Eternally Indebted to My Heavenly Father

When the people gathered in the Book of Mormon to hear the words of King Benjamin, they did so in part “that they might give thanks to the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, and who had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies, and had appointed just men to be their teachers, and also a just man to be their king, who had established peace in the land of Zarahemla, and who had taught them to keep the commandments of God, that they might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all men.” In other words, part of their reason for gathering was to show thanks to the Lord who had brought their fathers into the promised land, delivered them from their enemies, and given them leaders and teachers to teach them the commandments of God. Their gratitude was both for what had happened recently to them and for what the Lord had done for their ancestors 500 years before. As they subsequently listened to King Benjamin, he encouraged them to continue to show their thanks to God: “O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!... If you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you… if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.” He did not want them to forget what great blessings the Lord had given them, telling them and us: “There are not any among you… but what knoweth that ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are” (Mosiah 2:4, 19-21, 34). This gratitude to the Lord for their bounteous blessings helped to prepare them to have the great spiritual experience that followed as “the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ” (Mosiah 4:3).

                In the spirit of King Benjamin’s invitation I also give thanks to my “heavenly King” who has guided my life and given me the great blessings of the gospel and a forever family. Given that it is our thirteenth anniversary today, I am especially grateful for my eternal companion and the way that the Lord brought us together. As my junior year of college was finishing up at BYU, I looked for an internship for the summer. I applied to one that seemed very promising and had a good interview, and I was to hear back within a week. After nearly two weeks I hadn’t heard back and I resigned myself to the fact that I would be staying in Provo that summer and would work on campus. I told myself it would be better for my social life anyway. But the Lord had other plans, and I soon received the phone call that I had received the internship and made plans to head up to northern Idaho for the summer. The day after I arrived I made the hour-drive to church to attend a singles ward and quickly made some friends. That next Friday one of those new friends invited me to come with them to Spokane, Washington for sushi—which I don’t like—but surely having some company for the evening was worth the price of having to eat raw fish, right? So I tagged along. While there, they debated whether they were going to go to this girl’s house who was having people over before she moved. They decided in the end to stop by her place in Coeur d’Alene, and I wrote this in my journal: “After sushi we went to a house where a bunch of people were hanging out in CDA and I had a really good time just talking with people. The get-together was sort of a going away party for a girl named Angie who’s going back to Rexburg where she’s from. It was a lot of fun to talk with her.” We hit it off immediately and I felt a connection I had been struggling to find. She soon left the area but not before I got together with her once more and got a luke-warm commitment from her to keep in touch. I promptly joined Facebook to make that happen, and I subsequently spent many evenings outside that summer talking on the phone with her. We developed a friendship that blossomed into love, and 351 days after that first meeting we were sealed in the Draper, Utah temple. I shudder to think what would have happened if my new friends had not decided to stop by her house that evening, and I thank the Lord that they did! Yes, the sushi was indeed worth it!

                Before I left for northern Idaho that summer my father gave me a blessing, and I recorded this in my journal: “He said that I would gain many friends, and some would become lifelong friends.” That proved prophetic indeed, and how grateful I am to the Lord for my best friend who is now the mother of our six children and who keeps me firm on the covenant path of the Lord. I’ll never forget the look on our Bishop’s face at BYU one day as we were preparing to be married and she was coming out of an interview with him. I could see that he was a little  emotional and his face said to me without words: “She is incredible.” As we are now in the thick of life’s challenges raising children, I second that and I thank the Lord for her and the way that He miraculously brought us together. To use the words of King Benjamin, He has indeed “blessed [us] in all things, both temporal and spiritual,” and I am deeply grateful for the sealing power of the temple that binds us and our children together forever. I love her with all my heart and confess indeed that I am “eternally indebted to [my] heavenly Father!”