Monday, September 29, 2008

Traveling through heartache

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So it has been WAY too long since I have updated my blog. I am now in a world surrounded by Blogs that I figure that I should start mine again. I guess that I just need to be apart of the "in" crowd. The name of my Blog implies that I will be traveling but it is now metaphorically speaking since I haven't been able to travel for a long time. So now the travels will include experiences through my travels through life.
In my latest travels I have experienced heartache like I have never felt before. It has been an interesting journey as I have been trying to find out who I really am and who I want and need to become. I have had quite the setback from this heartbreak. For about two weeks I was not able to eat or sleep or think rationally or stop crying. This past weekend I have finally gotten a grip on myself and reality. There are many things that have helped such as family, friends and servants of the Lord. What I felt like including in my first Blog back is a talk written by my incredible cousin that has been through more than I can even imagine. She taught me so much through this talk that I knew that others that read it could receive strength as well. Thank you Cindy!!!

I’m thankful for the opportunity to speak to you today. I have been doing much introspection lately; I guess this is what happens as you age. I have had some pretty incredible experiences in my life and I have learned some hard lessons, and I am now just realizing the strength and faith that these experiences have added to my character. I hope today to share some of the things I have learned so that it may, in some small way, help you in your own journey through life.

Orson F. Whitney once said: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God… and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.

My story begins in the Denver, Co area where I grew up as one of 7 children born to Larry and Aldine Allen, who recently moved into our ward. I have been a member of the church for my entire life, as have my parents, and I led a relatively uneventful childhood in a good LDS home. As the good Mormon girl that I was, I attended BYU, and when I found myself graduating without any prospects of marriage (which I didn’t realize happened at BYU), I decided to put off the real world for a couple more years by going on a mission. I served faithfully in the Pusan, Korea mission, and while there met a young Korean man, a fellow missionary. About a year and a half after we both completed our missions, he moved to America and we got married.

I had lived a rather sheltered life up to this point and hadn’t been exposed much to the evils in the world. So, it came as quite a shock when my new eternal companion started beating me. Among the many things I suffered during my marriage to him was the constant verbal abuse and frequent physical outbursts. But perhaps the most difficult thing for me to endure was watching him abuse our young children in the name of parental discipline, and feeling powerless to stop him.

This was a very dark time in my life. I felt very alone as he isolated me from my family and friends. He tried to rationalize his behavior and convince me that what he was doing was his responsibility as the priesthood holder and “god,” as he often referred to himself, of our home. This is called “unrighteous dominion” and was an abuse of the sacred power of God. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do to fix the problem. I remember crying out in the deepest despair one night to Heavenly Father, “WHY ME?” I had always been a good girl and had done what was right. I had served a faithful mission and been married in the temple. What could I have possibly done which would warrant such a terrible punishment? The only response I received was the peaceful reassurance that God was aware of my pain. But that wasn’t enough for me at the time. I wanted the pain gone, not acknowledged.

After enduring 5 ½ years in this marriage, I finally decided that my 4 children would be better off being raised by a single mother than to remain in this situation, and I was able to free myself from him and get a divorce. That, in and of itself, was a very difficult decision and went against everything I had been trained to believe about eternal marriage.

I knew that my children needed a father, so I set about finding a new one. After attending a couple single adult events and becoming quite afraid of the prospects found there (no offence to those of you out there who attend those functions!) I resorted to an LDS based dating website. It wasn’t long before I received a message from “Captain Valentine.” My first impression of his user name was, “Oh Boy! Either this is a joke, or here is a guy who is pretty high on himself – The LOVE Captain!” Come to find out, of course, that it was from Todd Valentine, who was a Captain in the Air Force at the time. My first impressions were quickly dispelled after our first email interchange where we learned that we had so much in common.

Todd had grown up as a farm boy in Idaho as the oldest of 7 children. He was raised in the Church, as were his parents, and led a fairly uneventful childhood in a faithful LDS home. His grandiose dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot and turning his plowshare into 5000 pound GPS guided bombs were realized when he squeaked his way into the Air Force Academy and then graduated with honors. During his time at the Academy, he took two years off to serve a faithful mission in Taipei, Taiwan. While there, he met a beautiful young Chinese girl who was serving as a stake missionary at the time. She followed him back to the US after his mission, and they got married soon after his graduation from the Academy.

It didn’t take long for Todd to realize that he had made a serious mistake. Although he didn’t suffer the physical abuse I experienced, he endured abuse of a different kind. His wife suffered from borderline personality, which is defined as one who exhibits both neurotic and psychotic symptoms, but is borderline between the two. Her constant and dramatic mood swings kept Todd on his toes. She lived much of their married life in Taiwan with her family, and once when he surprised her with an unannounced visit, he realized the terrible conditions in which his 5 young children were being raised – filth, extreme neglect, and even signs of physical abuse. That, along with the fact that she continually threatened him with killing their children if he didn’t do what she asked him to do, convinced him that temple marriage or not, he had to take serious action to protect his innocent children. Through a daring rescue mission, the amazing details of which are beyond the scope of this talk, he was able to extract the children from the grips of her mafia-involved family and was awarded full custody of them during their divorce. He raised them by himself for about 2 years before he sent me that first fateful email.

It didn’t take us long to realize that Todd and I were meant to be together. The fact that together we had 9 children who were 9 years old and younger at the time should have frightened us, I guess, but we were way too much in love to let a minor detail like that deter us. After 3 grueling months of long-distance dating, and as Todd was transferring from Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota to Randolph AFB in Texas, we were married in the Denver Temple. Two days after our marriage, we loaded our 9 children into our new 15-passenger van and all drove to our new home in San Antonio.

The next 3 ½ years passed in blissful happiness. Todd and I fell more deeply in love with each passing day. The trials involved with dealing with our 9 children seemed easy as we tackled them side by side like a well-oiled machine. The joy we felt in our marriage and in our family was so great, it is beyond what can be expressed in words. We frequently reflected back on the experiences we had in our prior marriages and wondered why God hadn’t allowed us to meet each other first. It couldn’t have been too difficult while he was at the Academy in Colorado Springs and I was living in Denver. We could have eliminated so much pain from our lives. But, at the same time, we knew that the extreme joy we felt in our marriage only came as a result of the experiences we had in our first relationships. We had both been through the refiner’s fire and were now reaping the blessings of remaining faithful during our trials. In the midst of our difficulties, we could not understand why we had to suffer so much, but looking back with our new perspective, we could see the great wisdom of our affliction and found great happiness as a result. We both gained a very strong testimony of the purpose of our trials and the blessings that come from enduring them faithfully. We could also unquestionably see God’s hand in our lives as He guided us through our experiences and then, mercifully, to each other.

Then began our next major trial, which would challenge this testimony we had gained to an extreme. Late one night, not quite 2 years ago, I took Todd to the emergency room for some excruciating pain in his abdomen that had been building in intensity for about 9 months. After a long night of much poking, prodding, CAT scanning, and as we sat in a cold, curtained cubical in the ER, we were told that Todd had cancer. He had surgery 2 days later, during which they removed a baseball-sized tumor from his colon along with many other cancerous lymph nodes around his abdomen. Unfortunately, they were not able to remove a rather large tumor that was wrapped around a major blood vessel which led to his liver. Because of some major complications with the surgery, Todd was not able to begin the proper chemotherapy treatment for over 3 months, and by that time, the cancer had spread throughout his liver. He was told to put his affairs in order, because there was almost no chance that he would survive.

We were now faced with the dilemma of how we should respond to this crisis, and knew that the WAY we responded would shape the rest of our lives, and would probably influence the way our children responded to it. We had already gained a strong testimony that God was in control of our lives, so we knew that we were meant to go through this trial. We also believed that through the power of the priesthood, Todd could be healed…. if it were God’s will that it happen. Todd had many priesthood blessings during this time, but he was never told that he would experience a full recovery. Instead, with almost the exact same words given by several different people, he was promised that his appointed time on this earth would be fulfilled and he would not leave before everything that he needed to accomplish during his life would be accomplished.

President Kimball once said, “The power of the priesthood is limitless but God has wisely placed upon each of us certain limitations. I may develop priesthood power as I perfect my life, yet I am grateful that even through the priesthood I cannot heal all the sick. I might heal people who should die. I might relieve people of suffering who should suffer. I fear I would frustrate the purposes of God.”

Although we did all in our power to prevent the disease from progressing, we were pretty sure that Todd’s time on this earth was short. Now, we could let this knowledge make us extremely depressed or bitter toward God for not healing him. But we didn’t want to waste the little bit of time we had left together being depressed. We had faith that this was God’s will, and were able to accept it, discuss it openly with our children, and even laugh and joke about it often. Todd lived his final year and a half with as much vigor as he could muster and accomplished more things during that time than most of us accomplish during an entire lifetime.

It is a common concept that those who die young must have some great work that they needed to accomplish on the other side. This was not an acceptable explanation for Todd. What greater work could there possibly be for him than to be here to help raise our 9 children to adulthood? He didn’t believe that his death was for him to achieve his full potential. Rather, he concluded that his death must be for me, or our children, or perhaps even others around us to endure – that this was a trial that we must grow from. This thought brought him comfort, because he loved me, and all of you, enough to be willing to suffer any pain, and even die, so that we could become the people that Heavenly Father wanted us to become.

Just a couple months after Todd’s diagnosis, Elder Bednar gave a General Conference address entitled “The Tender Mercies of the Lord.” He defined Tender Mercies as, “the very personal and individualized blessings, strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving-kindnesses, consolations, support, and spiritual gifts which we receive from and because of and through the Lord Jesus Christ.” To illustrate these blessings, he continued, “…as you and I face challenges and tests in our lives, the gift of faith and an appropriate sense of personal confidence that reaches beyond our own capacity are two examples of the tender mercies of the Lord. Repentance and forgiveness of sins and peace of conscience are examples of the tender mercies of the Lord. And the persistence and fortitude that enable us to press forward with cheerfulness through physical limitations and spiritual difficulties are examples of the tender mercies of the Lord…. (These) do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness, obedience, and humility invite tender mercies into our lives, and it is often the Lord’s timing that enables us to recognize and treasure these important blessings.”

I want to testify that throughout Todd’s illness, despite the pain and suffering that we both endured, our lives were showered with the Lord’s tender mercies. I can’t even begin to expound on all of the small miracles and the many kindnesses rendered to our family during this difficult time. As just one example, let me tell you about my sister, Shauna Gruwell. About 4 years ago, she mysteriously announced that she was going to uproot her family of 6 from their home of 15 years in Vernal, Utah to move to San Antonio. The decision seemed very bizarre at the time, but for some unforeseen reason, she and her husband, Jeff, felt compelled to come. At the time of Todd’s diagnosis, Shauna was living less than a mile from our home and was serving as the ward Relief Society President. What better position could she have been in to render relief to a sister in need that that!? This was just one of many evidences that God was aware of our family and our needs.

Each one of us must endure our own trials – it is part of our earthly experience. I testify to you that God loves each of you very much and wants you all to find joy in your lives. But He also loves us enough to allow us to experience extreme sorrow and pain so that we can feel the extreme happiness and the many blessings that come when we rise above our suffering. In our deepest, darkest moments, we may feel all alone. Even Jesus Christ, as he hung in agony on the cross cried out, “My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken me?” And the Father had to turn away from his Only Begotten Son and let Him continue to suffer without divine intervention to ease His pain, which was in God’s power to give. Christ endured this so that He could understand, with firsthand experience, the pain we feel when dark tempests surround us. We are not alone in our sorrow. As the famous poem “Footprints in the Sand” so profoundly illustrates, the single set of footprints during our periods of greatest anguish are not a sign that the Lord has deserted us. Rather, those are the times when He carried us.

Although some of our trials are caused by our own sin, for the most part, we do not choose the difficulties we must endure. The only choice we usually have is our attitude toward those trials. “As one who suffered much in a concentration camp, Victor Frankl observed that the one freedom that conditions cannot take from us is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward those very conditions, grim as those may sometimes be.” It was a great blessing during Todd’s illness to keep our sense of humor and be able to laugh continually about our very dismal situation. I think that sometimes people around us who overheard our good-natured bantering about his impending doom were a little surprised and weren’t quite sure how to respond. But keeping a sense of humor about our circumstances was somewhat therapeutic. Laughing about your problems somehow makes them a little easier to bear.

As we pass through our own fiery furnaces, we also may feel that our trials are too much for us to endure. Neal A. Maxwell has said, “The thermostat on the furnace of affliction will not have been set too high for us – though clearly we may think so at the time. Our God is a refining God who has been tempering soul-steel for a very long time. He knows when the right edge has been put upon our excellence and also when there is more in us than we have yet given. One day we will praise God for taking us near to our limits – as he did His Only Begotten in Gethsemane and Calvary…. In retrospect, we will even see that our most trying years here will often have been our best years, producing large tree rings on our soul, Gethsemanes of growth!”

Todd finally passed quietly from this life in early July, the day after our 5th anniversary. I will not let his death be in vain. I am determined to learn the lessons God intended me to learn for traveling this difficult path. I am equally determined to not let any sin or transgression prevent me from being able to live with Todd again, because I know, without any doubt, that we will be together for eternity if I remain worthy. I can’t speak for my children or for other extended family members, but I pray that they, too, may develop this same resolve. I know Todd would want it that way.

I would like to conclude by quoting these verses from “How Firm a Foundation:”

Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.

I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose

I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes;

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!

I know that God lives. I am grateful for the knowledge I have of His plan of salvation, which brings such peace to my heart. I know, from personal experience, that if we remain faithful, humble and obedient, that we will be showered with the Lord’s tender mercies, and we will be given the strength necessary to wade through our affliction. The answers to prayers may not come immediately, or maybe not at all during this life, but we will endure if we persist in faith. Please, brothers and sisters, remain faithful through your trials, and I know you will be blessed profoundly. It may not be the blessing you expect, but the blessings will come and the strength you need to endure will be there for you.

 
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