The Way of Eternal Life

I was saddened to hear yesterday of the passing of Sister Patricia Terry Holland, the wife of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. I feel that I know her better than most wives of the apostles because of her service with him when he was the president of BYU. That was well before my time there, but my roommate and I used to often listen to the recorded speeches that he and Sister Holland gave at BYU during the 1980s because we found them so inspiring. She, like Elder Holland, encouraged the young men and women of BYU to reach their full potential and to never give up. For example, in one address, after sharing a humorous letter written by someone asking for their tuition back because they were graduating and weren’t married, she said this: “Don’t spend your time walking on your lower lip about what is not. That just stretches the heck out of your lower jaw. Be excited about your chance to grow and develop and become. You have so much personal potential…. If it didn’t seem unbecoming of the president’s wife in full view of the television audience, I would like to just shout at you to see in yourself what I see in you. The only limitations you have are those you set on yourselves. All of the tools and texts are here, right at your hand. But sometimes we cannot recognize the real purpose and significance of the moment which is ours to experience. That’s because too many of us learn only through our heads and not through our hearts! A common man or woman will hear only the commonplace, but a man or a women connected to the powers of heaven will learn to be an inheritor of those powers…. Be all that you can be!” In this and many other addresses she powerfully encouraged the students there to live the gospel of Jesus Christ and keep going even through their difficulties.  

Perhaps the most telling story about her character, though, came from the talk that her son gave in April 1983 in general conference. Matthew Holland was a young man in the Aaronic Priesthood when he apparently was asked to speak in the priesthood session of conference, and he told a powerful story about his mother that I’ve written about before. But it is worth retelling: “One summer morning, in that same student apartment my dad just described, I told my mom I was going out to the playground. She said okay, but told me not to come running back in with muddy feet because she was in the middle of washing and waxing the floor. She repeated the statement again for emphasis as I scampered out the door in a pair of cutoffs, barefoot and shirtless. I must have played for an hour, and at least half of that time was spent in the mud. Then, knowing my mom would probably be finished with the floor and would read to me, I ran home full of boyish excitement and vigor. That same vigor kept me and my mud-covered feet going right up the steps, through the door, and halfway onto the nearly finished wash-and-wax job my mother was still stooped over. Not waiting for a reaction and not wanting to leave my sin half finished, I ran across the rest of the floor, into my parents’ room, and slammed the door shut. Not knowing if I should jump out the second-story window or if just hiding under the bed would do, I burst into tears and hurled my small body onto the bed and prepared myself for the possibility of meeting my great-great-grandfather sooner than I had expected. I heard the door open quietly and looked over. Oh, good, I thought. She wasn’t carrying a heated poker (paddle; switch; anything). Before she could say anything, I cried out, ‘Mom, you don’t love me.’ To which she replied, ‘I do love you, and I’ll do anything to prove it.’ She then picked up my filthy, muddy feet and kissed them.” That is the true love of a mother, and she was a powerful example of how we should be towards our children. They must know that our love is “stronger than the cords of death” even when they need a little reproof (Doctrine and Covenants 121:44).

Thinking of her passing led me to reread President Nelson’s conference talk he gave right after his wife passed away in 2005. Interestingly the timing for the two couples was almost the same: Elder Holland and Sister Holland were married for sixty years, just one more than President Nelson and his first wife Dantzel. Speaking of her President Nelson tried to convey how important it is for each of us to be prepared: “From her sudden departure we can learn a very important lesson: now is the time to prepare to meet God. Tomorrow may be too late. Prophets through the ages have so declared: ‘This life is the time for men to prepare to meet God. … Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance.’” He encouraged us to choose now to repent and further taught, “We came to be tried, to be tested, and to choose. Our decisions determine our destiny. We are ‘free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator … , or to choose captivity and death.’ Those who choose the Lord’s way will likely endure persecution. But their reward is certain. Those who prove faithful ‘shall inherit the kingdom of God, … and their joy shall be full forever.’ Sister Nelson has earned that reward. What comfort that brings to me and our family!” Surely Elder Holland would say the same of Sister Holland whose life full of service to the Lord showed that she had chosen eternal life through her Great Mediator. We never know when the Lord will call us or one of our loved ones home, and so each day we must seek to choose to follow the Savior and to love even those who figuratively run across our clean floors with muddy feet. Ultimately, we are the free to choose each day if we want to be with our families and our Savior in the end. As Jacob taught, “Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life” (2 Nephi 10:23). May we all strive to choose the way of eternal life as Sister Patricia Holland did.