Immortality

 

My father was fond of telling this story. He told it whenever he found an audience willing to listen to the tale. He told it at my wedding breakfast the day I got married.

Here's the story the way my dad told it:

I was laying AstroTurf on our backyard deck.

I don't know if you've ever worked with the stuff, but you have to make sure the surface you are laying it on is perfectly smooth and clean. One small pebble or a little dust can keep the AstroTurf from sticking tightly, and that causes creases or lumps. I spent hours sweeping the deck, then hosing it down, and sweeping it again when it was dry. I repeated this several times, until I was sure it was smooth and clean, and I slowly and painstakingly rolled the sticky AstroTurf onto the deck. It was a perfect fit, and I stepped back to survey my work.

I was surprised to see a lump. It was a small lump, but big enough to stand out in the otherwise smooth and even turf.

I couldn't understand it. How could there be a bump under the AstroTurf when it had been clean and smooth just minutes earlier?

I realized that I had to pull the AstroTurf from the edge of the deck to the spot where I could see the lump, and I needed to do it quickly before the glue set.

I found a small piece of paper, folded twice. I picked it up, unfolded it, and read these words: “My name is Marnie Measom. I am seven years old, and I used to live here.”

I confessed my part in this caper, telling my dad that when he was almost finished and his back was turned briefly, I had dropped the folded paper on the deck and pushed it under the AstroTurf with my foot. “I wanted to be immortal,” I said, a bit sheepishly.

Now, many years later, I know that immortality does not come from a small folded piece of paper. It is a free gift from God, given to us through His beloved Son's atonement.

“The resurrection and immortality are gifts from God, through Jesus Christ, and not from the works and efforts of mortal men.”¹

But immortality is not our end goal. We can do better. We can work toward eternal life – God's life.

“But to be resurrected and immortal is not all that is required for entrance into eternal life in the kingdom of God. Eternal life in the kingdom of God is far beyond his universal gift of immortality and is God’s greatest gift to all mankind; it can only be brought about through obedience to the doctrines and commandments taught by Jesus Christ.”²

“For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39, emphasis added)

Maybe the next time I'm tempted to fold a piece of paper, I'll use it for origami. I think that will have more value than my childhood attempt for immortality.

1Bernard P. Brockbank, 1973

2ibid

Struck Speechless

(This is from 2002)

The first week of school is a terrible time for a mom to get sick.

But there I was, struck by some virus that rendered me nearly useless among all the bustle of kids loading and unloading backpacks and hunting for matching socks. For nearly a week I floundered, trying to keep my preschool children alive but quiet, occasionally sitting up to sign a note from school for one of the older kids.

By the beginning of the next week, although I was still weak and left with a lingering cough, I felt well enough to begin the task of digging my family out of the mess that had grown up around us. On Tuesday evening, I was explaining to my daughter why she needed to help clean the family room when my tirade was interrupted by a severe coughing spell. After I finished coughing, I tried to continue the lecture, but found it difficult to speak. The words just weren’t coming out right.

I had never experienced anything like this before. When I went upstairs to talk to my husband, Wes, my speech was slurred, and I stammered over some words.  Frightened, I began to cry. Wes put his arms around me and asked what was wrong. “I’m scared,” I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.

“You’re just tired,” he told me.  “You’ve been so sick. You go to bed. I’ll put the kids down. You’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.”

I crawled into bed and lay there, hoping he was right, but deep down I knew that I was not just tired. I was terrified that something was really wrong with me.What’s happening to me?  I wondered. What if it doesn’t get better? What if it gets worse, and I can’t talk at all?

For the first time in my life, I considered what it would be like to lose the ability to speak. While talking is a skill generally taken for granted, I was keenly aware that night how much it meant to me. I had considered in the past what it might be like to be without sight, or hearing, or hands.  Now I was wondering if any of those things were as valuable to me as my voice. I had never really realized before how important is was to me to just talk – to tell stories and jokes, to ask a friend how she felt, to chat on the phone.

I suddenly recognized the power our words have – for good and bad.  I saw that to be able to speak is a gift from God, who created us, and is the giver of all good gifts , and it seemed tragically wrong that anyone would use that gift to lie, or to gossip, or to hurt. I promised myself that if my speech was restored, I would never again misuse my ability to wield words.

At last I slept, and when I woke the next morning, my husband’s first words to me were, “Good morning.  Can you talk?”

“Yes, I can talk,” I answered automatically, but the words didn’t sound quite right. We looked at each other apprehensively.

“Say something else,” he said.  “Read me something.”  He thrust a book at me, and I began to read aloud. Although I could speak, and he could understand me, I was stammering and mispronouncing words. 

“Can you sing?  Sing something you know really well.”

We found  that I could sing fluently.

“Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Wes said.

I didn’t want to go. I honestly felt healthier than I had in days, and I didn’t see what a doctor could do about some fuzzy speech. “Let’s wait, and see what happens,” I said. I told Wes I was fine and that he should go to work.

In truth, I was more worried than I pretended to be.  But I was still reluctant to seek medical help. I decided to wait one more day.

The next morning, my speech was only a little improved. Wes called his office to tell them he wouldn’t be in. We left our younger children with a neighbor, and Wes and I headed to the hospital.

When we explained the reason for our visit to the woman at the hospital reception desk, we had her full attention. “I have a 36-year-old woman with slurred speech,” she said into a microphone at the desk. I was whisked immediately to the emergency room while people waiting ahead of me remained in their chairs.

The emergency room doctor asked us questions and listened to me speak. He had several theories and seemed to feel there was nothing seriously wrong, but he wanted to do a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan to rule out the possibility of brain damage.

With Wes at my side, I walked to the radiation center where the MRI scanned and recorded images of my brain. When the scan was finished, Wes and I went back to the emergency department and waited nervously for the doctor to return with the results.

When he did, he had unexpected news: “Mrs. Spencer, you’ve had a stroke.”

The next few hours were a blur of activity. I was transferred to a hospital eighty miles away. I spent the next day there while test after test was performed – tests on my heart, my blood, my veins – tests that would attempt to determine why a healthy, relatively young woman had a stroke. Eventually, I was released and told that they would let me know what they learned. Weeks later, I got the final word: my stroke was “cryptogenic.”  No cause had been found.

More than a year has passed since my stroke. I have made an excellent recovery. Although I still sometimes make errors in my speech, they are minor, and most people talking to me never notice.

Over the past year, watching my youngest child learn to talk, I feel like I am witnessing a remarkable, mysterious miracle – and indeed I am. From a very young age we human beings use breath, and brain, and ear, and tongue in a complex combination that we little understand to produce words with which we ask questions, and communicate facts, and invoke powerful emotions. The fact that we do it every day should not lessen our appreciation of the whole astonishing process.

I am truly grateful that my speech was restored. I cannot say that I have fully lived up to my promise that I would never again misuse my power to speak. However, I have certainly appreciated the ability more, and have tried to be more aware of the good – and bad – I do with it.

It seems to be a fact of life that we do not cherish most of the things we have – our health, our abilities, our loved ones – until we lose them, or almost lose them. I don’t know if we can really change that.   But perhaps the next time you speak words that make someone smile, or laugh, or cry, or light up with understanding, you will recognize how remarkable it is that you can do that.

I hope I will.

Sunday Blessings

When my Grandmother turned eighty in June 2006, all her family, including our children and all my siblings attended her birthday party. 

When my daughter Hannah and I talked to my brother, he told us that he was going to Hollywood later that week to oversee the filming of a movie he was co-producing. 

Hannah was thirteen and rather star-struck at that time, and the chance to go to Hollywood and see a movie being shot was overwhelmingly tempting to her. When my brother said that he would be driving there, and he didn't have a hotel to stay in, so he would just be 'crashing on some friend's couch,' you can imagine my thoughts. I told Hannah that she could go, but only if I went with her. As Hannah was something of a “Mommy's girl” then, she happily accepted the plan.

My brother said he could fit us both in his car, but I decided to look into other options. I found a really great deal on a round-trip flight to Southern California, and Hannah and I booked two tickets immediately. When I told my brother that we wouldn't be driving with him, he asked about the flight, and when I answered his questions, he said he would fly with us. Other family members heard about the trip, and they were interested, so my aunt and cousin drove from Arizona to meet us, while another family member joined us on the plane flight. 

My brother warned us that life on the set would not always be interesting – there would be a lot of time with nothing happening between scenes. That proved to true, but we didn't really mind that. We enjoyed the pleasant California weather and the novelty of the things going on around us. We saw a scene shot in a grocery store one day, and one at a storage facility a few days later. We had plenty of time to see the sights: Rodeo Drive, Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood, and a strip mall where we bought some frozen yogurt.

On Saturday afternoon, some of us went to a grocery store to pick up a few snacks and drink, and Hannah and I bought some simple food we could prepare and eat on Sunday: fruit and yogurt, spaghetti and sauce, and a loaf of french bread.

The next morning, two members of our traveling group went to see a professional baseball game. The other two decided to head to the beach. Hannah spent some quiet time writing in her journal, and I read some Church magazines I had brought with me. We enjoyed our fruit and yogurt, and decided to go out for a walk. We found an area where large business buildings surrounded a large, beautifully landscaped area with flowers and waterfalls. There was no one else there, and we enjoyed the peaceful serenity. Hannah and I sat down on a bench, and I told her this story:

_{Z Z Z Z Z}

When I began working at a market research company in October 1989, I had been looking forward to working there for weeks. I immediately liked the people I worked with and was excited about the work. There was one thing that I wondered about, though. When they hired me, they told me I would be doing quite a bit of traveling for my job. That was fine with me. But I when they said that my trips would usually be on weekends, and that I could expect to be out of town two Sundays a month.

This was a great concern for me. I wanted to keep the Sabbath holy. I wanted to be active in my ward and hold a calling. I was serving as the Primary Music leader at the time, and I didn’t see how I could do that if I was away from church half the time. I had felt really good about taking the job, and I believed the Lord had led me to this position. I decided that I would work hard, and do the best job I could, while doing my best to keep Sunday a holy day.

I was assigned to a project right away. I, along with two other analysts and one of the vice-presidents, would fly to California to conduct market research at a car clinic. We would leave Wednesday afternoon, spend Thursday setting up our research, and conduct interviews at the clinic on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I was disappointed about working all day Sunday, but I decided that I would make the effort to remember that it was the Lord’s day and make it a special day in some way. I would keep it as well as I could.

A few days before we were to leave for California, one of the managers asked to talk to me. He said that they had decided that I should stay in Memphis an extra day for some additional training before leaving for California. The rest of the team would leave on Wednesday and set up on Thursday, and I would join them Thursday night. I was a little disappointed about it, but I agreed.

When I got to California, I took a cab to the hotel, where I met the others. I learned that they had worked for about an hour that morning setting up, then spent the rest of the day shopping, sight-seeing, and beach-walking. They raved about the wonderful day they had spent. They told me they were sorry I had missed it, but they hoped we would have more time off to enjoy the area.

We worked very hard the next two days, spending long hours in interviews and team meetings. When I woke Sunday morning, I was not looking forward to working all day. I was determined to have as spiritual a day as possible, though, so I began the day with prayer and scripture study.

I left my room and met the other members of my team at the center where we had been working. There we learned that because of our hard work during the past two days, and because we had been fortunate enough to talk to the right people, we had unexpectedly met our research quota the day before. We had somehow completed three days’ work in two days. It was up to the project manager to decide what to do. We could work anyway, gathering extra information, or we could take the day off. She decided we would take the day off.

Everyone was happy. I felt that a miracle had occurred. The team manager said, “Okay, let’s go back to our rooms and change, then meet in the lobby in ten minutes. We can go back to the beach, and to that neat shop we found, and out to lunch.” She turned to me. “I’m glad you’ll get to spend some time sight-seeing, since you missed the fun the first day we were here.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I honestly did want to see the area and enjoy the beautiful day out on the beach. I also felt it was important for me to build a relationship with the people I would be working with. The other two analysts on the team were young women about my age, and I wanted to get to know them. The vice-president who was with us was a middle-aged woman whom I felt I could learn a lot from. I didn’t want to seem unfriendly on my first trip out.

Still, I felt that this Sunday off was a gift from the Lord, and I knew he had not given it to me for shopping and sunbathing. I told my co-workers that I would rather spend the day quietly in my room. They were confused about my attitude and pressured me a little, but I stood firm, and they left without me.

I had brought my scriptures and a current copy of the Ensign. I spent the day reading and praying. I discovered a radio station that was broadcasting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and I enjoyed listening to that. It was a peaceful day.

At the end of the day I met my co-workers for dinner. They seemed a little disappointed about their day – it had not been as much fun as they expected. They were tired and a little grumpy, while I felt rejuvenated.

We flew back to Memphis the next morning .On Tuesday I went in to the office to work, The team-leader for the project came to me with news that was surprising to both of us: I had been selected to write the report on the project for the client. This was very unusual – normally an experienced senior analyst or manager would write the report, and this was my first project. But I learned that the vice-president had been impressed with me in California, and they thought I could do it.

I worked for that company for five years, first full-time, then part-time after Sam was born. I developed skills that have helped me at home, work, and church. I was able to help support our family working mostly from home with my small children. And I was able to talk to several of my co-workers about the gospel. The job was a great blessing for me in many ways.

During the time that I worked there, I believe I worked two or three Sundays. Other employees worked frequently on Sunday, but somehow, my Sunday projects would be canceled, or I would end up with different travel arrangements than the other people on my team. I believe that the Lord tested my willingness to really do my best to keep His day holy on my first project, and he poured out a blessing on me because of it.

_{Y Y Y Y Y}

Hannah and I walked back to the hotel and began to make our dinner. We were almost done cooking the spaghetti when the rest of the group came in. None of them seemed happy. The beach was cold and windy, and the sand got in their eyes. The baseball game had been called early because of the weather. We offered to share our dinner, but no one was interested. They all went their rooms and closed the doors. Hannah and I ate, cleaned the small hotel kitchen, and sat on the couch for a while, talking before we went to bed. We had had a good day, and we slept well.

_{k k k k k}

I don't believe the similarity of these stories – the one about our trip to Hollywood and the one I told Hannah as we sat on the bench – is coincidental. God's work is perfect, and sometimes we have to learn the same lesson twice. Or we learn it once and need to be tested on what we learned. I'm grateful for those learning experiences, and I know that Hannah and I both strengthened our testimony of keeping the Sabbath a holy day.

“. . . call the Sabbath a delight. . .” (Isaiah 58:13)

A Child's Prayer

We occasionally smile condescendingly at the sweet, simple prayers of young children. Sometimes the simplicity of the words children use in prayer hides their wisdom, but when we listen carefully, there are lessons to be learned.

Dear Heavenly Father, 

I recognize that you are my eternal Father, and I feel that you love me, and I love you. 

Thank you for this day. 

Thank you for letting me live another day to live, grow, and play on this beautiful earth.

Thank you for my family.

I recognize that the family is an important part of the Plan of Salvation, and I'm grateful for a family that loves me and takes care of me. I know that my family can be together forever.

Thank you for our home. 

I am thankful for my house and for a place where I can feel safe and sheltered and where I can feel your Spirit. 

Thank you for my puppy.

I know that you created the animals on the world. They are wonderful to see and some are fun to play with.

Thank you for the beautiful world.

I am glad you created this world because I love to see the beautiful sky, trees, flowers and plants. I know you did it to make us happy.

Help me to feel happy and not be scared.

I know that you have the power to make me feel happy and bring me peace. 

Suffer little children . . . to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 19:14)

 

Next time you have a chance to hear a child pray, you may want to listen more closely. You just might learn something you really need to know.