Line upon Line

We, who live in a fallen world, and whose future lies uncharted and unknown before us, may carry in our souls, somewhere in the shadows, fears that plague us. What will tomorrow hold? We carry silent dreads—or at least I do. Anxieties that rarely show themselves in the light, but wait in your soul to be revealed when the time is right.

I have had such a dread about open-heart surgery, especially that my husband, Scot, would someday have to face that. The dread wasn’t born out of thin air. I had experiences here and there that loomed in my soul. I had seen my father have open heart surgery and become old in a day, never totally regaining his strength. Decades ago, Scot and I had filmed an open-heart surgery for a client, and the image is burned in my mind of a patient on the table, his heart stopped and his blood going through the heart-lung machine while the doctor worked, holding the man’s life in his hands.  I never, never wanted that for Scot, but I knew it was possible. Why?

Scot was a robust 42 when one night at 4:00 am, he awoke, looking ashen and complaining that he felt like a dump truck was on his chest. Two stents later, he was as good as new, energized, and keeping our impossible schedule at full throttle. Then in 2015, he had that same indication again, that load of pressure on his chest, and again got two more stents.

Then, a few days ago, a moment happened that had the Lord’s saving hand all over it. The timing was exquisite, orchestrated. Since the first of August, our schedule has been extremely hectic because we are working on a series of 85 mini-documentaries on the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith. This has entailed extensive travel with two cinematographers. We spent three weeks in the UK in August, capturing the sites of the British mission. Sending the Twelve to another continent while the Saints were still faint and weeping was an act of prophetic courage on Joseph Smith’s part. We wanted to capture the images that told that story.

Then, in September, we led a church history trip that took us from Boston to Carthage. Finally, we spent another chunk of time in October shooting again with our cinematographers in Kirtland, Missouri, and Nauvoo. Finally, we joined our missionary buddies from the Puerto Rico mission for four days in Kanab, where we hiked slot canyons and scrambled up sandy, resistant paths to the top of a hill for the view.

Then, on one of the first days home, that was to be our downtime to work at our computers for a while, Scot took a walk. As he walked, he had terrible shortness of breath and that unfortunate, but familiar, feeling of pressure on his chest. He came home, told me about it, and we headed for the emergency room.

We knew he would probably have an angiogram, and we expected that, like before, a stent or two would be placed, and we would be quickly in the clear. Instead, in only about 30 minutes, he was back in our room, with a stricken look on the face that is always smiling at me. He had to have open-heart surgery.

We could see the miracle that we had experienced immediately. This tight chest could have happened in a small coal-mining village in Wales, in a country cemetery in Lancashire, where we knew no doctors nor the health system. It could have happened in the vacant long reaches of fields at the end of dirt roads where we were shooting at the Crooked River battle site in Missouri. It could have happened at the top of a sand mountain after our struggling climb. But no. The shortness of breath and chest pressure were reserved for a walk down our own street, just at the perfect time to get him to the hospital. Such intricate and precise timing swept us with gratitude.

We marveled at this gift from the Lord and remembered another moment of divine, exquisite timing. Years ago, we were working on taking photographs in Mexico and Guatemala for a book we wrote called Light from the Dust about the Book of Mormon. To accomplish that, we drove our Suburban to Guatemala and found that the potholes of Oaxaca destroyed our transmission. A mechanic did his best to put it back in working order, but we knew we needed to see a dealer with their specialized mechanics. We finally found one in Monterrey, Mexico, but it was Friday, and they would not be open until Tuesday, so we drove with some worry to El Paso, hoping to find a dealer there who could fix the car. Again, there were too many hurdles, so with prayers in our hearts and looking for any indications of car trouble, we drove the Suburban all the way home and parked safely in our driveway. A triumph!

Then a friend in our ward asked us to dinner, and we drove the three blocks to his house, and our car died, kaput, a victim of Mexican potholes. How could we drive the thousands of miles home, and then have our car completely collapse in our own neighborhood? We knew we had been blessed.

So the timing of Scot’s chest pains was just as divinely measured, but the news of the need for an open-heart procedure was the worst. My dread that had lived in the shadows leaped out to clutch me by the throat. The three days home before Scot was to report at 4:45 am Monday morning at the hospital were grueling for me. I could be calm in my mind with an assurance that all would be well, but the recesses of my soul were being flooded with fear. Dread was my meat and milk. I found myself weepy and emotional sometimes during those days. I was slow and in shock. I could hardly breathe.

My Scot—the husband and friend who is the breath of life to me—was going to have his sternum split open, his heart torn out, and then stopped. That his heart should ever stop is truly my greatest fear in the universe, but that this would purposely happen was unthinkable to me.

Then, the Sunday night before the operation, our bishop and elder’s quorum president came to give us blessings. My blessing was beautiful, the words were fired with hope, but it wasn’t just the words that comforted me. Suddenly, I felt the shock, fear, and dread lifted off of me as if a spiked armor that had been digging into my flesh had been removed. It didn’t come with that all-out love and light cascading upon me as the Spirit usually does. Instead, what was so deeply troubling, stirring all the waters in my soul with worry and pain, was gone, vanished in an instant, and it has never returned during the surgery or all the sleepless nights since.

From that moment on, the shadow of fear and dread dissipated. Most miracles are not splitting the Red Sea, but letting God take your pain and parting you from the suffering emotions and fears that you carry. All was well. I knew it, and God knew it, and suddenly my heart was clear. I could dwell in gratitude for his grace upon us in this trying time. My mind was new, my shock was gone, and gratitude filled every empty spot of my soul.

So it was with gratitude for every single piece of this experience that we went to the hospital. We were grateful for the years of research that developed the scores of processes and procedures that made open-heart surgery possible. We were grateful to the doctor who had such discipline and dedication to learn this skill to be confident working on the human heart. (Scot’s heart would be stopped for about 100 minutes.) We felt humbled by every loving gesture from the hospital staff who were attentive night and day. We were overwhelmed with joy at the love and support offered by our wonderful children, grandchildren, and friends.

These days, while Scot is fighting to heal his sternum and watch the leg from which the vein was harvested be black with bruising, are still happy ones for us. As Scot likes to say, “My secret weapon is gratitude.” Acknowledging God’s grace and blessings upon you requires eyes to see, for He is one who works quietly and anonymously, but I can testify that it is real and powerful.

I will never forget having my soul move from horrified and agonized to calm and peaceful before my husband’s operation, so I could dwell in grace through the entire ordeal. Healing my soul is as real as healing my husband’s body.

Some Pointed Questions

Yet, when we talk of pain and gratitude, some pointed questions arise. Wouldn’t it have been much better if he had no genetic inclinations toward heart disease and had sailed through the age of 42 all those years ago without entering a hospital? Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable to not need open-heart surgery at all? Shouldn’t the Lord shield and protect us from every possibility of pain? Some might ask, why did we get the miracle of a successful surgery, when so many are harangued by things they hate and would plead with God to take them away?

Sometimes we call out in anguish, and we think that God has forgotten our address because we are in pain and cannot find relief.

Every soul has to wrestle with God on their journey about this. When pain is intense and no relief is in sight, can I continue in faith? Can I kneel when I am at the very limit of my extremities and continue to pray? C.S. Lewis has some thoughts on that in his book The Problem of Pain.

The natural world is a place of law and predictability. It is the only kind of world that would be livable for us, because anything else would be confusing, difficult, and unwieldy. It also means that two objects cannot be in the exact same place at the same time without feeling the pain of collision, that germs and viruses lurk at every turn, and that this is no place for immortal souls to be stuck for any longer than a short time, meaning that our bodies are not built to last. We have a limited warranty on them.

If the world changed and turned at every moment to save us from pain, Lewis says:

“A world so built would be one in which a broken glass would somehow reassemble itself because a child had cut his finger; a stone would soften its hardness whenever we stumbled; the fire would refuse to burn because someone disliked being burned.”

And:

“If miracles were offered at every turn of the road, then Nature would cease to be Nature. Men could not know what to expect from one instant to another.”

And:

“If God varied the laws of nature whenever they made it inconvenient for us, we should have no confidence in them at all. A stone would have no fixed hardness, fire would change its nature whenever it pleased us; water would refuse to drown a man, or a precipice to kill him, if they were going to be inconvenient.

What Does This Mean?

This means we are living in a world of fixed laws where the stakes are high. Lewis says, “If there is to be freedom, if there is to be any moral life at all, then courage and unselfishness must exist, and these can exist only where danger is real.”

Could we learn courage if we were never in danger, or exercise compassion if no one ever really was wounded? Could we ever exercise trust in the Lord if he padded our experience so that it never hurt, or if he answered every plea so directly and clearly that no faith was necessary?

Here’s Lewis again, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Shouting in our Pains

What he is shouting is, “I love you.” “I see you.”  “Come know me.” “Fear not.” “I know the end from the beginning.”

If we will let him, he offers the most potent power in our hard times, and that is gratitude. Gratitude changes the way the wind is blowing for us. We see difficulty as an invitation to know God better. Seeing our agonies through the lens of gratitude swings wide open new spiritual doors.

The Lord is consistent in all times and in all scripture in asking us to be grateful. This is grateful in all things, but is particularly important during times of suffering. Does He need our gratitude? Probably not, but we need gratitude in suffering because it heals and opens our souls.

Feeling gratitude in hard times means we have submitted to the Lord, learned to trust Him, and can now hear Him. Instead, demanding in prayer that he change our circumstances makes us blind and unable to hear.

In Habakkuk 3:17-18, we read: “Though the fig tree shall not blossom…yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” (That’s a very different prayer than, “Make my fig tree blossom or else, I’m done with you.)

In Acts 16:25, Paul and Silas have been arrested and are in stocks, “when they sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them.” (That’s very different than whining that they have been abused.)

Just a month after the Latter-day Saints in Independence had their lives turned upside down by the mob’s demands that they leave their homes at once, the Lord advises them: “Verily I say unto you my friends, fear not, let your hearts be comforted; yea rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks; waiting patiently on the Lord.” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:1,2.

Alma says that we must “live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you (Alma 34:38).

In Summary

So, the scriptures are unanimous in reminding us to live in gratitude, and, among other things, it is to give us the humility to be blessed through our hardest times. Gratitude is like a protective shield for us. It is a superpower. It absorbs and reflects light. It makes every agony a sacrament. It puts us in touch with God, who wipes away our tears and calms our troubled seas.

This very minute, we are in the midst of recovery from open-heart surgery, and I testify that we are happy because we are grateful. Gratitude opened the door for God to do His work.