I’m
the oldest of five children, so I was expected to set a good example for my
younger siblings and was frequently assigned the role of babysitter. Because my
parents often served in church leadership positions, I also felt some pressure
to be a good example for others who may be observing our family. I completed
the Personal Progress program during my teenage years and earned the Young
Womanhood Recognition award before graduating from high school. I graduated from
seminary after attending four years of early morning classes before school and
was regularly the class scripture chase champion. When I turned 21, I decided
to serve a full-time proselyting mission and accepted a call to serve for
eighteen months in the Pennsylvania Philadelphia Mission speaking English. I tried
to serve faithfully during each of those months. A year after returning home, I
married a returned missionary in the temple. We were blessed early in our
marriage with a daughter and then a son. These could be considered as a set of
culturally traditional events, as if a blueprint was followed for a successful,
religion-centered life.
My dad worked for the Church Education System during my
first twenty years. Children of parents in the military sometimes refer to
themselves as “military brats” because of the frequency of moving from place to
place. In a similar way, I have referred to myself as a “C.E.S. brat” because we
moved several times during my youth. I was born in Utah, we moved to upstate
New York when I was two, back to Utah the summer before first grade, to northern
Florida the summer before fifth grade, and to Colorado the summer before my
senior year in high school. My dad was then hired to teach in the religion
department at Brigham Young University for twenty more years, so our family
made one last move back to Utah.
On paper, it appears that I did all the “right” things while
being raised in a religion-centered home. The automatic assumption may be that
this combination would lead to a happy and successful life. There has been some
happiness and a measure of success. However, being a human on this planet
usually ends up feeling messy to one degree or another and life doesn’t always
turn out like the original blueprint.
While the previous description of my life is true, I have
experienced different degrees of depression and anxiety during most of it,
beginning in my youth. Because of that, my full-time mission experience was
extremely difficult. My husband is one of the best people I know with a good
and kind heart, but he no longer attends church with me or believes in the way
I originally thought he did. Our children have both had significant health
issues, one as a newborn baby and the other during an extended period in their
youth. Both children are now adults and they try to be good and kind as well,
but they also chose to stop attending church during their teenage years and no
longer believe in the way we originally taught them. They have each experienced
some depression and anxiety as well and have made some lifestyle choices that
are sometimes difficult for me to understand. In addition to the emotional
struggles I’ve experienced and the challenges our family has faced, I have also
experienced some physical challenges and was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis
in January 2013.
The original title of this chapter was “Shiblon Meets the
Messy Middle”. You may understand a little more of what I mean by the messy
middle. But what about Shiblon? Who is he and why am I including him in this
first chapter? We read about Shiblon in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament
of Jesus Christ. Most of what we know about him is found in Alma 38. In this chapter, we learn that Shiblon is the middle son and
his father, Alma, is speaking with him. Verse 2 reads, “And now, my son, I
trust that I shall have great joy in you, because of your steadiness and your
faithfulness unto God; for as you have commenced in your youth to look to the
Lord your God, even so I hope that you will continue in keeping his
commandments; for blessed is he that endureth to the end.”
The reason I appreciate Shiblon is that he is steady,
even though his life isn’t easy. His older brother, Helaman, becomes a prophet
and a successful military leader. Helaman’s story is told in many of the later
chapters of Alma. His younger brother, Corianton, made moral mistakes as a
missionary and Alma spends several chapters explaining the gospel to strengthen
him. Not as much is written about Shiblon and that makes me want to pay closer
attention to it.
In verses 3 and 4, we learn that Shiblon had difficult
experiences on his mission. The end of verse 4 reads, “and thou didst bear all
these things with patience because the Lord was with thee; and now thou knowest
that the Lord did deliver thee.” In verse 5, Alma gives him (and us) some
important counsel: “…I would that ye should remember, that as much as ye shall
put your trust in God even so much ye shall be delivered out of your trials,
and your troubles, and your afflictions, and ye shall be lifted up at the last
day.”
In verse 9, Alma powerfully concludes a brief summary of
his conversion story by saying, “…I have told you this that ye may learn
wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is no other way or means whereby man
can be saved, only in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the light
of the world. Behold, he is the word of truth and righteousness.” In verse 10,
Alma counsels Shiblon to “…be diligent and temperate in all things.” In verse
11, he continues: “See that ye are not lifted up into pride; yea, see that ye
do not boast in your own wisdom, nor of your much strength.” In verse 12, Alma leaves
him with this counsel: “Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that
ye bridle your passions, that ye may be filled with love; see that ye refrain
from idleness.”
I love these words of advice to this middle, sometimes
overlooked, son. Be steady and faithful in enduring to the end throughout your
life. Remember to trust the Lord and He will deliver and protect you from the
trials, troubles, and afflictions--which will inevitably come to all of us.
Look to God and to salvation through Christ, which will come because of their
righteousness (see 2 Nephi 2:3). We can’t save ourselves, but we can do our
best to be diligent, obedient, humble, and temperate in the process.
While teaching a Relief Society
lesson to the women in our church congregation, I shared a quote from President
Benson, which sheds light on Alma 38:10. “[A temperate person] is restrained in his emotions and
verbal expressions. He does things in moderation and is not given to
overindulgence. In a word, he has self-control. He is the master of his
emotions, not the other way around” (Teachings of
Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson, 302). That explanation was powerful for
me and helped me understand why I appreciate Shiblon’s steadiness so much. The
longer I live, the more I realize that if I am out of balance in any aspect of
my life (spiritually, emotionally, socially, or physically), it will
contribute to the current struggle. The answer is always to get centered back
on Christ and to focus more fully on developing the attributes that He
exemplifies.
In
another often quoted scripture from The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Helaman 5:12 addresses
this, along with the idea I originally discussed about balance: “…remember,
remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of
God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth
his mighty winds… yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon
you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and
endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation,
a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” I focus a little more when
a scripture is prefaced with the word “remember” twice.
Emily
Freeman, one of my favorite authors, wrote: “In our moments of greatest worry,
we must turn to the Savior. He knows how to get us through the middle moments
because He has experienced them Himself” (Making it Through the Middle,
p. 30). Elder Neal A. Maxwell explains: “It is in our weakness and extremity
that God’s power is fully felt. Only when, of ourselves, we are helpless is His
help truly appreciated” (All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience,
31). Emily’s sister shared this insight with her, “Sometimes He refines us in
ways we might not have wanted because He needs to use us in ways we might not have
thought.” (Making it Through the Middle, 48).
If all of that sounds overwhelming to you, here is some
wise counsel from Emily, “I realized I needed to stop and take note of how far
I had come, how much I had grown. I needed to recognize that the Lord was
moving me toward the promise even if the progress was taking longer than I
thought it should.” She discovered a passage that I also discovered back in
2001: “…They began to prosper by degrees…” (Mosiah 21:16). She continued, “We
have to learn to wait on the Lord… We must also remember that sometimes the
miracle doesn’t come all at once—sometimes it comes by degrees. Through this
process…we become sanctified…. The miracle you seek may not be discernable from
the middle of the journey” (Making it Through the Middle, 13-15). She
concludes, “We come to know the Savior best in the moments when we need Him
most” (Making it Through the Middle, back cover). I add my witness that
we can trust in God who is working on the miracle behind the scenes, even when
we don’t have any idea how our difficult experience will ever work out.
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