The Holy Ghost is so much more than a Comforter. He is how I have come to enjoy the everyday parts of life as if they were a Disneyland trip. Mornings aren’t so hard. Opportunities present themselves like birthday gifts. And clarity comes to me in ways I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. I believe because living the Gospel is the happiest way I can possibly see living in this world.
Last week I had the privilege of hearing this thoughtful message of a young sister missionary before she left on her mission of full-time service as a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I loved her introspection and vulnerability in sharing her experiences. With her permission, I get to share her thoughts with you:
“My Covenant Path Journey” by Sister Julia McNairy
I am Julia McNairy and I leave on Wednesday for the Provo MTC to serve…for the next eighteen months.
Last week I was set apart as a full time missionary, and I have done a week of home MTC! It has been a very ambivalent week for me with so many spiritually high moments and a lot of tough learning experiences. I have really had to look my strengths and weaknesses in the eye and acknowledge them. Some of the stressful parts of MTC so far have been: waking up at 6:30 in the morning, starting to teach real people about the gospel, and having to be on a computer for hours and hours a day. The two things that have gotten me through this week of home MTC have been Lindsay W.’s carrot cake and listening to the Howl’s Moving Castle soundtrack. But really, I have been so blessed this week. I have seen the hand of God in so many ways. I have an amazing companion–Sister Lott–and a truly stellar group of missionaries in my district. It has been so amazing to get to know these people.
I have thought a lot about what I want to speak about today. Unlike many missionaries I have heard from over the years, I started planning my talk weeks before I even knew exactly what day I was going to speak. I remember sitting in the congregation at my [my friend’s] farewell talk a few months ago and jotting down ideas for things I could share. My sister introduced me to this tendency to get things done long before you need to, call[ing it] “precrastinating.” But really, all I want to share today is some parts of my understanding and my relationship with Jesus Christ’s gospel.
I’ve broken my thoughts up into three things I’d like to talk about. These are not everything I have a testimony of, but they are things I feel inspired to share.
The first thing I would like to talk about today is that daily scripture reading and communication with the Lord are powerful.
I am a personal witness that these things invite the spirit of the Holy Ghost into your daily life. In my [church congregation] at [college], my bishop called it “bookending your days” with scripture study and prayer.
I think that in everyone’s personal spiritual development there has to be a time where your testimony separates from the testimony of the people you trust around you. For me, this happened in the last semester of my senior year of high school.
During that Christmas break before, I set some goals for my life in the upcoming semester. One of them was to have a morning routine where I would spend a certain amount of time reading my Book of Mormon and saying a prayer for the day. I also wanted to start to journal more and found an empty drawing pad that I could write in. As the semester progressed, I developed a habit of reading scripture from the Book of Mormon and writing my prayers down in my journal.
I had never before studied in this way and this consistently. As the days and weeks went on, I found that my life began to change. The best description for how I changed during this time was that I started to live my life in HD. Everything about my life felt clearer and in better focus. I felt the Spirit constantly, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, I just knew it related to my daily reading and prayers. Everything became about my relationship with the Gospel. My life aligned and priorities fell into place. It was during this time that I knew I was going to serve a mission. It just made sense to me. Why wouldn’t I want to show how much Jesus Christ’s sacrifice meant to me by doing what He had asked me to do: sharing His message?
The second thing I would like to talk about is what I call my personal pride cycle.
Since that golden semester when I leveled up in spirituality, I have come to see an ebb and flow in my spiritual momentum. After that semester of school when the summer started, I lost my habitual studying and as a result I lost a lot of my day-to-day connection with God. I didn’t lose my testimony, but I could feel that I didn’t have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost like I did before. Then as I went to school in the fall at [college], I struggled before I again found a spiritual flow and my connection to God flourished.
During that time at college, I started to reflect on this cycle that seemed to always happen in my life. There were times when I would go to [young women] camp or go to the temple weekly and feel the Spirit so [strongly], but then something in my life would change, and the light of Christ would fade. I saw this happening even as I wondered how I could change so that there weren’t dips in my spiritual oscillation.
I started to notice that what was happening in my life was very similar to what the Nephite people experience in the Book of Mormon. In the beginning of the book of Helaman it says, “There was continual peace established in the land, …insomuch that there were thousands who did ajoin themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance” (Helaman 3:23-24). But then [Mormon] says, “[there was] exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their exceedingly great riches and their prosperity in the land; . . . And because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands. . . And it came to pass that they did repent, and inasmuch as they did repent they did begin to prosper” (Hel. 3:36; Hel. 4:13,15). All of this happens in the space of twelve years. In terms of whole communities of people, that is not long. These people go from faith to folly and back again over and over. These verses in Helaman are just one instance of this occurrence that happens throughout the Book of Mormon.
It truly mirrors what I have seen in my life. But instead of changing over years I spend months in one phase of this pride cycle. I found that there tends to be five different parts of this cycle.
- First is the good part. These are the times in my life where I am like the people of Nephi who have “continual peace” and are “prospering in the land.” This is when I have the same spirit that was with me my last semester of high school, and my life aligns with the will of the Lord.
- Then is the second part. This is when I forget that every good thing in my life comes from God. I start to be lazy in my worship. Often this happens at the beginning of summer, or when I go on vacation, or when life gets very busy. I lose my routine and I get distracted with how nice my life has become. Whether from negligence or from conscious thought, I am communicating to God, “I don’t need you anymore. I can do this by myself.”
- The third part is the bad part. This is when managing life on my own isn’t so fun anymore. The Nephites spend a lot of their time at the bad part experiencing war, destruction, and famine. When I am in the bad part of my life I am emotionally destructive. This is when it feels like I can’t handle life. Often I am really struggling in school, and I get sad. I don’t enjoy my life like I want to. Things that used to make me happy don’t fill me up anymore. I would say the key word for these times in my life is “overwhelmed.”
- The fourth and fifth parts of this cycle are what I really want to focus on. They are my journey back to the good graces of God.
I tend to be a motivated person who wants to enjoy every facet of life. So when I find myself in the bad part I make lists and I talk to my mom and I cry to myself until I make a plan for changing things around. Every single time to date that I do this my plan is based on shaping myself up. I tell myself to dig my heels in harder and grit my teeth as I shoulder all my issues. I make elaborate plans that map out every moment of the day. I handle things. Essentially, I constrict and contort and control my life into what I think will make me happy.
Most of the time this helps a little bit. I clean my room more often, I am productive in my days, I get more homework done. I even get back into reading scripture, saying prayers, and going to the temple. But there is a very big difference between saying “Heavenly Father help me with what I want,” and, “Father let me be an instrument in Thy hands”. I have found that in my spiritual progression it doesn’t work to check the boxes to receive the blessings.
This leads me to the fifth and last part of my pride cycle. This is when I surrender to God. The first thing that I have to do is acknowledge that God knows what to do better than I do. He has the plan and he has promised me that if I follow Jesus Christ he will make more of my life than I ever could on my own.
To surrender to God takes more than a humble disposition, I truly think it is a different way of seeing the world.
When I surrender to Jesus Christ I look at my life differently. To me it feels like putting down every stressful and burdensome thing in my life. I often think of the image of carrying suitcases in each hand and holding them up by tensing my shoulders and gripping the handles and standing as tall and straight as possible. Each suitcase is something I have to worry about. They are big and heavy and my responsibility. But when I surrender them, I imagine them falling to the ground and feeling the release of tension in my back, shoulders, and hands. Only after I let them go can Jesus Christ pick them all up for me and say, “Let’s not worry about these. Jjust walk beside me, and we can go together.”
I have tried to use real life applications for what surrendering to the will of God would look like. When I have taken up Sister Nelson’s invitation to “ask myself what a holy young adult would do?” I find that I am in a state of surrender, because essentially that question is saying, “What does the Lord want me to do?” This same idea applies to President Nelson’s invitation to “Think Celestial.” He told us, “When you make choices, I invite you to take the long view—an eternal view. Put Jesus Christ first because your eternal life is dependent upon your faith in Him and in His Atonement. . . When you are confronted with a dilemma, think celestial! When tested by temptation, think celestial! When life or loved ones let you down, think celestial! When someone dies prematurely, think celestial. When someone lingers with a devastating illness, think celestial. When the pressures of life crowd in upon you, think celestial!” Brothers and Sisters, there is no situation that cannot be solved by giving it to Jesus and thinking celestially!
There is a quote about surrender that I just love, and I would like to share with you. Debora Adele writes, “Surrender is knowing ourselves to be a part of [God’s] divine oneness and then giving ourselves over to this greater whole. We find in the process that we do not lose ourselves, but instead become part of the greatness itself.” When Jesus says “I am the way” (John 14:6), I think that literally means that He is the only thing getting into the celestial kingdom, and we have to become part of his greatness to go in with him. We must surrender to His will in every way.
The third thing that I want to share is why I believe.
A few weeks ago on a fast Sunday Brother P. shared why he believed, and it resonated with me so much that I would like to echo his words. “I believe because I want to believe.” I think a lot of times we are told by the world that our wants have to coincide with logic. I see nothing more reasonable than to believe because I earnestly want to.
I also believe because of the times in my life where I have had feelings that only could have come from the Holy Ghost. In my experience of life, people are trying to feel things. From haunted houses to vacations on white beaches to holding a baby to or staying up late watching a good movie, people want to have emotional experiences. But I have never in my life been able to generate by myself the kind of feelings that come from loving the gospel. From reading my scriptures every morning and every evening. I have a testimony that the Holy Ghost is so much more than a Comforter. He is how I have come to enjoy the everyday parts of life as if they were a Disneyland trip. Mornings aren’t so hard. Opportunities present themselves like birthday gifts. And clarity comes to me in ways I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. I believe because living the Gospel is the happiest way I can possibly see living in this world.
I also believe because I know that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came to this earth and suffered each of my pains so that [He could help me when I suffer]. And because of that I get to have the most personal and beautiful relationship with Him. One of the greatest parts of my life is that I know that I can never love my Savior Jesus Christ too much. He will never fail me. He will never stand me up or move me to second priority. He will never think less of me or not want me around. He would never desire anything less than my greatest potential. And that is more precious to me than anything the world has to offer. In Jeffrey R Holland’s talk “The First Great Commandment” he says, “We have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can’t quit and we can’t go back. After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before.”
That is why I am choosing to serve a mission. I am going to leave behind everything that I know and serve because I have encountered the Son of the Living God, and I will never be the same.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.