sentences.  Cori came back in and looked like she was totally shocked at the change that had occurred.  Then I remembered, I left an apple crisp in the oven!!  I shot up and told him I had to leave.  I should have invited him over to have some with me but my brain wasn’t functioning correctly.  At this point Cori was standing behind Brent motioning with her hands and trying to whisper something about me getting his number.  I was so panicked that he would turn around and see her I just left.  The next day Cori and I went over to his house and was lucky to catch him at home.  He was there to eat dinner then he was going to head back to the law school.  The first thing he said to me was, “I’m supposed to get your number at 9 o’clock tonight.”  The executive secretary was going to give him a call back at 9…..

He came over to our house the next night for pizza with a few other friends.  He asked me on a date for that Friday and after that we started to see each other every day.  It was right in the middle of his finales and he was leaving in two weeks for an internship in Las Vegas for the summer.  Seriously, the timing was both horrible and wonderful all at the same time.  I’m so glad we met before he left for Las Vegas but little did I know it would require me to use a lot of faith in the upcoming weeks and months.   

I had been engaged a few years earlier to someone else and swore I would date the guy I married a lot longer before I would get engaged again.  The problem is once you know, you know.  I remember a week before Brent left we were coming home from a date and I told him that we could just see where things would go after the summer and that we could take it slow. Ha Ha!  Not a chance.  It was so contradictory to how I really felt.  As soon as I got home I told my other roommate Mel that I was going to marry Brent.  She blurted out, “WHAT!!  But how do you know?”  I just knew.  Knowledge had been placed in my mind and there is no other way to describe it.

Before he moved to Las Vegas, Brent ended up having the guts to tell me he loved me and he intended to marry me regardless of my plan to wait him out.  During the conversation I had never felt such great warmth and peace.  He was telling me what I had already discovered in my heart and the Holy Ghost was reassuring me so I wouldn’t panic in the middle of our long distance relationship.  I do remember falling back on that feeling multiple times during our long distance courtship and engagement.  It would calm me down and help me move forward with our plans (that were moving very quickly I might add).

I won’t go into all the details of our courtship (because they are borderline PG-13), but I will say that after having a previous wedding called off I kind of panicked if Brent and I went longer than two weeks without seeing each other.  Our Bishop, Larry Gelwix, suggested we fix that by making an effort to see each other every other weekend.  He also called Brent and got after him for not helping me feel more secure with the distance between us, it actually helped a lot.  On those weekends Fridays were amazing.  By Sunday I would start crying on and off all day before we had to leave each other.   Brent proposed to me over the 4^th of July weekend after asking my dad for my hand in marriage.  (My dad said Brent could have all of me, not just my hand!)  We were at my home in New Mexico and we hiked up to my favorite spot on the mountain behind my childhood home.  He gave me a necklace called a teekee he got in New Zealand on his mission.  Then he pulled out the ring, told me he loved me and asked me if I would marry him.  It was perfect.  Brent moved back to Utah to start his third year of law school and I started the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program.  We got married on a beautiful fall day in the Bountiful Temple in Utah and had a reception in Salt Lake City at a bed and breakfast next to the capital.  To this day I wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe I would not have had a receiving line during the reception so Brent and I could actually enjoy the reception, as well as the food we didn’t get to taste.  Then we lived happily ever after……..

My severe stubbornness combined with Brent’s intensity and quick temper made for an interesting and explosive first year of marriage.  It was also during this year we discovered how amazing and wonderful being married is.  The combined personality traits of stubbornness and intensity ended up being our saving grace and helped us to push through some very difficult and unexpected times.  Not long after our first year of marriage I lost my older brother.  Brent and I were also in the middle of infertility caused by a lovely thing called polycystic ovarian syndrome.  I won’t go into detail but I will say that one of the side effects is also weight gain…….oh for real!  It's a continuous battle.

Brent’s first professional job was in Las Vegas.  I was determined to be happy with it but after six months I finally came to Brent in tears and told him how unhappy I was and that I COULD NOT imagine staying to raise a family.  Being the loving husband that he is he asked if I could live anywhere, where would I live?  Denver, Colorado, or anywhere in Colorado.  My family used to vacation in Colorado and I fell in love with it.  Nothing could be more perfect.  We actually had a conversation about moving there right after a Saturday night session of our Stake Conference and both of us felt the Spirit prompt us very strongly that we should move to Colorado.  Brent studied for the Colorado Bar for 3 months.  He would go to the library after work and often not come home until 10 p. m.  This made him pretty grumpy.  After passing the Colorado Bar his boss in Las Vegas heard about the potential move and gave Brent a raise.  Three months later he gave him another one.  His boss obviously wanted him to stay and this strategy worked.  Brent came home one day and without talking to me about it he told me he decided we would not be moving. Colorado didn’t pay enough money for him to leave this job and he would not go.  This resulted in the biggest fight we have ever had in our married life.  Soon after we moved to Colorado (happy wife happy life).  The whole time we both felt lead and guided there and to this day I cannot figure out why.  We must have accidentally broke a mirror during our move because we had seven years of bad luck from that moment on.

Many of the experiences we had over those seven years I have shared or I plan to share in more detail in other posts.  Layoffs, pay cuts, unemployment and awful bosses as well as some very difficult behavior from our oldest child that caused our lives to be filled with professionals.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg, I almost needed to be institutionalized, Brent definitely had his moments as well.  Through it all Brent and I have grown closer.  It didn’t tear us apart like it could have but created a love that is deep and binding.  I know for a fact that the closeness we have gained has been a choice that we made to never give up on each other and Heavenly Father nurturing our love.  Not long after I delivered our first baby, Parker, the result of the stretch marks and the dramatic change in my body was upsetting and embarrassing.  I went to go change my cloths in the bathroom and I remember Brent grabbing me by my shoulders, looking me in the eye and softly saying, “I am your husband”.  Those three words said so much to me. That there were no conditions on his love for me.  That he accepted me with his whole heart and that he cherished me.  Years later Brent’s world fell apart and the ground came out from under him. I wanted to make sure he knew that I felt the same way, I am his wife.  No matter what we experience I will love and support him.  I will be there for him in his hour of need.  That is a true love story.  

True love is when both of you put your selfishness aside and put each others needs ahead of your own.  Brent has made changes in himself for the good of our marriage and the good of our family.  It has inspired me to make my own changes.  I believe that one of the reasons marriage and family is so important to Heavenly Father is because it changes you in a way you could not otherwise be changed.  It helps you become more like the Savior in a way that nothing else could.  Marriage is not always a pleasant experience but it can give us the opportunity to try to pattern our lives after the Savior’s life.  There are also often moments of failure and a chance to rely on the Atonement.  Marriage also puts someone in your life that will support and champion you when you need it most.

 There are times I look at Brent when he comes home from work, in a raw moment with the craziness of the kids and the house and I can’t believe how much I love him, how sexy and sweet he is to me.   I feel old and beat up and he is aging gracefully, it is so unfair.  But then he will pull me into his arms, kiss me passionately and tell me how beautiful I am.  Sometimes all I can think is, “He can’t be serious!”  But I’m grateful for the love as I hold back tears (because he teases me when I cry). 

A few weeks ago we were having a conversation about last Christmas and how awful it was.  Then Brent said, “I just always felt like you deserved better.”  My answer is, “How could I get anything better?”  I have a loving, faithful husband who honors and cherishes me, who honors the priesthood and his temple covenants, who leads our family with faith and righteousness.  Even when he felt God couldn’t love him.  He has walked through hell and back and has kept me by his side through every minute of it.  He is the hardest worker I have ever known.  He comes home from work tired and warn out but he hits the ground running to help with the house, the kids and the endless chores.  He make me feel beautiful (even though I think he needs his eyes checked).  I have everything I ever deserved and more.  God knew who I needed and even though life with Brent hasn’t always been easy or perfect, I have been blessed to have a marriage beyond my wildest dreams.  I have had the windows of heaven open upon me and Brent has been a blessing that was poured into my life and it has been almost more than I can receive.