As a brand new missionary in England, I was assigned to the southern
coast for my first area. One Sunday afternoon, my companion and I decided to go
tracting in the small town of Sandwich, located just a few miles north of the
white cliffs of Dover. After a few hours knocking on doors, feeling like we
must have talked to every living person in the place, and without any success
at all, we sat dejectedly down on a nearby bench.
Although it was summer time, as sometimes happens in England, it was a
rather cold and damp day. Feeling downcast due to the lack of response in our
efforts to share the Gospel, my companion tried to lighten the mood by
remarking, “It’s okay, Elder. It could be worse. It could be one degree colder
right now.”
His comment was well-received and hit home. Life really wasn’t bad. We
were in a beautiful country. We had the Gospel. We were missionaries on the
Lord’s errand. In fact, I had more blessings than problems. I felt much better
knocking on doors the rest of the afternoon, armed with an enlightened attitude
and a purer perspective – although I was still cold, still damp, and still wished
someone would listen.
As insightful and perceptive as was my companion’s point – that “It
could be worse; it could be one degree colder” – what happens when it does get
one degree colder? Or, for that matter, what happens when, metaphorically
speaking, it gets 10 or even 50 degrees colder? What happens when the pressure
is on, the crowd is watching, and the game is on the line?
In a college environment, what do you do when the homework is grueling,
the exams are punishing, the roommates are exasperating, and the longed-for
eternal companion is not materializing? Or after college, what do you do if you
don’t land a job, get laid off, have stress in your marriage, have poor health,
or your teen-agers don’t listen? In those times of trial, despair, fear, and
worry, I say that is the time when the stage is best set for God to show forth
his power. Indeed, it is often in the most dire of circumstances that God’s arm
is revealed most miraculously.
Miracles require faith and generally some amount of courage and hope on
our part, as well as trust that God will always do his part. We must also
remember that God’s ways are not our ways. His response to a given situation might
be different than what we want to have happen. In addition, the timing of his
response could vary greatly from our expectation of timing. Yet in all cases,
God’s involvement in our lives is carefully crafted to bring about the greatest
good. For “he doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world.”
Find courage and hope
Several years ago, I gave a lesson in my elders quorum based on the
First Presidency message in the July 2004 Ensign written by President Thomas S.
Monson entitled “Miracles of Faith.” One part of the lesson particularly struck
me because of the uniqueness of a principle that I had not previously
considered, which afterwards became even more personally poignant because of imminent
events that were about to occur in our home.
From time to time, the Lord puts certain truths into our hearts that
affect our future destiny. We may not fully understand his reason for teaching
us these principles at these particular times. Instead, it is often once we
have passed through the ensuing experiences that clarity comes. We can then
look back, through life’s lenses, and more fully see that God does prepare a
way for us to accomplish what he commandeth.
Part of President Monson’s message that I shared with my elders quorum
read:
“Mothers and
fathers who anxiously await the arrival of a precious child sometimes learn
that all is not well with this tiny infant. A missing limb, sightless eyes, a
damaged brain … greets the parents, leaving them baffled, filled with sorrow,
and reaching out for hope.
There follows
the inevitable blaming of oneself, the condemnation of a careless action, and
the perennial questions: “Why such a tragedy in our family?” … “How did this
happen?” “Where was God?” “Where was a protecting angel?” If, why, where,
how—those recurring words—do not bring back the lost son, the perfect body, the
plans of parents, or the dreams of youth. Self-pity, personal withdrawal, or
deep despair will not bring the peace, the assurance, or help which are needed.
Rather, we must go forward, look upward, move onward, and rise heavenward.
It is imperative
that we recognize that whatever has happened to us has happened to others. They
have coped and so must we. We are not alone. Heavenly Father’s help is
near."
What struck me was that the 'absence of the miracle' could actually be
a miracle in and of itself. The premise being that as God's ways and thoughts
are higher than man's, at times the Lord may choose to provide a miracle
counter-intuitive to what we may want – knowing full well his end purpose. And
because of the absence of the miracle fixed in our minds, he's better able to
help us grow, and thus become happier than we ever could have been had we received
the desired miracle for which we had prayed.
At the time I naively thought my impression of that principle was
because I had given a blessing to the daughter of a family I home taught,
hoping that a dramatic recovery would spark the family back into activity. When
the little girl ended up in the hospital that same day, I thought the absence
of the miracle would somehow bless their life more than had she been
miraculously healed. However, little did I suspect then the extraordinary
experience amongst the challenges that the Lord was already engineering.
About a month later, we went to an ultra sound appointment to see
whether my expectant wife, April, was having a boy or a girl. We learned that
we were having our third son. We also learned that there were severe physical
complications afflicting his body. He was missing large portions of his brain,
his skull wasn’t properly shaped, and the doctors weren’t even sure if he would
survive till delivery. During the ensuing weeks it seemed that every time we
received additional information, it was bad news. I still remember sitting in a
room in the Brewster Building, across the street from the Wilkinson Center,
when my wife called to tell me the latest update – that our son didn’t have a
right eye. Thinking back to my mission companion, it certainly felt like it was
much worse than one degree colder.
With faith, and in order to pray more specifically and effectively for
our unborn son, we decided on his name him early. (Normally we waited till we actually
saw our children to make sure they matched their names.) We chose the name of
Caleb, after the Old Testament Israelite who was a companion to Moses and
Joshua and was noted for his fearlessness in the face of overwhelming odds.
Caleb survived his birth, though it became quickly apparent that he
would be very much like a newborn baby throughout his entire life. He would
never walk. He would never talk. He would never feed himself or be able to so
much as hold his head up on his own. When asked how long we might expect him to
live, the doctor replied, “Take him home and never bring him back to the
hospital. We can’t do anything for him. Enjoy him all you can. You have a few
weeks to a few months; outside chance of a year, possibly two.”
I remember being terrified as we walked out of the hospital with our little
boy to take him home. The number of machines and medical equipment we needed to
sustain his life was overwhelming. The possibility of losing him was a constant
fear. Simply feeding him required an extraordinary effort as he needed to eat
every three hours. The process to eat took one hour to complete. This involved
waking up all throughout the night: start the pump, sleep for an hour, stop the
pump, sleep for two hours, start the pump, sleep for an hour, and so on. We wondered how we would keep ourselves
alive, let alone our fragile son.
Thankfully the Lord blessed us with many miracles in what appeared like
a hopeless situation. Angels in the form of ward members, family, friends, and
medical personnel came to our aid. We literally had meals brought in for three
months. We had a competent and caring nurse, a doctor who made house calls, and
family and neighbors that prayed mightily in our behalf. We could feel heaven’s
hand upon us. I felt angels walked our hallways and sat in Caleb’s room. Our
three-year old son told us that sometimes he saw Jesus peeking in our windows.
In Caleb’s baby blessing I promised him that he had completed his task
on earth by being born and that he could now rest for a time. This was not the
plan for Caleb and his mother. In some kind of pact
that I have yet to fully understand, Caleb and April bargained with heaven to
do a greater work. God had matched them up perfectly: Caleb, with his
fearlessness in the face of overwhelming odds, and April with her mother’s love
and daring optimism.
April purposefully chose hope and trust in the Lord. To her core, she
is happy and optimistic. With God’s help, she took what could have been a terrifying
trial and reshaped it. She took a corner of heaven and pulled it right down
into our home – opening it up for all to enjoy. Every day became a celebration
with Caleb. She made him a birthday cake after his first week, cupcakes for his
second week, cookies for his third week, and so on. She celebrated everything
about Caleb; for every day was truly a once in a lifetime experience for the
boy who was sent home without hope.
In what might have looked like a burdensome task to others, caring for
Caleb became a privilege. Though his body was misshapen and broken, his spirit
was whole, noble, and great.
Being in his presence was healing and heavenly. I love my wife and thank her,
Caleb, and Heavenly Father for making the time with Caleb not only possible but
powerful. It was indeed heaven on earth.
Even his missing eye was a blessing. It became his distinctive feature.
People were drawn to him, especially children. They would often ask, “Where is
his eye? What happened to him?” I would usually say that Caleb was a pirate, or
that a bear had eaten his eye. But my wife would explain that in our family, a
wink meant I love you. Before Caleb
was born, we told our boys that he would only have one of his eyes. They were concerned
for their brother. “Don’t worry,” she would say. “He will just wink at us every
day!”
Caleb was never able to tell us he loves us with words, but he told us
every day with his wink. His little wink was a daily message of love from
heaven. He brought the love of God and light of Christ into the lives of all
who knew him. His winking eye was a sweet reminder of his deep love for all of
us.
Hope and courage have always characterized the righteous. Ever the
optimist, Joseph Smith was once quoted as saying:
“I should never
get discouraged, whatever difficulties should surround me, if I was sunk in the
lowest pit of Nova Scotia and all the Rocky Mountains piled on top of me, I
ought not to be discouraged but hang on, exercise faith and keep up good
courage and I should come out on the top of the heap.”
It was this type of faithful fortitude that saved the Nephites from the
decree of death declared by the unbelievers if the sign of Christ’s birth did
not come. It came the very night that Nephi prayed.
Likewise, a measure of firm faith and trust in God preceded the parting of the
Red Sea;
saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from a fiery furnace;
and helped David defeat a giant.
Recognize God’s ways are higher
However, not all miracles deliver. Sometimes, according to God’s
purposes, miracles are seemingly withheld in order for his greater designs to
develop. After all, Abinadi was burned at the stake, the Mormons were driven
out of Jackson County, and Joseph Smith was martyred at Carthage Jail. Or, on a
less important scale, but still significant to those involved: lost puppies may
not be found, testing center prayers may not be immediately answered, and
Church basketball games may not be played with good sportsmanship in spite of
prayers offered otherwise.
But that doesn’t mean God is absent, or doesn’t care, or hasn’t
provided a miracle. I say again, that it is at those times, when it is 10
degrees colder, that God is involved, he does care, and is performing his work.
We must remember that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [his]
ways higher than [our] ways, and [his] thoughts than [our] thoughts.”
Just imagine what would happen if miracles were left up to us. In my arena
of athletics, it would probably go something like this: the Church is true. The
Church is the sponsoring organization of BYU, the Lord’s university. The BYU
sports teams are flagships of the university. Therefore, no BYU team should
ever lose, which would be irrefutable evidence that the Church is true. What a
blessing this would be to the growth of the Church. I can picture the missionaries
talking to an investigator: “Bro. Jones, as you know, the BYU football team has
never lost, the basketball team has won every national title, and each of our
golfers gets a hole in one on every swing. Don’t you think it’s about time you
were baptized?”
Obviously the Lord does not work this way. A plan where supposedly
everything would go right and so nobody would be lost was already proposed and
rejected. The plan of salvation, on the other hand, allows for opposition in
all things: sadness and sweetness, wrongdoing and repentance, trial and
testimony.
With so much opposition in our lives at times, it seems like God chooses
to work through underdogs. Take Gideon of the Old Testament for example. Israel
was in bondage to the Midianites. God called Gideon to deliver them. He raised
an army of 32,000 men.
“And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too
many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, less Israel vaunt
themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.”
God asked Gideon to reduce his army to 10,000, which was still too many. God
then asked him to reduce his force even further; to just 300 men to go against
a foe who were “…like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without
number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude.”
With the help of God and against all odds, Gideon and those 300 men bested the
Midianites and their tens of thousands.
God is clearly not limited by the same constraints that obstruct our
mortal way. Left on their own, Gideon and his 300 would have had little chance
for victory. Gideon was not alone. Nor is he the only instance of God using
small and simple “means to bring about his great and eternal purposes.”
God took Enoch, a lad, slow of speech and walked with him. “And so great was
the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God, …and he spake the word of the
Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his
command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course;…and all
nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the
power of the language which God had given him.”
God also took former Egyptian slaves and molded them into the mighty
Israelite nation. He turned a fisherman into a chief apostle. And he shaped a
plow boy into a prophet.
The Lord himself came in the most humble of circumstances – a babe in a manger
born into a carpenter’s family, who would become Lord of lords, King of kings,
and Savior of worlds without end.
Trust God
Such miraculous transformations come as a result of trust in God’s
plan. One night for family scripture study, we read the account of the “man
which was blind from his birth.”
This caused “his disciples [to ask] him, saying Master, who did sin, this man, or
his parents, that he was born blind?”
Seeing the obvious parallel in our own home, our young sons asked why Caleb was
born blind. In the next verse, the Lord provided our response: “Neither hath
this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him."
Then
Jesus healed the man so that he could see.
Caught up in the grandeur of the story, our boys asked whether I could
heal Caleb. I stammered some kind of response that I didn’t feel it was the
Lord’s will for Caleb to be healed. I added that often the healings recorded in
the scriptures were performed by Jesus, prophets, or apostles - very righteous
men commissioned by God to perform miracles for specific purposes of blessing
the lives of those involved and increasing the faith of those who would
eventually read these stories.
Not to be put off, and possibly sensing my apprehensive response, my
boys faithfully concluded that it was time to appeal to a higher authority. It
so happened that we were going to the Church Administration Building later that
week to attend the setting apart of my dad as a mission president by one of the
Brethren. Knowing that we would be meeting an apostle, my sons requested that I
ask him to heal Caleb.
Talk about being put between a rock and a hard place. How could I sustain
their faith without selfishly imposing on an apostle? I compromised with my boys
by telling them that I would not ask for a blessing on Caleb, but that we would
leave it in the hands of the Lord.
It was a wonderful occasion to be with my dad as he was set apart and to
be in the presence of one of the Lord’s special witnesses. He was not inspired
to heal Caleb. As we walked out of his office, he stopped at Caleb’s stroller,
bent down, and kissed him. He told him
three times that he loved him. He then shook my hand and hugged my wife while
whispering in her ear, “I am so proud of you.” In the sight of God, Caleb did
not need healing. Instead it was me that left that office peacefully whole.
Rely on his timing
Trusting in God means that we also trust in his timing. The man in the New
Testament story was blind from birth. I’m not sure how old he was, but that
miracle was years in the waiting. Then one day the Master came along and healed
him. “In his own time, and in his own way,"
God will respond.
As an example of the Lord’s timing in my life, I had been at my new job
in the BYU Athletic department for about three weeks when I had to go down to
Las Vegas for a business meeting as part of the conference basketball
tournament. I woke up very early to make the long drive down there in time for
my 12pm meeting. My wife and I prayed fervently I would make it safely. Caleb
had been in the hospital for a few weeks and we had been pulling many late
nights to be with him. Despite every precaution and physical effort I could
make, just outside of St. George I fell asleep in the blink of an eye while
driving full speed down the freeway.
I woke up to find myself heading down a hill into the median dividing
the highway – one set of tires on the pavement, the other set in the weeds and
gravel. I quickly spun the wheel to take me back on the road, but this only
caused me to do a 180 degree turn across the lanes of traffic. Thankfully no
other cars were near me. Once I got to the far right side of the road, I had
the fleeting thought that I could pull it off and would be able to stop the car
on the right shoulder. Not so. I think the car was still travelling about 60-70
miles per hour when I slammed into the sand and sagebrush, flipping the car
over.
Eventually the car came to an abrupt stop with me hanging upside down
by my seat belt. I undid the catch and fell to the floor, which was now the
roof of the car. It was impossible to open any of the car doors. They were all
wedged shut because the car had become fairly flattened to the ground. I
climbed through a window since all the glass in the vehicle had shattered.
Besides a bruised and embarrassed ego, I was completely unharmed. The
only cut I had was a small slice on my hand where a piece of glass had stuck me
when I released myself from the seatbelt and fell to the ground. After being
checked out by the police (who also issued me a ticket), my sweet Grandmother
who lived in St. George somehow let me borrow her car so I could finish my trip
to Las Vegas. I walked into my meeting about 15 minutes late.
The hard part was telling my boss, Tom Holmoe, who was also at the
basketball tournament, that I had destroyed a University vehicle during my
first month on the job. To make a bad situation worse, my seat at the
basketball game following the meeting happened to be directly in front of
President Samuelson. I spent the whole of the game pulling glass out of my hair
as inconspicuously as possible.
In my mind, the timing of that wreck was life turning one degree colder.
I was trying to make a good first impression at my job. My wife and I were
doing our best to take care of a sick child. We had prayed for safety.
The Lord’s timing and purpose were made clear over the following days
and months. Tom is a great boss and has never held the accident and the loss of
the car against me. The University eventually replaced the car, but thankfully
didn’t have to replace me – because I was still alive. The Lord had preserved
me from what should have been a fatal accident. Having come so close to death
helped me more fully appreciate my life and all the people around me. I
especially enjoyed the time spent with Caleb late at night when I would wake up
to take care of him. Not only did it mean I was still alive, but Caleb was too.
There were times when I thought Caleb would live a long time. He had so
often successfully battled sicknesses and surgeries, illnesses and infections. He
had been to the hospital many times, but always came back to us. We loved
having him in our home. Caleb could have quickly returned to heaven, but
instead he brought heaven to us for seven years.
Twenty-five days ago, in the timing of the Lord, Caleb slipped peacefully
away, being held in the arms of his mother and surrounded by his family. He had
spent a courageous day fighting with his might against a vicious infection
brought on by pneumonia. The wonderful doctors, nurses, and other medical
personnel at Primary Children’s Medical Center had done all they professionally
could to keep Caleb alive. His body was simply too worn out.
I have heroes in my life: Joseph Smith, Captain Moroni, Ammon, and
others. On that day, my wife was my hero. She bravely and tenderly leaned down
to hug Caleb. She whispered in his ear, “I love you, Caleb. I am so proud of
you. If your body is too tired, it’s okay. You can go back. You can return to
Heavenly Father.”
For over seven years her love and God’s will had allowed Caleb to be a
significant part of our earthly experience. But in the very moment when it was
needed, her heart changed. She could let him go. She trusted God because she
knew God. She knew that God could understand her personally, in a way that few
others could. For God had also lost a son. And through the Atonement of that
Son, God can do miracles. He can forgive a sinner. He can save a lost soul. He
can heal a broken heart.
With God nothing is impossible;
especially when life is hard and it is 10 degrees colder outside. “But behold,
all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.”
God provides the plan, and we contribute the faith and courage. We trust in his
timing and in his ways to achieve his purposes; even when, and probably
especially when, such purposes may be
unclear from our perspective.
At a stake conference not too long ago, I had an interview with a
visiting authority. He learned about Caleb as part of our discussion.
Acknowledging the hard work it took to care for Caleb, I thought he would then
encourage me to keep it up and to faithfully persevere in the service and
sacrifice I was providing. Instead, his next four words entirely transformed my
relationship with Caleb. He simply said: “You are being exalted.”
All this time I had thought that we were taking care of Caleb. But in
reality, God through Caleb had been taking care of us. God was making a miracle
where I hadn’t expected. He was performing a miracle on me, and on my wife, and
on our kids, and on all those coming into contact with Caleb. Having Caleb in
our home was an honor and a privilege. It was also sacred.
With faith, courage, hope, and trust, God will bless us…no matter how
cold our life may feel. I know that God loves us. I know that he hears us and
heals us. And I know that he is exalting us. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
