Why I Believe
By Stephanie Waite
I was born and raised by faithful life-long members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So, in my childhood they taught me
about Jesus and my Heavenly Father. I was taught the doctrines of repentance
and faith and choosing the right. Eventually, when I turned 8, I was baptized.
Many might believe that this teaching and training by
parents are my reason for believing. And I will say that their efforts in
parenting are what guided me to my belief. But my parents teaching is not why I
believe today.
I believed my parents when I was a child. But, I did not
really live their teachings very well. I was a naughty kid. I am not saying
that lightly. I mean, it is just the truth. I was not really kind to my
friends. I hurt them physically frequently. I was stubborn and selfish and
insecure.
I believed the LDS church was true because I had been taught
that. But, I didn’t know it for myself. I was going to church every week and
all that, but my heart had not been converted.
As my childhood turned to adolescence, I may have stopped
scratching my friends and acting out but I found other ways to get attention
from my peers. By the time I was 13 I had been going to our youth program for a
year and had felt the Spirit on more than one occasion. I knew I needed to be
better and I was trying.
Shortly before I turned 14, I started going to seminary, a
before school class where you study the scriptures. I had an amazing teacher
who had a huge impact on my life (thank you to Garth Tesch.) I began reading my
scriptures on my own everyday. I
had made some good new friends and had really begun to change.
During that year, I had been trying to get one of my best
friends, who was a member of our church but not really active, to come with me
to seminary. She had come a couple
of times and told me she felt the Spirit there. I knew deep down that this was
a good thing for her and I really wanted her to come with me. I had spent a lot
of time and effort trying to encourage her to join me. I felt so happy that she
was feeling the Spirit there.
Two days later, my friend called me one night. I was sitting
in my parents’ study looking at a picture of the Savior they had there. I was
alone. My friend told me excitedly that she had sneaked out of a church
activity with a boy and done some things they ought not to have done. She was
bragging about it. I was crushed. I was so hurt that she would go do these
things after feeling the Spirit and all the work I had been doing to help her
get back to church. (I did mention I was selfish right?)
But as I listened to her, what could I say. Was I any less guilty
than she? No. My own sins, as I knew them to be, were beyond what she had just
told me. I could say nothing. I hung up the phone and the wheels of my mind
started turning.
If I was this hurt by
what she did. How hurt would my parents be if they knew all that I had done?
After all, they had been working my whole life to bring me into the church.
Geez, how hurt must my future children be. How disappointed in me must they
feel. They surely have seen all my doings. They must be so bummed to be getting
a mom who is such a sinner.
Then I looked up and saw the picture of the Savior looking
at me.
He knows. He knows
everything. And so does His Father. They have been working so hard to get me
back to them and here I have been screwing it all up.
At this point, I got up and went into my bedroom. I spent
the next three hours sobbing. I don’t think I can describe how low I felt to
anyone who has not felt the full weight of their sins on their own back. But I
felt them that night… keenly. They were overbearingly heavy on my shoulders. I
wondered how I could live with the weight of them. I was so weighed down in
sorrow that I felt I was not even worthy to utter a prayer.
Yet, praying is what I had been taught we were supposed to
do to be forgiven. Still I shrank before my Maker knowing how I had hurt the
Savior. I knew that what I was feeling, that weight of sin, was just a small
drop of what he had felt in the Garden of Gethsemane. I was so very sorry to
have caused Him such pain. How could I now ask anything from Him?
After three hours, I gathered my courage and knelt before my
Maker. The only words I could think were, “Father, please… please forgive me.”
Immediately … and I mean immediately, all the weight was
gone. It was lifted from my shoulders. I could feel it evaporate off of me. I
was filled with a sense of love and peace that was beyond description. I knew
that I had been completely forgiven for all those sins that had been weighing
me down. I knew I was accepted of the Lord.
When evangelical Christians talk about being “born again,” I
imagine this might be the kind of experience to which they are referring. I had
been baptized years before, but that night I was truly born again. I felt
changed in a mighty way. I knew exactly the weight of the burden the Savior had
taken from me. I knew I would spend the rest of my life in His service in
gratitude for His sacrifice for me.
This experience is why how I know that the Savior is real
and that through His atonement He has the power to forgive sin.
Several months later, after spending a year reading about
and studying the history of our church, I had another experience that gave me a
solid testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith. I went on a trip to visit the
church history sites. I had been praying for about a year to know for myself
whether our church was really all it claimed to me- the only church with a
fullness of the truth of the Savior’s gospel and led by the Savior himself
through a prophet in our day.
One of our last stops was at the Sacred Grove where Joseph
Smith went to ask God which church he should join. He recounts that in answer
to his prayer, God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to him and told
him that he should join none of the churches he had been considering. He was
told that the Savior’s church was not on the Earth at that time but it would be
restored to the Earth through him.
I was familiar with the story. But, I wanted to know for
myself if it was true. So when the group leader gave us time to go find a spot
and pray in that grove, I hoped for an answer. I was disappointed. I was so
concerned by the mosquitoes buzzing around me that I was not able to focus very
well on my prayer. After a short time, I gave up and found a friend and headed
back to the visitor’s center where we were to gather for a testimony meeting.
During that testimony meeting, something amazing happened.
It felt as if a veil was lifted off of my understanding and I felt my heart
burning within me. I am not talking about heartburn, though it was a physical
feeling. It felt like my heart was glowing embers of a fire. It didn’t hurt. It
just felt so warm. Into my mind came scriptures I had read about the truth of
spiritual things being witnessed by a burning of the bosom. I knew that was
what I was feeling.
I also knew that it had been burning for a while but I had
only just then, as the veil of my understanding was lifted, been able to recognize
it. This told me that I had been having witnesses of the Spirit my whole life
but I had not recognized them as such. I needed to be more aware to recognize
them.
I shared my testimony and walked out of that room. I found
comment cards in that visitor’s center and wrote myself a note. I wrote down
how I felt. I told myself never to forget what I knew right then. I knew that
Joseph Smith was a prophet, that he really did have the vision he claimed to
have, and that the Book of Mormon was a true book of scripture. It followed
logically to me that if Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Book of Mormon was
true then this church he restored must also be what it claimed to be.
I wrote on those cards, “I know it and I know God knows that
I know it.” I am bound by that witness. I am committed. I am all in.
Beyond these experiences of my youth, I have had countless
manifestations both big and small of the Spirit guiding me and working in and
through me in my life. I have felt the Spirit as I read the scriptures,
including and especially the Book of Mormon. I have had prayers answered in
miraculous ways. I have seen the Lord’s hand in the workings of the church. I
have been physically healed in a powerful and immediate way by a priesthood
blessing given when I had pneumonia in college. I have had witness after
witness of the truth of the doctrines of the church as I have put them to the
test by living them.
In my adult life, I have been faced with trials that test
faith. I have had doubts enter my mind that could derail me from my faith if I
let them. They are small things, inconsistencies I could focus on, questions I
can’t find answers to, or historical things I just don’t understand about the
church, its doctrine or some of the leaders.
But the fact remains that I know what I have felt. When I am
faced with those questions, trials, or doubts I choose to believe.
Never was this choice more poignant than when my daughter
drowned. Here I was, doing all I could to follow the Savior and choose the
right. And one day as I am sitting 10 yards away inside my house, my 14 month
old is drowning outside in our spa. I had received warning promptings to
prevent bad things from happening before. Yet on this day, it was as if there
was total radio silence from heaven.
God did not stop that bad thing from happening. And as we
fasted and prayed for her to recover, she only got worse. We only felt peace
when we prayed “thy will be done” and turned her over to the Lord’s care.
After she died, religion didn’t help they way you think it
should. It didn’t feel the way I had been taught it would feel. I didn’t feel
the Spirit comforting me. All I felt was pain and loss and sick to my stomach
at the nightmare that was my reality.
That is how it felt at that time. And in those circumstances,
I made a conscious decision to believe anyway. Now as I look back, I can see
how the Lord was with us. I can feel how we were surrounded by the Spirit and
angels were ministering to us daily. I read my writings from that time and feel
the Spirit that was all through me at that time. But, I was unable to feel it
then over the overwhelming pain I was experiencing.
I later heard Elder Scott, a modern day apostle who had lost
2 of his own children, say that trying to feel the spirit after great loss or
grief is like trying to appreciate the delicate flavor of a grape after eating
a jalapeño pepper. His analogy was perfect.
Five and a half years later, I see how much my life has been
blessed and how my family and I have grown in ways we could not have without
Camille’s death. I have seen people join the church and grow closer to God by
reading about our experience. I may not like it, but there was a purpose in her
passing that was within the Lord’s wisdom.
To this day, if ever I read or hear something that makes me
doubt. I step away and choose to believe. Believing makes me happy. It gives me
hope. It helps me survive.
I feel like losing my daughter was like me stepping out of
the boat like Peter did to walk on the water. I have felt everyday since then
has been a miracle of me walking on the figurative water. As long as I keep my
eye focused on what I know (and that is that the Savior loves me and is guiding
me home) I am okay. I dare not take my eye off of Him and be distracted by the
storm around me. It is too bleak, too dark. I survive and thrive only by
keeping my eye on the Savior. I choose to believe and He keeps me afloat.
I believe.
To read more essays on this topic, visit my friend Laura Laurent's blog HERE and click on the tab "Why I Believe." You can even submit your own essay if you like.
