It’s Still True

My son, Ezekiel, who is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Norway, asked me some time ago to write out my testimony for him. I put off the doing of it, but thought about it for a long time and in October I put my thoughts down in a readable format.

I was born in the covenant to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (For those who are not members of the Church, “born in the covenant” means that your parents are Church members who have been sealed in the temple and you are considered a “child of record” rather than a “convert” if you decide to be baptized.) I grew up in a home where dedication to Christ and His gospel was of paramount importance. But even being raised in a home where the gospel is given a place of importance in every aspect of your life, each individual has to come to conversion on their own. The support, love, and guidance of parents can  make it easier to approach that moment, but everyone who obtains a witness of Christ and His work, whether born in the covenant or contacted by a missionary, gains that knowledge  individually. Each conversion is personal. This is the story of mine.

I have had difficult experiences since that moment of conversion, times and occurrences that have pushed me to question my own faith and ability to live my testimony. But my knowledge of God, His son Jesus Christ, and the restoration of the Gospel of Christ in the latter-days has never changed since then. I have wondered if I could keep the covenants I know discipleship demands, but I have never doubted the truthfulness that this IS the Church of Jesus Christ on the earth today.

God Is

As background I’d like to say that there has never been a time in my life that I have ever doubted the existence of God. I know that some people struggle with that first, foundational belief, but I never have. I can remember, from my earliest days as a very young child, my utter dependence upon my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I remember lying in my bed, I was probably about three years old, afraid of the dark, huddled under the covers, not wanting to crawl into Mom and Dad’s room again to sleep on the floor so that I could be closer to a sense of security. Going to their room meant crawling past the television with the glowing red “eye” that scared me at night.

I felt homesick for Heavenly Father. I can’t explain it any other way. I was simply homesick. I felt out of place in a world that I didn’t always understand. I closed my eyes, thought of Heavenly Father’s beloved face and felt myself drift away through sky and clouds, past stars and galaxies, to the bottom of God’s throne where He sat with his arms held out to me. I climbed up the steps, to His feet and held my arms up to Him. He gathered me up in His arms, hugged me close, kissed my head, and tucked me on His lap and asked me about my day. I rambled on and on to Him about my day, about my little childhood fears and worries and He listened intently to every word. I could feel His love surround me and I fell asleep held fast in arms that were strong and secure.

I have thought of that experience often, whenever the feeling of being out of place threatens to overwhelm me again and it comforts me. It comforts me to know that God has as much interest in the prayers and worries of a toddler as He does for everyone else.

The summer I turned 8 my mom and dad took the younger members of our family, those not married and out on their own already, on a trip around the United States in a borrowed motorhome. We traveled to historic sites important to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I walked the pathways of the Sacred Grove and felt the peace and Spirit there. It was a Holy place and even at that age I could feel it. We came home and I was baptized that summer in Redding, California along with several other children in our stake.  I worried on that day, just a little, that I wasn’t absolutely certain of what it meant to know something was “true”. I didn’t know what kind of proof I needed to know something was true or not. But I wanted to be baptized and so I was.

The Witness of the Holy Spirit

It was about a year and half later that I learned what “proof” for me is. I believe that every person communicates with the Spirit in their own unique way. For some it is a thought, or a feeling, and for others a voice. The testimony of the Holy Ghost is given to one soul differently than to another. God speaks to each of us in the language we know best.

We had moved to the small town of Lakehead, California and attended Church down the mountainside, some 58 miles away, in Central Valley. I was in the primary, which was held in a large basement room, with big windows so that lots of light came it. But the hallway that we had to walk to get to that room had no windows at all. The only light was from several overhead lights in the ceiling, and the occasional open door of a classroom that let in light from their windows.

One Sunday morning, after Sacrament meeting and Sunday School opening exercises, I remember walking very slowly down the steps, taking my time turning the corner into the basement hallway, and struggling with my thoughts.

I don’t know what prompted my questions, but there were many flooding my brain. I wondered “What if Joseph Smith DIDN’T see Heavenly Father and Jesus? What if he DIDN’T see Moroni? What if he just made it up as some kind of trick to play on his family and the whole thing just got waaaay out of hand?” The thoughts made me sad. I remember feeling lost at the thought of if being false. My steps slowed, the other kids pushing their way to the room at the end of the hallway went around me and I ended up being alone as I passed by the classroom doors. I remember holding my scriptures to my chest, turning my head to the left as I approached the next classroom door which was open and thinking, almost as a prayer “What if it didn’t really happen?” My heart hurting at the thought.

As I passed the open door and saw the light coming in through the window I heard a voice in my mind as clear as could be say “But it did happen, Vernie Lynn. It happened just the way Joseph said it did. It’s all true.”  I recognized the voice, it was so familiar and comforting to me. As I passed through the light from the window I felt the light of the Spirit filter down all the way through my body. It was so rich, full, and beautiful and I knew at that moment that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was TRUE, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, the prophet of our dispensation, that the gospel was restored in its fullness, and that God was still speaking to people today. That he was speaking to ME, and that I could know for myself whatever truth I needed to know. That testimony, in its innocent simplicity, has stood me in good stead my entire life. Because of that I never take for granted the testimony of a child. The purity of a child’s testimony is a sacred thing.

A Renaissance of Belief

In April of 2018 I had what I keep thinking of as a renaissance, almost a rebirth, of my testimony. For the previous 5 years I’d struggled with the disappointments, heartbreaks, and sorrows of mortality. Those things are always present, even in a relatively peaceful life, but for the past several years I had felt swamped by overwhelmingly negative emotions. Our life had never been one of ease, but we had always managed to get by, to get through, to find the means to keep going. I’d gone through what felt like a huge number of personal trials. We lost our business and I came under attack from people who had called themselves my “friend” when it was in their interest to be friendly and called me a liar and a fraud when decisions beyond my control destroyed our farming endeavors. I let those words sink deep and they were like a cancer in my soul.

I had always been a relatively positive person but almost without warning I could see no positivity at all. The negativity, hurt, pain, and disillusionment of trying so hard to be faithful with so little reward for my efforts was a heavy weight to carry around. Slights, unkind words, and empty promises seemed to be the only thing that my life was made up of, or at least all that I could see. I went to church seeking comfort. Time and again hoping that I could sit and feel the peace I had felt before. It was almost like clockwork, each Sunday I would sit in the pew at church, the strains of the sacrament hymn would begin, and the desire for the atonement to be real in my life, for my own capacity to receive it, would be so huge it brought me to tears every time. Even when I tried to stem those tears they wouldn’t stop. I longed for peace, I longed for comfort, I longed to feel that I was worthy of God’s compassion, I longed for some touch of kindness in my pain. Looking back I can see that I was looking for absolution. I wanted someone to see all of me. The broken bits, the errors, the mistakes. I didn’t want to pretend I hadn’t made any. I wanted to be seen in truth, and still be worthy of forgiveness.

I tried to remember my testimony. I reread journals, tried to remember dreams, tried to feel again what had once burned so bright. But I could never feel it. I couldn’t feel the recognition of my sins or the forgiveness for them no matter what I did. I don’t know whether it was there for me or not, but over the course of almost a year, crying my way through every single sacrament hymn, hoping that I could feel comfort from God or a friend, from anyone, without it arriving, I came to believe that help was never going to come. I sat there alone during the sacrament, surrounded by people who called me sister, and I felt utterly alone. I stopped singing the hymns. I moved my mouth to the words, but no sound came out. I felt dead inside and it was too much effort to put breath into the songs. I went each week because that was my training, that was the mold I had fit my life into, but it meant less and less each week.

I moved from the pews in the front of the chapel to the chairs in the overflow to give myself some distance. I went from wanting to be seen to wanting never to be seen. One Sunday a speaker stood up and said that if we just put in a little effort then God would respond tenfold in our lives and we’d receive the hope in Christ that Nephi had. We just had to work a little harder at it. I stood up and walked into the foyer and stared at the portrait of Christ hanging on the wall and experienced something I never had before. Weeping with no tears. I could feel my eyes burning, but nothing came. I didn’t know where the tears were. William stepped out of the overflow seating into the foyer and came over to me.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

I turned to look at him and said “I don’t know what that even means anymore.”

“What?” he asked again.

“I don’t know what it means to have a hope in Christ. I don’t even know what it means.” I had tried. I had worked so hard at it that I had nothing left. I started sitting in the foyer after that.

We moved from living in a motorhome to living in my in-laws upstairs. William was falling apart as fast as I was. I needed his strength and his support. I needed to strengthen and support him. We were both broken. He begged me “Can you trust God and just love me?” I tried, but I wasn’t sure how to trust God anymore. He never seemed to be there when I needed Him. And then I would feel guilty for feeling that way. Didn’t I still have a warm roof over my head? I wasn’t holding onto my children in a refugee boat was I? I hadn’t buried my family under the rubble of a bomb destroyed house had I? What had I to complain of? Yes I was destitute but for the generosity of someone else. No, I had nothing of my own to show for my efforts. But I wasn’t living on a street. I had no guarantee that I wouldn’t be there in the future, but I wasn’t there right then. I tried to see it as a blessing. I tried to express gratitude.

I listened to people telling me a positive mental attitude was everything, that all I needed was a big dream and life would get better. That if I could just submit willingly then my life would improve. Because if I was struggling, or impoverished, or hurting, then there must be a reason for it. If you’re where you are and where you are isn’t where you want to be, then you’re there because you failed somewhere along the way to make the right choice. It’s just a consequence. It felt like the worst kind of a judgment: cruel and callous. I had nothing because I chose to support my husband in his dreams? I lost my own dream because I tried to help him get his? I had nothing left of what I had loved and wanted in life because I trusted God when He counseled me to let it go so that He could bless me with something better?

I sat with William in the back chairs of the stake center, watching President Nelson speak at a regional conference. I heard what he said, I wanted to believe what he said. He talked about hope. He talked about there being a bright future for each of us. And suddenly everything went black in my mind. I felt like I hit a wall, or the floor at the bottom of Hell. I heard the words but they meant nothing to me. I could see all that I’d once had, all that I’d lost, and my current lack of any kind of future. I turned to William, and I don’t know what my face looked like but it must have been terrible because he grabbed my arm and asked me what was wrong. I said “I have no hope. There’s just…nothing. There is no hope. Pain is all there is. Hope is a lie.”

Hell is Hopelessness

I think that must be what Hell is. Because I had never before been to a place so dark, so painful, so lacking in anything that would comfort the spirit. William drove us back to his parent’s place, back to our borrowed rooms in someone else’s home and put his arms around me. “It’s going to be okay Vernie, things will get better.”

I pulled back from him and stared at him for a moment. “I don’t believe you.” I said and turned away to go change out of my Sunday clothes.  I didn’t believe him. At that moment I believed that pain was all there was.

I kept going, one foot in front of the other, but it was so hard. I didn’t understand how the body could keep going when the heart and mind felt so completely destroyed. But I did. I still cooked, did the laundry, went to work, came home again, washed the dishes, spoke to my family. But it was like being half dead.

My own family, my parents and my siblings, could tell something was wrong.  They wanted to help me. They told me to go to where they could take care of me. But that felt like giving up the only dream I had left: my family. I could leave the motorhome and borrowed bedroom behind me. I could leave my husband, bring my kids, and go where they could love me and take better care of me. But it felt like I would just be trading one set of parent’s compassion for another’s. And without the benefit of my husband beside me.

It was the first glimmer of wakefulness I’d experienced for a long time. I found a sign at a thrift store one day while trying to find shoes for my children. “All my love…All my life” it said. I stood in the shop staring at it.

I thought of the promise I’d made to William so many years before. To love him. To give myself to him. I thought of the promise I’d given more recently, to trust God and just love William.  I picked up the sign, bought it for 25 cents, and put it up in my room. If all I had left was the promise, even if the dreams and hopes were gone, at least I still had the promise. I made it, I was going to keep it.

Shifting

It was a turning point. I don’t know how. But somehow in that decision something shifted inside me. Nothing in our outward life changed at first but things gradually started to get better in my mind. Little by little, hanging on by my fingernails, I started to come out of that abyss I’d fallen to the bottom of.

I started to do what William had begged me to do. Just love him. I stopped expecting anything from him. I smiled when I saw him, even if I was worried. Even if I didn’t know how we were going to get through the next month I smiled at him anyway. I still worried, I saw my children waiting for life to happen and I yelled at my son, my Ezekiel who asked me to write this testimony, and told him to quit waiting for life to happen to him, to get busy and go make it happen. So he started trade school and William went with him.

My father died, then my mother. It was grief stacked upon grief. I smiled at William but I still worried. I lived in a borrowed garage and a dugout basement with exposed dirt and spider infested rafters. I was sitting on a ledge in that abyss, still going through the motions of the mold I’d set so many years ago. I expected nothing. Everything William gave me was a gift. Even if our needs were greater than our capacity to provide for I stopped expecting anything different from him than what he could give. It might have been disillusionment that led to that place. It might have been lack of hope or belief. But whatever the reason, God turned it into a gift. My lack of expectation gave him respite from my disappointment and let him just feel my love.

In just loving William, without the added weight of expectation, I found some love for myself as well. I found just enough compassion for myself to accept that life had been hard for awhile and it was okay to let myself heal.

Yet still in that compassion, and in that slow healing, I could feel no hope. It was like the stillness after a tornado. The rage of the wind is gone. The creak and groan of the house that survived the onslaught is silent, but the devastation remains to be cleaned up.

I could still tell the teachings of my youth. I could go to the scriptures and find for you the verses that would speak to the topic at hand. I could recount tales of the hand of God in the lives of ancestors.

I could tell you of the instances of heavenly help in my own life. I could still experience them. But hope remained elusive. What I had once held onto so tightly was the one thing I couldn’t regain. My heart was tender towards those who had also lost hope. Gentle towards those who had been hurt by those who wanted to heal the wounded, but didn’t know how to heal without hurting first. I heard stories of other souls who had taken leaps of faith only to fall and break themselves on the jagged rocks of mortality. Not realizing that faith guarantees no joyous outcome in the flesh.

I experienced stillness in my soul. Not hoping, not asking, not growing, just being. My mind was open, my heart was not closed, but I wasn’t expecting any more from God than I was from anyone else. I still struggled to know what it meant to have a hope in Christ. I didn’t know what it should feel like. What it should look like to a life destroyed by the vagaries of mortality. I listened to the pain of others and I wondered if pain were not the entire purpose of life. If maybe the entire point was to experience it so that we would understand what the atonement could heal in a life. I just didn’t know what healing, what wholeness from the atonement could feel like.

I went to church and played the hymns for children’s voices. I listened to the stories of those who had sought healing in the church but found hurt instead, particularly women, and wondered why it should be that those who earnestly seek God should be so wounded by those who profess to love and serve him? How could someone claim guidance of the spirit on one hand but be so lacking in compassion on the other? My mind struggled with the inequity within the church.

Spiritual Crisis

I found myself on a Sunday morning in April of 2018. Listening to the words of apostles as a new prophet was going to be sustained. President Monson, whom I had loved and supported, had passed away and President Russell M. Nelson was to be sustained as the Prophet and President of the Church. I thought back to my experience at the regional conference. To the utter desolation of having tried so hard for so long and losing all hope in the process. Of how it felt to hear the words of those who loved God but not be able to believe them because of the terrible pain surrounding the soul.

They began calling on quorums and age groups to stand and sustain the prophet, one by one. I stood behind my children and watched and I was struck by spiritual crisis.

Could I sustain him?

I had never struggled to raise my arm to the square and sustain any prophet before. And I wasn’t struggling this time with a man, I had always enjoyed President Nelson’s words and counsel. It wasn’t about him. This time was different. This time my sustaining vote was about me.

I thought of the many, many people I had spoken with who had been hurt by well-intentioned but flawed priesthood holders within the church. Who when questioned about the wisdom of a course of action had responded with “Well, you can trust that if a priesthood brother did something you don’t understand or don’t agree with, then there’s something you don’t know. You just have to trust. They wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone.” But trust was difficult for me. I could trust God, but I knew that trusting God meant that there was a good chance I would be hurt for my obedience. Not because God hurt me but because obedience leads to all sorts of consequences, not all of them pleasant. I had trouble trusting men to lead correctly, to act with compassion, and with kindness, when I had often seen an absence of both.

I struggled with whether or not I could raise my arm and make a covenant with God to support the church. That was my dilemma.

Could I do it? Could I continue to support a church where I couldn’t feel hope? Could I continue to support a priesthood that so often disregarded the very real pain of mothers, wives, and daughters who had lost hope while “following” the men in their lives?

I stepped out of the one big room we all lived in, the converted garage that was living room, kitchen, dining room, and bedroom all combined, into the only private room in the house, the bathroom, and came to a crossroads.

I was in that moment as I had been as a child of nine years old, pleading to know if the church was really true. But my pleading was different this time. I begged to know “Can I do this? Can I sustain the prophet? Can I make this covenant between me and God? Can I support the church even though I know the men and women who run it are often imperfect and flawed? Even though concerns and pain seem to be ignored?”

My heart was silent and still, I knew my moment to either raise my arm and sustain President Nelson or refrain and step away from following the prophet was coming within seconds, but it felt like time stood still. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, thought of all the years I had sustained with no qualms, but also with so little experience, and waited.

And that voice, the one I’d known since my infancy, that infallible, beautiful, longed for and loved voice spoke to me again.

“Vernie Lynn, everything you’ve always known is true is STILL TRUE and the Church needs you WITHIN its ranks to support, strengthen, and sustain.”

The words sank deep. It is STILL TRUE. And I knew in that moment that I could be true to it.

I walked back out into the garage just as my children were sitting down from being called to sustain the prophet. I was called upon next and found that it was a thing of joy to raise my arm to the square and covenant with God to follow His prophet. I began to cry as I felt the Spirit testify to my soul that this IS God’s prophet upon the earth today. That this IS His church.

Hope Reborn

Something else fell upon me that day, something I had forgotten the sweetness of, and I wept harder as it began to take root and grow once more in my heart: hope.

I, who had held onto hope so tightly in my naive youth that I choked it to death. I, who had lost hope so entirely that I didn’t even know what it felt like or looked like anymore. I, who had given up the expectation of ever experiencing it again felt it flood through me, like liquid gold, lighting every corner of my soul once more. Deeper, richer, more poignant than it had been before.

In that hope I felt seen, I felt understood, I felt loved, and I felt forgiven. At last, at long, long last I remembered what it felt like to have a hope in Christ. To be recognized as imperfect, but loved so perfectly. To be taken in with all my flaws but to be given the atonement so flawlessly. To be recognized in my unbelief and doubt but to be compensated for my lack with an overflowing faith.

That feeling has stayed with me. It has carried me through grief, given me eyes to see and ears to hear. Increased my capacity to forgive and my desire to serve. Helped me see where I need to change and how I can improve. I pray with all that I am for that feeling to never depart from me again.

Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven live. Not in an ethereal, never to be understood, always to remain a mystery kind of living. But as a true, caring, always concerned for our welfare kind of life. I can see now that Christ was with me in the stillness, He was with me in the darkness, He was with me through the pain. Those moments can make us blind to Him, but it doesn’t make Him blind to us. I can look back and see His hand and compassion in so many small and tender things. Things that the size and scope of my pain could not allow me to see. His Spirit never stopped reaching out to me.

So many people are experiencing that kind of pain in the world. Dead in heart and mind and already half-buried in the woes of the world, carrying around the dust of the grave with them wherever they go.

I know better now just how much compassion is required to reach out to those around me. To love them no matter how much they hurt. To reach out with as unending an effort as that which Christ does.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s church and kingdom upon the earth. His followers may be flawed, but they want to serve. They are flawed as I am flawed, as everyone upon the face of the earth is flawed. If we can hold on together long enough, continuing to improve and grow, we may find that our flaws lessen and our faith increases. I am grateful to be numbered amongst those who want to serve.

I find strength and comfort in the scriptures, in reading daily of those who have lived and served, much like we do in our day, and in the wisdom and counsel from God in the pages of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

I find strength in the companionship and shared testimony of good friends who are walking their own paths of faith and pain. I am sustained when I feel weak and I can offer support when someone else needs my strength.

The atonement of Christ is so powerful It can overcome the sins, disappointments and difficulties of life. It isn’t there just to cleanse us of our mistakes, but to comfort us in the distress caused by other’s mistakes as well, and even from the pain in our life caused simply by being alive. The aches and pains, the stubbed toes, and injuries and disappointments of mortality. He’s there for all of it. Loving us through it, trying to help us where we will let Him.

That is my testimony. That God lives, He loves us, and He always wants to help us. Our work in this life is to let Him.