Faith

“And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to

have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye

have faith ye hope for things which are not seen,

which are true.”  (Alma 32:21)

I was born in Southern California, to two parents who were innately good.  They were not, at the time of my birth, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but my father, especially, had a great yearning at this time in his life to know what was true, and if there was any religion that offered an answer to the questions he had about life and the hereafter. He was working at his job in copper piping with a young man who was from Utah, and who had a different aura about him.  My dad was sincerely curious as to what made this young man different from the others he had been around during his life.  This young man didn't drink or swear or gamble, and yet he seemed perfectly happy in his life, maybe even more so than the people my father was acquainted with. 

One day he asked this young man what made him so happy, and they had a good conversation about the gospel.  My dad was invited to listen to the missionaries, and he readily accepted.  He was what you have probably heard referred to as “golden”: he gained a witness of the truthfulness of what the missionaries were teaching him, and desired very soon after to be baptized a member of the Church.  That day came as my father was baptized in a swimming pool in the backyard of a home in Southern California, and he never looked back.

My mother was a little more methodical about accepting the gospel.  She was happy for my father, and was perfectly fine with him becoming a member of the LDS church; but she had been raised as a protestant, and was not sure she wanted to abandon the faith of her childhood.  After many months of being taught, and of praying and pondering about her decision, she was also baptized a member of the Mormon church, and gained a very powerful and humble testimony of the truth.  I cannot overstate how important her influence was on me during my childhood.

I was just a baby at this time, and little could I have known then how the decision my parents had made would affect my life.  I was soon sealed in the Los Angeles California Temple to my parents when I was about 18 months old, and thus began a faithful effort on the part of my parents to teach me the gospel and to help me to understand the importance of the things that they had learned. I believe I was very blessed to have been taught at such a young age, by two parents who were “on fire” about the gospel of Jesus Christ and who wanted me to have a knowledge and testimony of it from my very first years.

When I was three years old, I very clearly remember my father asking me to come to him, and when I got there he showed me a copy of the Book of Mormon, and told me that there were some very important things in that book that he wanted me to learn.  They were called “The Articles of Faith”, and he believed I had the ability to memorize all 13 of them, so that I could be able to tell others what I believed.  I remember being very curious as to what these “articles” were that my Dad thought were so important, and if I could do what he thought I could do.  He told me that my Mom would help me, and that he was excited to hear me one day say all 13 from memory.  My mother was very patient in helping me to learn the words to each one of the Articles of Faith, and worked with me as I tried my 

best to memorize them.  I was fortunate to have been blessed with an ability to memorize things easily, and I think my mother was surprised at how quickly I was able to learn them.  I will never forget the day as I sat with my mother on the brown velvet couch in our living room, saying each article of faith from memory, and how her eyes got wider and more excited with each one I “passed off”.  Eventually, as I came to the 13th article of faith, her excitement was so boundless that she couldn't help but smack the couch to the rhythm of those final words “we seek after these things”!  She hugged me tightly and said, “You did it, Michelle!  I knew you could do it!”

Pretty soon, word got around my ward that I knew all 13 articles of faith from memory, and people kept congratulating me about this accomplishment.  At 4 years old, the Bishop of our ward asked me to come up and recite the Articles of Faith to the congregation, and I can still remember the looks on the faces of the teenagers, since they were required to memorize them in Mutual, and many of them struggled greatly to do so, and here was this little girl not even in Kindergarten saying all of them!  I recall this experience, not to brag or feel pride in what was truly a gift from my Heavenly Father, but to show how crucial it was for me to know what I believed at this early stage in my life.

At about this same time, after the birth of my younger brother, my mother began to have a hard time doing things that should have been easy for a person in the prime of their life to do.  She was constantly fatigued, had a hard time walking, and felt a lot of uncomfortable symptoms going on with her body.  She went to many different doctors who all told her that she was either depressed, or just worn out from being a young mother, but she knew that something else was very wrong.

She finally was referred to a doctor of neurology who was fresh out of medical school.  She explained to him the symptoms she had been having and he thought carefully and then told her to go to the door of the examining room and walk toward him.  It only took him a minute to see what others had failed to: that my mother walked with a slight drag in her legs, and the doctor told her that he suspected she had a disease called “Multiple Sclerosis”, an autoimmune condition in which a person's own body began attacking their nervous system. The next few months were ones of tests and more tests, while my parents waited for news of whether this was indeed the diagnosis. It was finally determined that this was the cause, and my mother was told there wasn't much they could do to help her, since there were no drugs or therapies at that time for this disease.  This was devastating news for a young mother of two, who wanted nothing more than to be there for her children and her husband, doing the things that other women took for granted.  She was only 26.

There are several different types of Multiple Sclerosis, and I remember my mother telling me about a lady she knew who was diagnosed with this disease and had gotten to the point where she was only able to get around by crawling on the floor.  Then, for some mysterious reason, this woman woke up one day to find her disease completely gone—she had gone into remission.  This gave me hope as a little girl that this might be what would happen to my mother; but this was not to be the case as it soon became apparent that she had the “progressive” form of the disease which gradually gets worse over time.

As my mother became weaker over the years and unable to keep up with the overwhelming job of being a mother and homemaker, she frequently told me that she was just so grateful for the gospel, and for her Savior, which eased her burdens and carried her sorrows when she couldn't face life.  She would attend the temple with my father as often as she could, and was always happy to tell me about the kind people in the temple who would help her get around and do the ordinances. She would also remind me that we were a “family forever” and that no matter what happened we would always be together if we were faithful.

Eventually, my mother suffered a massive stroke when I was 10 years old, and I was told that she would probably never be able to speak or walk again.  This was a surreal period of my life as I struggled to come to terms with having my sweet mother hooked up to a variety of tubes and machines and trying to communicate with someone who was unable to say anything more that “Hi” or “Help”.  She started out in the hospital, but was eventually transferred to a nursing home.  We visited her usually twice a day, in the morning and at night, and though he did his best to deal with the circumstances, I could tell that my father was devastated by this turn of events.  This was a serious blow to him not only emotionally, but also financially as well, since he had always struggled to pay the regular bills, let alone thousands of dollars of medical expenses.  Apparently, this finally led my father to bring my mother home, and to have us take care of her the best we could.  The difficult thing, though, was that my father was working 3 jobs to help us get by, and the majority of her daily care fell to me as the oldest.  I didn't really resent this at the time, but I did feel that no one else could possibly understand what it was like to be me.  I carried a pager with me to school so that my mother could dial a phone number and have it “beep” the device, letting me know that she needed my help. This was during my 6th grade year, and my teacher, Mr. Tonan, was very patient with my situation, since I usually had to leave once or twice a day, every day, during that school year.

The next October I decided that I would have a Halloween Party with my friends.  I was needing some escape from the difficult life I was living, and I wanted to just be a kid for a while and have some fun.  I remember carefully peeling grapes and cooking spaghetti so that my friends would be fooled when I told them to put their hand in a bowl full of “eyeballs and brains”.  I also read up on as many ghost stories as I could, so that I would be prepared to give them a real fright!  I had about 5 or 6 friends come over that night and we were really having a great time, when something told me to go check on my mother.  I told my friends I would be right back, and as I went back to my mother's wood paneled bedroom, I could feel that something was not right.  My mother was laying in bed, shaking all over, and because she was unable to speak, I didn't know what the matter was. I asked her if she was cold, and she nodded her head, so I lay a thick blanket over her and gave her a drink of water.  I went back to my friends, and did some more activities, but I felt very strongly that I needed to call for help.  I told my friends that something was wrong with my Mom and that I was going to call 911.  I told them that they could either stay around and wait for the ambulance to come, or they could go home.  Most of them wanted to stay there, saying they wanted to be there for me, but I think they were probably just excited about being there as the emergency crew arrived. I called 911 and told the lady on the other end that my mother had Multiple Sclerosis and that something was wrong with her, because she was shaking uncontrollably.  The lady said she would send the paramedics, and in a few minutes, they were there, checking her over and finally telling me that she was in shock. They didn't know at that point why, but they said it was a good thing I had covered her up with a blanket and called 911 when I did or she might have gone into full blown seizure.

My father was able after this to apply for financial help, and my mother was able to go back into a nursing home.  I was glad that my mother was getting around the clock care, but it was a difficult experience to see the many people (mostly older) who suffered with the effects of their bodies deteriorating.  I tried my best to be friendly and cheerful toward my mother and the others around her, but I was slowly dying inside.  How could a loving God let this happen to my dear, sweet mother? How could he let her suffer this way, along with all these other people she was surrounded by?  I began to seriously question the faith that had been taught to me by my parents.

On Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 1988, my mother passed away in a Southern California hospital.  She was only 37 years old.  I remember feeling strangely peaceful about the news when my grandmother told me my mother had just died.  I felt as though a great burden had been lifted, since the suffering of my mother had a taken a great emotional toll on me.  Even though I was only 13 years old, I felt as though I was 40.  I woke up the next morning with a streak of gray running through my hair, and I was told that this sometimes happened to victims of traumatic experiences.

The next week was somewhat of a blur as we planned my mother's funeral and informed family members of her death.  I remember clearly the day my Young Women's President came to our door to express her condolences, and told us that she would be willing to sing at the funeral.  My father was grateful for the offer, but struggled to know what song she should sing.  I immediately knew, because it was a song I had heard my mother sing with great feeling and emotion during the Sundays we sang it in church.  I told him she should sing “I Stand All Amazed”, and he agreed  that it was the perfect song.

I was inwardly struggling during this time with the idea of my mother being buried in the ground.  It seems like a silly thing, since I knew that was what happened to most all people after they died, but I couldn't bear the thought of her being buried.  I also sincerely wondered whether I would see my mother again, and whether the Article of Faith I had learned as a child was really true: “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel”.  Were the ordinances of the temple really true?  Was there a power strong enough to conquer death so that my mother would one day rise again, with a perfected glorified body?  

As I thought about these questions, the need to open my scriptures became urgent. I felt strongly that the answers I needed were there, and I needed to feel at peace with this difficult situation.  As my hands randomly flipped through the pages, I felt drawn to the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, and my eyes fell upon these words in chapter 3, verses 5 and 6: “Trust in the Lord with all thine  heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths”.  I could completely relate to Joseph Smith when he said that “Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart.”  This was exactly the way I felt after I read this scripture.  It was as though the Lord were speaking directly to me, telling me that all the things I had learned about the gospel were true, and that I simply needed to trust him, even though I may not understand everything perfectly right now.  I also was being gently chastised about remembering to pray, since that was the way I knew I was supposed to “acknowledge Him” and that he would always be there to direct my life if I would let Him.

I never after this time doubted that I would see my mother again. I had complete faith that the ordinances of the temple were real, and that families really could be together forever.  This experience really formed the foundation of my future life, as I struggled with future trials and temptations. This taught me that faith was a real and powerful force, if we allowed it to work in our lives. I learned that “trust in the Lord” was really what faith was, and that even though there were things I could not see with my eyes, there were things I could feel with my heart that were just as real.  

What experiences have you had in your life which have strengthened your faith or helped you to understand the power of faith?