Praise in the Hard Things

(Originally given as a talk in sacrament meeting June 12, 2022)

I need to give you three images for the story I'm about to tell.

The first image comes from the series, The Chosen. After Jesus casts evil spirits from a man, the man lays completely spent from the trauma of the ordeal. As he lies on the ground, Jesus tenderly holds the man’s face in his hands, and tells him, “I know it felt like it would last forever, but it’s over now.”

The second image comes from a little girl who survived the Willie Handcart Company, Agnes Caldwell. Though she was rescued, she was devastated that the man who rescued her made her run alongside the wagon for quite a while, nearly past the point of complete exhaustion. Then, when she thought she could run no further, he tenderly gathered her into the wagon, and wrapped her with blankets. During the run, she was certain he was the meanest man that had ever lived. Later, she realized the man had forced circulation back into her very frostbitten legs and feet, most certainly saving them.

The third image is from a story in a letter we received home from our son when he was on his mission in Argentina. He received a phone call one night from a young man who had been baptized that day with his wife. The wife had gone to a home to see about taking in their laundry to earn some money for their family, only to learn it was a trap, where she was sexually assaulted. Grant and his companion rushed to the hospital to be with the young couple. Grant wrote home that he took this young husband – not much older than he - by the shoulders and said to him, “These are the kinds of experiences that will either bind you to God, or tear you away from him. YOU are the one who decides which.”  Grant wrote that he could see from the look on the man’s face that he was going to choose God.

So - remember these images: Jesus holding a face in His hands, a wagon master saving a little girl’s legs and feet by making her do something she didn’t think she could do, and a young man making an important decision to never leave His newly found God.

Now. The story.

On October 27, I fell on my morning walk and broke my shoulder.  After spending hours in the emergency room being treated, Dale and I both presented with covid symptoms three days later. I was admitted to Park City’s IHC hospital on November 3.

On November 22, I was told I needed to be intubated. I remember thinking that this meant I would most surely die, which surprised and disappointed me. I don’t remember feeling all that sick.

On November 30, doctors performed an emergency bowel resection, as heavy sedation had slowed my body systems and a bowel obstruction had formed. The surgery went seemingly well, until December 5 when I went into septic shock and renal failure. It was discovered that the resection had leaked throughout my body. Two more surgeries were performed to save my life in the next three days, and I was put back on a ventilator for another two plus weeks – a total of 25 days of intubation. This still sounds like someone else's story; I remember nothing after November 22.

The next cognizant thought I had was on December 18 – a week before Christmas - waking up in ICU and having someone tell me all this. The next three weeks included dialysis, attempts at physical therapy to wake my atrophied muscles up, and horrible bouts of PTSD – usually, in the middle of the night.

I was moved to a skilled nursing facility on January 6 – the only one of two facilities in a 4-state area with an in-house dialysis. No other facility wanted to deal with getting me to a dialysis clinic, as I was completely immobile.

The next 7 weeks were more physical and occupational therapy and more dialysis. Besides my life being spared, the greatest miracle, to me, was walking out of that facility on February 23 on my own two feet, finished with dialysis.

One of the most important nights, spiritually, during this incredible journey, was the night of my birthday, three days before I was first intubated. I could tell I was having trouble filling my lungs, but I still didn’t feel all that sick. And I got the wild idea… to sing. The nurses could hear me; they told me later.

Looking back, I think it was more than just trying to fill my lungs with air. I think the Holy Ghost was teaching me, before I entered the pit that was the next three months, that I needed to learn to praise God IN the hard thing. I had so often marveled about Nephi being able to praise God as he was tied to the mast of a sinking ship, or Joseph, praising God as he was thrown in a pit by his own brothers, sold into slavery, and falsely accused and imprisoned. How do you do that?  I could understand being grateful for the lessons after the fact, but how do you praise God in the middle of the Hard Thing?

That night I went to YouTube, where I found Dale and 360 of his closest little singing friends, who sang these words with me:

Benediction

Come to us this night,

Console our souls,

Becalm our fears,

And bless our sleeping.

Come to us this day,

Awake our hearts,

Renew our minds,

And bless our rising.

Come to us this hour,

Restore our hope,

Confirm our faith,

And bless our living.

Come to us we pray,

Receive our love,

Behold our joy,

And bless our praising.

(David Warner)

I probably sang that song at least 15 times that night. That night was one of the most sacred nights I’ve ever experienced. Looking back, I know the Lord was helping me build the ark for the coming flood, and teaching me a lesson I would need and use for eternity.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s April conference talk, “Our Relationship with God,” quotes Brigham Young: “My faith is placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and my knowledge I have received from Him.”  Elder Christofferson said that it is in building this relationship with God that strengthens our faith, not the receiving of expected blessings or outcomes.  I have learned for myself that this is true.

That’s one of the great blessing of trials. The refining process – and who we become in the trial – is definitely part of the blessing. But the greatest blessing is better knowing our beloved Father, His Son, and the Holy Ghost personally. Elder Christofferson promised: “We can anticipate growing trust and faith in the Father and the Son, an increasing sense of their love, and the consistent comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

         All three of those promises were realized in what I have come to call my Liberty Jail Winter – which, incidentally, lasted about the same length of time.

1.  I trust my Heavenly Father, my Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost more than before. Elder Christofferson counseled, “Allow Them over time to manifest Their fidelity to you. Come to know Them and truly to know yourself.” I am a witness, and was spared to witness:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are always with us. Their tutelage during this earthly experience is profoundly personal and intimate. They will leave nothing undone for our best good. I do not hyperbolize when I say that They have been with me every single moment of this unusual trial of facing death, losing all my strength, and literally relearning every single thing my body once knew how to do effortlessly. My prayers became constant, with no formal beginnings or endings – just an endless conversation with my most beloved Father in Heaven, who created me to have this experience so I could learn to trust Him and love Him best.

2.  It can be difficult to imagine that adversity – especially pain – is a manifestation of God’s love. But I am a witness, and was spared to witness: God loves us so much, He allows the conditions of the Fall, our own agency, and the agency of others, to provide learning opportunities in a world of opposition.  We could receive these valuable lessons in no other way. We have scriptural evidence that God weeps over the human condition and the suffering of His children, particularly including the suffering of His most beloved and obedient Son.

The most loving instructions I received in the darkest days of complete helplessness were these three words: Be. Here. Now.”  As I heard those words so often, I came to recognize that Father didn’t want me to dwell on the what if’s or if only’s of the past. Nor did he want me to become overwhelmed at the seemingly impossible milestones still ahead of me in my future. The instructions to Be. Here. Now. - taught me two valuable lessons. I learned to truly experience all the wretchedness of the experience, so I could witness forever that I wasn’t in that place alone. I was succored and supported by Jesus Christ, because of His atoning sacrifice, particularly because He had taken my name as proxy into the sacred temple of the Garden of Gethsemane. Even more sacred to me – I have learned that if I had wished that sacred place of here and now away, I would have left Jesus Christ there to have suffered it for me – alone – thereby missing out on the opportunity He gave me to Be. Here. Now – with Him. Learning to Be. Here. Now. is what has taught me that He truly wants to always be there with me.

3.  Recognizing the consistent comfort and guidance of the Holy Ghost has always been one of the most tender evidences of God’s love for me. I’ve always fancied I’m a little spoiled because of the personal tutelage that I receive from the Holy Ghost. But learning to do everything over again has meant learning to listen to my body in ways I didn’t know how to do before. The Holy Ghost helped me with every step – from not taking too big a bite when I was relearning to eat, to whether to push to sit up or stand up a little longer, or to recognize it was time to rest.

The Holy Ghost also taught me to focus on my caregivers rather than my own pain and discomfort. I learned to ask a really important question: “tell me your story.”  The Holy Ghost taught me of the heroism of these hard-working, overworked angels, and instructed me to testify to them of God’s love for them, and of how heroic their lives and their efforts were to me. Focusing on something besides my own miserable condition was important training to think of others before myself, and in doing so, it blessed us all. Several of my helpers would spend time in my room, saying “It feels different in here. There’s peace in here. There’s light in here.” I am a witness: when God is there, peace and light must also be there.

Remember the three images I spoke of earlier. Those images are important to this story, because I was one of those three faces at different points in the last several months. Over these last months, I was the man, at one time or another, spent from the trauma of the experience, whose face Jesus cradled in His hands. I am a witness and was spared to witness: I could nearly feel His hands on my face.

 I have been the little girl running beside the wagon. There were moments where I couldn’t believe how hard it was to be made to do such a thing, when all I wanted to do was rest. But praise God forever, that besides being the tender Father who cradled my face, He is also the wise Father who placed me in a situation where I had no choice but to run – or in this case - climb painstakingly out of the deep, deep pit, nearly spent with the effort.

But most importantly, I was also like the newly-baptized young man, who decided in the midst of the hard, that I was not leaving my God, nor was I blaming Him. That was the beauty of learning to praise Him.

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes comes from The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, a senior devil, writes this warning to an apprentice devil:

“Our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

We aren’t always going to be in the mood to be obedient. Circumstances will make us feel that we have a note from home that excuses us from being obedient. But the truly obedient – are obedient even when they’re not in the mood, or when the circumstances would suggest otherwise - no matter what happens to them. They understand the importance – and the power – of covenants.

God’s love isn’t evidenced in the sparing of a life, nor is it evidenced in the calling of a child home. God’s love is evidenced in the lessons taught and learned in each of our personalized curriculums, no matter where they take us. The very most important lesson I learned was to praise Him – to tell Him regularly, with the intent to learn to tell Him unceasingly – that He is good, that He has all knowledge, all love, all light, all power, that His plan is perfect in its power to save His children, and that I rejoice in being a part of it.

Praise is more than gratitude – it’s the highest form of gratitude. It implies trust, a sense of God’s love for us personally, and an acknowledgement of His consistent comfort and guidance. Praise can save us from despair. I am a witness, and was spared to witness: praise saved me from despair.

Elder Christofferson ends his talk: “In the end, it is the blessing of a close and abiding relationship with the Father and the Son that we seek. It makes all the difference and is everlastingly worth the cost. We will testify with Paul ‘that the sufferings of this present [mortal] time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’” (Romans 8:18)

Francis Webster, a survivor of the Martin Handcart Company, expressed it perfectly:  “The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay.” I am a witness: it is a privilege indeed.

I close with these images of praise that come closest to expressing the sure knowledge and joy of my heart that God is my Father, that Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer, and that the Holy Ghost is my teacher and testator, and that these three are, indeed, my truest, my most unfailing and faithful Friends.

From the hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”:

“Finish then, thy new creation; true and spotless let us be.

Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee.

Changed from glory into glory, till in heav’n we take our place,

Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise."

This is a beautiful reference to one of my favorite scriptures of praise. In Revelation 4:10-11, it speaks of the four and twenty elders, which are not just twenty-four people, but rather, a representation of all faithful people who keep their covenants:

“The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

The pleasure of our God is to see His children happy, and the nature of happiness is to be with our God. We receive those crowns by virtue of the perfect obedience and generosity of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who shared His earned inheritance with those of us who could never earn a crown without Him. How fitting, then, that we should cast those crowns at His feet, in eternal praise for His goodness – and the goodness of our great Father, who would allow that perfect Son to suffer all our hard things with us, so that He could share celestial glory with us.

I am a witness, and was spared to witness. I was spared to witness that I know these things by the power of the Holy Ghost, who has taught them to me. For this priceless knowledge, I praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Edited version of this talk appeared in the April 2023 Liahona under the same title: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2023/04/united-states-and-canada-section/praise-in-the-hard-things?lang=eng