Real Life Answers

By J. Gaz

“Who Do You Think You Are?” is a television program broadcast during the past couple of years helping celebrities, like Ashley Judd, trace their ancestors.  It is also a very intriguing question being asked lately by more and more people.  We live in a transient world where families no longer stay in one location for generations.  Without extended families, we can easily lose our roots and our sense of belonging.  We ask ourselves, “Who am I?”  “Where did I come from?”

I am no different.  I have five brothers and we eventually all left our ancestral home in Utah and spread out from Hawaii to New England.  We only remain close by vacationing with each other every other year, rarely talking or emailing each other.  Our next generation does better.  They have the enormously popular social media to help them stay in touch.  But for many, including myself, that is not enough.

I starting researching my family’s genealogy about fifteen years ago and it opened a fascinating history to me.  It was not JUST a history – it was MY history.  It was so much more than just names and dates.  It is about remarkable people and their remarkable stories.   I learned that I have three major genealogical lines here in Massachusetts in the 1600s.  One lived in Salem starting in 1630.  Did his family participate in the witch trials?  Another settled in Boston and was a linen draper, which was part of a family business based in London.  Yet another settled in Watertown and had his farm somewhere in the middle of Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

I have also been lucky to find journals or writings by some of these ancestors.  One of my favorites comes from my great-great-grandmother Alvira Smith.  Alvira was born in Ohio after her parents join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  She traveled with her family to Missouri where her father and older brother were killed in a mob raid on their camp.  Her twin brother had half of his hip shot away in that raid and was miraculously healed by the Lord.   As soon as her twin, Alma, was able to travel they moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.

While she was there, she states that she worked hard, earning $1.25 per week.  Her family was saving all the money they could to make the trek west to Utah.  With her money she bought several pairs of shoes, because she didn’t want to walk barefoot across the plains.  Alvira didn’t write much, just a couple of pages when she was old.  But what she did write is priceless to me.  I particularly like her description of crossing the plains, which is not your Hollywood version of pioneering.

“We crossed the plains in the year 1850 and I was then 18 years old.  There were twelve in our family and everything we owned on this earth was put into two wagons.  I guess I walked over halfway across the plains to Utah.  We left in May and we didn’t get to Utah until September.  There was a large company of us, but we divided ourselves into smaller companies of about twelve to nineteen wagons each.  Some men would ride ahead and let us know a good place where we could get grass and water.  These things we had to have.  We didn’t have any trouble coming across the plains.  The buffaloes didn’t bother us at all, and sometimes Indians would come up to us and laugh and then go away again.  We crossed the Mississippi River in a little skiff with oars.  We came right to Salt Lake City.”

To truly answer the question “Who do you think you are?” I feel that you need to go further than just finding the names, dates, and places of your ancestors.  It is the stories that bring them to life. Think about your family.  Do you have an older member who has stories to tell?  Why not call and find out.  If you wait too long, that older family member might not still be here and those stories will be lost.  Once you get those stories, write them down.  If you choose to take this journey, you will discover a true sense of who you are and that you belong, because their stories are your stories.

The Church of Jesus Christ can help you in your journey, feel free to contact them or start your search online at familysearch.org.

By Cherie G.

It’s a tough question.  The way I see it, each of us is a student in God’s gigantic classroom.  We’ve each been given an intricate and powerful machine called “eternity”, and we’re all here to learn how it works so that one day, we can become like God and create our own worlds and children, just like him. Eternity functions when all eternal laws (i.e. physics, marriage, math, agency, families, etc.) are understood and are being used properly.  Just like the with laws of motion, if the user of eternity doesn’t perfectly understand or obey all of those eternal laws, then the machine will crash, and the type and violence of the crash depends on the severity and type of the law overlooked/disobeyed.  Because this life is a learning process and eternity is VERY complex, we can be great students of the laws and still experience crashes and explosions in our lives that lead to difficult and painful experiences.

While we are each dealing with our own crashes and explosions, there is another dynamic to this classroom. Every time a machine blows up or breaks down, there’s collateral damage. The really big explosions often severely injure those in close proximity.  To us, it appears chaotic and brutal, but there’s one more thing to keep in mind. The Lord is omniscient. Since time and space do not bind his perception, he can know whose machine is going to explode, when, and why. With that knowledge, the Lord organizes his classroom.

The Lord knows which explosions would injure me in just the right way as to promote a better, more thorough and memorable understanding of eternal laws. Yes, I do believe that every injury from every indirect explosion (meaning, the consequence of someone else’s actions) or mistake is strategically meant to become an opportunity.  It’s an opportunity to learn something more about eternity, to become more capable than you ever could have managed having gone unscathed. Whether it’s losing your ability to walk because someone was a careless driver, enduring sexual abuse, or experiencing the death of a loved one, every explosion, of all sizes and shapes, is an opportunity for growth and improvement that extends beyond our previous capabilities. Some will have longer, and perhaps more painful/involved, healing times.  But I know even that process can be a refining one.  Long story short, we need to accept that the equation below, though popular, is some very bad math:

Injuries = suffering = misery = bad (avoid at all costs)

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to alleviate the suffering of others, or that we should seek out suffering, nor that suffering might somehow turn into a pleasant experience. I do believe suffering is inevitable and awful to endure, but is one of the most effective ways to teach love to selfish beings (and as we know love is a very big and very powerful eternal law).  I don’t think any human would ever be able to prevent all suffering. I also don’t believe any God ever would.

To answer the question more directly, I think the reason God does not protect us from one another’s explosions is because the open proximity, connection, and communication with your peers is essential to our eternal education.  That vulnerability is unquestionably necessary to really learn about love.  Think about the outpouring of love for those families in Connecticut, or how much better we are about loving our neighbors when we know they are struggling.  I think there’s a reason God creates circumstances that can result in suffering, and I believe those circumstances are intelligently designed to put us on the fast track to deeper, more truthful, understandings of eternity.  Whether that be a hurricane, an election, or a school shooting, the Lord is wise and knows how to get the greatest investment out of choice and circumstance (good and bad) without interfering with our agency.  Since agency is one of those laws God perfectly understands and wouldn’t revoke from his children, I figure the best way to deal with tragedy is rely on him to teach me what I can learn and how I can grow from it.

Bringing this back to my own life and experience with eternity, I do not, and will not doubt that the people in my life have been strategically placed there and that the experiences I’ve had were meant to augment my progression. I have a solid and strong testimony that the Lord knew which of my peers would be able to teach me the most about eternity at any given time.  He also knew which of my peers I might be able to assist most effectively.  This is probably where I’ve felt the most blessed in my life.  Even though I have my fair share of scars from friendly (or maybe not so friendly) fire, I know that I’ve learned more about love, God, and his children from those experiences than many, perhaps more pleasant, memories.

Some might ask why God doesn’t just give us all the answers, or work eternity for us so that we can avoid explosions.  First, I would refer them to the beginning of this post.  Eternity is not something to be mastered by simple memorization.  Just because you can recite the text doesn’t mean you have an understanding.  We learn by doing, and like it or not, it’s a long, arduous process.  Secondly, the Lord cannot choose for us because we are the one’s trying to figure out eternity, not him.  Sure, he would get a lot of appreciation if he just did it for everyone, but he also wouldn’t produce very capable students. I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point of this chaotic earthly classroom.

By Cherie G.

I’ve learned that the things relating to God and the gospel often seem ambiguous because they are so big, and while many of us raised in the western world would love for them to fit in neat little boxes that we can fit perfectly into our experiences, that’s not how things of eternity work. They don’t fit into anything. Not time. Not space. Not even mortality. They’re more comprehensive than any temporal language could describe, bigger than any mortal framework could hold, and more expansive than any theoretical box could store. It’s why scriptures are never read the same way over time even though the words never change. It’s why we’re constantly being reminded that things are learned “line upon line, precept on precept.” It’s really the only way to begin digesting something like that—slow as that kind of learning process may seem.

It probably doesn’t help, either, that the Lord is constantly reforming our perceptions and showing us our previous understandings were just immature childlike drawings of a reality we still can’t wrap our heads fully around. Some may look at it, get discouraged, and give up on trying. Some say it’s impossible to ever understand and therefore not worth a lifetime of work that will never get you there. They seek for something more quantifiable and rational—something they can master and check off their list. As one who craves the quantifiable and rational, I understand those desires. We want to feel wise, competent, and capable in the lives we lead. I think it’s the hunger of wanting to become like God (all powerful and all knowing). Like most hunger, there’s a sense of urgency.

Often, though we’ve been counseled to have patience and faith that food will come, many of us start to look for something quick and easy to fill the void.  Maybe it’s a lie we tell ourselves to justify an action or ease an aching conscience.  Maybe it’s blaming another for our woes, or casting judgement on someone to make ourselves feel better.  In either case, we are looking for something to soothe our aching and grumbling souls, even if it doesn’t really satisfy the hunger.  The problem is, filling up on proverbial junk food will never provide us the nutrients required to “grow up” and become like God.  Patience is a virtue that channels hunger into a diligent search for eternal truth taught by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The searching is necessary. The work required to find those truths is part of the process of learning them. It helps us remember just how valuable truth is.

I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to “wait for an answer” when you feel like you’ve waited long enough and are absolutely starving.  I know how frustrating it can be to get an answer you don’t feel like you understand.  But I also know the Lord is wise and well aware of your situation.  He knows how to feed his children and meet their needs in the right time and in the right way.  It may not be comfortable, but with faith and patience it is bearable.  So during those frustrating and confusing times you’re searching diligently for answers, don’t load up on frivolous fillers.  Remember to have faith, be patient, and dinner will be served.