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Wings of Faith
I wanted to make my son’s Christmas wish come true and see in his face the joy I desperately wanted for myself. My three-year-old squeaks with excitement. His response is an innocent reply to my offhanded question, “What do you want for Christmas?” I mutter a hesitant “We’ll see” before putting him to bed, relishing the rare moments I get to spend with him. I’ve been too out of sorts to be present most of the time. The unceasing screams of his sister, suffering from colic, keep pulling me into the black hole of postpartum depression. I feel like a…
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Mom’s Empty Chair
My husband and I lived in the same ward as my angel mother. Each Sunday, as a member of the Relief Society presidency, I sat at the front of the Relief Society room, facing the sisters. My mother always sat in the same place on the front row. I enjoyed watching her responses to the lessons and hearing her comments. After each meeting, she kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand. My mother and I were close, so it broke my heart when she passed away unexpectedly. After her funeral, my emotions remained tender. When Sunday arrived, my husband asked…
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Stuck
One winter while I was driving home from a wedding reception for several hours in the middle of the night, the snowy weather became frighteningly intense. I was driving through a canyon, with 30 icy miles (48 km) stretched between me and my home. Almost instantly, it seemed, the road got slicker, the night sky darker, my eyes heavier, and the falling snow much thicker. Having foolishly forgotten to put my mother’s sport-utility vehicle into four-wheel drive, I realized there was little traction, but that thought arrived too late. I completely lost all control of the vehicle and began sliding across…
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Sister, I Love You
During an interview while I served in an elders quorum presidency, I asked a fellow quorum member if he had ever felt and acted on a spiritual prompting. He thought for a moment and shared an experience. One afternoon he was washing dishes when he received a strong impression to go knock on a neighbor’s door. He did not understand why, but the prompting was powerful and urgent. He stopped what he was doing and left right away. He arrived at his neighbor’s door, not knowing what to do or say, and knocked. No one answered. He knocked again. There…
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It’s not much of a story, or a miracle. Still, It’s a hammer stroke that helped forge my testimony in God. I think I was 10, and I was playing a Sherlock Holmes computer game. It was one of those old games where you clicked on the screen, and if it was there was a clue there, it would light up. I had been looking for clues to get through a locked door for what felt like hours (it was probably only a few minutes). It felt impossible, and I was ready to give up. I remember saying a prayer,…
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A Prayer of a Child
Some years ago, some close friends of ours loaned us their cabin in Island Park, Idaho. When we arrived at the cabin, we found that the key that we had been given to unlock the front door didn’t work. We tried to undo windows and pry open screens, all to no avail. Suddenly our son Steven, who was about seven years old at the time, shouted to us that he had just successfully opened the front door. Steven, with a big grin on his face, was standing triumphantly inside the front doorway. I was amazed. I asked him how he…
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Abide In Faith
While serving in Guatemala as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Randall Ellsworth survived a devastating earthquake, which hurled a beam down on his back, paralyzing his legs and severely damaging his kidneys. He was the only American injured in the quake, which claimed the lives of some eighteen thousand persons. After receiving emergency medical treatment, Elder Ellsworth was flown to a large hospital near his home in Rockville, Maryland. While he was confined there, a newscaster conducted with him an interview that I witnessed through the miracle of television. The reporter asked, “Can you…
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Finding Him
Last summer I had a chance to go to a Toby Mac concert. I’m a lover of christian music and so I couldn’t wait! I enlisted my two daughters to go with me and, since we all grew up listening to christian music, they were in. It was a little different than what I expected. I was the minority being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but listening to Toby Mac was incredible. In the middle of the concert, Toby got a break and they brought in a preacher. He was all about saving…
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That Darn Cold
Two weeks ago, my husband got sick with a nasty cold. It was not just sniffles. It was full blown fever, chills, heaviness in his chest. He thought he could die. It was that bad. Hey. It happens. We all get sick sometimes. The problem was timing. We had a daughter getting married and it was important that he could show up and support her. As this cold dragged on, the realization that being there was becoming bleak. With the wedding in two days, we were still waiting for the fever to break, a sign that he was getting better.…
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Miracles Through Death
One of the hardest things to go through in this life is losing someone. Especially a child. Our oldest got invited to a sleepover birthday celebration for one of his friends. That night, as most boys do, they stayed up playing games and eating junk food. Early in the morning they decided to go swimming in a reservoir close to his friend’s home. Having been up all night, they made it out about 100 feet and then realized they were exhausted and decided to swim back. All of the boys made it back except one. My son. As they looked…
