Faith In Every Footstep

Faith In Every Footstep
July 28, 2013
By Sarah Millington

                                                                                                                                                                            

During a busy time of the restoration in September of 1831, the prophet Joseph Smith received the following counsel from the Lord found in Doctrine and Covenants 64:33:
“Wherefore-be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.  And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.”   The faithful Saints who helped in the restoration and the Pioneers who crossed the plains and settled this state are examples of those who have heeded that counsel.

I am the daughter of an institute teacher.  Through the years my Dad’s specialty became church history.  Because of this, I grew up knowing about pioneers.  As a child I walked through the Sacred Grove and climbed the Hill Cumorah.  I stood in the place where Jesus appeared in the Kirtland Temple.  I walked through Old Nauvoo and camped by the Mississippi river.  I’ve climbed Rocky Ridge and stood on top of Independence rock.  I’ve visited Devil’s gate, Chimney rock, the Sweetwater River and other sites along the Mormon trail.  And every time I went to Dad with a problem, he told me about pioneers.  

I admit that as I grew into adulthood and the trials and pressures of life became greater, I grew weary of the “pick up your handcart and move on” advice.  Somehow thinking about the pioneers and their incredible suffering  just made me feel lame and guilty for the simpleness of my own trials. I was genuinely struggling with these difficulties, however small, and I wanted comfort and escape from  the circumstances.   It was hard to see the usefulness of talking about pioneers when my problems seemed so different from theirs. 

We worked our way through those trials and the ones that followed through the years without thinking much about pioneers.  I always admired the qualities of self reliance and frugality so I trained myself in some of the old fashioned skills to help our family be provident and thrifty.  I found it enjoyable to do things the “old fashioned” way now and then.  Maybe there were times where I thought I’d make a decent pioneer.  Mostly I was glad for my convenient life.

But as the size of my family grew, my ability to achieve and accomplish things, even good things diminished.  I was living in the mentality that I knew the kind of help I needed in order to “get back in the game” and I was growing impatient with my own failures and the lack of support I was getting from heaven.  I was trying to be a good girl and do everything right, but did not feel like the Lord was helping me the way He should.  I was unaware of the refining process I was going through and was quickly falling into a state of depression and despair.  I could not understand why the Lord would command me to do all of these things and then not help me and make it easy or even possible to do them.  Week after week, my efforts to perform at a higher level were sabotaged and I was left feeling abandoned by God. 

In the years since that time, I have been taught by teachers, friends, and experiences  that my worth as God’s daughter is not based on my performance. I have learned a  different way to measure success.  .   Seventeen Miracles was one of those experiences.

A couple of years ago, my sister and her family acted in several church movies including 17 miracles.  It is a movie worth watching.  As I sat and watched the suffering of those people play out before me, I finally started to “get it” about pioneers.  I began to understand what my Dad was trying to tell me all of those years ago.   I wrote in my journal the following entry entitled 18 miracles: 

“Dallin and I had the opportunity to go to the movies. 
This is a rare treat for us, but we decided to splurge since my sister's family is in the movie.
Our money was not wasted.
Scene after scene made me weep as I watched the faith of the early Saints being tried and tested.
And I wondered, has my faith been tested like that?
I watched people giving their all, burying their little ones and dear sweethearts. 
If they were lucky enough to be able to dig a grave.
And I wondered, am I giving my all?
I saw a woman who sat on a rock and refused to go on because she had suffered so much privation and weakness.  A miracle helped her choose to go on.
And I empathized with her weakness and feelings of being overwhelmed.
And I wondered, how many miracles have helped me stand back up when I've faltered?
How many more will I need to get to Zion? 
Can I, like her, remember the past miracles and be grateful when I am tempted to despair?
I saw people suffering beyond imagination for what they believed in.  The world would have called them fools.
And I wondered, am I listening to the wisdom of man more than trusting in God?
The movie was called 17 miracles.
The 18th miracle is the one going on inside of me”

My sister shared the following thoughts about the experience:

“Okay, I am just going to keep it real here, and admit that while I have always admired and appreciated the pioneers, when Kevin and I were asked to go on trek with the youth in our stake, I was VERY glad that I was pregnant, and had a good reason to decline. My thought on that has always been,” Why would anyone want to reenact other people’s terrible, hard, tragic, and otherwise miserable experiences?????” Well, I am here to admit, that going through the winter unit of this movie did give me insight and love for these people with a new eye of understanding. I would not want to do it again, but I am thankful to have had that small glimpse not of the suffering necessarily, but of the strength that they had, and that testimony that surely their strong spirits must have in some way supported their bodies, because there is not a way that they could have endured what they endured without miracles.

Our first day of the winter unit was Kenzie’s scene, where she portrayed the death and revival of a young girl in one of the companies. It was pretty far below freezing that entire day, and we could not get warm. We had layers, we had heaters, and still we were just exhausted with cold. It was disconcerting not only to see my daughter in makeup depicting this young girl’s death, but it made me wonder how that girl must have felt to be brought back to life in such conditions. Honestly.

Our second day on the winter unit was Kimball’s day. This day was a bit warmer, but it didn’t stop snowing once. We were all soaked through, and Kimball had holes in his shoes, and was shivering before we had even gotten to location. Again, we could not get warm. Everyone was miserable, and we would take turns taking kids shoes off and trying to warm their feet in front of the heater, but it didn’t do much good because everything was soaking wet. Several times I took Kimball’s shoes off and put his feet on my stomach to try and get them warm. Kimball and his friend Savannah played two children who died on the trail. This day they filmed them in a common grave, and again, I did not like seeing the death makeup on my child. They also shot a scene at the end of the day of he (Nels Nelson) and Bodil struggling in the snow right before they die. It was a poignant scene, and people were taking great photos of it, but I don’t think I could ever hang this photo up and look at it every day. It is too much for me to think about. I know this doesn’t need to even be said, but I had a bed to go home to that night, and a fireplace and hot chocolate, and because of the exhaustion, and the relief to get home that day, I felt that I would not soon take that for granted. The thought did not escape me that it must be terrible to have no place that is a refuge. How could these mothers and fathers cope with watching their children starve and freeze, and they had no way to help them? I kind of can’t even think about it. That day broke my heart, really.

I think everyone likes to fancy that somewhere in their lineage there is some royalty, or some “blue blood.” It has come to my attention as of late, that in my case, this is not true. My dad has been relating a lot of stories lately about our “redneck”  ancestors. But what this experience has given me is a sense that I have the blood of stalwart, unfailing, and faithful people running through my veins, and that they were able to see and experience these kinds of things and get through it because they knew what they were doing was a great work. I believe that they were given a sense of vision of what this would mean to us as their descendants, and I will be forever appreciative of it, and have the utmost respect and gratitude for them.”

              

  God is going to ask us to do hard things, and he will not rescue us from the very things he has prepared to refine us.  I realized that I had been praying for the wrong kind of help. I have learned that Christ did not come to save us from our circumstances.  When we believe that he did, we make the same mistake that the Jews of his day made.  Christ came to save us from our sins.  And when we turn to Him, he will, in mercy, show us our weaknesses, humble us, and refine us. 

I began a process of learning to center my life on Christ, on choosing happiness no matter my circumstances, on being thankful in all things.  All Things—including trials.  It was a new kind of gratitude.  Instead of just looking outside my misery and trying to find beautiful things around me or being glad that it wasn’t any worse, I began to see the beauty in the trials themselves.   I learned that pain, disappointment, and difficulty are part of the package of the gift of mortality.

When I started using the pain and irritation as an invitation to think of Christ and what He suffered for me, the trials no longer had the power to affect my personal peace.  

 In order for the pioneers to get up each morning and work through such extremities, they had to have something to go on besides sheer endurance.  And we all know that getting to the Salt Lake Valley did not end their hardships.  Hoping for a better world may seem fruitless in our own seasons of extremity, especially when we are offered no immediate escape from the trial or perhaps no relief until the end of this life.  But I believe there is power in the hope itself.  Hope in Christ has the ability to make the trials of today bearable and even sweet.

The motto by which we honor pioneers is Faith in Every Footstep.  We have heard the stories of what that meant to them.  We sing about pioneer children who sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked.  We know that they kept walking even when they left bloody footprints in the snow.  We weep when we hear of little ones buried in shallow, cold graves or young children left to live and finish the journey on their own.  We shudder to think of being so cold, so sick, and so hungry.  Yet they walked on, sang on, prayed on, and worked on because they knew they were following Christ.  Like my sister said, we do not honor them for their suffering, we honor them for their faith in Christ.   They trusted that they were laying the foundation for a great work.  They saw miracles of rescue and relief, but more important, they were miracles themselves!  They were truly giving all to follow Christ and they had no regrets.  All was well with them because they were with Christ.  They knew there was a greater wealth to be found in following him than in all they left behind.  We would do well to consider that they gave up that which our culture most treasures for a life in Christ.   We reap the benefits of that great work that they laid the foundation for.  They believed in it and hoped for it.  We witness and experience it. 

And so we too can be miracles.  The great work is not finished.  Our own footsteps can be as faithful as theirs.  In Hebrews 11:1 it tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. “  Indeed the faith of the pioneers is evidence that there was and is a greater cause to live for than the accomplishments and praise of the world.  Knowing that faith is a substance helps us understand the importance of nurturing and exercising it.  In Alma 32 we are given a great analogy about nourishing faith as a seed.  What can we do to nourish our faith?  Pray.  Read the words of God and his prophets.  Ponder and write.  In our fitness-crazed culture where we are encouraged to write down everything we take into our bodies, are we as careful and regular about what we take into our souls?  Is your spiritual food diary full of regular, nourishing feasts with plenty of snacks in between?  I know I have a lot of work to do to improve my spiritual diet.  When we nourish our faith, we are doing things that will invite the Holy Spirit to be with us.  We must also be aware of the many devices and distractions that drive His influence form our lives. 

Now that we know how to nourish faith, how do we exercise it?  In short, we follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost and keep the commandments.  We work toward having faith in EVERY footstep.  Not just the steps we take down the halls of the church or the temple.  Not just the steps that lead us to our knees in prayer.  When we truly have faith in every footstep, we are allowing Christ into every single part of our lives.  We are loving Him with all of our might, mind, and strength.  Success will begin to look less and less like the standards the world sets and more and more like a day where more footsteps were taken in faith.  We begin to see that every moment of our lives is really an opportunity to accept or reject Christ.  To walk by faith or by fear. 

The first  time I put this principle into practice was during a tantrum of my then 3 year old.  It was almost comical how something that would normally wind me up and fill me with temptations to be angry or hurtful or depressed became a fun challenge to see if I could remain in the Spirit.  Other footsteps may include getting people ready for church, spilled milk, misunderstandings with a spouse, problems at work, sickness, education—all of these steps can be taken in faith.  As we learn to increase our faithful footsteps, life becomes more fun and joyful.  We begin to see with an eternal perspective.  Our spiritual muscles become strong enough to be steadfast in Christ no matter what our circumstances are.  The cares of the world begin to slip away and we realize that we can experience peace and joy and rest in the Lord and enjoy His presence even while completing our life on this earth. 

My prayer for myself is that I will cease to be weary in well-doing.  That I will put my shoulder to the wheel—even that I will submit to the God-directed curriculum of my life and “ pick up my handcart and move on.” That I will strive to take more faithful footsteps each day.  I hope that I will remember the pioneers—not as a source of guilt and not merely because of their suffering, but as an example of their faith and true success.  I believe that they are some of the “angels round about us, ready to bear us up” and help us have faith in every footstep.