Here is a story of a Young Father who had his life planned out and then became oh so acutely aware that his plan and The Fathers plans were 2 very different things.
My edge of the miracles were all long Shots. But those long shots were what brought meaning to me and helped me to learn more than I had at any other time in my life.
I was raised in a very large family (1 mom, 1 dad, 16 children) for which I will always be grateful. Everyone in the family at a young age was taught to contribute and we all had our chores. We had to milk cows. Take care of some chickens, pigs, a horse and a little bit of land. I spent my days outside as a kid and grew up on various little farms and sometimes in neighborhood homes. In our family, if you were a boy you had chores around the house with mom until you were old enough to go to work with dad. My dad is a contractor. I learned to work with my hands and started going to work regularly with my dad and brothers in construction when I was 8. From then on up into my mid-twenties, all my summers and much of my after school hours were spent working on a job site and learning many different trades building houses. Although I worked a lot growing up, my parents were supportive of me playing sports if I wanted to, so I played a lot of sports. I suppose half the time I played sports to get out of having to go to work on the job sites. My Sophomore year in High School I playing football and had one of those moments you watch in movies that taught me an important lesson about life.
We were down by 2 points, 30 yards from the goal line with 8 seconds left on the clock. Last down, last opportunity to try and win. Of course we were playing our Rivals who were a bunch of tough farm boys from Idaho. The only chance at winning this game was a field goal kick. We win this game we go to State, we lose this game our football season is over. As expected, Coach sends out the Varsity field goal kicker who starts to run on the field with the rest of the field goal kicking team. It's a 40 yard kick from the hash (on an angle). For some reason, still unknown to me today, suddenly Coach changes his mind as they're running onto the field. Coach yells out my last name and says "get in there and put it through"...He puts me, the Junior Varsity Sophomore field goal kicker, in instead. This came from out of nowhere! Being JV I hadn't played at all in that game as expected and I had no clue that it was even a possibility in Coach's mind that I'd be going into the game that day. Let alone be sent in to try and take us to state in the last seconds of the game! I was too shocked to know what else to do but to put on my helmet and run on the field and give it my best shot. We're from a small town and EVERYONE was there. I wasn't warmed up, I'd been standing there on the side lines the entire game. I was nervous, excited, and of course a little worried that I might let down all my teammates in front of the entire town. I'm not a very big guy. Especially compared to the varsity football teams. I was 5 foot 8 inches tall and 140 lbs. I know I looked small running onto that field and it seemed like a long shot. Despite what many people were thinking, I bit down on my mouthpiece, took a deep breath, signaled for the hike and gave it my best. Once the ball left my foot, I knew it was going through the uprights. I let out a sigh of relief while the ball was still in the air. It was like I was watching it all in slow motion. Time really does slow down like it shows in the movies. The crowd on both sides and the whole football field was silent. The silence was gone in an instant. The moment the ball went through the uprights I was tackled to the ground. Not by our rivals, but by the place holder from our team who was a Senior. He hit me so hard he laid me out flat and the entire football team piled on top of me in an uproar of celebration. The crowd cheered wildly, the football team and city went crazy that night. It's an experience I am grateful for and will never forget.
The lesson I learned that night was you never know when you will be called upon. And regardless of the circumstances you must always give your best whether you feel prepared and ready or not for what life may through at you.
After that game winning kick, I started to receive mail from a bunch of different colleges. Some of them Ivy League colleges like Harvard and Yale. My senior year I received offers from a few colleges to play football as a punter and field goal kicker. For some reason, my heart wasn't in it, so I ended up turning down the scholarships and decided to attend college at Ricks College in Rexburg Idaho. That summer I worked and saved up money for college. Before school started I'd paid for my housing, had all my classes scheduled and was ready to pay for my books and anything else I needed to start school that coming fall. A week before school started, I meet this girl who was from Utah while on a family trip to Bear Lake, UT. It was the first time I felt like this might be someone I could marry. At the same time I remembered I always wanted to serve a mission for our church, The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, before I got married. My priorities became very clear to me all at once. It felt a lot like being thrown into that football game in the last seconds as a Sophomore. In that one weekend before school started, I changed all my plans which seemed like a really big deal at the time. I thought I'd go to school for a few years and then eventually server a mission for our church and hopefully get married one day. My new plan was mission, marriage then college...as I soon would learn, plans don't always go the way we thing they will. I sold my housing contract, pull out of college, cancelled all my classes, broke the news to my friends and worked construction with my dad until I was old enough to serve a 2 year mission sharing the gospel.
Five days after I was old enough to serve (19 years old), I found myself in the LDS Missionary Training Center (MTC) preparing to serve in Santiago Chile speaking Spanish. I didn't speak Spanish at the time, so that was going to be a big learning experience to say the least. Imagine trying to preach the gospel which you're still learning yourself, at age 19 in a country you've never been to, very far from home, family and friends in a language you don't speak. It was a huge challenge! It felt a lot like the long shot field goal kick. I "bit down on my mouth piece" so to speak and went to work. Six long, hard months later I was speaking Spanish teaching the gospel in Chile. When I left for my mission I left behind a girlfriend who at the time I thought I'd marry one day. I also passed up offers I had from colleges to play football as a kicker. I passed on college all together to go wherever I was called to serve. I learned from my dad, it's ok to want great things in your life so long as you're willing to work for them. In my mind I figured I was doing Gods work and sacrificing my time and other opportunities to serve God. So, after my mission I thought for sure I was entitled to receive the blessings I wanted. I wanted to marry my girlfriend, attend and graduate college and have a family of my own, get a great paying job and provide for my family. These blessings would all came about but certainly not in the time frame or way I thought they would.
Days after I got back home from serving my 2 year mission in Chile, things didn't work out with my girlfriend. We didn't feel the same about each other and we were going in different directions, that was evident the first time we talked. This was very difficult for me to deal with emotionally at the time because I had thought for two years we would be getting married. Shortly after that, physically I began to get very sick with something the doctors and specialist never figured out.
I would wake up with severe swelling in my body and was allergic to many different random foods and things I'd never in my life been allergic to. My hands were so swollen I couldn't bend my fingers, it was like I was wearing huge clown gloves and it hurt to touch anything. My feet were so swollen I couldn't walk without it feeling like I was literally stepping on needles. The swelling moved through my body and around in very strange ways. My face became very distorted and disfigure and it would move from one side of my face to the other, across my forehead, swelling my eyes shut at one point as it passed through, down into my lips. My lips swelled up so bad I couldn't touch them and they were abnormally HUGE. It was extremely humbling and humiliating. It moved down my neck. One morning I woke up and could feel my vocal cord loose in my throat, like it was sagging. I couldn't speak for 2 or 3 days until the vocal cord tightened up and it had passed through to some other part of my body. I never struggled with popularity or being liked in school or girls not liking me, so to look like this was difficult inside. I wore a big turtle neck sweater that I'd pull up over my face to cover up the swelling whenever I was around anyone. I didn't leave the house much when I was having these episodes. It would come for days or weeks and then go for a day or two and come back and go into a different part of my body. It was unpredictable and miserable. I was stuck sick at home in a small town, didn't have a car, could hardly work and when I did I didn't get paid very much. And of course, I was in no physical condition to date because I was too embarrassed and sick. All my friends had left town and gone to college, my siblings lives seemed to be progressing and moving along as expected and then there was me. I remember feeling like Job from the Bible.
One of the most frustrating things was not knowing what it was or what was causing it. I'd been to many traditional doctors and allergy specialist and homeopathic doctors and nobody had any answers. We searched the internet and couldn't find anything that looked promising. Over the months that this had been happening the doctors would give me anti-inflammatory that would help keep the swelling in check sometimes, but whatever it was became more and more immune to the drugs. On three different occasion my tongue swelled up to the point I couldn't breath and my mouth was forced open by my tongue. The first time it was painful but Benedril reduced the swelling sufficiently. The second time my parents had to rushed me to the Emergency Room and much stronger drugs were used. The third time was a life changing event.
It had been nearly 9 months that I'd been dealing with this strange illness, parasite, we didn't know what to call it. It was a Sunday morning and my family was heading off to church. I told my mom I couldn't go because I could feel the tingling sensation that always happened in my body right before I had one of these episodes. This was becoming very common so my family didn't think much of it to leave me home by myself for a few hours. I could get around, I had the house phone and there was a car in the driveway if I needed it, so I was okay with them leaving me home alone. About 30 minutes after they'd left the swelling in my tongue started up. I could tell it was going to be bad, so I got myself dressed, got in the car and started driving down the road to the hospital. Half way down the road I had a stupor of thought, I decided I'd had enough of this. I turned the car around headed back home, went inside the house and laid down on my parents bed (most comfortable bed in the house). I said a prayer and put all my trust in God. In my prayer, I told God I'd had enough and I didn't know what I'd done to deserve this but I was not going to move from that spot. I'd accept whatever God had in store for me next. I was either going to lay there and die or he was going to do something about the swelling. I was exhausted from the whole experience and didn't feel like fighting that day. I had just finished my prayer when my mom burst through the door in a panic looking for me. This was amazing, because church was 3 hours long and she always stayed at least 30 minutes past and it had only been about an hour since they left. My parents drove two vehicles to church that day. During sacrament (similar to mass for Catholics) my mom heard a voice very clearly say "get home right now your son needs you". She stood up at once and without saying a word to my dad she left the chapel, got in the car and headed home as fast as she could. My dad was wondering what was going on and rushed out after her and ended up driving the other vehicle home, leaving the rest of the family at church. When they arrived my parents were prepared to rush me to the ER again. I didn't want to go so I asked my dad to give me a blessing for healing instead. In our religion, we believe in healing by the laying on of hands by the authority, called the priesthood, god has given to worthy men. The same way Jesus Christ healed people in the Bible.
With doubt in his heart (I only say this because he mentioned this), but a worthy priesthood holder nonetheless, my father performed the blessing. During the blessing while his hands were on my head I physically felt the swelling going down in my tongue and my parents and I could hear a small popping noise coming from my mouth as it went down. At the end of the blessing my father wasn't fully aware of what had just happened but my mother being a woman of great faith was. After the blessing I stood up to hug him and he said "lets go get in the car we'll rush you to the hospital". I slowed him down, put my hand on his shoulder and told him calmly I wouldn't be needing the hospital, that I needed to go get some rest and I'd tell him more about it later. It started to sink in what had just happened. There was no doubt that I had just been healed by the blessing. Days after this experience, my family decided to do a family fast for me. This is a one day fast (nothing to eat or drink) we practice in our religion similar to when Jesus fasted for 40 days in the bible. My family fasted for me to be healed from this illness I'd had for 9 months. The very next day I was completely healed. At times I felt as if I'd be sick like this for the rest of my life. The thought of being healed seemed like such a long shot...like the field goal kick from years before.
It's been about 12 years since I faced that trial and I've never had a repeat episode since. I'm not allergic to anything like I was when I was sick. There's been no physical signs,side affects or permanent dis-figuration from that ordeal. The only permanent marks were left on my heart, my faith and belief in God. He is real, he is our father, he loves us and would mold us into great beings capable of great things if we will willingly allow him to. I learned from this experience that it can be painful, challenging, difficult and sometimes scary to become who God would have us become. But, if we are faithful, humble, believing and patient in our trials he will bless us with Joy. A couple years after suffering through this I met the woman of my dreams and we married in the Bountiful, UT LDS temple for time and all eternity, after dating for 2 years. I started college full-time at age 27 while also worked full-time installing satellite dishes for DirecTv. Months before I graduated at age 30 and with 2 children and a wife to support I landed a dream job in my field of study and we've been very financially blessed. Given the time frame and my lack of experience in this field, this was another long shot. We've been happily married for 9 years now, have 4 amazing young boys (ages 7 to 1) and hope to have a large family one day. I can not express enough gratitude for my children and wife whom I love dearly. As the years progress I'm slowly understanding and seeing why I had to go through what I did. Like metal in a furnace being softened and molded by the blacksmith, we sometimes have to suffer through difficulties and trials to become malleable in the makers hands, for he knows our true potential. I'm grateful for these and many other experiences that have brought me closer to God, my family and happiness. God bless you and may you believe in long shots.
· Mosiah 7:33
" But if ye will turn to the Lord with full
purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence
of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure,
deliver you out of bondage."
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