Serving, Asking Others to Serve

We all could stand to be more patient with each other. And most of us could stand to stretch a little more. I have served in Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary presidencies.  Each time I have been in a leadership position, I have been reminded repeatedly that there are many people who serve nearly tirelessly, happily, and selflessly.  There are people who will do just about anything you ask, no matter how many times you go to that well, and there are almost as many who step up before you've even asked, because they saw the need and were willing to help.  The sister who will step in and teach a lesson at the last minute.  The counselor who shows up with the treat you completely forgot to ask her to make.  The friend who offers to bring dinner to a family in need before you've even had time to think about who is available.  Believe me, there are more of those people than you'd expect, and each and every one of them is worth their weight in gold, especially when you're trying to keep an organization (and a ward) running smoothly.  I will never forget hundreds of moments and days where people stepped up and helped their leaders and their ward, often in ways that people never knew about.  My gratitude for that is deep.

Sometimes we forget how difficult it can be to fill all those roles and needs. Sometimes we get impatient or critical.  We are unChristlike in our assessment of a situation or the people involved in it.  We all have different areas of weaknesses.  Our frailties are as unique as our strengths, and sometimes people may have been put in a position or asked to fill a role because the Lord can help them develop more strength where they are weak.  People who are willing deserve patience and encouragement, not criticism and condescension. I am deeply ashamed of the few times I forgot that, the times that I forgot how very patient my Savior has been with me, when I was willing but weak.  I regret the times I forgot how often I have demanded--all too unknowingly--the patience of my ward members and leaders.

When I was 22, my bishop asked me to be Young Women president.  I thought the idea was completely ridiculous.  But I was raised to believe that you don't say no to a calling--I don't think it ever occurred to me that that was an option. You serve wherever and in whatever capacity you are asked. Full stop. More than that, though, I trusted that bishop implicitly. After several years of working with him, I would come to trust his spiritual leadership even more.  If he said he felt strongly impressed that that was the role I was to fill, I believed him. I felt a little overwhelmed, but I was also confident that if that's what the Lord wanted me to do, he'd help me figure it out. Those three years were challenging, but delightful.  I loved those girls more than I ever thought possible. I learned a lot.  I had no teachers, advisers, etc., and more often than not only had one counselor. I put a great deal of time, effort, and energy into it.  But I was still 22, with a baby and a toddler and not very many years under my belt as an adult.  There were things I did poorly, things I failed to do, and I only figured that out in retrospect or through gentle, patient direction, because no one ever criticized me.  They only supported me.  And I regret the times I have been less than that for someone else who was willing--but weak.

Because one of the other things that has been readily apparent every time I have served in any leadership role is that there are people who won't serve.  Or who will only serve in ways that they find pleasing.  When you are in a leadership position, trying to fill callings within your stewardship can be a difficult, and sometimes discouraging, task.  There are people who will tell you that of course they'll serve, just not with this person.  I'm happy to take any calling. Unless its in this auxilliary, then don't bother asking--no matter how many necessary positions you've got vacant. Sure, I'm happy to take dinner to this family, as long as it falls on the second Wednesday of the month. Nope, I'm not gonna help with that activity, I don't do weekday stuff.

Personally, I think the doers are much more numerous.  I think the vast majority of people step up and help their neighbors.  And obviously there are definitely times when health or circumstance genuinely prevent us from doing something that we've been invited to, and we need to be honest with those doing the asking if that's the case.  But if you've been asked to serve, think twice before you say no.  It could be that the thing you think you don't want to do, or think you can't do, will end up being one of your most rewarding opportunities--that was certainly my experience in YW--and that can only be true if you approach it with a willing heart.

If you are in a position of leadership, offer guidance and instruction and redirection as the Lord so prompts, but fight the temptation to be impatient or self-righteous or critical. If you place your trust and your love in the Lord, he can do amazing things with a willing heart, no matter how weak. We are each of us a part of the body of Christ, and each part is needful. We are each at a different place in our spiritual development, and we each need teaching and nurturing.  Do not turn away from those who are willing to serve because they are not yet as you would have them.  The Lord would have them, just as he would have you, and that is enough to start something wonderful.

Broken

I know what its like to feel like your brain has betrayed you. I think a lot of us fear losing control of our minds, but over the course of the last year I have had to face the reality that a great deal more of it is beyond our conscious control than we like to believe.  But a chronic illness is different: you feel like you're living on a trap door, just waiting for it to give way at some completely unpredictable moment.  Mine is minor, and the greatest risk is my physical safety.

There are others who live with much larger, much less stable trap doors. Sometimes when the bottom falls out, their illness takes over and causes them to do something that they otherwise would never do.  Until someone puts the pieces back together, they often have no idea what's even happened.

When something shocking and disturbing happens, a very natural reaction is to keep looking for more information, more details, some pieces that will make it make sense so we can categorize and process it and move past it.  But sometimes, no matter what we find out, it still won't make sense, and nothing can make that OK.

All we can do is work toward accepting that we're all broken, some so extremely so that it can create a wide circle of hurt.  We work on trusting that the Lord knows and understands that better than any of us, and governs over it with tremendous mercy and grace.  There are things that we rightfully mourn in the mortal realm, but I trust that he will make the scales balance eternally, and heal the brokenness that permeates this life.

Feeling Buried

The first bill from my most recent misadventures arrived today.  I have a pretty good sense of how much ORs, anesthetists, surgical plates, etc, cost, so while the sum was depressing to me, it wasn't at all surprising--it was about what I expected.  It caught Doug off guard a bit.  I tried to be reassuring by responding, "We'll get there."  He responded, quite understandably, "When?! When I'm 90?! When the kids are 90?"

Our marriage has sort of felt like one long, bad cosmic joke, financially.  We've always been pretty frugal (the big exception being going to the expense of driving to Montana once a year when we lived in California. And the year we had the most wiggle room, we bought everyone annual passes to Disneyland, back when buying them for the whole family cost us less than the price of one plane ticket to Missoula).  We rarely go on real dates, and even when we do, usually pretty cheap ones. The kids have lived almost entirely in hand-me-downs, thrift store finds, and eBay purchases.  Our cars have been modest, and we only had one for the first 8 years we were married.  Our home and all of our rentals have been modest, and we've rarely done much with them, as far as decor, improvements, etc.  We have never bought many toys or extras, for the kids or the grown ups--presents were limited to birthdays and Christmases, and we kept those pretty simple.  All the shoes and clothes I have owned our entire marriage put together cost about as much as a month's rent for a family home.  All the furniture we've ever bought consists of a couple of hand-me-down couches, a couple of thrift store recliners, a set of discount bunkbeds, our king bed, and our two (inexpensive) couches.  The one indulgence has been the bit of travel we have done, and most of that has come out of tax return funds.

And yet, we manage to keep falling further and further behind.  We were in school, then grad school the first few years we were married.  We took the job in Lindsay, realizing it didn't pay much but that the future was good.  We managed to buy the townhouse, and then almost immediately ended up in the ER and then in the hospital for 5 days with little Dylan, and then took in an entire family.  Those bills almost sunk us.  But they didn't.  So we started climbing out of that hole, little by little, and it took several years.  We were finally almost there, back to something of an even keel, when Doug lost his job.  We faced 16 months of no steady income, precious little income of any kind.  We were just starting to get ourselves back to something resembling normal bill paying, when we totaled our van, and had to unexpectedly add a car payment to our monthly bills. For everyone's sanity, we had to finally break down and spend the money to seek treatment for Doug's ADD (and that is one decision I have not regretted for one second--it has made all the difference in the world). We had made no progress on any of the debt from all of that, but were at least back to a reasonable monthly budget, when my brain freaked out.  Repeatedly.  Two ambulance transport bills. Two ER bills.  Two EEGs, CT scans, MRIs, multiple appointments with a neurologist.  We hadn't even had a chance to touch those bills yet and BAM! treacherous ice threw thousands more dollars at us: another ambulance, another ER, surgery (with implants), multiple trips to the orthopedist.

And we've decided to set Doug's resignation at the end of June.  I am regularly tempted to freak out.  To panic, or to be angry, or just to break down and cry.  But I always get the impression that its going to work out: that we will not be buried and behind forever, and that we will actually make progress much faster than I expect.  I don't see how that's possible--I really, really don't--but I trust it.  Its really the only reason I haven't had a meltdown.  Maybe it means that business will take off even quicker than we expected.  Maybe it means that there's some adventure waiting that we haven't foreseen.  I don't know.  But I keep getting the impression that we will be able to offer our kids and our family more than it seems right now.

I sure hope so.  Because this is getting old.

Birthdays

Its been a crazy couple of months at our house.  Mom hobbling around makes the whole house run a bit less smoothly.  Dad putting in whole days at work and then another 4-6 hours at his second job makes things even more bumpy. Keilana got pneumonia (and a particularly awful case of it--both lungs sounded like garbage, top to bottom and all the way across) and strep throat, and missed two full weeks of school.  Kylie also got strep throat and missed an entire week of school.  Dylan developed a persistent, mysterious and severe cough as soon as his sisters got better, and ended up missing an entire week of school, as the cough was difficult to keep under control even with cough syrup. Thankfully, Keira never got sick.

I'm back on both feet now, with only a brace.  All the kids are healthy.  This week has been Spring Break, and I have organized and cleaned the house top to bottom.  There are 8 weeks of clinical hours and online classes between me and graduation.  Doug has submitted his resignation and will no longer be working for the county as of June 24th.  Life is changing quickly.  Its all a little crazy.

And in the middle of all of it, the kids just keep growing up.  I wish somehow we could hurry Doug and I through all of this, while pushing pause on the kids.  Alas, time marches on, indifferent to my mommy impulses.

Dylan turned 10 last month.  I always hesitate over how much to share about my kids online, for their sake. Suffice it to say, Dylan is a unique kid.  That is often delightful and has many advantages, but it also has its challenges.  The first half of the school year was very difficult for him. A few months ago, I saw a significant shift.  Instead of "nobody likes me" I started to hear, "I don't fit in" or "I have different interests than a lot of the boys in my class".  He recognized that those weren't the same thing, and it was huge.  He made friends a lot easier after that.  For his birthday, he invited four other boys over.  They played Minecraft, ate pizza, and watched Star Wars on the big screen.  As he was taking friends home with his dad, he said over and over again, "This was the best day ever".  Its hard to express how much that meant to me.

He loves Star Wars, Minecraft, Pokemon, Bakugan, and wild animals.  Especially birds.  He knows and can classify many, many species of wild birds.  He obsesses over them, and loves to learn facts about and categorize wild animals.  He often talks about being a wildlife biologist when he grows up.  We discovered today that he may have some hurdles to jump there.  His class had the opportunity to dissect fish today.  He came home looking green, and told me he ended up having to sit across the room away from everyone else, and still almost threw up.  He said, "I thought it was going to be fun, but it wasn't."  As he started to talk about it, he began gagging again and thought he was going to vomit.

His teacher texted me a picture of him during the beginning of the dissection.  His whole body is tense and he's holding his stomach.  When his dad asked him if he felt bad for the fish he said, "Yeah. One had eggs in it--that means they're never going to hatch.  And they were only 2 years old.  It was sad."  He is a tremendously sensitive child, both physically and emotionally.  The combination of assaults on his senses was just a bit too much for him.  He's very bright, and generally kind.  He has some challenges ahead of him, but many tools for overcoming them.

And Keira turned 5 yesterday.  She is a fun little monkey. She is still incredibly smiley: she looks for reasons to be happy most of the time. She can be very friendly and outgoing, the most confident of our girls at this age, but also far and away the most introverted.  She has gotten quite bold in her social interactions, happily talking freely with adults when they engage her.  But if you leave her alone with her toys, her coloring supplies, or an iPad or TV, she can contentedly go hours without talking to another person.  She handles having to go to school everyday really well, but would happily stay home 90% of the time if I let her. 

I took her shopping on Monday for a new birthday outfit (last year's shamrock shirt and tutu were getting pretty small).  She was thrilled to be in the car with me, but wanted to listen to music, not talk.  She has a very specific play list: The Sweet Escape (Gwen Stefani), Vindicated (Dashboard Confessional), Stuck Like Glue (Sugarland), Little Wonders (Rob Thomas), Radioactive (Imagine Dragons), Apologize (One Republic), and Curious (Barenaked Ladies).  It makes her a pretty pleasant traveling companion.  She still sleeps in our bed too often, and even refers to it as "our bed".  She is quick-witted, and loves to tease and joke.  She's very precocious and precise in her language--she loves to explain things to people.

When she gets hurt or angry, she will scream if its me or her siblings, but with anyone else, she shuts down to total silence and runs away to hide.  If she's upset but mostly controlling herself, she won't disappear, but will absolutely refuse to speak. This makes her dad bonkers, but is so familiar to me that I can't even muster irritation.  Our other girls are fit-throwing shriekers, which was totally foreign to me when I became a parent.  Keira reacts like me.  Though its unfair, this makes it easy for me to be patient with her.  Keilana will shriek, throw herself about (she is the child who has broken doors and put holes in drywall), and Kylie will hit and scream that she hates you.  I have learned to be patient (neither of them loses it very often and they are both very sweet and quick to apologize when they have regained control), but its hard for me to understand.  Keira's disappearing act, or stubborn refusal to engage, makes perfect sense to me.  More often than not, she's a peacemaker: if someone starts to get upset, she will do what she can to quickly smooth things over.  She doesn't like conflict, and happily does what she can to make people happy.

Its a joy to watch them grow, mature, and learn.  Its also torture. *Sigh* The nature of being a parent.

My Strengths and Weaknesses, Illustrated

Severely dislocated and fractured ankle: calmly gives directions to the kids, patiently gives information to paramedics and waits through backboard jostling and bumpy drive, chats politely with nurse and doctor while waiting for x-ray and realignment.

Realizes the kitchen floor still hasn't been mopped, someone turned the thermostat up, the laundry room is still a scattered mess and no one has folded or put away my laundry, and the counters and stove still need to be scrubbed, and that there really is no way to bathe the two little girls without soaking at least one of my legs: histrionic monster convinced that the whole world is against her, whom the children run from in fear.

Some trials seem tailor made to show you exactly just how far you are from the person you'd like to be, and in exactly what ways.

A Hitch in the Plans (or rather, a break)

So, I figured since I can't move, I might as well write.  Today, I was walking across the street to get my dog, and I stepped through a large sheet of ice near our neighbor's driveway.  Unfortunately, I slipped back and sideways at the same time, landing on my side.  However, my foot stayed under the ice.  I let out a loud, pained, growly yell and for a very brief, delusional moment, I thought I perhaps had a bad sprain (I heard a loud, horrible pop) and lifted my foot in the air to look at it and yelled angrily, "Dammit, my foot's going the wrong way!"  I was wearing a hiking boot (my standard day-to-day winter shoe), so it didn't look too sickening, just bizarre.  I yelled out to Keilana to call 911 (I wasn't about to try to get up on that ice, and I was pretty sure Doug would not be well-equipped to handle this particular injury), and then to call her dad.  She is quite prone to panic, but she held it together and managed the 911 call pretty well.  

The fire department showed up and were trying to get my foot stabilized (they apparently aren't equipped with severely-dislocated-feet braces) and get me safely off the ice.  They did great and moved pretty much as quickly as anyone safely could, but I was laying on the wet ice in a thin sweater, and was starting to shiver something fierce.  

I wasn't able to take a photo myself, because I was still on a backboard so it wasn't easy to sit up, so one of the paramedics snapped a pic for me.  They did a portable x-ray:

 Rather messy.  It was dislocated, and the fibula had a pretty bad break right in my ankle.  The ER doc  ordered a push of dilaudid but told me setting it would still be very painful (I hadn't had any pain meds til that point.  He tried once, but told me that my muscles were so tense it would be much more effective and safe to set if I was sedated.  "No point in torturing you" was his phrasing, I believe.  So they put me under and got it set:

It lined back up nicely, and he sent me home in a soft cast with orders for strict bedrest and ice and elevation.  If the swelling goes down enough, I'll have surgery tomorrow to place some pins and a plate to stabilize, with no weight bearing at all until the cast comes off, likely 8-12 weeks from now.

The pain is terrible, but tolerable.  As I was laying there on the ice looking at my sideways foot, my first thought was, "This might screw with being able to complete my clinical hours on time."  My next thought was, "This is going to be so freaking expensive."  So if all of you out there in blog world would pray for a relatively quick and complication-free healing, it would be more appreciated that I can possibly express.

The pain aside, the most miserable part was the shivering.  I was loaded up and went through all of this in my wet, cold shirt and jeans, and was shivering almost constantly (and fairly severely) the whole time, excepting the brief period that I was sedated.  It completely wiped me out.  I understood theory how much work shivering is, but experiencing the fatigue that came with it is a whole other thing.

So here's hoping that the recovery goes well between now and Marchish.  I can't work right now, obviously, and so I'm going to need to get licensed on the time frame I had in mind to pay off my medical bills in a reasonable amount of time!  But, the limitations will be a good exercise in patience and humility for me.  I am once again unable to drive for the time being, among the various other limitations.  Apparently, the Lord has had a lot to teach me about limitations and patient acceptance this year.  I'm getting better at it.  But I've got a long way to go.

Heart Failure

I’ve always been interested in the life sciences in general, and human physiology specifically, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about hearts in particular.  The human heart is incredibly powerful and actually quite capable of overcoming many adverse conditions, to some degree or another.  On the other hand, while most of our major organs have ways of storing necessary nutrients, or of reducing activity and maintaining function when necessary nutrients are not available, the heart does not.  Our kidneys, for example, have such a marvelous functional reserve that we can lose 75-90% of kidney function before developing any symptoms at all.  But the heart has no reserve.  Our hearts need a constant, ongoing supply of oxygen and glucose, and when either supply is interrupted, a heart begins to die very rapidly.

I’ve thought about that as I’ve considered how often we speak of the heart as the metaphorical center of ourselves, especially spiritually.  As we exercise and consume healthy foods with the necessary nutrients, our heart grows stronger, more efficient, more consistent.  The risks of damage to our heart decrease, and along with them, the risks of any interruption to that supply of air and sugar that is so vital to our heart function decrease.

I think our spiritual well-being is very much like that.  We need a constant supply of spiritual nourishment, which comes in the form of prayer, scripture study, Sacrament meeting attendance, and keeping the commandments, to keep our spirit alive and healthy--to feel the love of the Lord and to hear the promptings of his spirit, to know what is right.  We need exercise, in the form of participating in and renewing covenants, by partaking of the Sacrament and going and returning to the temple, to have the capacity for spiritual exertion.

The Lord often refers to spiritual decline as a “hardness of heart”.  One of the primary problems that develops in the human heart that prevents healthy functioning is a gradual hardening of the valves and vessels within the heart that make it work.  That isn’t something that happens suddenly.  Too many cheeseburgers and bags of chocolate over too many years of moving too little leads to a little loss of function at a time.  At first, we may not even really notice: hiking isn’t very fun any more, because getting up the hill is hard enough and draining enough, that we fail to enjoy the view.  So we do it a little less often.  And then other, simpler, tasks get a little harder, so we stop doing them so much.  And before long, even basic tasks become challenging and we start to see that we’re in trouble, but the road back to health just seems so daunting that we doubt we can do it.  

That’s how spiritual hard-heartedness happens, too.  We stop doing the little things, we allow the spiritual nutrients to stop flowing: we’re too busy to read ours scriptures, we stop listening when we pray, or maybe stop praying altogether, we skip Church once in awhile.  The gunk builds up and the vessels get hard and our spirit starts to die to the things of eternal life. Pretty soon, spiritual exercise isn’t just a little uncomfortable, it feels impossible. But its not.  We understand that, with our physical bodies, what took years to do will not be undone in a week, but sometimes we expect spiritual damage to be undone nearly instantly after we try to change our ways.  Because of the tremendous power and grace of the Lord, spiritual healing can often happen more quickly than physical healing, but it still takes work and it still takes time.  

Sometimes heart patients will deny their problems, because they feel like they have made a mess of themselves and are ashamed.  Doctors want them to face the problems not to embarrass them, however, but because they know that they can’t help someone get better until the patient is willing to identify the problem and allow the doctor to lay out a treatment plan, that the patient will commit to follow.  All of the Bishops and Stake presidents I have known have felt the same way about the individuals within their stewardship.  Though it can be hard to believe when we are in a hard-hearted state, a call to repentance is an act of love, whether it comes directly from the Lord through inspiration and prompting, or through one of his appointed servants.  Inspired leaders reach out not to condemn or shame, but to echo Alma’s plea: “If ye have experienced a change of heart and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?” (5:26)

Many of the adversities we face in this life, however, are not self-inflicted.  Sometimes it is not our own sin that hurts our hearts, but the decisions of others, over which we have no control.  To withstand the spiritual challenges presented by such adversity, we need to be spiritually fit.  One of the interesting ways that the human heart prepares for adverse conditions is in the development of collateral circulation:  the heart has several major arteries that supply the heart muscle itself with the necessary blood for continued function.  But as we engage in consistent cardiovascular exercise, our heart forges new, smaller vessels that will keep blood flowing should one of those larger arteries become obstructed.  Obstruction of one of those vessels is one of the most common causes of a heart attack, and the presence of those extra passageways can be the difference between full recovery and permanent damage, between living and dying.

No one glides through life unchallenged or unhurt, so when adversity strikes, especially those trials which seem completely undeserved and unfair, whether we are able to use those trials to grow spiritually or are defeated by the spiritual hill, will depend largely on the spiritual exercise we have done to prepare our hearts for exertion and challenge.  Faithfully adhering to and exercising our covenants will decrease the probability that unexpected heartache will severely damage our faith.  If we have been participating in the Sacrament in a meaningful way, if we have been attending the temple and living up to the covenants we made therein, if we have been consistently serving in the Lord’s name, we will have enough avenues to sustain spiritual life in times when we are squeezed and, hopefully, refined.

But here is where the applicability of the metaphor begins to wane.  In a mortal heart where there is an unexpected, severe stress, if a clot lodges in an artery and no collateral vascularization is present, that individual is most likely going to die, quickly.  No second chances.  

But the Lord is an eternal being, and a patient one.  If there is one thing the scriptures teach us, it is that the Lord does not give up on his children quickly.  One of my favorite scriptural phrases is found repeatedly in the ninth chapter of Isaiah (and quoted in the 19th chapter of 2 Nephi), “his hand is stretched out still”.  The prophet outlines the the many follies and abuses of the people--in other words, the things they must give up or change in order to come to the Lord again--and then reminds them “for all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still”.

No matter what we may have done, no matter how far we may have slipped, no matter how much we have allowed our hearts to harden, the Lord wants us to turn to him.  He wants us to know peace, to have joy, to take his hand.  But he will not force us to do so.  It is absolutely essential to the fulfillment of our Father’s plan that we be able to choose for ourselves what we will do, and who we will be.  Our Father and our Savior know better than anyone that that inevitably means that we will fail.  That’s OK.  It hurts, its embarrassing, and if you’re prideful like I am, it can occasionally be infuriating, but we are only left to struggle alone if we choose to do so.  Sometimes, in medicine, what finally brings a heart patient to a doctor (or an ER) is attempting to do something that is necessary and realizing, usually very painfully, that they can’t do it--that they are physically incapable of doing something for themselves.  So it is with us, that often what causes us to turn to the Lord is not a habit of humility, but the facing of a trial that we realize we are not capable of bearing alone.  Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the Rock of Ages.”  I hope to someday be humble enough that I will remain close to the Lord at all times, but in the meantime, I am learning to be more grateful for the challenges and deficiencies that remind me often how much I need his presence and his grace.

Sometimes we struggle to explain the Atonement, but I suspect that, because it is so awesome in its depth and breadth, we try to make it more complicated than it is.  Elder Holland recently said, “Brotherly hands and determined arms reached into the abyss of death to save us from our fallings and our failings, our sorrows and our sins.”  I believe it really is as simple, and as complicated, as that.  

A few months ago in primary, I gave each of the kids a paper heart, and asked them to put their own name on it.  Then we did various things to the paper hearts to symbolize different things in life that we do, or that others do to us, that can cause hurt to our hearts: we stomped on our hearts, and they held up pretty well;  we crumpled them up, and though they were a little thinner and pretty crinkly, we were able to smooth them back out pretty well, all intact;  then, we imagined some of the worst things we could think of happening, and we ripped the hearts in half.  I asked the kids to try to put them back together.  Most of them gave up immediately; a few of the more determined, independent personalities tried adamantly to weave the tiny little wisps of construction paper tears together, but eventually they conceded defeat as well.  Put a pin in that thought, I’ll come back to it in a moment.

Part of what prompted the thoughts that led to this talk were the talks given by Elder Renlund, a newly sustained apostle, and President Nelson, the newly sustained president of the quorum of the 12 apostles, at the last General Conference.  Though their talks ultimately went in very different directions, each began by telling a story about one of their most devastating moments as a doctor, facing a particularly hard patient loss.  Both men are superb heart transplant surgeons--Elder Nelson was a pioneering leader in the fields of both heart valve surgery and heart transplant surgery.  The combination of intelligence, knowledge, work ethic, physical skill, and sheer nerve required for a successful heart surgeon is rather unique, and I find it intriguing that the Lord has called two men from that field to serve in the leading Council of His church.  It is mind-bogglingly incredible to me that human beings, faced with the challenge of hearts that have exhausted all other options and cannot be fixed, have figured out how to keep someone alive temporarily while removing their heart, and then placing an entirely different, healthy heart in their chest, hooking up vessels like their rewiring a car, and then sew that person back up and they go on living their life.  That is so completely astounding as to be almost unbelievable.  

But what actually struck me about these stories, was that part of what made those moments so difficult for these doctors was that they had already dealt with so much loss.  As an incredible an accomplishment as human heart transplant is, the bodies into which they are placing those hearts are still mortal bodies.  The gifted individuals who perform the surgeries are only mortal, and the bodies that the “new” hearts are taken from are similarly mortal.  So many things can, and very often do, go wrong.  The extraordinary promise of a new heart and a longer, better life, can rapidly collapse, often into complete and utter loss.

Here, too, the metaphor, thankfully, fails.  In Ezekiel, the Lord declares, “A new heart also will I give you. . .and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”  Back to our Primary lesson:  I told the kids the hearts could be put back together, and then I brought out the big heart.  A heart about twice the size of the others that had the Savior’s name on it.  I took the two pieces of my little broken heart and glued them together onto the Savior’s heart.  I explained to the kids that the Savior can heal our hearts, but only if we give them wholly to him, to make our hearts one with his--and if we try to pull away from his heart, ours will break all over again.  

Mortal heart transplants, as phenomenal as they are, face a high failure rate, because all the parts involved are mortal.  The Savior promises a new heart, but it isn’t a fallen mortal one that will, whether it’s immediately or in few years down the road, eventually fail us;  he offers his heart.  The new heart he gives us is his eternal, unblemished, unfailing, unwavering heart.  What manner of men ought ye to be? Even as he is.  Be ye therefore perfect, even as our Father in Heaven in perfect.  He can give those high commands, because he willingly and selflessly provides what we need to achieve them.

One thing we can count on, that is true for every human being, is that our hearts will fail us. Because we are earthly beings subject to the fall, that is true spiritually as well--at some point or another, and for most of us many times over, our hearts fail us.  Later in his life, many years after reminding his brethren of the “song of redeeming love”, Alma prayed, “Yea, I know I am nothing, as to my strength I am weak.  Therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things.”  When we feel spiritually weak, when we feel emotionally beaten up, when we feel like we’re sitting at the bottom of a huge mountain and think, “I just can’t do this”, we have to remember that we don’t have to climb it alone, that the Lord will strengthen our hearts.  When Peter had enough faith in the Lord to step out of a boat in a stormy sea, he walked on water.  And when it got scary and overwhelming and his heart began to fail him and his feet consequently began to sink, the Lord reached down and pulled him above the waves.  He didn’t let Peter drown--he won’t let you either.

But just as getting up and walking a few more steps than you did yesterday will begin to strengthen your mortal heart muscle, taking a few more steps in faith than you did yesterday will begin to strengthen your spiritual heart.  We each have to start where we are and take one step at a time forward.  It will take time.  It will be hard work.  But the cost of discipleship, as high as it can be, is significantly lower than the many costs of a hard heart.

And when the storms come, as they inevitably will, and the waves crash and the wind howls, we must hold on tightly to what we already know and trust that the Lord is there in our trouble.  When we feel overwhelmed, and it seems too much to bear, we can remind our frightened and strained hearts that there is someone to turn to who knows the pains we face and the apprehension we feel.  As Elder Holland said, “When life is hard, remember we are not the first to ask, ‘Is there no other way?’”  The Savior pressed on, through pain and blood and exhaustion beyond comprehension or compare, so that he could heal and uplift and seal our hearts for something better.  

We all face heartbreaks, and sometimes there is no earthly solution.  Sometimes, we make decisions, or the consequences we bear of other people’s decisions, force us to let go of what we thought our eternity would look like.  But the Lord has promised us over and over that no good thing will ultimately be withheld from those who faithfully make and keep covenants with him, even if we cannot see, from this side of the veil, how those blessings will be fulfilled.  President Monson recently said, “At times. . .we feel surrounded by the pain of broken hearts, the disappointment of shattered dreams, and the despair of vanished hopes. . .We feel abandoned, heartbroken, alone.  If you find yourself in such a situation, I plead with you to turn to our Heavenly Father in faith.  He will lift you and guide you.  He will not always take your afflictions from you, but He will comfort and lead you with love through whatever storms you face.”

As we struggle, sometimes succeeding and sometimes falling flat, each step forward is a little easier to make if we trust that we have a Father who loves us and is watching over us, and a Brother who willingly unburdens our hearts of the weight of our sins and failures.  I love that the scriptures teach us of the faithful devotion of obedient and powerful prophets, without glossing over their flaws and missteps.  At the beginning of the Book of Mormon, we see Lehi, trying to manage unruly sons, sacrificing his comfortable home and position to obey the Lord’s commandment to flee Jerusalem.  But we also see him doubt, and hear him grumble.  We see some of the moments that his heart fails him.  Lehi does the only thing any of us ever needs to do, what we must do: he repents, and he takes another step forward.  And little by little, he becomes the man who, in his parting testimony to his sons, declares with confidence and humility, “The Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.”