Well today is the 26th of September 2007. I am living in a condo with some friends, in Utah County (also known as happy valley). The mountains seem to be living on our balcony with the best sunsets you have ever seen, and a bad day to me is when I realized I have worked through dusk.
Six years ago if you had asked me where I would be now, I would not have put myself here. If I was joking I would have said: "In the major leagues," but realistically I probably would have said: "Somewhere entagled in business management." Needless to say I am thankful for realized dreams I never knew I had.
One of my earliest memories as a child is taken from our house in California where I stood at the botton of the steps looking up a dark staircase. I believe I was calling a brother to dinner but I found myself wondering about the darkness at the top of the stairs...it could have been outerspace...I started wondering if perhaps that darkness was a previous home...is that where I was before I came to this earth? I distinctly remember not being able to grasp the idea, blowing my own mind as a pre-schooler!
I stopped pondering the eternities and my place within them until my dad passed away when I was 21. The last time I saw him was my 21st birthday. A month later (just a week after 9/11), Tom and I drove home in the early hours of the morning and as we walked up the driveway (filled with unfamiliar cars), side by side, I whispered that I was scared.
The funeral was held at the LDS church. The strange cars belonged to my mom's visiting teachers, who had found her only a few months prior. Tom and I set up pictures for the viewing and as we were doing such- laughing, crying- my dad was wheeled into the room in a box.
I think in all of us, deep down, we know this moment will come when we have to say goodbye to our parents. Perhaps the goodbye has a soundtrack of soft stringed instruments, one last I love you or I am proud of you and one last embrace between two, that slowly and poetically fades into one, weeping silently. This was not one of those memories. He was already gone. Previously I had some fears about burrying loved ones- to me it seemed like burring a sleeping person, but when I saw my dad laying there, I knew he wasn't "sleeping," in fact whatever it was that made my dad my dad... was gone. Where did he go?
Well, I am not going to detail all of the events of the funeral and family- the point is the change that happened to me, within me, my conversion... whatever you want to call it, but without these events there would have been no conversion.
I walked slowly up the steps to the stand to speak at the funeral. I was going to speak at the FUNERAL, I was walking up the steps to speak at my DAD'S FUNERAL, I was walking up the steps to speak at my dad's funeral because HE PASSED AWAY...my dad passed away...MY dad. I looked at the men on the stand, I recognized one of them (Mark Halley- the bishop- who a few nights earlier had offered our household, blessings...for some reason to me it seemed like it couldn't hurt...I didn't really understand what it was but I accepted the offer). Im not sure who smiled first but we were both smiling...I was smiling. Why was I smiling? A soldier at the cemetary presented an American flag to my mother...why was I smiling? Why did I feel so good?! A couple months later, face to face with two elders, I asked myself that same question.
With as much eagerness as my emotions could allow, I sought out answers concerning my dad. My boyfriend Bill of nearly three years was by my side as we sat with the elders in the church foyier. Once again with much suprise I found myself feeling peace and even smiling...two things that had become foreign to me in the months following my father's death. A couple years earlier my friend was consoling another friend who had lost her father to death as well. She told her that "God has a plan" and for some reason those words enraged me! What the crap was she talking about...god has a plan...pfff right. I didn't hear much of what the elders were saying, I was so distracted by my feelings, not only of peace but I felt that someone was standing right next to me, I kept scooting over subconsciously allowing space for another to sit down...but nobody was there. The elders asked me to say the prayer before we parted ways...I declined a few times before I cried in explanation that I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO "GOD"! What is prayer anyway? As Bill and I drove away I recalled what Kristen had said about God having a plan...and this time I admitted to Bill (through tears) that perhaps she was right.
Christmas vacation came and went but my question still remained. I planned to set up a second visit with the elders in exchange for a private meeting with a local pastor (terms set by Bill). I explained to the elders in excitement that Bill and I were going to get to meet with a pastor of a church on campus! The elders tried to equal my excitement but seemed concerned, they had stopped by to say hello and have another one of our freezing converations on the door step. They walked everywhere on campus in long black trench coats looking for people to talk to, often receiving more than one obscene taunt from passerbyers. It wasn't until a few years later that I would understand why they did what they did... it was so cold in Mt. Pleasant.
Bill and I sat down in the pastor's office, just as I had felt peace with the elders, I felt darkness and fear in this setting, and again I was not sure why. I sat directly opposite the pastor with Bill off to the side of me. I explained to the pastor that Bill and I knew almost NOTHING about religion and even less about Christianity. We did not come to debate but rather to educate ourselves so that we could have intelligent conversations on the matter. Bill and I had attended church with his family a few times and that was about the extent of it. I also explained that the sudden interest in the "afterlife" (I was not interested in religion, just wanted answers), began when my father passed away just a few months earlier. I was quickly reminded why I HATED religion. Two hours later Bill and I walked to the car...my feet seemed to weigh 100lbs and my heart even heavier. "Want to go to lunch?" Bill asked, unphased by the anti-mormon onslaught. I looked at him puzzled, and emotionally exhausted..."Were you in there just now?!?" I wasn't sure since he spoke maybe two words the entire time. He looked at me somewhat suprised at my mood or my reply, Im not sure, then he asked what was wrong. I repeated a few things that were said in the meeting and Bill seemed again unphased..."Do you believe what he was saying Bill?!"..."Yes" he replied. Absolutely shocked I stared him in the eye "Say it then...SAY IT!"..."I think your dad is in hell" he replied.
A few days later the elders stopped by again to see how things went. At this point I had figured out why they weren't quite as excited as I was when I told them I would be meeting with the pastor. I explained, as if I had been proven right, what had happened, how cruel the pastor had been, that Bill and I had broken up, and as a result I wanted nothing to do with religion.. since I had figured out as I suspected that religion had nothing to do with God. They seemed to feel what I was feeling. I told them I did not want to meet with them anymore, there was no point. They tried to console me offering help if ever I needed it and apologized almost in behalf of the pastor. Before I closed the door, one of them said: "We just want you to know that we thought it might be hard and so we prayed for you all day that day." I was stunned... they were praying for ME? That stayed with me, I had never heard that before, or maybe I never felt it, Im not sure but the idea of someone praying for me was overwhelming, but not enough.
It was summer now, the last one in our house. It was the money-pit summer. The bathtub didn't fall through the ceiling but I bet it would have been next! It was the summer of new floors, gallons and gallons of paint, wood staining, bad counter tops, broken dishwashers and a cake that said "Sorry about the fire", and that was a welcome home cake upon my mom's return from our nana's funeral. It was the summer we re-built our home together, patched walls up and tore the one's between us down. Tom and I had been up at school for the aftermath of our family's loss...Courtney and becky however were just kids, and they had to stare the empty chair at the dinner table in the face everynight. We were all pretty mad, and we handled it in different ways. It was the summer I got my answer.
The sister missionaries sat across from courtney, becky and I at the huge kitchen table my family had sat around for dinners and games for as long as I could remember. The sisters explained that the Gospel of Jesus Christ answers questions like Where did I come from, why am I here, and where am I going... I found myself back at the bottom of the staircase looking up into the darkness. They told me that our spirits existed before we came to earth..."I knew it!!!!" I exclaimed. I felt an understanding open in my mind and a peace came to me, I knew that what they had said was true, and it made sense.
The house sold it's second day on the market. Tom and I were back at school having our weekly dinner together when he gave me the news. For a second I was excited, all the hard work we had put into the house had payed off, then the realization of letting the house keep all our memories became an unbearable task. How could I pretend nothing changed if everything changes?! I cried a little, Tom hugged me, and I swallowed it down. After the craziest move ever, three december birthdays (including my dad's) and a "someone's missing" Christmas, I found myself back at school again a few days early to re-coop. The weight of everything was finally hitting me, everything that had happened, everything I had learned, and heard was suddenly on my shoulders, and I was at the bottom.
Campus was desolate, Mt.Pleasant was a college town with a casino and on break the population dropped down to what seemed to be a handful of people, none of which I knew, and so I was alone...I thought.
Every missionary I had ever met tried and tried to get me to pray, it just seemed scary to me and weird. Prayer was so foreign and I wouldn't know what to say anyway. So I didn't, until that night. I finally realized that everything I had tried to fix things wasn't working, so I found myself kneeling in my dark bedroom.
It was a prayer that I try to equal in humility and fervency often. I begged and pleaded that if there was a God, I needed to know and I needed help. I recognized that maybe I wasn't good enough to be helped but I needed it anyway. I sobbed. "Please help me if you can even hear me, if you are real." After a while I stood up, wiped my face and walked out. I stood at the doorway gazing into my dark bedroom, my aunt Stevie told me once that an angel came to her when she was struggling, I saw nothing but darkness in my room, there were no angels, there was no God. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and gave up. I returned to my painting in the living room in silence.
It wasn't twenty mintutes later that I heard a knock on the door. I did not answer. The knock came again and I called out (since I knew of no one that was in town) "Who is it?" a man's voice replied "It's the missionaries." I felt my heart explode inside me. Instantly I KNEW that God was real and that somehow He had heard my prayer, and that was a huge shock to me. When I was pleading in my bedroom He was listening to ME!!! This, for a lot of people seems to be a pretty simple an obvious principle but if you really think about it, I mean REALLY...it is amazing to think that God listens to me, that he heard me. I opened the door and there stood two elders, one of them asked "Are you Gillian?" I was blown away. I had never met these men and I was living in a new apartment. For the first time I knew and felt that God was real, I felt a physical change come over me. They started to introduce themselves and I began to cry. They looked at eachother confused and asked if I was alright. I told them what had happened, and how I finally prayed, and prayed for help, then they showed up. Elder Kim and Elder Beazer stood smiling and asked how they could help. Since I knew there was a God I needed to find out who he is and what was expected of me. I was no longer just looking for answers, but I needed to know how to become better, how to fulfill whatever mission I was sent here to fulfill, what was the meaning of life and how could I live it? Who was this Jesus Christ everyone was talking about and what did he do?
I met with the missionaries several times a week with a million questions. I stopped drinking and doing drugs and life seemed to have a brilliancy I had never noticed before, or that had been dimmed over the years, it became exquisite to me, I could feel more, more joy and also more pain. I lost almost all of my friends, it might be argued that they were not really my friends, or so the after school special goes, and my family thought I was turning into a Jesus freak...and still do actually.
After the initial shock of becoming one of those churchy people I had avoided my whole life, I decided it wasn't such a bad thing after all. I still loathe the idea of being religious... so please do not put me in the finger pointing bible thumping category. I pick on my family a lot because I know they picture me as this turtle neck crucifix wearing weirdo that thinks they are all going to hell and is quietly judging them, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.
One year after the missionaries found me on my doorstep, I found myself on the other side of the door holding the Book of Mormon and a Bible wearing the same name tag I closed the door on so many times. Thats when I really knew why they walked in the freezing cold, why they left everything behind, why they kept going door slam after door slam...the Gospel is real, God is real.
Funny how life turns out, how we turn out, how things change. For a long time I was afraid to change, to try new things, to share my talents...but not anymore.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."- Nelson Mandella Inaugural speech 1994.
Six years ago if you had asked me where I would be now, I would not have put myself here. If I was joking I would have said: "In the major leagues," but realistically I probably would have said: "Somewhere entagled in business management." Needless to say I am thankful for realized dreams I never knew I had.
One of my earliest memories as a child is taken from our house in California where I stood at the botton of the steps looking up a dark staircase. I believe I was calling a brother to dinner but I found myself wondering about the darkness at the top of the stairs...it could have been outerspace...I started wondering if perhaps that darkness was a previous home...is that where I was before I came to this earth? I distinctly remember not being able to grasp the idea, blowing my own mind as a pre-schooler!
I stopped pondering the eternities and my place within them until my dad passed away when I was 21. The last time I saw him was my 21st birthday. A month later (just a week after 9/11), Tom and I drove home in the early hours of the morning and as we walked up the driveway (filled with unfamiliar cars), side by side, I whispered that I was scared.
The funeral was held at the LDS church. The strange cars belonged to my mom's visiting teachers, who had found her only a few months prior. Tom and I set up pictures for the viewing and as we were doing such- laughing, crying- my dad was wheeled into the room in a box.
I think in all of us, deep down, we know this moment will come when we have to say goodbye to our parents. Perhaps the goodbye has a soundtrack of soft stringed instruments, one last I love you or I am proud of you and one last embrace between two, that slowly and poetically fades into one, weeping silently. This was not one of those memories. He was already gone. Previously I had some fears about burrying loved ones- to me it seemed like burring a sleeping person, but when I saw my dad laying there, I knew he wasn't "sleeping," in fact whatever it was that made my dad my dad... was gone. Where did he go?
Well, I am not going to detail all of the events of the funeral and family- the point is the change that happened to me, within me, my conversion... whatever you want to call it, but without these events there would have been no conversion.
I walked slowly up the steps to the stand to speak at the funeral. I was going to speak at the FUNERAL, I was walking up the steps to speak at my DAD'S FUNERAL, I was walking up the steps to speak at my dad's funeral because HE PASSED AWAY...my dad passed away...MY dad. I looked at the men on the stand, I recognized one of them (Mark Halley- the bishop- who a few nights earlier had offered our household, blessings...for some reason to me it seemed like it couldn't hurt...I didn't really understand what it was but I accepted the offer). Im not sure who smiled first but we were both smiling...I was smiling. Why was I smiling? A soldier at the cemetary presented an American flag to my mother...why was I smiling? Why did I feel so good?! A couple months later, face to face with two elders, I asked myself that same question.
With as much eagerness as my emotions could allow, I sought out answers concerning my dad. My boyfriend Bill of nearly three years was by my side as we sat with the elders in the church foyier. Once again with much suprise I found myself feeling peace and even smiling...two things that had become foreign to me in the months following my father's death. A couple years earlier my friend was consoling another friend who had lost her father to death as well. She told her that "God has a plan" and for some reason those words enraged me! What the crap was she talking about...god has a plan...pfff right. I didn't hear much of what the elders were saying, I was so distracted by my feelings, not only of peace but I felt that someone was standing right next to me, I kept scooting over subconsciously allowing space for another to sit down...but nobody was there. The elders asked me to say the prayer before we parted ways...I declined a few times before I cried in explanation that I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO "GOD"! What is prayer anyway? As Bill and I drove away I recalled what Kristen had said about God having a plan...and this time I admitted to Bill (through tears) that perhaps she was right.
Christmas vacation came and went but my question still remained. I planned to set up a second visit with the elders in exchange for a private meeting with a local pastor (terms set by Bill). I explained to the elders in excitement that Bill and I were going to get to meet with a pastor of a church on campus! The elders tried to equal my excitement but seemed concerned, they had stopped by to say hello and have another one of our freezing converations on the door step. They walked everywhere on campus in long black trench coats looking for people to talk to, often receiving more than one obscene taunt from passerbyers. It wasn't until a few years later that I would understand why they did what they did... it was so cold in Mt. Pleasant.
Bill and I sat down in the pastor's office, just as I had felt peace with the elders, I felt darkness and fear in this setting, and again I was not sure why. I sat directly opposite the pastor with Bill off to the side of me. I explained to the pastor that Bill and I knew almost NOTHING about religion and even less about Christianity. We did not come to debate but rather to educate ourselves so that we could have intelligent conversations on the matter. Bill and I had attended church with his family a few times and that was about the extent of it. I also explained that the sudden interest in the "afterlife" (I was not interested in religion, just wanted answers), began when my father passed away just a few months earlier. I was quickly reminded why I HATED religion. Two hours later Bill and I walked to the car...my feet seemed to weigh 100lbs and my heart even heavier. "Want to go to lunch?" Bill asked, unphased by the anti-mormon onslaught. I looked at him puzzled, and emotionally exhausted..."Were you in there just now?!?" I wasn't sure since he spoke maybe two words the entire time. He looked at me somewhat suprised at my mood or my reply, Im not sure, then he asked what was wrong. I repeated a few things that were said in the meeting and Bill seemed again unphased..."Do you believe what he was saying Bill?!"..."Yes" he replied. Absolutely shocked I stared him in the eye "Say it then...SAY IT!"..."I think your dad is in hell" he replied.
A few days later the elders stopped by again to see how things went. At this point I had figured out why they weren't quite as excited as I was when I told them I would be meeting with the pastor. I explained, as if I had been proven right, what had happened, how cruel the pastor had been, that Bill and I had broken up, and as a result I wanted nothing to do with religion.. since I had figured out as I suspected that religion had nothing to do with God. They seemed to feel what I was feeling. I told them I did not want to meet with them anymore, there was no point. They tried to console me offering help if ever I needed it and apologized almost in behalf of the pastor. Before I closed the door, one of them said: "We just want you to know that we thought it might be hard and so we prayed for you all day that day." I was stunned... they were praying for ME? That stayed with me, I had never heard that before, or maybe I never felt it, Im not sure but the idea of someone praying for me was overwhelming, but not enough.
It was summer now, the last one in our house. It was the money-pit summer. The bathtub didn't fall through the ceiling but I bet it would have been next! It was the summer of new floors, gallons and gallons of paint, wood staining, bad counter tops, broken dishwashers and a cake that said "Sorry about the fire", and that was a welcome home cake upon my mom's return from our nana's funeral. It was the summer we re-built our home together, patched walls up and tore the one's between us down. Tom and I had been up at school for the aftermath of our family's loss...Courtney and becky however were just kids, and they had to stare the empty chair at the dinner table in the face everynight. We were all pretty mad, and we handled it in different ways. It was the summer I got my answer.
The sister missionaries sat across from courtney, becky and I at the huge kitchen table my family had sat around for dinners and games for as long as I could remember. The sisters explained that the Gospel of Jesus Christ answers questions like Where did I come from, why am I here, and where am I going... I found myself back at the bottom of the staircase looking up into the darkness. They told me that our spirits existed before we came to earth..."I knew it!!!!" I exclaimed. I felt an understanding open in my mind and a peace came to me, I knew that what they had said was true, and it made sense.
The house sold it's second day on the market. Tom and I were back at school having our weekly dinner together when he gave me the news. For a second I was excited, all the hard work we had put into the house had payed off, then the realization of letting the house keep all our memories became an unbearable task. How could I pretend nothing changed if everything changes?! I cried a little, Tom hugged me, and I swallowed it down. After the craziest move ever, three december birthdays (including my dad's) and a "someone's missing" Christmas, I found myself back at school again a few days early to re-coop. The weight of everything was finally hitting me, everything that had happened, everything I had learned, and heard was suddenly on my shoulders, and I was at the bottom.
Campus was desolate, Mt.Pleasant was a college town with a casino and on break the population dropped down to what seemed to be a handful of people, none of which I knew, and so I was alone...I thought.
Every missionary I had ever met tried and tried to get me to pray, it just seemed scary to me and weird. Prayer was so foreign and I wouldn't know what to say anyway. So I didn't, until that night. I finally realized that everything I had tried to fix things wasn't working, so I found myself kneeling in my dark bedroom.
It was a prayer that I try to equal in humility and fervency often. I begged and pleaded that if there was a God, I needed to know and I needed help. I recognized that maybe I wasn't good enough to be helped but I needed it anyway. I sobbed. "Please help me if you can even hear me, if you are real." After a while I stood up, wiped my face and walked out. I stood at the doorway gazing into my dark bedroom, my aunt Stevie told me once that an angel came to her when she was struggling, I saw nothing but darkness in my room, there were no angels, there was no God. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and gave up. I returned to my painting in the living room in silence.
It wasn't twenty mintutes later that I heard a knock on the door. I did not answer. The knock came again and I called out (since I knew of no one that was in town) "Who is it?" a man's voice replied "It's the missionaries." I felt my heart explode inside me. Instantly I KNEW that God was real and that somehow He had heard my prayer, and that was a huge shock to me. When I was pleading in my bedroom He was listening to ME!!! This, for a lot of people seems to be a pretty simple an obvious principle but if you really think about it, I mean REALLY...it is amazing to think that God listens to me, that he heard me. I opened the door and there stood two elders, one of them asked "Are you Gillian?" I was blown away. I had never met these men and I was living in a new apartment. For the first time I knew and felt that God was real, I felt a physical change come over me. They started to introduce themselves and I began to cry. They looked at eachother confused and asked if I was alright. I told them what had happened, and how I finally prayed, and prayed for help, then they showed up. Elder Kim and Elder Beazer stood smiling and asked how they could help. Since I knew there was a God I needed to find out who he is and what was expected of me. I was no longer just looking for answers, but I needed to know how to become better, how to fulfill whatever mission I was sent here to fulfill, what was the meaning of life and how could I live it? Who was this Jesus Christ everyone was talking about and what did he do?
I met with the missionaries several times a week with a million questions. I stopped drinking and doing drugs and life seemed to have a brilliancy I had never noticed before, or that had been dimmed over the years, it became exquisite to me, I could feel more, more joy and also more pain. I lost almost all of my friends, it might be argued that they were not really my friends, or so the after school special goes, and my family thought I was turning into a Jesus freak...and still do actually.
After the initial shock of becoming one of those churchy people I had avoided my whole life, I decided it wasn't such a bad thing after all. I still loathe the idea of being religious... so please do not put me in the finger pointing bible thumping category. I pick on my family a lot because I know they picture me as this turtle neck crucifix wearing weirdo that thinks they are all going to hell and is quietly judging them, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.
One year after the missionaries found me on my doorstep, I found myself on the other side of the door holding the Book of Mormon and a Bible wearing the same name tag I closed the door on so many times. Thats when I really knew why they walked in the freezing cold, why they left everything behind, why they kept going door slam after door slam...the Gospel is real, God is real.
Funny how life turns out, how we turn out, how things change. For a long time I was afraid to change, to try new things, to share my talents...but not anymore.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."- Nelson Mandella Inaugural speech 1994.
