Miserable? Try This Solution!

John and I were living in Washington, D.C. during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. During that time, Barbara Bush became one of my absolute heroes. I had noticed her picture showing up doing simple acts of service: reading to kindergarten children, walking with a patient in a retirement home, working at a food bank, etc. I wondered, with all that a first lady has to do, how in the world did she find time to do so much service?

Then one day the Washington Post ran an article by the reporter assigned to cover Barbara Bush. It was clearly a frustrating assignment. He recounted how she would use disguises to leave the White House so that the press corp wouldn’t know where she was going. He assumed it must have driven the Secret Service crazy! One day he caught up to her as she was returning from a service experience and asked her why she was so involved in simple service and why she wanted no one to know.

Barbara shared with the reporter her experience when her husband was the Chief U.S. Liaison in Beijing, China (This was before the U.S. opened up its first embassy in China.) She didn’t speak Chinese. She wasn’t involved in international policy like her husband was. She became lonely and depressed as he worked long hours every day.

One day she biked to a home for elderly Chinese widows. Although she didn’t speak their language, she found that she could serve them in simple ways by styling their hair, helping them bathe, etc. She began to frequently bicycle to and from the home. She was surprised that her depression lifted as she grew very close to these women.

Later, returning to America, her husband was named the head of the CIA. Her children had grown and moved away. Her husband couldn’t talk with her about his work, due to the sensitive nature of the work of the CIA. Once again, Barbara was haunted by depression. Remembering her experience in China, she started going to a hospice center, where again, she both served and loved the women. The depression quickly resolved.

She insisted to the reporter that service was her healing secret.

Is this a secret that we all should know?

I have a sweet friend who was the object of terrible sexual abuse as a child. She confided to me that one of the most debilitating effects of this horrendous situation was the debilitating powerlessness she felt. Her mother, aware of the abuse, kept silent about it. As soon as she turned eighteen my friend moved far away from her family. But her sense of learned powerlessness overshadowed her accomplishments.

Eventually, she was posted to Afghanistan to work with children affected by AIDS. For the first time in her life, she felt empowered when confronted with suffering. She was surprised that she, herself, was healed through this empowerment. Service had brought her the peace she had sought for so many years.

In my work in India with the leprosy-affected, I have had the remarkable gift of being able to work with Padma Venkataraman. Padma is the daughter of the former President of India and was the Permanent Women’s Ambassador to the UN from India for 20 years. She is one of the most incredible women I have ever met.

She stepped down from her prestigious roles to work with the leprosy-affected people of India. Earlier in her life, she had experienced an intestinal blockage and as a result had part of her intestines removed. It has caused her much pain and sickness, often with a resulting fever.

Padma once shared with me that many days she awoke feeling too sick to get out of bed. She said her husband would counsel her, “Get up and go to a leprosy colony, you’ll feel better.” She continued, “Becky, it was like magic. I would feel that I couldn’t even sit up, but when I forced myself to go serve in a leprosy colony, I forgot my pain. It was the best medicine in the world.”

Modern psychiatry tells us to “turn in” and try to understand our pain if we want to find healing. The Savior promises healing in exactly the opposite method, by “turning out.”

In his great sermon on effective fasting, Isaiah counsels us to serve our fellowman if we want to be heard when we, ourselves, approach the throne of grace. It’s as if God’s saying, “Serve me, then I’ll serve you.” How do we serve God? Simple: we serve His children!

Speaking for God, Isaiah asks, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen—to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and that ye let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke. Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry? That thou bring the poor that are cast out to thine own house? When thou seest the naked that thou cover him?” Then Isaiah promises that as you do those things, “Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and the He shall say, ‘Here I am.” (Isa 58:6,7,9)

Abraham Lincoln was certainly no stranger to suffering. He insisted, “To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.” He knew the secret!

I once heard someone say, “We all stagger under the weight of our own crosses.” That immediately resonated with me. And who better knows how to survive a cross than our Savior? We all have many wounds. They come from simply living in a fallen world. Continuing, he said “Some wounds are self-inflicted. Some wounds run deep such as divorce and abuse. Some fester without forgiveness. We need to treat these wounds as soon as possible to keep them from scarring.” None of us want scarred souls!

We put this healing secret to work after the Covid pandemic in India. The pandemic was much worse in India because of the Delta variant that developed there. School was cancelled for two years. Can you imagine? Online learning was relatively sparse and largely ineffective. Many students just hung out watching TV. Entertainment in India is quite different than in America. They have very strict regulations about sexual content in movies, and so, instead, movies tend to be extremely violent.

When the students were finally able to return to school, all across India schools began to experience violence, both between students as well as violence directed towards teachers. It quickly became a national concern.

At Rising Star Outreach, we were also surprised by the violent behavior of the students upon their return. Our school counselor devised a brilliant solution. She established Charity Days in the leprosy colonies. Twice a month the students were taken to one of the leprosy colonies we work with. They helped with the medical clinic, they treated people for lice and scabies, they washed patients’ hair. They played games with the patients waiting to see the doctor.

Back at school the aggressiveness of the students receded remarkably. It was the beginning of a much-needed healing process. To our surprise, it also helped to heal the rift that had developed between the generations in the colonies. The younger generation, subject to the crippling stigma of leprosy, tended to resent their grandparents who had been afflicted with leprosy and sent to live in a leprosy colony. Now the grandchildren were subject to the same stigma since they came from a leprosy colony. It was so sweet to watch as the younger generation learned to love and reconnect with the older generation.

Pres. George H.W. Bush has often been quoted as saying, “We all have something to give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can’t. If you’ve got a hammer, find a nail. If you’re not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble—seek out someone who is.” He had personal experience through Barbara of the truth of that counsel!

Finding opportunities to serve is not difficult. Elder Neal Maxwell suggested that we are surrounded by need every day. He assured us, “We would be staggered and ashamed if we saw fully the unused and unexplored possibilities for service that surround each of us all of the time.”

Elder Uchtdorf has strongly affirmed the healing secret: “Often, the answer to our prayer does not come while we’re on our knees but while we’re on our feet serving the Lord and serving those around us. Selfless acts of service and consecration refine our spirits, remove the scales from our spiritual eyes, and open the windows of heaven. By becoming the answer to someone’s prayer, we often find the answer to our own.”