Conversion

Wow. Posting a Sunday thought isn't quite as easy as I imagined it would be. I rarely feel like blogging on Sunday. So, here it is, almost eleven o'clock at night (o.k...now it's Tuedsay. This was much tougher than I anticipated) and I'm hoping to be coherent because what I want to write is important. Really important. Probably the most important thing I will ever say.

Ummmm....no pressure, though.

During Sunday School, the teacher asked for a volunteer to come and look at a picture and, without showing it, describe the picture to the rest of the class. The volunteer proceeded to describe a stone boat, with arches and swirly scrolls along the ends. With that description in our minds, the teacher then passed around the picture and asked how close our imagined picture was to the actual picture. Sadly, not very close.

She compared that object lesson to attempting to describe something that we have experienced. In the end, no matter how well you say it, or how detailed your description is, the re-telling of the experience can never fully equal the actual experience. Likewise, the things written in the scriptures are these amazing experiences had by a people long ago. They are trying to explain....to record something for us so we can understand as well. I appreciate the verse found in Mosiah 26:33 where it says, "And it came to pass when Alma had heard these words he wrote them down that he might have them..."

The next chapter contains a favorite, and oft-told story of Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah and their conversion following their rebel rouser years. Alma the younger wrote his experience down and we read about it, but upon the urging of the Sunday school teacher, I found myself reading with new eyes. Alma experienced this. His experience was much more than we readers can ever understand. And yet, he tried to explain. He tried to describe the great change that happened to him.


I knew then that I wanted to write down my own conversion story. I wanted to "write it down so that I might have it" and ultimately, so that others might have it. This is real. This happened to me. But, now fear has grabbed hold of me and I don't know if I can do a good enough job of explaining it. I worry that I'll leave an important part out, or misrepresent a sacred thing. However, fear aside, I have hope that my words will serve as a great reminder to me, of a time when I really was at a crossroads, and I chose a road that has made all the difference.

While I certainly can't claim a sin-less youth or one that was mistake and pain-free, I can say that through the example of my wise and sincere parents, I didn't struggle with confusion about the truthfulness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I think I thought about it, but always respected and admired my parents enough to trust their testimonies and lean on their understanding. I witnessed them serve faithfully, study regularly, and live the gospel every day. Additionally, both are incredibly intelligent, and I could simply never imagine that they wouldn't....you know....know.

Shortly after graduation, I traveled to Europe to sing with a youth chorus. We flew into Germany and our first stop was to have lunch in a small town, on the way to an even smaller town. A group of six of us stopped at an adorable little bistro, with red and white checker tablecloths and ordered pizza. All six of us also each ordered a beer along with it. I know my heart was pumping when I placed that order, but I also recall making the mental decision that I was going to do this...be a part of this European experience. Drinking was not against the rules, as the drinking age in Europe is lower than our own in the U.S., and we were instructed to be responsible and to always remember that we were representatives of our country and state. Missing the much, much larger picture, I thought, "O.K."

I knew what I was doing. I will never claim ignorance or naivety. I just didn't think it would matter so much. But I was wrong. It mattered. More than I could have ever imagined.

Contrary to my original plans, my European experience didn't end in Europe. I came home, back to my familiar friends, my familiar home but not my familiar actions. I kept drinking. I really liked my new, wild self and from the positive feedback I got from a lot of my school friends, so did everyone else. For the first time, I wondered if I had been fed a line through all those years in Young Womens. Wasn't this kind of life supposed to make me feel miserable? Where was the misery? I was having a ball.

In order to get to the ball, however, I had to resort to lying to my parents (really for the first time. They were not strict and always full of trust, so curfews and choice in friends were always abdicated to us) and lying to God. I kept up the facade of my former self and forged ahead with my plans of attending BYU. Neither of those actions came consequence free.

I arrived at BYU that fall full of irritation and judgment. Who were all these dweebs and why in the world did I allow myself to be dragged to the so-ridiculous-I-can't-believe-people-in-college-actually-do-this evening of tunnel singing? I hated all of the rules and really wondered how I could manage a transfer to a state school at home and "really experience college".

Miraculously, the magic of BYU started to sprinkle it's happy-valley fairy dust on my head and after a few months of Book of Mormon classes, devotionals, and roommates that weren't as horrible as I originally imagined, I started to feel real remorse for my sins. I wanted to be better. I wanted to be the kind of girl who belonged there. I decided to try.

It wasn't easy. It involved a lot of behavior that was uncomfortable and unpleasant. But, you know the phrase...the one that says it would be worth it. I hoped so.

I returned home that summer unprepared for the great war between personal wills. I had mistakenly thought that going through the repentance process would somehow make me immune to all future temptation. Sort of like a vaccine, I suppose. Once again, I was very, very wrong.

For the next year, I became a person I didn't like much. The fun from the previous summer was replaced with dangerous friends, reckless behavior and a complete loss of the spirit. I felt schizophrenic pretending to be one personality to my family, someone different for my friends, and someone in between at BYU, where I returned for my sophomore year. I honestly didn't know which of those someones was actually me anymore. Feeling unhappy and in a great deal of emotional pain, I wondered if the source of my unhappiness came from what I had been taught by the church. Afterall, take away that conflict of interests and I could take away the pain, right?

I thought so and stopped going to church the second half of the year. Sundays came and I'd go for a bike ride or a drive, I'd happily work up at the hole-in-the-wall Radio Shack I was bound and chained to, or hang out in my room, ignoring my well-meaning but beyond annoying returned missionary roommates. All I wanted to do was to stop pretending and choose a side. But I also wanted a college education and was financially dependent on my parents so I lied to my bishop to obtain my ecclesiastical endorsement just in case I'd be back in the fall (really, I considered lying the least of my concerns at the time) and began looking into getting financial aid at some different colleges.

It was much harder to avoid church while at home. Sometimes I went. Sometimes I'd say I was going but, instead, stealthily remain in the car. If I could, I tried to be scheduled to work just to avoid the conflict. I know my parents and my siblings knew something was going on, and each of them attempted to talk to me and help me in whatever way they could, but my heart was hard and truthfully, I thought I was beyond saving.

The second half of the summer brought some important changes. In late June, I went to Guatemala to see my brother, who was finishing a spring term study abroad. The trip was full of highs (riding on top of buses, taking a mud room bath - I can't remember the actual word anymore, staying in small Q'eqchi villages, and swimming in the crystal clear waters of Panachal) and lows (having my purse stolen, ruining two cameras, getting the worst sunburn of my life, having the runs after eating a mango, and witnessing my beloved brother pine after the girl he met and fell in love with:)) but I vividly remember making the decision to order an alcoholic drink in front of my brother. I was coming to terms with being who I thought I was, and started testing the waters to see how someone I absolutely adored reacted to my controversial behavior.

Jon's reaction was filled with surprise, curiosity and mild disappointment, but the overall affect was still one of love and acceptance for whoever I was. I think his thoughtful reaction was the first step away from the direction I thought I wanted to go.

Instead of returning home, I spent the remainder of the summer in Mesa, Arizona, living with friends and once again working at the ubiquitous Radio Shack. Something happened during the six weeks I lived there. I got a glimmer of who I chose to be when I separated myself from the influences of home and BYU. I wasn't the annoyed, bored, and condescending person I turned into at BYU but neither was I the eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die person I felt determined to be at home. I was just me. Mostly fun, sometimes serious, but most importantly, comfortable around the people who shared my childhood beliefs.

That fall at BYU, I changed my life. I declared a new major - zoology, and started hanging out at an entirely different part of campus from my first two years there. I lived with my sister who never walked around singing broadway standards in her underwear, never performed an intervention involving Michael McClean music, never stayed in her bed all day not talking and staring at the ceiling, and never, ever judged me. I decided to read the Book of Mormon and this time, it was not for required reading for a class. I also decided to once again talk to my bishop.

I had the biggest headache of my life that Sunday afternoon I sat in the Wilk waiting for my appointment. The whole room bounced in sync to each heartbeat. As I walked into his office, he told me he wanted to begin with a prayer. He didn't know why I had come but he got down on his knees and offered a prayer that I would feel comforted and calm and that I would know that the Lord loved me. Tears poured down my face as more than a year's worth of pain flooded my heart. It hurt...more than I expected it to...but I had a lot of hope that it would be worth it.

That was a serious semester for me. I spent every morning from six am to 10 am at the BYU laundry working the mangle and then filled the rest of my days working my tail off studying for sixteen credits of pre-med classes. I also worked hard - very hard - to gain a testimony. If I was going to give up friends I loved and a lifestyle that still seemed attractive to me, I wanted to do it for a better reason than simply pleasing my parents. Or fitting in at BYU. Or because that's what good Lucy does. It had to be because of truth.

I finished reading the Book of Mormon about the same time my bishop asked me if I was ready for a temple recommend. I replied that I thought so, and he proceeded to ask me the required questions. We both cried as my answers revealed how much I had changed that semester. He handed me that piece of paper and I walked out of his office with a new heart.

Then something happened as I walked along the sidewalk to my basement apartment on Cherry Street. I received a witness, strong and real and perfectly clear, that I had truly been forgiven. That my scarlet sins were white as snow. That Heavenly Father loved me - me - and had the fatted calf roasting on the spit. I felt so amazingly happy. Not great date happy. Not awesome meal happy. Not even twenty-pound-weight-loss happy. No, I felt godly happy...and nothing can really compare to that.

I wish I could say "Happily Ever After - The End" after that, but I've learned that it doesn't quite work that way. There are still times I get frustrated and wonder if I'm just spinning my wheels worrying about the wrong stuff, but then I'm gently reminded once again that it's worth it. Apathy rears its bored little head every now and again and I have to recommit myself to what I know to be true.

I do know it. It seems unbelievable in this topsy turvy world to know anything based on faith, but I had an experience on a sidewalk that I cannot deny. I know the atonement is real. I know that Christ is my Redeemer. I know that Heavenly Father organized this world so that we could be participants in His plan and knowing how short our efforts would measure up, sent Jesus Christ to make up the difference. I know that He does not expect us to do this on our own, and has sent leaders and prophets, scriptures and temples, keys and understanding so that we will not fail. But, perhaps the most significant thing is, He gives us our agency so that we can choose for ourselves.

That freedom of choice can be a scary thing. All sorts of mistakes and consequences can sneak in, changing a whole life before that person knows it's changing. When I come across people who once knew or believed, but now dismiss the gospel as a thing of naught, I ache with longing for them to come to Christ. Again. And again. I ache because I know He will accept our efforts every time, until the desire to be anywhere but close to Him is gone.

Like Alma, I can only describe my experience. I can never expect anyone else to fully understand, or appreciate that moment in my history. It was important enough, and incredible enough, however, for me to try.

And so I did.