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 Lora I.

Arguably the most clichéd religious and philosophical question is this: What is the purpose of life? This question has been uttered, written, and repeated by thousands of folks around the world including Adam, one of my good high school friends. Even now, a full decade later, I still remember our conversation about the purpose of life. It was the years of adolescent angst and strong opinions, so typically, I was perfectly happy to philosophize about grand questions. However, even then I remember finding it almost comical that Adam was asking, “What is the purpose of life?” I laughed and then stifled my laughter when I realized he was asking in earnest.

Yet now, I have a little more sympathy for Adam and all the other askers of this question. As is unfortunately too often the case, my sympathy for this concern came only after I had to wrestle with the same question for myself. For me, the heady “What is the purpose of life?” first slipped in under the guise of its pragmatic second cousin, “What do you do?”

“What do you do?” I was asked over and over. It’s a simple question, yet for nearly a year I didn’t have a simple answer because I was unemployed. Historically, I could always answer succinctly. I’m a student. An intern. A grad student. A researcher. However, during my period of unemployment, my answers to this simple question either felt long-winded or incomplete.

I was searching for a new job and hoping I would stumble upon a new career in the process. I had begun my previous job with a certainty that this was it, this job was the launching pad for the career I envisioned for myself. It was an academic position focused on research in poverty, which seemed like a perfect fit for my philosophizing self (I never really outgrew that). I was sure the job would be fascinating, move me toward more graduate school, and be beneficial to society. Plus, there was a paycheck and benefits. Practically perfect in every way. Perfect, that is, until it morphed and I morphed and unfortunately we didn’t morph in the same direction. I was anxious, burdened, and unhappy about my job. My dream job was deflating me and I didn’t know what to do about it.

During this time, I remember thinking about a scripture from both Book of Mormon and Isaiah: “Wherefore do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy,” (2 Nephi 9:51, Isaiah 55:2). This scripture, along with support from friends and prayers, provided the courage I needed to leave the job. However, it didn’t immediately help me answer the question: What did I do? What did I want to do? What should be the purpose of my life?

I think one of the reasons this question is difficult is that it is in truth a deeply personal and individual question, which should always be reframed as, “What is the purpose of my life?” Since this is a personal question, the scriptures (as a general guide) can only begin to answer it by pointing us to God and Christ, explaining the Lord will anchor us when we are directionless and keep us focused when we find direction. And most importantly, in my experience, the Lord can then guide each of us in our decisions and personalize the answer to the question for each of us.