Here's part of a letter I'm sending to a branch president I served with in Wisconsin. I do so with intended reverence, as some of the things discussed are very sacred to me. That being said, the subject matter is so universal that I thought it ought to be shared.
"So last
Sunday I was in Young Women’s (I’m an advisor these days) and the teacher was
talking about “deep beauty”. (You know,
that beauty which is our Divine Nature, charity, and the presence of the Spirit
in our lives all rolled up into one, and the kind that shines in our
countenances when our confidence in the Savior grows? Ya.
That one.) Anyway while she was
going over all of that I was busy having a flash back to a conversation I had
in your office two-ish years ago.
Here’s the
context: I was training a very green missionary. I was trying to teach Spanish while, all at once, trying to learn Spanish. My circumstance was such that every
limit of my personality and character was simultaneously being stretched and
reshaped. The proverbial icing on the
cake was that I was also suffering from a pretty tenacious case of insomnia. It was grueling. During this time I was having some really
open and candid conversations with my Father in Heaven about what it was that I
was “doing here anyway”, and whether or not I was made of stern enough stuff to
survive this crucible. God seemed to
think that I was; I wasn’t so sure.
One Sunday, while
sitting in Sacrament Meeting, you looked over at me with your stern face
on. I thought, “Goodness. We’ve mussed something up.” After the meeting you bee-lined over to me
and asked if you could chat with me for a minute. I said that’d be fine, convinced that we were
getting a doozy of an assignment or that we were busted big time for something. Turns out I was not busted, and you were not
stern. In your office you asked me if it
would be alright with me if you gave me a blessing. I remember being surprised by your wording. You did give me a blessing, I would be
curious to know if you remember it. You
said, verbatim, phrases out of my patriarchal blessing and then were given to
expound on those phrases. As you spoke I
was given visions to understand more clearly the application of the things I
was being told. I saw the work in which
I had been involved in the pre-earth life. I saw my divine nature; I saw my “deep beauty”. After the blessing concluded you said with
some astonishment, “That was the clearest blessing I’ve ever heard.” I didn’t
doubt it. That was the clearest blessing
I’d ever seen.
Another
Sunday, a little later, I was in your office again, this time I was telling you
that my companion and I were going to be cutting back. I had been, in fact, commanded by my mission
president to take a nap, to ease up. I didn’t
know how to explain that I wasn’t strong enough to keep up the pace, and that
your branch was going to lose a portion of the Missionary Time that it deserved and
needed. I began by saying, “President,
you might have noticed that I’ve looked a little run-down lately…” You interrupted in your usual candid way by
saying, “Actually, Sister Wilcox, I had been noticing your growing strength and
beauty.” I didn’t understand how I could
look anything other than exhausted and harried.
But I also knew that you wouldn’t tell me anything that wasn’t the
truth.
It has been
many, many months since those conversations, and it wasn’t until yesterday in
my little Young Women’s meeting that fully ripened. The reason I could see my own deep beauty, my
divine nature, and the reason you could see past my exhaustion was that in
those moments we were both looking at me with spiritual eyes. The members
of the church have been told for years
that the outside form and figure doesn’t matter as much as what’s in our hearts. (I think this sermon is given to the Relief
Society sisters and Young Women at least once a quarter.) But it’s only
true when we are looking at each other with our spiritual eyes. If I’m employing my earthly eyes, or relying
on the arm of flesh, then all I will see of myself and others are the things that the world
sees. I think that’s part of what Mormon
was getting at when he said that when the Savior appears “we shall see him as
he is” [Mormon 7:48]. If we’re employing charity, as
Mormon exhorts, we will be able to look at our brothers and sisters through the
eye of the Spirit and see them as they
really are; we will be able to look at the Savior and see him as he really is. That vision changes everything!
So this is a
really long way of saying thank you.
Thank you for being willing to act on a prompting by the Spirit, to ask
an unusual question. Thank you for being
candid and frank. Thank you for helping
me plant some seeds so that months and months after I’ve left the field I’m
still finding ripe fruit.
Hug your
family for me. I think of you all often."
