2017 Chaplain Training - Recognizing the Lord s Tender Mercies in Hard Times Janet Johnson

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Merry Barnett
5 years ago
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1 : I have to take a minute to assess my audience. I m the Gospel Doctrine teacher currently in our ward, and you know, everybody that s a teacher takes that teachers course that the Church does now. One of the important things is to know your audience. Sisters, I m really humbled. I love my audience. You are my heroes, so it s really hard to speak in front of you. This talk is usually my favorite take-home talk of the whole chaplains seminar. I don t know if you feel the same, but because we get to know the intimate details of each other s lives and the trials that we re going through, I was really hoping to skip the details of my trials and just talk about how we got through it. All of those things were taken up in conference. You know, what it came down to, really, and what I want to talk about, is how we can serve each other and, through service, let that be our healing balm to get us through our hard times. There were so many wonderful talks on service, and I will give some specific details about that. I had some wonderful suggestions from my navy sisters in our breakout session. So grateful for all of you guys. So what it came down to, the only thing that I could share with you that you haven t already heard this weekend, is my story. My story is not anything different than your own, but it s mine and so I can share it with you. I ve known about this assignment for probably three months, and it s been weighing on my mind. I ve gone over and over the things that I would talk about, but I guess when it gets down to it, I ll tell you about the hard time I went through this year. Because of my age, I m labeled advanced maternal age. Have you heard that one? If you re 35 or older and you ve having babies, you re in that upper category, and you get extra-special tests. So I was offered a test in January for trisomy 13, 18, and 21. I ve always declined it in the past, but now it s DNA and you get to find out the gender of your baby. I have four girls and one boy, so we were really excited. I could tell I don t know if you can tell when you re pregnant, by how you carry your child, what you re having. I said, I know it s a boy, and I would love to confirm that. My doctor said, I ll call you in a week, because that s how quick you get the response back. In a week I got a call, but it wasn t my physician. It was the medical assistant asking me to come in. So I did a quick study on that test and what the possibilities would be. I asked my husband to accompany me. I was preparing myself for Down syndrome. I guess I am a little older and thought that s what it would be. When we got in, I was really surprised to find out it was 98 percent accurate screening for trisomy 18. And by the way, it is a little boy. So the tears didn t start until she told me it was a boy. Anyway, the other thing they say about trisomy 18 is that it is not compatible with life. That s the medical phrase that they offer you for consolation, I guess. I don t

2 know. But I had a really nice doctor, and she said, Anything you want, anything you need, you know, call me and let me know, and I ll do whatever I can to help you. They don t usually make it to term, so your next option would be the amniocentesis at 16 weeks. I was 12, 13 weeks by that point and got to go home with that. But you know what? I live on Twentynine Palms. It s a Marine Corps base. The large families, we have large vans. And as I was driving home, my other friend, who drives a Ford Transit and I drive the Nissan NV, you know, we have these big buses she was there. And I stopped. She was there, and she s my friend because not only does she have five children, but she s a navy chaplain spouse. In that moment she cried with me and prayed with me. That was a real tender mercy at that time. Then I went on my way home and processed that. Then I decided to talk to my doctor. I said, Well, you know, I just would like to know there s a heartbeat. So she let me come in weekly for heartbeat. Week 15, I just thought it would be a regular heartbeat. She was looking, and you know, sometimes on the ultrasound they re looking at dimensions. She was taking a long time, and I said, Well, what s she looking for? And that s when it sank in that she was looking for a heartbeat. So she went and got another physician to confirm the fact that there was no heartbeat. You know, her response also was, Well, this is a tender mercy. You don t have to carry it to term. Another option would be to terminate, and I just couldn t do that. Anyway, coming home from that appointment, there was my friend in her van, and she was outside. And she cried with me and prayed with me. I love my chaplain spouses. Did I say that right? They re my sisters out there. Not only did the ward offer meals they were wonderful. So some things you can do if you haven t heard of that, the Meal Train. It s an online thing, and people can sign up to bring in meals to your home. You can open that up on your Facebook. It s just a link. So we had over two, three weeks of meals come in. That was hard to feel OK with, but she assured me that it was really a blessing to them to be able to do that for me, because what else do you do for somebody? My chaplain spouses, my sisters, they did do other things for me. One time I just didn t want to be alone, and Clint was coming in late from the field or something like that, and I just asked the sister by the way, she s lost a child, too, but as an adult. She has no other children, so she is very much service-oriented. I said, I just need somebody to be there with me. And she did. She came and helped me clean up dishes and let me get the kids to bed, and then we just talked. We talked about losing a child. Actually, the conversation went like this. It was something like, I can t believe that the Lord trusts me enough to go through that trial. And she s like, I ve never heard anybody else say that, but I feel that way, too. It really is an honor. There are a few scriptures these were my notes. They are so crazy. I tried so hard to have this all written out, and I just knew I couldn t because it s too hard to write

3 down. Anyway, the scriptures, there are several, but basically when Jesus commanded His disciples or us to become like Him right? That s the commandment, to become like Him. I always thought that was, like, by doing good things and being good. I never realized that becoming like our Savior, we also endure pains and sorrows and heartache. That s another way to become like Him. I m the Gospel Doctrine teacher, so last Sunday we had the lesson on the Willie handcart company. I had a member from the stake come up to me afterwards like, Wow, I was in this other ward, and they focused a lot on the historical facts, but yours was focusing on the spiritual aspect, because the lesson, we wanted to liken it to our own spiritual journey you know, the pioneers journey to our spiritual journey. During the lesson he had raised his hand and made some comments, and it was a very spiritual experience. It was a really good lesson. But he made some comments about the Savior. I think it s in Nephi. I don t know where my notes are. They re, like, right here, but I can t see them. You know how that goes. Alma 7:11 12, and it talks about the Lord s suffering. I said, Well, why is that your favorite scripture? and he said, Because the Lord knows our pains and our sorrows. I could see in his eyes his pains and his sorrows on such a deep level. I ve never seen that before. I knew he was talking about his wife. She had died. I didn t know how I knew that, but the Spirit told me. Afterward he came up to me and he said, You know, not a lot of people realize how the Willie handcart company, how cold it was up there in Wyoming on the frozen grounds. He said, But I do, and my wife s buried there in those grounds. It was a real blessing that because of my sorrows, I knew how to have compassion for him. I felt his sorrows. I don t know that I ve ever cried with a stranger over their sorrows before, but it was very tender and very sweet because I had experienced something similar to losing a loved one. My grandma passed away. Her name s Janet, by the way. I m her namesake. She was 94, and I think I called her on the phone more than I called my mother. My husband s grandmother we re just getting to that age where we re realizing how precious life is and how much love we have for our ancestors. My heart is turning to my fathers. It s beautiful. I am so grateful for these experiences. There was one other part of that this last year that I wanted to add, and that s because my husband was deployed a year and a half ago, I knew that I wanted to find another lady on the base whose husband was deployed. I was lucky. There was a lady who moved into our ward. She had four kids. She was having a baby, and then her husband left 11 days later. It was a nine-month deployment. I told her husband, I said, She s mine. I ll take care of her. I tried really hard. I had a shower for her, and we had her over, and then I had my health issues. So I picked her up in the spring, and we went to Time Out for Women. I got her son enrolled in soccer and the theater camp that my kids are doing.

4 You know that talk this morning, your husband, about physical fitness? I knew I needed to get there. I didn t want to. I was at the gym, and being in the military I like to exercise, but I wasn t feeling good. So she and I helped each other get there. We d go every day because we d drop our kids off at theater camp, and then we d go to the gym. It took a couple weeks to actually get back into that, but it was healing. Having her to talk to was healing. I had been helping her; I thought, You know? I was on the treadmill next to her and I m like, Oh, my goodness. I m doing all these things. When is somebody going to help me? It was really rather pathetic. She didn t say anything. She s really sweet. We re moving, and so she said, I d like to come over an hour each week and just help you sort through your stuff, and How about we do movie night at my house this week? It was just really neat to see things turn. You know, when we feel like we have so many great needs and we re drowning. And I go to the doctor and cry, Please find something wrong with me, because I don t know what s wrong. She s like, OK. So she ran all the tests. She s like, Well, you re healthy. Everything s good. It s just, we need each other. And we can t wait until we re in a good place to serve others, because it s that service that s what s going to heal us. So I wanted to challenge you to think about, you know in your times of need, when you d say, Well, I wish somebody would have done that for me, be that person that does that, and your need will somehow, magically get filled. The Lord knows your needs, but He also knows their needs, and we need to help each other. If you re in a place where you re on a military base, really reach out and do your best and rely on those other chaplain spouses. It s a great resource, and it s been a blessing to me. The Lord loves us. I know my time is short. I have something up here that s from the inter-library loan. I just want to read it. It s called Indian Captive. Have you ever read that? It s by Lois Lenski. Anyway, it s about Mary Jemison. She was an Indian captive. She s talking to Earth Woman, who is a woman kind of like I don t know. Anyway, she s wise. And Mary s asking her, you know they re talking about the Great Spirit. Mary was Western. She was born on a ship coming over. She was a Pilgrim. They believed in, you know, Christianity. So she was asking her, the Earth Woman, about this Great Spirit. She s like, Yeah, I think I remember now. My mom used to talk about somebody like that, but we didn t call it that. It was a different name. She said, If you ask the Great Spirit for things, will he give them to you? And Earth Woman said, We try to remember what he has already given. We thank him for the changing seasons, for the fruits of the earth, for the preservation of our lives. Then we ask that he continue his protecting care over his children. He knows what is good for us (Lois Lenski, Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison [1995], ). That stayed with me the last couple weeks. Our Provider knows what is good for us. We need to remember all the good things He s done for us. And I pray that we can do that and it will lift us up. As we serve, we will be filled with that love. And I leave my testimony with you that this is the Lord s Church. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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December 6-7, Jesus is Born. Luke 1-2; Matthew 2; Matthew 1:21. Jesus came to earth to be with us

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