Be With His Children in Their Troubles

In the most recent general conference, President Henry B. Eyring based his talk on the words of the hymn How Firm a Foundation. Those words are based upon this passage from Isaiah: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10). The hymn paraphrases it this way: “Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed, For I am thy God and will still give thee aid. I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by my righteous, … omnipotent hand.” President Eyring made this important point: “Those promises become more precious as we move through the challenges in our lives and in the lives of those we love. It is important to realize that the promise is not for the removal of challenges.” He then related how he had asked his mother once, “Mother, why is life so hard?” His mom replied, “Hal, of course it’s hard. It’s supposed to be. Life is a test.” The idea that life is a test perhaps best described in this passage: “We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abraham 3:24-25). Another scripture in modern revelation from the Savior says this: “And I give unto you a commandment, that ye shall forsake all evil and cleave unto all good, that ye shall live by every word which proceedeth forth out of the mouth of God. For he will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept; and I will try you and prove you herewith” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:11-12). Not long after He said that, the Lord also declared, “Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:4). We are here on earth to be proved and tried, to see if we will learn to do all that the Lord commands us to do. And like any test, one cannot measure what is being assessed unless the test is actually hard.

            President Eyring spoke about his mother’s very difficult test of health problems, and he described her final days in the hospital. He said, “As my mother went through her last days of life, she became bedridden. The only picture she had placed on her bedroom wall was of the Savior. It hung where she could see it as she lay in her bed. My father had a cot placed next to her in the hospital room so that he could help her immediately during the nights. After she died, my father walked through the floor of the hospital ward to thank and to shake the hand of every nurse who had helped her.” The love that his father showed to his mother in those final days was clearly very impactful on him, for he has mentioned this experience at least three other times in general conference. In 2018 he related, “We all experience tragedy during which we need the reassurance of the Spirit. I felt it one day as I stood with my father in a hospital. We watched my mother take a few shallow breaths—and then no more. As we looked on her face, she was smiling as the pain left. After a few silent moments, my father spoke first. He said, ‘A little girl has gone home.’ He said it softly. He seemed to be at peace. He was reporting something he knew was true. He quietly began to gather Mother’s personal things. He went out into the hospital hallway to thank each of the nurses and doctors who had ministered to her for days.” He said something very similar in 2015 when he said this: “I stood next to my father in a hospital room. My mother, his wife of 41 years, lay on the bed. We had watched her for hours. We began to see the lines of pain disappear from her face. The fingers of her hands, which had been clenched into fists, relaxed. Her arms came to rest at her sides. The pains of decades of cancer were ending. I saw on her face a look of peace. She took a few short breaths, then a gasp, and then lay still. We stood there waiting to see if another breath would come. Finally, Dad said quietly, ‘A little girl has gone home.’” In 2009 President Eyring also spoke of this time in the hospital: “In my mother’s final illness, the more uncomfortable she became, the more giving her comfort became the dominant intent of my father’s life. He asked that the hospital set up a bed in her room. He was determined to be there to be sure that she wanted for nothing. He walked the miles to work each morning and back to her side at night through those difficult times for her. I believe it was a gift from God to him that his power to love grew when it mattered so much to her. I think he was doing what Jesus would have done out of love.”

                Clearly the love that his father showed to his dying mother was very impactful to President Eyring. As I have thought about this, I think it is telling that what seems to have made the biggest impression on President Eyring from his father was not his father’s incredible scientific career. The Wikipedia page for Henry Eyring says, “Eyring developed the absolute rate theory or transition state theory (TST) of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics.” Don’t ask me what that means, but clearly he was brilliant and incredibly accomplished in his field. On that same page is an impressive list of awards and publications, but nowhere does it mention the love he showed to his wife. And yet, for his son, I think that was what mattered most and what had the greatest impact on him. After telling this story of his mother and father in this most recent general conference, President Eyring added, “Now, I tell that story to offer evidence that the Lord sends faithful disciples to help Him keep His promise to succor others in their distress.” Most of us will never come close to accomplishing in our own secular work what Henry Eyring did, but we can all become a disciple who succors others in distress as he did. To pass our test in mortality, we do not need to do great things in the eyes of the world, but we do need to help the Lord in His work “to be with His children in their troubles.”