BYU Women's Conference Notes -- Thursday

BUT IF NOT -- MARIE STEEL, BRENT TOP:

Two months ago she and her husband celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary. Contrasting their good and bad times makes a beautiful tapestry. It would not be the same without both good and bad.  Faith can bring miracles, but it has to be the will of our Heavenly Father.  After her son came home from primary one day he said he'd learned that faith could move mountains and he was sure his faith could cure his mother's arthritis.  She explained that sometimes we need to learn from our experiences and so Heavenly Father helps us bear them instead of taking them away.  Complaing and murmuring will not make our adversities go away.  Instead of asking "Why me?" maybe the question should be "What can I learn from this experience?"  When her daughter was a high school sophomore, she became fatigued and run down.  Later she got a headache and neck pain.  They took her to the ER.  She had leukemia.  Their world had been turned upside down.  One day she was picking out prom dresses and then she was fighting for her life.  She kept hoping this was a bad dream she'd wake up from.  They prayed constantly.  Her cancer was very agressive and the treatment would have to be very agressive.  The chemo wiped out her immune system.  Priesthood blessings brought peace and comfort.  Friends all over the world were praying for her.  There was a feeling of profound love and support.  A fundraiser bake sale was organized by a friend.  A niece had been hit by a car 16 years earlier and went through head trauma.  This niece understood what it was like to be hospitalized for long periods.  She provided great encouragement and support.  She made a card that said, The trials that we are facing have a purpose." Heavenly Father eases the burdens that are upon our shoulders, even so we cannot feel them upon our backs.  We can bear our burdens with ease.  They are made light.  Christ knows what it feels like to have chemo with all its side effects.  Are we placing our faith in an outcome that we desire, or do we have faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ?  If it is the latter, we can trust that they know what is best for us.  Her daughter went into remission and then had a bone marrow transplant.  We do not have total control over our lives, but we do have control over our attitude toward our circumstances.  Her daughter is doing well now, attending college.  But she will be unable to bear children.  However, instead of thinking of what she doesn't have, she is grateful for what she does have.  A friend's husband was killed in an accident and left her with six children to raise.  She was not prepared for what happened.  But she remembered a scripture, Be still and know that I am God.  What we learn in our youth sustains us through our trials later in life.  Heavenly Father has a perfect plan for us.  No pain we suffer is wasted.  All that we suffer and endure builds up our characters.  It is through sorrow and suffering that we gain the education we need.  The afflictions we suffer in this life refine us and prepare us for that which is to come.  Bad days come to an end and heavenly promises are kept. 

One of his favorite stories is from the Old Testament when Daniel and his friends were sentenced to death in the burning fiery furnace.  Daniel said that God could deliver them from the burning furnace, but if not, he would still serve the Lord.  We can know that God can do all things, but if He doesn't choose to take our afflictions away, we can still demonstrate faith and continue to serve the Lord.  When he was a mission president, he would get emergency phone calls with bad news for his missionaries.  One time a missionary had a mother with cancer.  He had fervent faith that his mother would get well and was very hopeful.  But the "but if not" came for that missionary.  He had the dreaded task of telling this missionary that his mother had died, even though he had prayed so fervently for her cure.  He wondered if this missionary's faith would falter.  But not for a moment did his faith slacken nor his work suffer.  He wondered if this missionary was in denial and would eventually crash and burn.  But he did not.  This young man finished his mission as a spiritual giant.  He said "I held on to the iron rod when I could not see the tree of life."  That is such a profound thought!  We want to see the end form the beginning.  But have no witness until after the trial of our faith.  We need to learn to walk to the edge of the light and perhaps a few steps into the darkness, and we'll find that the light will continue on ahead of us.  We have to walk into the darkness of our lives at times.  Sometimes storms will beset us and threaten our grip on the iron rod, but we must remain steadfast.  Often when our lives remain agreeable we refuse to seek the Lord.  CS Lewis met and married when he was in his 60's and he found the joy he never had in his 20's.  However, his wife got cancer and then died.  He had profound grief, pain and loneliness.  Twenty years earlier he thought he had all the answers, but now he had questions and doubts.  He wondered why God felt so absent in his time of trouble.  He said you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.  It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box.  But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice.  Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?  Only real risk tests the reality of belief.  Nothing less will shake a man.  After suffering in his grief, C.S. Lewis started seeing the light.  He journeyed out of the darkness of doubt.  He said you can't see anything properly when your eyes are full of tears.  A drowning man cannot be helped because he clutches and grabs.  How can we get to the point where we say to the Lord "Thy will be done" and really mean it?  A great deal of God's will must be done by us.  We must be an agent as well as a patient.  We must ask to be enabled to do it.  There are always duties to be done, often neglected duties to be caught up with. That is holding on to the iron rod--continually day by day and hour by hour.  Holding on to the iron road is every prayer we pray, every scripture we read, every church meeting we attend, every act of service we give, every bit of love we show to others.  We need to daily hold on to the iron rod even when we can't see the tree of life.  That is what that missionary did during his hours of sorrow.  He got up each day and prayed and studied scriptures and he went to work.  He held fast and he endured.  There is no one great thing that we can do and then be done and do no more.  Every day, month after month, year after year, we need to develop our characters and weed out our imperfections.  Noble deeds may be done every day, and each one draws us that much nearer to deity.  Press forward in your good times and bad times and your "but if not" moments.  God loves us with a perfect love and will be with us in our fiery furnaces. 


ARMED WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS AND WITH THE POWER OF GOD IN GREAT GLORY -- RUTH TODD

There is incredible strength from all these women gathered together.  She was a brand new freshman at BYU in 1979.  Yes, she turned 50 on her last birthday. While sitting here in the Marriott Center she received a witness that Spencer W. Kimball was indeed a prophet of God.  In 1980, Camilla Kimball stood at this pulpit and her talk impacted her life and still effects her today.   Her husband brought her here to the Marriott Center for a basketball game on their very first date.  She has memories as a child while her parents were away of hearing a siren and thinking they'd been killed in an accident and they were never coming home.  She has always been a worrier.  Her parents taught her to pray when she was afraid.  Just as vividly as her memories of her worries, she remembers answers from Heavenly Father after she prayed, feeling comforted.  A wonderful warm, calming feeling would come over her.  As this experience was repeated, it became a personal message of peace from a loving Heavenly Father to a frightened little girl.  She knew the power of prayer.  All her life she has known that prayer strengthens us.  The Lord needs all of us and He is especially counting on you!  Nephi saw that in the latter days there would be few who would choose righteousness.  Most would choose iniquity.  How can such a small number withstand the tide of wickedness?  God empowers the righteous.  We may be small in number and scattered throughout the earth, but our influence for good is magnified by the Lord when He arms us with His power.  A pioneer family who was crossing the plains were faced with a storm of hail, show and wind.  The husband became too weak to even swallow when the wife tried to give him food.  During the night, he died.  He was placed in pile with 13 others who had died during the night, and they covered him with snow.  The ground was frozen too hard to bury him.  She continued on with three young children.  She did make it to the valley and said that the Lord had blessed her.  After all she had endured, she kept her faith and testimony and gave thanks to God.  There are pitfalls around every one of us.  Her testimony of prayer has grown stronger with every passing decade.  Prayer is a great gift which Heavenly Father has given us.  You cannot reach your potential alone.  You need help from the Lord.  The more we read the scriptures, the more we realize we want to read.  There are personal answers to your individual questions found in the scriptures.  Serve others.  With so much suffering all over the world, it will take efforts of all good people working together to help.  Serve willingly in whatever capacity you are called.  At 80 years of age, a lady was visited by her bishop.  She thought he was coming to help her, but he called her to be the new primary president.  No matter where we are in life's journey, each of us has the opportunity to be instruments for the Lord and make a difference in other people's lives.  She went shopping with her daughter for a new swimsuit.  The swimsuits the daughter choose were not modest and they couldn't agree on what to buy.  They left the store with zero swimsuits.  Children need parents with strong standards who will stick to them.  Set a standard in your home and your life and stick to it.  You can do it!  Have a strong influence on your children.  The stripling warriors said they did not doubt for their mothers knew it.  Those mothers' daily lives must have been wonderful examples! If their mothers hadn't been unified in their faith in Jesus Christ, it would not have been possible to produce 2,000 faithful sons. We are blessed with God's protective power.  If you want to be armed with righteousness, pray, read the scriptures, attend the temple.  Work together to increase in faith and personal righteousness.  We each have different talents and abilities, and have various circumstances in life.  It takes all of us!  We don't want to do without a single one!  We each get to search for the path that the Lord has in mind for us. The guidance of the Holy Ghost can help us understand our Father's will for us.  Never feel your contribution is less than somebody else's.  Don't be judgmental.  There is no place for criticism or holding grudges.  Negativity drives away the spirit.  We must be one in Christ.  Even as a child, she realized her Heavenly Father wanted her to be happy and feel peace.  What a gift peace is!  It's not the world's peace, it is His.  There is joy to be found in service and in personal communication with our God.  Whether we find that joy, it's up to us.    65 years ago a lady told her aunt how happy she was!  She was graduating from college and would be married soon and was so excited about her life.  Her wise aunt told her that she could be that happy every day of her life if she would meet each day of her life with gratitude.  Now 65 years later, this woman is widowed and diagnosed with terminal cancer, but she still meets each day with joy and gratitude.  She has lead a joyful life. 

TRUSTING IN THE LORD'S TIMETABLE -- MICHELLE BROWN, JANIE PENFIELD

One night her phone rang at 3:00 a.m.  It was a neighbor who asked if her husband could help her husband who had fallen in the bathroom.  Sometimes we need help with things we can't do ourselves. We need to put the "us" in trust.  Hope is trusting in God's promises.  We must trust the Lord enough to accept His will and know that He has a plan.  We also need to trust in His timing?  Our faith needs to include trust in the timing of the Lord.  Stick to the task till it sticks to you.  On November 17, 2010 her husband came home from work and they enjoyed a dinner together.  She was getting a migraine and decided to stay home so her husband took their son.  Her husband slipped on the ice and was taken to the hospital.  He got a CAT scan and then they sent him to a room.  He had hit the back of his head.  They had to put a breathing tube in.  They tried to bring the swelling in his brain down and it would go down for awhile, but then increase again.  He got multiple CAT scans.  During quiet times when she was alone with her husband in his room, they would pray together, even though he could not speak.  This brought great comfort.  Family and friends prayed for him and she felt strength from the prayers.  The Lord was with them through it all and she knew she could do whatever she had to do.  She trusted in the Lord.  She felt peace.  November 24, Thanksgiving Day, their family met together in the hospital and had a family prayer. She felt peaceful and felt that Heavenly Father had a plan.  December 1 her husband suffered a massive stroke.  His brain showed no activity.  She was confused because she had felt so good when she prayed and didn't think this would be the outcome.  She called her son on his mission and told him whatever decision he made about his mission, she would support.  His first thought was to come home immediately, but he prayed and felt he still had work to do on his mission so he stayed.  He was willing to stick to the task and continued to serve his mission.  He just returned from his mission two days ago.  She knows he did exactly what his father would have wanted him to do.  As her sweetheart passed on, she trusted in the Lord.  She was blessed with a confirmation that this was the Lord's will.  The Lord doesn't take a man away from his family for trivial reasons.  She has seen blessings poured out to their family.  Don't ever miss an opportunity to be a servant and help someone else trust in the Lord.  You never know what the Lord's plan is for you and your family. There will be trials in your life and you may not be prepared.  But never give up an opportunity to serve others. Be willing to submit to all things.  As you do so you'll come to understand the Lord's timetable.  Then we can be prepared for whatever life brings. 

She is 35 years old and single and the last thing she wanted to talk on was trusting in the Lord's time table.  The Lord's words are sure and will not fail.  The Lord is constant and all blessings will eventually be ours if we are faithful.  Waiting for "eventually" to come is hard. When will we choose to make His plan, our plan?  We all need to increase our trust and faith.  How do we learn to have more faith in the Lord and His timing?  Choose to put the Lord first.  We can choose who we want to be.  We can make ourselves into anything we want.  We can choose to put the Lord first.  Making and keeping covenants adds powers to our lives.  Spend some time in the scriptures every day.  It is also essential to pray every day.  If we want to hear the Spirit's whispering, we must listen carefully.  Unless you attune yourself, you will miss it.  It takes conditioning.  While hiking up a mountain, a friend researched the best path and the best plan.  They trusted their friend and were lead up and down the mountain safely.  The Lord will provide us with the direction we need as we travel life's trail.  We can have faith in the outcome, even though we don't know all the things we'll find on the way.  We need to put the Lord first in our lives. Choose to be a disciple of Christ.  Live worthy of and follow the promptings of the spirit.  The world calls for us to be rich, be selfish, be pampered.  But a true disciple needs to make time to be about the Lord's business each and every day, strengthening others and increasing our faith and righteousness.  We should learn what the Lord would have us learn, do what He would have us do and become what He would have us become.  We lift others in their weaknesses.  Nurse and guide those who need us.  We can count on the Lord 100% of the time to keep His promises to us, if we keep our covenants with us.  Last spring she completed an Olympic Triathlon.  She had friends who encouraged her as she trained for this event.  Without her support group, she never would have completed this event.  Her choices allowed her to finish.  We too must train and prepare the for the challenges that come into our lives.  We must devote and time and effort daily necessary.  If we can truly believe the Lord has our best welfare at heart, we can have faith in His timing.  We need to move from the big picture to the little picture.  We live in mortality with the veil blocking our view of eternity.  If we could see things from Heavenly Father's perspective, we could view things eternally.  Sometimes she feels like she has faith in eternity, but she worries about the plan for his own life if she never gets married in mortality.  Will she always have her sister as her insurance beneficiary?  Sometimes she feels dissatisfied with her life and that makes her lose the spirit.  We all struggle with different things that lead to sadness--infertility, unemployment, illness.  We must choose to look up.  We will be strengthened and we'll feel peace as we have faith to look up and the courage to follow the Lord's direction.  If you lack faith, work to build it.  Trust in His timetable.  We need to do the right things at the right time.  We can choose to be comforted.  Sometimes we think things are going well, but then the relationship fails, the job ends, things don't turn out the way we had hoped.  Don't forget that the Lord loves us and is mindful of us.  We must pray constantly for help.  God does answer our prayers.  He will be with us through it all.  God has a timetable for each person.  Don't refuse to be comforted.  Let the scriptures refresh you.  The gospel will shape and guide our lives.  We can feel the love of God and feel peace.  The Lord promises angels on our left and right to bear us up.  Press forward with a steadfastness in Christ.  Feast upon the word of God and endure to the end.  If you do this, you'll have eternal life.  We must choose to be patient.  How are we responding to the challenges placed before us?  Are we choosing to be patient?  Patience is a virtue.  Patience will not be an optional attribute in the next world.  As we develop more patience, we'll be of good cheer as we seek the Lord's will.  To everything there is a season.  The Lord will lead us along.  We must choose to be patient.  Choose to put the Lord first, build faith, be comforted.  The Lord loves us and has a plan for each of us that is far better than we can imagine.  We will find the peace that comes form having an eternal perspective.

SPEAK WELL, SHARE WELL; ACCENTUATING THE POSITIVE IN YOUR SPOUSE (GAYLANMARIE G. ROSENBERG, JOHN R. ROSENBERG):

We're all tested in a variety of ways.  We all have powers for good or evil.  We radiate our character and cannot escape it.  We are constantly effecting the world.  We have tests of time, understanding, choice, and character--when, why, what, and how).  How do we respond to the imperfections of others?  He that is without sin among us, let him cast the first stone.  Stop throwing stones at each other.  Focus on getting rid of our own beams.  If needed, give kind and calm correction.  Very little love can come from a person who is not at peace with himself and with God.  We need to take care of our own souls.  If correction is needed, what we say and how we say it is very important.  None of us is perfect.  We need the perfect coach to help us in that process. Christ came to help us in our weakness, not in our perfection.  God didn't send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  We have the power to uplift each other--powers of grace, love, acceptance, communication, optimism, appreciation, humility.  We can enhance our power to uplift another.  None of us can blame our behavior on someone else.  Through the grace of our Savior, we receive strength and assistance to do good works that otherwise we would not be able to maintain.  Grace is an enabling power.  The power of love.  The place to start is with our own hearts.  What we want with all our hearts will determine in large degree whather we can claim our right to the companionship of the Holy Ghost, without which there can be no spiritual nourishing.  We can begin today to try to see those we are to nourish as our Heavenly Father sees them and so feel some of what He feels for them.  Can we love for Him?  We cannot change or control another's behavior.  When we try, it demotivates them to change.  The power of acceptance.  Can we let it be okay that we are not perfect?  Suppose your husband says, "Why can't you ever cook a decent meal?  Fred's wife is a gourmet cook, why can't you be more like her?" Would that motivate you to kiss him, smile, and go call Fred's wife for cooking tips?  Power of communication.  Communication is more of an attitude than a skill.  In the essentials, let there be unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; but in all things, charity. Never assume your husband can read your mind and don't become irritated that he doesn't do so.  One newlywed woman complained to her friend that she was disgusted with her husband who never did a thing around the house to help her.  The friend asked her if she had asked her husband to help and she said no, she was sure he could see her working away while she was working and he ought to know what he should do.  Later this friend talked to the husband and asked him how his marriage was going.  He said it was great!  He had the best wife in the world.  She told him one thing she loved about her husband is that he helped her around the house, without her even having to ask.  The man said, "Well, if my wife wanted help, I'm sure she'd ask me."  That marriage didn't last a year.  Power of optimism.  It's amazing how good others look when we look for the good in others.  Whatever we focus on will increase.  We progress more by enhancing strengths than by trying to fix weaknesses.  Build a deep emotional reservoir.   Express gratitude frequently.  Make the other person feel good about himself.  The Power of appreciation.  Spend time together.  Communicate effectively.  Deal with crisis in positive manner.  Have strong commitment to each other.  Have high degree of religious orientation.  The power of humility.  It is wise to fear that our own skills are inadequate to meet the charge we have to nourish the faith of others.  Our own abilities, however great, will not be enough.  But that realistic view of our limitations creates a humility that can lead to dependence on the Spirit and thus to power.  How can we be instruments in the Lord's hands if the instrument seeks to instruct?  If we trust God, why not yield to Him? 

Eternal life is one of the greatest gifts of of.  Eternal wife is also a wonderful blessing.  He grew up in a home clear full of women and he currently lives in a home clear full of women, but coming to Women's Conference is a whole new experience for him!  We are sanctified not by our similarities to our spouse, but by our differences.  In our patience, we possess our souls.  Patience is more then quiet resignation.  It is soul making.  It is self mastery.  We gain dominion over the unruly parts of ourselves.  Suppose you ask your husband to carry a mattress downstairs and he throws it out the window, getting it all dirty.  Make the best of it, if you can be calm.  Getting mad about it after it's already done will do no good.  Some are blessed with five talent spouses, others with two talent spouses, but even if you have a one talent spouse, the Lord will not be pleased if you bury him.  Our talents improve by the labor of love.  Lighten each other's burdens in covenants of love. The gospel is about relationships.  It strengthens relationships.  Our covenants with our spouse is second only to our covenants with the Lord.  If our relationship with Christ requires a weekly recommitment, how long can we go in our relationship with our spouse?  When he was first married, his wife suggested they talk about their feelings.  This idea scared him to death.  He thought her feelings must have been hurt and talking about it would be difficult.  It never dawned on him that talking about feelings might be entertaining.  Heavenly Father doesn't watch us glaringly looking for ways to condemn us.  He watches to know how to lift us.  When he's struggled in his marriage it's because they wanted day 6 privileges on day 1.  When God created the earth, He did it in order.  He didn't create fish before water or man before land. Each day He declared that what He did was very good, even though it wasn't done yet.  Imperfect means unfinished. But each day of our lives, we can feel it is very good, even though it isn't perfect and our lives aren't finished yet.  Be patient with yourself, with your spouse, and with your marriage.  Wait patiently on the Lord.  Patience is more than waiting for something to happen, it's actively working toward goals and not becoming discouraged when things don't happen right away.  Patience speaks with a still, small voice.  The words we use effect our perception of the world.  One day he came home from school and his mother asked him how school went.  He told her he had a substitute teacher, a skinny old woman.  His mother corrected him and said she was not a skinny old woman, she was a slender elderly lady.  Let your speech be always with grace.  Build your spouse in significant ways.  Be of one heart and one mind and treat each other with respect.  Patience combined with love permit us to detoxify our disappointments.  Use the process of time well.  It will cradle us as we develop patient humility.