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.