My Miracle

So I have been debating writing about this  just because it could be taken the wrong way by some.  I feel, though, that not writing about it and sharing it would be me not acknowledging that a miracle did in fact happen.  It needs to be shared.  Be warned.  It gets a bit personal.
A couple of months ago I started feeling tenderness in my right breast.  I tried to brush it off and just think of different things it could be...maybe I was sleeping on it weird or something.  I started giving myself little breast examinations just about every day trying to feel for lumps.  If you didn't know though, the breast is lumpy tissue anyway so that made it rough to figure out if it was really anything or not.  However, I continued to have to have pain in a very isolated spot and I started to get more and more nervous.  I was also having some breathing problems and my chest was hurting a lot so I got scared that they were somehow related.  In my mind I thought the worst thing possible - I had cancer and it had spread to my lungs.  So I made an appointment with the campus wellness center.  I explained what was going on and they were more concerned about my heart and lungs that anything else.  EKG and chest X-ray showed nothing wrong in either though.  The doctor told me it was probably a new way my body was trying to cope with stress.  Okay.  Then they told me I could go.  I quickly reminded them about my other concern and the nice lady doctor gave me a quick breast exam.  She told me to show her where my pain was.  I pointed.  She felt.  Lump.  She told me I would need to go get an ultrasound at the hospital the next morning.  She also immediately told me that the fact that I have tenderness is a good sign - less tumor-like.  She said she thought it was probably just a fibrosis agnoma (or something like that.  I don't know the terms).  Okay, great, well I'm still scared.  I left feeling extremely discouraged and scared.  I tried to just stay positive while I was at my internship, but the second I got back to my apartment, I lost it.  The only thing I could do was fall to my knees and pray.  I knelt there weeping.  I was terrified.  I told Heavenly Father that it has always been easy for me to trust Him when it came to all things physical.  I knew that if my family members were ever to get sick, or if I were ever to get sick, it would be His doing and we had something to learn.  In my mind, I put my hands out like I so often have - completely lost at what to do or think and just trying to be open to whatever answers He might give.  I asked Him what I had to learn from this and how I could have peace.  In that moment I thought about the other concerns I have in my life - mostly dating and school related decisions.  In that moment Heavenly Father told me through the Spirit that I needed to trust Him in ALL things.  Not just all things physical.  My sobs paused for a moment as I tried to process the impression I had just had.  I felt a wave of humility and relief at the reminder that I can truly give my burdens to the Lord - that I didn't have to do anything on my own.  I felt peace and stillness.  I knew things were going to be okay.  Still my mom came up to Logan so I wouldn't have to go to a scary appointment by myself - after all, what if it was scary news?  I wasn't about to find out I had cancer by myself.  So we went to the appointment, got my ultrasound and there was NOT a mass.   A small cancer-less enflamed gland or group of fibers or whatever (I don't know - I was just focusing on the fact that it wasn't a tumor).  They said we would keep an eye on it and if it got worse or seemingly bigger that we would do a biopsy, but so far so good!  Cancer free, baby!  Again.  Relief.
I left the hospital with my mom feeling a little sheepish at the ordeal this had been just for it to turn out to be nothing.  Why had I been so afraid?  Then I told her my experience praying and she told me that if that experience was what this was for, then it was worth it.  I had a special experience with my father in heaven and with my loving older brother.  I felt their love and was told that I could trust them no matter what.  Some things in my life are just as out of my control as getting breast cancer is.  The Lord is in charge though.  That, I had to know for sure.  My mom and I had a good talk about how sweet it was that God would give me this opportunity to learn from Him.
I think of this experience often when I get caught up in trying to have control over everything and when I start to feel impatient about different things in my life.  "Trust me in all things - not just the physical," He said.  So maybe me not having cancer wasn't exactly the miracle in this situation.  I obviously never had it and while it was an incredible relief to not have it, I think the more profound miracle was the spiritual experience I had the night before and the next morning in realizing what had happened.  Like the woman who touched Christ's robes knowing she would be healed, my cancer-free self was not the miracle - it was that my relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus were strengthened.  The Lord showed His hand in a way I hadn't really expected.  He taught me a lesson I needed.  Right there in my little apartment, next to my stilted bed and mini fridge.  He taught me a lesson I won't ever forget.     That is absolutely a miracle!  And they happen everyday if we are willing to listen.  If we will humble ourselves enough to let Him reach us, He will.  He always will.  I know we have a loving Heavenly Father who is watching over us.  I know we have a Savior and Redeemer in Jesus Christ.  He is in everything good.  How grateful I am for the constant line of communication we have with those who love us perfectly.  How grateful I am for the any lesson and answer I can get whenever they deem fit.  How grateful I am for the constant miracles they reveal to us if we turn to them.  I believe in Miracles, indeed.  

"For I Saw Him and I Heard His Voice"

I just love General Conference.  Don't you?   Not only does it strengthen my resolve to be a better person in the future, but it also makes me think back to the moments when I gained my testimony about the most fundamental principles of the gospel.  Elder Neil L. Anderson's talk did that for me this time.  He spoke all about Joseph Smith, remember?  He mentioned that we must all gain a testimony of Joseph Smith in our own way.  He then listed a few examples of how that is done.  When he said this, I was taken back to the very moment I knew without a doubt that Joseph Smith was a prophet of a living God.

I was just thirteen.  My family flew out to Nauvoo Illinois to participate in the Nauvoo Pageant.   I loved learning the songs, making new friends, staying up late playing signs, and visiting various church historical sights.  We would spend only two weeks there.  One week learning the pageant and one week performing it.  I have never sweat so much in my whole life!  

One of the Sundays we were there, there was what they called a Sunday Sociable.  It's now called "Our Story Goes On," but it was just the first year they did it so it was still being developed.  It forever has a special place in my heart and I go to see it whenever I can.  It was basically a medley of well-known broadway show-tunes put to a script about life and love and the pursuit of happiness, to put it simply.   A few church songs were also added or written to be included in the program.   I remember loving the songs and the uplifting messages but there was one that, as cliche as it sounds, changed my life.  The man who played Joseph Smith, Dallyn Bayles - a man who I knew well from Savior of the World and who I already greatly admired - got up to sing.  It was a song being sung as if by Joseph Smith himself.  It was Joseph telling his story.  "As a boy alone in a quiet grove, I knelt in earnest prayer..." He sang the words, 

"For I saw Him and I heard His voice.  And the answers that He gave me made my heart rejoice.  So now I testify.  I'll tell the world until my dying day.  I have seen Him - the truth, the light, the way." 

Immediately upon hearing him sing, "I saw Him and I heard His voice," I was completely overcome - head to toe - with a feeling I had never felt before.  It wasn't a line upon line, precept upon precept acquiring of knowledge.  It was all there.  Right then.  I knew it was true.  I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet of God who saw my Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ.  He saw them!  I was able to see Dallyn as Joseph Smith and hear his story as if it was him telling me.  Instead it was the Holy Spirit confirming to me that what I had been singing and dancing about for those two weeks was real.  I could taste it.  I couldn't control the tears.  I wept during the whole song.  It was one of those moments that I have previously talked about, where the ground shook.  At least it seemed to.  I ran up to my dorm room and cried and cried - my awkward little body didn't know how to handle this new feeling!  I felt like I was going to burst!  I wrote in my journal, and this is directly from it, "Christ is real and I feel so close to Him now than I ever have before.  Joseph Smith is real and I love him so much.  When I see him, I will thank him and hug him."  I grew such a strong, deep love and appreciation for the prophet of the restoration that day.  Most importantly, I recognized that if he was real, the Book of Mormon was true and I had an older brother and redeemer who loved me.  I felt what Joseph Smith said himself about being completely unable to deny the truth he knew.  

At the time I didn't know how unbelievably crucial this experience would be to my entire testimony, but I can honestly say that it was one of the most important moments and the beginning of my true conversion.  Everything changed after that.  Ever since then, I have never had a doubt in my mind that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and saw God the Father and His Son.  Not a doubt.  It is instilled in my heart forever.  I think about Nauvoo and that moment often.  I can still smell it in certain hairsprays or lotions, the songs still get stuck in my head, and I thrill whenever someone tells me they are going to see or be in it...but nothing is as much a part of me as that bit of truth I learned that day.  Not much younger than he was when he was introduced to this gospel, it became real to me that day and has been ever since.  

How grateful I am for the miracle moments we are blessed with.  Moments when the Lord teaches us the most important things we can possibly learn.  I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  He translated the Book of Mormon.  He saw and heard Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  They live and it does, indeed, "make my heart rejoice."