I remember when I was in Oklahoma, it was in the middle of a tornado day—a day which all the conditions are right for many tornados. On this specific day, the tornado watch was on all of the local channels, and they were tracking a tornado heading towards the area of my house. When all of a sudden, another tornado popped up and then they directed all video footage to this EF5 tornado. I watched the television in awe as this super tornado was in a field kicking up dust and debris while it was heading towards a barn. It was on my mind as well as many others, “what is going to happen to that barn?” Within seconds of the tornado hitting the barn, it began destroying it. After a minute (it was a slow moving tornado), the only thing left was the concrete foundation, and it was completely clean of any debris or by-products of the barn. This made me think of two things: wow, that was awesome; and, what happened to the tornado coming towards my house? I frantically switched from station to station to see where it was when the storm cloud that was supporting that tornado came through my neighborhood. I ran to the storm shelter and waited out the sirens. After about 15 minutes we left the shelter to be grateful that none of our homes in the neighborhood were destroyed.
Whenever the discussion of spiritual foundation is spoken of and when anyone refers to building your house upon a rock, I always think of that tornado that destroyed that barn. The foundation was solid, and it stayed, but the barn was not made to withstand tornados. I ask the question, what good is having a sure foundation when you will be swept off of it with a strong enough storm?
As person who has grown up the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I have a solid foundation that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, and that we need to have faith, repent, be baptized, go to church, pray, read the scriptures, etc. There are some gospel doctrines that I am more in-tuned with than others. There are some aspects of the foundation mentioned, I neglect to do. Even with this solid of a foundation, after serving a mission, I was in turmoil and stopped going to church. I had a spiritual foundation, but when the storms came, I stepped off of that foundation.
Later in life, I was in more turmoil, and I came back to the church. In a way I stepped back onto that foundation. I felt better when I went to church, paid my tithing, prayed, and read the scriptures. I feel better when I do them now, but I am not perfect and I sometimes neglect to do them when I am focusing on the chaos of day to day life.
When Archer was beginning to grow, I was grateful that I was about to have a son. Then we received the news at one of our routine pregnancy checkups that Archer had issues, then our lives went into turmoil. We knew that Jesus could heal Archer, but would He? We had the miracle of getting Archer to Stanford and were surrounded by the best doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other staff members in the nation. Then, Archer crashed. We still believed that Jesus could heal Archer through these great and amazing people. It was only a test, I thought. After all the miracles that I had seen, Archer still passed away. Why did Jesus not heal him? He could have healed him but why didn’t he do it? That question now is irrelevant. The question that I should be asking is, am I going to let this storm blow me off of my foundation?
This brings me to an important aspect of Jesus’s statement of the wise man, “therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,” the most important aspect of this quote is to do the sayings of Jesus (Matthew 7:24). To simplify this, Jesus Christ is the foundation, doing his sayings would be building on the solid foundation. But there is something missing, that is shown repeatedly in the scriptures but is sometimes glossed over when referring to spiritual foundations and doing the sayings of Jesus.
When the time at Stanford was getting harder, instead of getting angry with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, we turned to Him even more. We began to anchor ourselves to Him. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew: 11:28-30). This has become one of my favorite scriptures, especially through the hardships that I have gone through. When the people of Limhi in the Book of Mormon were enslaved by the Lamanites, they eventually turned to the Lord, “And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility; and they did cry mightily to God; yea, even all the day long did they cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their afflictions” once the people of Limhi were truly humbled and after time God strengthened them and their burdens were lightened (Mosiah 21:14). This helps me know that when we are at our lowest and that we are cornered into an impossible position, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ can help us out. If there was any one thing that helped us out the most it was turning to the Lord and relying upon Him that helped us through the most trying of these times.
Now we are back in Utah, trying to comprehend all that we went through. Is it the time to loosen our anchor to our foundation? No, if anything it is the time to strengthen our anchoring to Jesus, so when the storms come we are not swept off of our foundation, like the many tornadoes that happen in Oklahoma.
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