As a Child Doth Submit

I listened today for the first time to an address that President Jeffrey R. Holland gave at BYU a few years ago. He reminded his audience of the heart-wrenching story he told in general conference in October 2016 about Troy and Deedra Russell who lost their nine-year-old son when Troy accidentally backed over him with his truck. He related another tragedy that more recently happened to this family: “Early in the morning hours of September 8… Deedra Russell was traveling northbound on Interstate 15. Near mile marker number 14, where the highway is tightly cut into the sides of the Virgin River Gorge, Deedra saw a pickup truck traveling at freeway speed. Unfortunately, it was traveling right at her, coming south in her northbound lane. At the wheel was an inebriated male driver, age thirty-nine.” He continued, “Sister Russell, though pinned immovably inside the car, was not killed in this accident. With remarkable assistance from emergency personnel, she was extricated from the wreckage and life-flighted to the St. George Regional Medical Center, where—after 132 days of hospitalization, some forty of them in intensive care—she is still waging the fight of her life.” He gave this awful description of what she has undergone in that time: “Her lacerations, fractures, and surgical needs almost defied description. She has been in the operating room for eighteen surgeries, with more to come. Her kidneys have been damaged, and at least two of her external wounds have to remain open with wound VAC assistance until they can be closed. Indescribable pain, interrelated injuries, recurring nightmares, and, most recently, a sequence of paralytic seizures have been her lot day and night. But every indication is that she is going to make it, for which we are grateful.” To a family who had already gone through so much with the tragic loss of their son, this additional tragedy seems to human comprehension like more than they should have to bear.

President Holland based his talk on well-known words from King Benjamin’s address in the Book of Mormon. He said, “King Benjamin taught that a fundamental purpose of mortal life—­perhaps the fundamental purpose—is to become ‘a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord,’ which will require us to become ‘as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.’” He then commented, “What does that mean for us? It means that struggle and strife, heartbreak and loss, are not experiences that come only somewhere else to someone else. It means that moments in which faith feels frightfully difficult to hold on to are not reserved for our bygone days of persecution and martyrdom. No, the times when becoming a saint through Christ the Lord seems almost—almost—too much to achieve are still with us. And so it will be until God has proven His people for their eternal reward. We will be asked to submit, to obey, and to be childlike. For some of us that is difficult now, and it will be difficult then.” I have read this scripture many times, but in my mind I have not focused much on that last phrase: we are to willingly submit to whatever the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us like a child submits to his father. And President Holland’s comments suggest that doing this last item is crucial for us to obtain the rest of the attributes in the list; in other words, if we want to become as a child, full of humility, patience, and love, we will need the refining fires the Lord allows to take place in our lives. The natural man will only be fully conquered as we experience afflictions with the submissiveness of a child. To become a saint through the atonement, we too must pass through our own small version of Gethsemane. He continued, “the road from faith to pure knowledge, from mortal trials to celestial rewards, always somehow winds through Gethsemane. And when we are invited to join the Savior of the world in that place, we should be prepared to answer the demanding question He put to Peter, James, and John: ‘Could ye not watch with me one hour?’ Figuratively speaking, our entire cycle of searching and waiting, of repentance and forgiveness, adds up to much less than an hour compared to His blood-producing purge of all the sorrows and all the sins and all the mistakes made by all humankind from Adam and Eve to the end of the world.” We should expect “some anguish in this journey” of life if we are to become the saints that the Lord is trying to help us become. But President Holland gave us this encouragement as we go through these mortal challenges: “Please, you beautiful young colleagues in this work: When your life seems to be one tear and tragedy and heartache after another, the meaning of which and the answers to which you cannot understand, I ask you as Alma did to ‘hope for things which are not seen [but] which are true.’ As sure as you live, all of the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, are waiting for you, short-term, long-term, and forever.”

I was touched by the good that did come out of this tragedy. As he told this story, President Holland mentioned that the man who caused the accident was there present in the audience. He shared the remorse of this man who has been openly forgiven by Troy and Deedra. He wrote to them, “Deedra, I feel so horrible [about what] I [have done] to you. My heart is [broken]. My lungs can’t breathe. I am so sorry for the pain you are in. . . . Troy, you are an angel [to forgive me]. . . . I am so sorry you had to go through so much in your lives already, and now this, all because of me. . . . [But] I am going to church again. I am reading my scriptures every night. And please tell the kids I am so sorry I hurt their mother. [Deedra,] I know I nearly took your life, but if it matters, you have saved mine.” It a powerful silver lining to a tragic story, and what an incredible love this couple showed the man who caused them so much pain. As President Holland commented, “surely they are becoming ‘saint[s] through the atonement of Christ the Lord.’” The story invites us all to seek the Savior and to seek to become better from whatever struggles we have to face. King Benjamin’s words are just as relevant to mortality today as they were over 2000 years ago: through the atoning grace of Jesus Christ, we can overcome the natural man and become a saint through Him and all the trials He sees fit to let into our lives.