My purpose in speaking in devotional today is to testify of our Heavenly Father's love for us evident in the natural and spiritual laws that govern the power of renewal. Although we all have the inherent gift of resilience because of our divine nature, we sometimes forget how to renew ourselves. We have difficulty tapping into that God given gift of spiritual strength and hardiness we all possess.
The scriptures reassure us of this gift. In Psalms we read:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.[1]
Christ taught and exemplified the power of resilience, the ability to recover quickly from setbacks. A woman brought to Him having been caught in the very act of adultery is anticipating certain death by stoning. After teaching the accusers about judging, he then asks this of the woman: "Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."[2]
Go and sin no more sounds a lot like - recover quickly from this setback - it sounds like instruction to be resilient. Time and time again, he lifts those who are sick, sorrowful, oppressed, or sinful and instructs them to "rise", "walk", "tell", or " feed my sheep." He does not tell them to mope around a little more because life is pretty hard, but He encourages them by reminding them of His love, their purpose in this life and His promised divine help.
We have been commanded to "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect".[3]
Yet do we really understand what perfection means in the eyes of our Heavenly Father? The footnote to the word perfect in this scripture tells us that the Greek translation for this word is "complete, finished, or fully developed." Our road to perfection is a journey toward becoming fully developed, like our Heavenly Father. But when we perceive perfection as being "without error or mistake" life becomes frustrating, very discouraging and sometimes frightening.
Amulek teaches in Alma chapter 34, that we don't have a whole lot of time to brood about the setbacks we experience in life. He teaches:
Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.
For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.[4]
I love the beautiful parables and metaphors the Savior used in His teaching. Because of my own personal affinity to anything in the outdoors, I love the stories of lilies of the field, olive trees, seeds sown in soil, gardeners, and sheep. How many lessons were taught on mountains, a stormy sea, and in a sacred garden? Alma knew that all things testify of Christ. He taught Korihor that:
All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.[5]
I have spent my life living in some of the most spectacularly beautiful natural places in the world. In each of these uniquely different places I have witnessed the power of renewal and resilience evident in the natural world around me. The plants and animals live true to the design of their creator.
During my elementary school years I grew up at the foot of Mount Graham in Southeastern Arizona. Near the top of this 10,000 foot mountain live Douglas Fir trees that are over 700 years old. They are some of the oldest conifer trees in the U.S. Southwest. These trees were young saplings before Columbus even thought of sailing to the Americas. I marvel at the adaptations these trees have had to make through the seasons of drought, flood, blizzard, wildfire and every other natural event that could happen during many centuries. Yet through it all they have remained a living entity capable of absorbing the necessities of life from the sun, soil and moisture in order to generate new growth.
At the age of ten my parents moved our family from the Gila Valley in Arizona to Hawaii where my father was employed as a veterinarian for the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture. My parents bought a house in Kailua on the island of Oahu. As a teenager I never saw green sea turtles off of the beach at my parent's house. The green sea turtle's historic nesting sites were in the Hawaiian Islands, but through a variety of circumstances their numbers had dwindled to near extinction. Through protective measures taken in the 1970's, the green sea turtles have made a comeback and now I can see green sea turtles from my mother's dining room window almost any time I look out at the ocean. The comeback was only possible because some of those green sea turtles were tough. They survived some serious setbacks. A green sea turtle can live to be 80 years old. It is amazing to imagine what a sea turtle might experience in an ocean during 80 years. What modifications might they have had to make to ensure their survival as their traditional nesting sites and habitat changed?
While I was a student at BYU in Provo I was hired as an instructor for the Ricks College Biology Department's Discovery expeditions and I was introduced to the spectacular beauty of Idaho. My first exposure was on a whitewater rafting trip on the Salmon River through the Frank Church Wilderness of No Return. This wilderness area of over 2 million acres is the second largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states. This was so different from my other two homes, but equally beautiful and amazing. I was in awe of the wildlife and the solitude.
I have spent a lot of time in the Salmon River country since my first experience there. It has remained the same in many ways, but things have changed also. This wilderness can experience varying amounts of precipitation each year. There might be a series of years when there is a drought or a year of deep snowpack with its resulting spring flooding. It is fascinating to watch a river or stream channel change as a result of a high water year, a rock fall, a fire and to see how the ecosystem adjusts and adapts.
I have since made my home here in Rexburg, Idaho. I can see the Teton Mountains from my kitchen window and marvel during every sunrise, sunset and night sky that I experience in this beautiful place. My career has allowed me to have profound experiences with these places. I have been privileged to come to know these places of natural beauty in a deeply personal way.
It is hard to describe what feelings are evoked by being in nature, but these feelings are often described as being spiritual. The world would define spiritual as a concept of an ultimate, sacred and divine force. The natural world creates a spiritual emotion for many reasons: the vastness, the following of mysterious natural laws, the great diversity and uniqueness of the different species, and the solitude. But for me, the great spiritual lesson from nature is that of adaptation to change and the perpetuation of life. Basically, Heavenly Father's creations are designed by him to be masters of renewal.
Despite winter snows and sub-zero temperatures, a small delicate flower called a spring beauty pushes up from the recently melted snow bank and blossoms in the Teton Mountains. In the middle of an Arizona drought, tough lizards of the Sonoran desert find water and food and carry on. After a wildfire burns a mature forest to blackened stumps, small herbaceous plants emerge from the blackened forest floor after the fire.
That same God who created these beautiful environments and the species that inhabit them also created us. He endowed us with the same abilities of physical renewal. I have experienced many times the miracle of physical renewal. Numerous times I have experienced profound fatigue from a demanding peak ascent, an extended backpacking trip over challenging terrain, or a challenging experience with an early snow storm. My privilege as a mother has sometimes involved late nights with a baby or sick child when I was already physically and mentally exhausted from my own work performed that day. Yet our God given ability to renew our bodies physically is astonishing. It is amazing how different the world seems after a good night's sleep and good nutrition.We have all experienced the miracle of physical healing from injury and illness. Even at the time of death there is the promise of physical renewal through the resurrection. My mother passed away last November. For the last six years of her life she needed full time caregivers due to her cognitive decline. In her earlier years she was a middle school earth science teacher. It was hard to watch her struggle with memory loss and the inability sometimes to express herself or to even make simple daily living decisions. It was very hard for me, her daughter, to switch roles with her. It was hard for her too. I knew she was not going to get better. Sometimes our mortal bodies have done their work and they experience what they are meant to experience in mortality.
At my father's graveside service, six years before my mother's death, a friend brought about 20 homing pigeons whose wings had been dyed beautiful colors of the rainbow. They were released at the end of the service and we marveled at the beautiful ribbon of color they made as they flew in a beautiful pattern on their way home.
My mother remarked to me, "At my funeral, forget the flowers, I want those birds." So when it came time for my mother's graveside service we made arrangements for the birds. After the dedication of the grave, the birds were released. We watched them fly together against the dark green backdrop of the beautiful Koolau Mountains and then were shocked to see the birds form the shape of a heart. The funeral director was standing next to me and she said in a hushed voice, "Did you see that! The birds made a heart!" I wasn't quite sure I had seen it myself, but when she said that I knew that I had seen it. For me this was a message of renewal from my mother and my Heavenly Father. My mother was renewed. She was free.
As miraculous as our physical renewal is, our God given ability for spiritual renewal is central to God's plan for our happiness. How do we become spiritually renewed? What do we need to rebound from spiritual challenges? What keeps us from being resilient in the face of spiritual setbacks? Sometimes it is the imperfections in this life that keep us from being in a renewed state. We expect life to happen exactly as we have pictured our life to happen.
I will forever be grateful to my mother who, despite her cognitive and physical limitations, which she had no control over, she maintained a gracious and grateful disposition. The last time I was able to visit her; I was getting ready to catch my flight home the last evening I was there. My mother had had a difficult and confusing day so I was letting her caregivers get her ready for bed in order to keep things more familiar for her. I stood by the open door to her bedroom as her caregiver tucked her in for the night. Her caregiver pulled up her blanket and said warmly, "Good night Rita" and kissed her gently on the forehead. As the caregiver turned to leave, my mother caught her hand. She said, "Thank you for helping me. When I get to heaven I am going to tell them how good you have been to me." The last words I heard my mother speak were words of gratitude and concern for her caregiver despite of her awareness of her physical and cognitive weakness. This is resilience.
We are all painfully aware of our weaknesses and imperfections. We have been taught that Heavenly Father strengthens us through this awareness of our weaknesses:
And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.[6]
So here is the first step in spiritual renewal and resilience, humility and an awareness of aspects of our life that need some work.
A resilient person recognizes their weakness.
This can be very discouraging.
Lyle J Burrup in a recent Ensign article advised parents on how to teach their children to be resilient. He wrote:
As children become resilient, they understand and accept these two facts. They see life as challenging and ever changing, but they believe they can cope with those challenges and changes. They view mistakes and weaknesses as opportunities to learn, and they accept that losing may precede winning.
As children develop resilience, they believe they can influence and even control outcomes in their lives through effort, imagination, knowledge, and skill. With this attitude, they focus on what they can do rather than on what is outside their control.[7]
So here is a second step to spiritual renewal, the recognition of our strengths, our ability to control our destiny through our own effort, knowledge and skill. We also have to recognize that we do not gain this knowledge and skill without challenge and effort. It is through experience that we learn and develop new capabilities.
A resilient person recognizes their strengths and uses them.
Many of us, however, freeze in fear and discouragement when faced with a challenge that seems beyond our capabilities. We focus on what we cannot control instead of what we can control. Some years ago, I took professional development leave to help do research for the Department of Conservation in New Zealand. My husband and our three teenagers set out on a grand three month adventure in the southern hemisphere. In New Zealand, drivers drive on the other side of the road. When we had purchased a mini-van for our family, I asked a New Zealand friend to ride with me as I got used to driving on the left side of the road. We started out on some quiet residential streets and a little busier road with some oncoming traffic.
All went well. But then we came to a two lane round about. YIKES! All the lanes were full; traffic was traveling fast and coming from four different directions into the round about, in what seemed to me to be the wrong direction. I froze. Traffic began to back up behind me. I just couldn't see how I could get into the round about. I just saw cars and cars and cars coming at me fast. My friend encouragingly and cheerfully said "Go for the gap, Kari, Go for the gap." I started looking for a gap instead of cars. I saw a gap and away I went. That expression has become somewhat of a philosophy of life for me now. When I see perceived obstacles in front of me, I take a deep breath, look for the gap and try to take action.
A resilient person looks for opportunities, not obstacles.
Elder Marvin J. Ashton said this about progression and achieving maturity: "Perhaps it is not too far off the mark to say adult conduct is a process. Mature conduct is generally developed through self-discipline, resilience, and continuing effort."[8]
Did you catch that? Maturity or becoming fully developed is a process and involves some tough personal effort and resilience and renewal when faced with a challenge. Tough personal effort and resilience is not required in a trouble free life. It is only through the winters, the droughts, the devastating wildfires, and the loss of our nesting places that we can become mature and complete, like our Heavenly Father. Lehi taught his sons, "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things."[9]
As I reflect on our first parents, Adam and Eve, I am in awe of their resilience and ability to adapt to changes in their situation. Wow, to go from the Garden of Eden to the Lone and Dreary World, that would take some adaptation, some resilience, some renewal. And guess what? We are their descendants; we have their genetic code in us. But we don't need to look as far back as Adam and Eve. I need only look back as far as my own mother to see resilience and renewal.
My father's great grandparents were in the Willy Handcart Company. Peder and Helena Mortensen had planned to come to Zion with their entire family. As they prepared to come to the Valley of the Salt Lake, the mission president in their native Denmark asked if they would leave their oldest son, Morton (my great great grandfather) to serve a mission. This was very difficult for them because Peder (the father) and the oldest daughter Kristine were disabled and not able to walk well. The family was depending on this eldest son to be the strength in getting the family consisting of 8 children to Utah. The youngest child was four years old.
The mission president, Hector C. Haight, promised them that "If you will consent to his staying and filling a mission, I promise you in the name of the Lord that you shall every one reach the land of Zion in safety, that God will protect you on the land and on the sea." They accepted his promise with faith, and it was agreed that Morton would remain in Denmark. The family traveled by steamship across the Atlantic, by train to Iowa City and it was there the decision was made to make the journey by handcart with the older children pulling the handcart with father Peder and daughter Kristine and often young 4 year old Caroline in the handcart. I cannot even imagine their struggle on the night of October 19, 1856 when over 18 inches of snow fell. Having run out of food two days earlier, the arrival of the rescue party was a literal answer to their prayers. The second oldest son Anders recorded that:
We wept as we went on our journey. We went before the Lord and pleaded for Him to make good the promises which were given to us by His servants when we were in old Denmark. How we implored Him to raise the sick and give us strength to carry our burdens without complaints!
Although they still had to endure the agonizing pull up Rocky Ridge and an additional 300 miles to Salt Lake, the family - every one of them - arrived on November 9th.
This story is one of resilience and renewal and has taught me another step necessary for spiritual renewal - prayer and faith in the promises of our Heavenly Father.
A resilient person relies on the Lord to help overcome challenges.
The scriptures and the teachings of our latter day prophets are full of promises we can rely on. Recently I have been intrigued by promises made by living apostles concerning the youth of the church and family history. Elder Bednar in October Conference in 2011 spoke to the youth of the church:
I invite the young people of the Church to learn about and experience the Spirit of Elijah... As you respond in faith to this invitation, your hearts shall turn to the fathers... Your testimony of and conversion to the Savior will become deep and abiding. And I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary. As you participate in and love this holy work, you will be safeguarded in your youth and throughout your lives.[10]
We can be renewed as we act upon the Lord's promises. I know the story of my great great grandparents safeguards me. When faced with challenges that may seem insurmountable in my life, I think about Rocky Ridge and I am strengthened by Peder and Helena and their children. I am strengthened as I review my patriarchal blessing and remind myself of the promises made to me specifically if I do my part.
A resilient person exercises their faith in the Lord's promises.
A beautiful promise from the Lord is found in Isaiah. "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."[11]
What does it mean to wait upon the Lord? I believe it means all the steps we have been discussing today. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses the Lord has given us, being humble, exercising our faith in his promises through prayer and action, and being patient. Sometimes our most important "action" we can take is to be still and know that he is God.
A resilient person is patient.
The power of the Atonement is what enables us to become renewed, resilient and ultimately to experience joy. Darrin Cozzens commented in his Ensign article on resilience that:
It is only the Atonement that ultimately makes life worth living, only the Atonement of Jesus Christ that can make winter-weary people feel at peace with themselves, happy and optimistic at the outset of another new season.[12]
Take a moment today as you view the natural world around you. Notice how obedient Heavenly Father's creations are. They fulfill their purpose. Christ used the examples of the lilies of the field, seeds sown in soil and olive trees to teach these doctrines. Let their resilience and ability to grow and renew themselves be an inspiration to you. Develop your own spiritual resilience through becoming aware of your weaknesses, recognizing your strengths and using them, looking for opportunities, not obstacles, praying for help and guidance from the Lord, exercising your faith in the Lord's promises, and patiently waiting to see the Lord work the miracle of renewal and resilience in your life.
I testify that your success in this life is the work and the glory of the Lord. The completion of your mission in this life is the purpose of Christ's atoning sacrifice. Nothing can be more important than your ability to renew your strength in the face of adversity and to mount up with wings of eagles. That we all may fulfill these purposes of the Lord is my prayer.
Notes
[1] Psalms 23:1-4
[2] John 8:10-11
[3] Matthew 5:48
[4] Alma 34:31-32
[5] Alma 30:44
[6] Ether 12:27
[7] Burrup, Lyle, March 2013 Raising Resilient Children, Ensign
[8] Marvin J. Ashton General Conference April 1987 "I Am An Adult Now"
[9] 2 Nephi 2:11
[10] Bednar, David. October, 2011 General Conference, The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn
[11] Isaiah 40:31
[12] Cozzens, Darrin, April 1993, The Power of Renewal, Ensign