Faith is action

I have this recurring dream. It's the first day of school, and I don't know what my classes are, where they are, or when they start. I don't know if I have homework or reading to do or who my teachers are. All I know is that I can't go to any of my classes until I know where I'm supposed to be, so I spend most of the dream frantically racing against the clock as I try to track down my schedule.

If I'm in high school, I'm looking for it in the junk mail stack at home, because in the early 2000s you had to wait to get your schedule in the mail and then call your friends to see if any of your classes matched up. When that doesn't work, I have to execute my worst-case scenario plan: go to the front office and ask them to print out a copy for me.

If I'm in college, I'm trying to remember my BYU login and how to navigate millions of drop-down menus to find the precious page that will be my blueprint for the semester.

I haven't quite figured the lucid dreaming thing out, but I've had this dream often enough that I can sense the importance of preserving the information I seek so I won't be caught unprepared the next time. If I manage to get my hands on my schedule, I'll store it in a secret compartment in my backpack or the pocket of my jeans so that when the next first-day-of-school dream comes, I'll be ready. 

Except my plans never quite work out. Sure, the schedule I saved carries over to my next dream, but the writing is smudged or my jeans have gone through the wash so the paper is mush or the wind snatches that scrap of paper out of my hand. No matter what I do, the one thing I can count on is that I will be stuck, unable to move forward until I know where I'm going, while everyone around me is walking from class to class with purpose and confidence.

It wasn't hard to figure out why my brain keeps replaying this dream. I want to have a destination before I start moving. I don't want to waste time or risk failure or rejection by charging recklessly ahead. So in life, as in my dreams, I often find myself treading water, making no progress because I don't know which direction to go. I focus on the answers I seek, when what I probably should be doing is taking a leaf out of Fred Weasley's book: making up the plan as I go along (his favorite kind of plan, as he tells us in book 7). In other words, take a leap of faith.

In his October 2024 General Conference talk, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught:  

"We should not expect to understand everything before we act. That is not faith. As Alma taught, 'Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things.' If we wait to act until all our questions are answered, we severely limit the good we can accomplish, and we limit the power of our faith."

Our society celebrates those who take action. Who visualize exactly what they want and then make it happen. I'm all about taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be acted upon, but I'm finding that I'm often able to go further and accomplish more when I let myself be guided for a while. No vision board, no goals, no end game in mind—just the surety that none of my logical, thought-out plans have worked out and a hope that God will first untangle the knot I've gotten myself into and then send me the help I need to get going again. All I have to do is take the next step. In the dark. Possibly off a cliff.

It goes against my nature to relinquish control, but usually the first thing that happens when I surrender to God is that the awful feeling of stuckness goes away. I may still not know where I'm going, but I finally feel like I'm moving somewhere, toward something that matters, even though I don't have the steps mapped out for me. Somehow, the answers come as I go along, but only if I keep walking with faith.

I still get caught unprepared on the first day of school in my dreams from time to time, just like I freeze in real life when I don't know what my next step is. But walking into darkness is less panic inducing than it used to be. Yes, I still think things through and plan ahead as much as possible, but I'm learning that moving forward without answers doesn't have to be my last resort. It can in fact be the only way forward, and often leads to better outcomes.

The Lord lays out the promise of faith in action in Alma 32:43: 

"Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you."

Faith isn't the easy part of the process, but in the end it's what makes it all work.

5 things I learned at BYU Education Week

I attended BYU Education Week for the first time last year and loved it so much I decided to attend every year for the rest of my life, provided I had the availability, ability, and vacation time to do so. People seem to think it's weird that I take a whole week off work to go to school, but it makes perfect sense to me. If I could pay the bills by being a professional student, I would do it. It would be a far more fulfilling career path than any I've stumbled into so far, that's for sure.

This shirt spoke to me.

My enthusiasm for Education Week stems partly from my love for BYU campus. It's one of my favorite places to be and always feels like home, even if it's been years since my last visit. On a deeper level, Education Week also (somewhat) quenches my insatiable desire to learn. This week feels like drinking from a fire hose of spirituality and intellectualism, and it's exhilarating, exhausting, and invigorating—and worth every one of those vacation days. 

I'm wearing the same backpack I used through all four years of college. It's carried a LOT of weight over the years and is still in one piece!

My journal entries of Education Week are always bursting with rambling insights, but I wanted to capture the main themes here in a more "official" format.

Truth can be found just about anywhere

One of the best lectures I attended was the "holy envy" series. Holy envy essentially means finding the good in other faiths and beliefs. This is one of the main reasons I love to read and learn so much—I love finding gospel truths in secular places. During this class we looked at the writings and teachings of non-LDS writers, leaders, saints, and more and compared them to Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings. We have more in common across cultural and political and religious divides than we think. Sure, we don't agree on everything, but truth is out there for anyone to find, no matter their background. 

The ultimate goal of covenants is to bring you closer to Christ

Covenants have been in the spotlight a lot recently, which carried over into Education Week. My understanding of and appreciation for temple covenants has deepened quite a bit this year, and some of the classes I took this week added more to what I've been learning. Temple covenants are more than a list of standards required to maintain a temple recommend. The main purpose of temple covenants is to draw us closer to Christ, and that is one of the most important relationships any of us can have. Keeping covenants requires sacrifice, just like any other relationship worth keeping, but those sacrifices set us up for continual joy and progression, which is what keeps us close to Christ, too.

When you're wandering in a wilderness, the worst thing you can do is give up

We see a lot of wandering communities in the scriptures. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Lehi's family left a life of comfort to wander through many wildernesses. The early Saints moved from place to years for decades before settling in Utah. While I've never had to leave my home and way of life to live in a tent for months or years, I do know what it feels like to wander aimlessly through life, wondering what the point of it all is. When you're stuck and feel like you're getting nowhere, it's tempting to just throw your hands up in the air and stop trying. The scriptures show us again and again that God is able to lead his people to more fertile places—eventually. But if you're set on camping out in your troubles forever because you're tired of trying, he can't lead you to something better. The only way through a trial is through it, and nobody knows better than God how to get you through it.

Creativity can change your life

Creating things is part of our nature as human beings, but it's hard to be creative in a world that demands conformity and where bills must be paid. But taking the time to create—even if you're not the best at sewing or painting or writing or baking—not only has the power to make your life better, it can also change your perspective on things and bring more joy into your life. I've struggled to prioritize creative pursuits when the realities of life must be answered to first (the dearth of posts on this blog is just one of many examples), but I'm feeling some hope now that there are actually solutions to be found that will allow me to live a more meaningful and useful life AND pay the bills. Cool things happen when you let yourself think outside the box and try new things.

Christopher Columbus wasn't the villain we make him out to be

It's very "in" these days to villainize Christopher Columbus and the American founders. In the case of Christopher Columbus, he's taken all the blame for the atrocities that happened in the Americas, both during his lifetime and for hundreds of years afterward. But primary sources—writings by Columbus himself and by those who knew him—tell a different story. I'm not saying that atrocities like slavery and sex trafficking didn't happen, just that there's no real evidence that Columbus was the perpetrator of them; oftentimes he wasn't even present when they happened. Obviously Columbus wasn't perfect, and his actions did have unintended consequences. But it's unreasonable and unfair to judge those from the past based on what we know now. I hate to think what people will be saying about us in a few hundred years.

Bonus thing: BYU Creamery ice cream is delicious

I missed out on a lot of quintessential BYU things while I was a student: hiking the Y, going to games and concerts, partaking of various culinary delights, dating. I like to blame it on being a poor, working student who had no free time or money—and that was certainly a huge part of it—but my shyness held me back from living the full college experience, too. I've made up for it somewhat in the years since graduation, though. This week I went to the Creamery on 9th twice, an iconic spot I've only been to a few times in my life, and was kind of astonished how good the ice cream was. I usually prefer my desserts to be in cake or cookie form, but if BYU Creamery ice cream was an option I might pass up my old favorites and spring for the ice cream. (The BYU brownies—WITHOUT mint—will always win the day, though.) For a church that's known for its "health code," aka, the Word of Wisdom, we sure know how to put the unhealthy in the foods we love.

Plain and precious truths

 *I gave a talk at church today and a few people have asked for a copy of it. I decided to post it here, minus the lame intro and nervous jokes.*

I spend a lot of time with the written word, both when I’m being paid to do it and on my own time. I’ve been a big reader for as long as I can remember, and anyone who has been to my house can attest to the fact that I have a bit of a book buying problem too . . . but that’s a problem I’m okay with having.

I read primarily for one of three reasons. First, is to escape. Whether my life is boring, difficult, or just complicated, it’s always a relief to escape into another world or to deal with someone else’s problems instead of mine. Second, reading is one of my favorite stress relievers and a very necessary part of my wind-down routine at night so I can be relaxed enough to sleep. And third is, of course, to learn. I love collecting little nuggets of wisdom and seeing the world—real or imagined—through others’ eyes.

I get especially excited when those bookish life lessons I find are also gospel truths. But the scriptures and words of latter-day prophets are the best source of plain and precious truths, so this year I’ve been trying to focus more on the lessons they have to teach me.

God is a god of miracles

One truth that has been on my mind a lot the last few years is that our Father in Heaven is a god of miracles.

In the April 2022 General Conference, President Nelson said:

Moroni assured us that “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.” Every book of scripture demonstrates how willing the Lord is to intervene in the lives of those who believe in Him. He parted the Red Sea for Moses, helped Nephi retrieve the brass plates, and restored His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Each of these miracles took time and may not have been exactly what those individuals originally requested from the Lord.

In the same way, the Lord will bless you with miracles if you believe in Him, “doubting nothing.” Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.

It’s not hard for me to see miracles in other people’s lives, but I struggle to see them in my own. After Pres. Nelson gave this talk though, I decided to follow his counsel and seek and expect miracles from the Lord. I did this the only way I knew how—by praying for help. I prayed for the miracles I wanted, even though past experience had left me a little bitter on that point. I prayed for help seeing the miracles that were already there, too.

I’m not going to tell you that all my dreams suddenly started coming true. But I did start seeing tiny little miracles in my own life that I was blinded to before. I became a much happier, more grateful person. I grew in ways I wasn’t expecting, and in ways I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t focused on the Savior. And as I searched for, and found, these little miracles, my faith grew as well. One of the biggest blessings is the continual realization that I love the life I have, even though it wasn’t the one I planned for.

Not all miracles are obvious and life-changing, though. In fact, most of them aren’t. More often than not, it’s the quiet miracles that help us become who we are meant to become and get where we need to go. The better I understand this, the more I'm able to see that our Father in Heaven is eager to shower us with blessings and miracles. Pres. Nelson has also said that “God will do everything He can, short of violating your agency, to help you not miss out on the greatest blessings of all eternity.” A lot of times, all we need to do is simply pay better attention.

“Salvation is free”

When I was baptized at age 8, my grandma gave me my very first journal. I wrote about my baptism when I got home that day, and have kept a journal ever since. I am currently on journal number 34. (I did say I spend a lot of time with the written word.)

I’ve thought a lot about this gift over the years, and the gift giver as well. One of my grandma’s special talents was gift giving. For her, Christmas shopping wasn’t something she did only during the holidays. She spent all year shopping and making gifts for her grandkids. She was so on top of it that even though she passed away in February, many of my cousins got presents for Christmas that year that she had bought or worked on. She also gave gifts through service. Even though she had 9 kids of her own and not a lot of money, she opened her home to any kid in the neighborhood who needed a hot meal or love and safety, and was always quick to prepare a meal for a neighbor in need. And for the last 20 years of her life, she did this while battling cancer.

I say all this not to put my grandma on an impossible-to-reach pedestal, but to provide a little bit of context into why I still think about this gift, even decades later. My grandma had a lot of grandkids. A lot of people to take care of. A lot of her own problems. I don’t know where she found the energy to get to know her shy little granddaughter who sometimes spent more time in her garden eating all her cherry tomatoes than inside visiting with her. Somehow she saw past all of my louder, more entertaining relatives and the walls I put up around myself to understand that a journal would be the right gift to give me for my 8th birthday. 

Because of that gift, journaling became a huge part of my life. It’s how I work through my problems because, as I suspect my grandma realized, I’m not the kind of person to talk to people about my problems. Writing is how I make sense of the world and my place in it. It helps me remember my life and what I’ve learned. It’s alarming the number of times I’ve reread old entries where my past self was having a grand realization about life, while my current self was thinking, “I thought I learned that for the first time a few weeks ago.” Human beings, by nature, are forgetful. It’s why the word “remember” is repeated so many times in The Book of Mormon—if we don’t make a conscious effort to remember what we’ve learned, we could lose it completely.

The journal I got on my baptism day is a gift that keeps giving, both because it was profoundly personal and continues to bless my life today.

All of us have access to an even greater gift, one that is exactly what we need, more than we deserve, and always there to bless us. That gift, of course, is the atonement. Lehi teaches us in 2 Nephi 2:4 that “salvation is free.” He didn’t mean “free” in the modern sense of the word. We don’t have to qualify for it. There are no preexisting conditions or circumstances that disqualify us from it. And we won’t be bombarded with ads for the rest of our life because of it.

This gift is free because it was given out of love. All we have to do is accept it.

In this month’s issue of the Liahona, President Jeffrey R. Holland teaches us:

Jesus Christ has made it clear that all Heavenly Father’s children have equal claim on the blessings of His gospel and Atonement. He reminds us that all “are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden” (2 Nephi 26:28).

“He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).

“He inviteth them all”—that means all of us! We should not place superficial labels and artificial distinctions on ourselves or others. We should never put up any barriers to the Savior’s love or entertain thoughts that we or others are beyond His reach. As I have said before, “It is not possible for [anyone] to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”

Instead, as Sister Holland and I taught just a few months before her passing, we are commanded to “have charity, which charity is love” (2 Nephi 26:30). This is the love the Savior shows us, for “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him” (2 Nephi 26:24).

This, the atonement, is the most precious truth of the gospel. It is profoundly personal and will bless us through the eternities. Our Father in Heaven knew we would need it, and he prepared the way for us to have it through his son who was willing to sacrifice everything so that all could be made right for each one of us, no matter how trivial or beyond saving we feel.

The most plain and precious truths of the gospel are centered on love. I know that God loves each of us individually and is an expert at personalizing our miracles. I may not know exactly how the atonement works, but I do know it does work and that it is a gift that has already been given to everyone who has lived or will live on this earth, and that it will never expire.

The cost of convenience

It's a generally accepted fact that when presented with two options, humans will opt for the more convenient one most of the time. Entrepreneurs know this. Marketers exploit it. Teachers and students (not to mention parents and children) battle over it. 

It's why so many things get invented. We humans like the path of least resistance. 

As someone who hates wasting time/effort more than just about anything, I live on the path of least resistance. Anything that saves me a trip up the stairs, eliminates a meeting, combines two grocery store runs into one, or frees up time for leisure has high value in my life.

But I've noticed something the past few years. Our society expects convenience at a level it never has before. When we're constantly hustling from one thing to another, convenience becomes pretty important, but lately it feels like convenience is about more than just, well, convenience. It's about avoidance, too. Why endure a grueling commute to go to work when you can do the same work at home? Why make dinner when you can have someone bring it to your door? Why endure an awkward party or date when you can just message people from the comfort of your own home?

We've gotten used to modern conveniences making our lives easier. That's nothing new. It's what we've sacrificed for it—human connection—that has changed.

When the world started to open back up again after the pandemic, I recognized that I needed to put myself back out there—or else. It wasn't like it was when I was a teenager, when the worst thing that could happen to you was to be a social outcast. The stakes were much higher this time; it wasn't just my reputation that was on the line. After spending over a year at home alone, I was fighting for a smidgeon of a chance to live again, and that meant being out among the people.

It took some time. A lot of efforts went nowhere. There were—and still are—a lot of failures. But then, one day, I realized that I had more of a social life than I'd had since college. Even though having coworker friends was kind of off the table since I mostly worked remote, I had regular people in my life again outside family. I even valued random interactions with strangers more.

As much as I hate to give covid credit for anything good, my life is better today because of what I learned while spending a year at home. It forced me to prioritize relationships—of any kind—above comfort and convenience.

That being said, I still spend a good amount of time alone and I still opt for the convenient, less fulfilling option more times than I should. I'm also paying attention to what society as a whole is doing, and my observations have led me to believe that even though people have resumed normal life, most people spend less time socializing now than they did pre-covid. And it's not just because we're all busy working and raising families and catching up on all the TV shows. We've simply gotten used to our more efficient routines. Making plans and then following through with them feels like it requires more effort than it used to. 

Our American independence is partly to blame, too. A lot of us got used to relying on ourselves when we were cut off from the world during covid, and that, my virtual friends, is a very hard habit to break. After all, why do something with people when you can just do it yourself (and probably more efficiently, too)?

These shifts in how we've spent our time the last few years, and who we spent it with, weren't always super noticeable. That is, until you saw the uptick in headlines about the rise of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Until you started seeing it in yourself and seemingly everyone around you.

There's always been plenty to be depressed and anxious about. This isn't a new reality for 2024. Strong relationships have always made these things easier—but prioritizing them is harder than it's ever been. 

But prioritize them we must. The comforts of convenience can only get you so far.