I believe the only way that any of that could be the case is because of my eternal perspective and my love for the Savior. I had an excellent, righteous plan for my future. I was going to graduate high school, get my bachelors degree before I was eligible to serve a mission and then serve a full-time mission for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. I was so excited. This was me. This is me. I am the kind of person who works hard in school (maybe I need to mention that I was getting 4.0s all throughout high school) and I am a missionary. I want all of Heavenly Father’s children to realize their potential in the light of Christ with the most joy beyond any of our understanding. This. Is. Me. So when this was taken away from me 2 weeks before the end of my Junior year, I was PISSED.
In the beginning, I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do simple tasks anymore and why I got overly exhausted all the time. By the time I finally began to understand that this was my new life, I got really angry. In my head, I was still capable of doing everything I once could. Besides that, why would God want to take away such a wonderful plan from me? So while I never denied His existence, I believed whole-heartedly that He did not care about me.
I kept trying though. I had a deep-rooted testimony and I was determined to be able to cling to it once again. There are a few things that one must be steadfast and immovable in to be able to stand strong when life hits you hard. I imagine these are different for each person, but there are 3 things that I have done that have saved my life – both spiritually and physically. The first is simple yet so fun. My music is of the most uplifting quality and I do not listen to anything else. The second is my tender mercies journal; when President Eyring suggested (in 2008) we take a moment at the end of each day to consider how the Lord has been in our lives and make note of it, I took that as a call to action and went to work on it immediately. Recording what I am grateful for each day and being able to go back and reflect on it has been extremely powerful. Finally, ever since the first day I could step foot in the temple, I made a resolution to go to a new temple at least every year on my birthday. That brings us to today.
I haven’t felt very worthy at times. I haven’t felt very loved. I have felt very unloved. I have felt very broken. I have felt very demolished, beaten, defeated and like a pile of ashes. I have felt like the burnt tabernacle in Provo. I have felt like the destroyed Nauvoo temple. I had not ever made that correlation until I was sitting in the dedication for the Provo City Center Temple in 2016. As one of the speakers began describing the Provo City Center Temple’s history – being once sacred then burned, destroyed, having much sadness surrounding it, and then after much thought, deliberation and inquiries of the Lord deciding to make it even holier – it sounded like he was describing me. I remember shuffling through our things as the tears began, trying to find a piece of paper so that I could draw the similarities. This was it. I finally discovered why I had always had such an affinity towards the Nauvoo temple. Because I am the Nauvoo temple, just like I am the Provo City Center temple.
Everything that I once knew was destroyed. I continue to learn that I’ve been doing all sorts of things wrong since the accident. Small things like walking, standing, or sitting, all of these things I do incorrectly. My brain couldn’t process academics the way that it always had. All of my friends walked away. My hair was shaved and even when it grew back it was growing back a darker color! So, like both temples, there wasn’t a whole lot leftover to work with. However, there was still a strong foundation of my family and my Savior. It was going to take a whole lot of work and a whole lot of time – longer than the Provo City Center but hopefully not as long as the Nauvoo temple – to get back to and holier than before.
Let me make note that I am no where near close to being finished. I am very much in the construction stage and it feels like I’ve been pounding the same nail, for the last 10 years. However, Cherie Call often reminds me through her music, “when I feel like just a teardrop in the rain, [God] sees the ocean in me.” I have also asked some of my close friends who have been with me throughout all or almost all of the last ten years to help explain the progress that I cannot see.
Like I mentioned earlier, it has been a tradition for me to visit a new temple on my birthday every year. Unfortunately, COVID makes that impossible. Coronavirus also destroyed the thoughts and plans I had about my 10 year anniversary earlier this year. So in lieu of both of these significant events, we decided to talk about my connection to these unique temples instead.
Building the lego temple proved to be a long, intricate process. Even in the very beginning there were some pieces that were confusing and I didn’t understand what the point was of having them there. I later found out that those exact pieces were some of the fundamental foundation pieces to hold the insides together. But, despite having placed them exactly where the plan had said to, when I put pressure on them, many of them still collapsed. Building the Provo City Center temple lego set reinforced the similarities with my life. Friends, academics, extracurricular activities, dreams, plans, etc. had all been put exactly where they were supposed to be, yet when pressure was applied, they collapsed. Unfortunately, my life isn’t as easy as picking up the lego piece and replacing it.
As I began the roof, I noticed something wasn’t quite right. So I had to back track a number of steps. This reminds me of just about everything I have to do now. For example, I used to play all sorts of musical instruments, I was a fast speaking debater, I loved calculus, rollerblading was my outlet, so on and so forth. In order to rollerblade again, I had to regain balance. In order to play any instrument, at the most basic level, I had to go back and learn where middle C is. I still can’t speak fast or do advanced calculus but you understand what I’m saying.
My spiritual connection was one among many things that was severed in my accident. It is very hard for me to feel His spirit or know that what I am doing is in accordance with His will. Because of this and many other symptoms regarding my traumatic brain injury, I ask for priesthood blessings like it’s nobody’s business. This is something that has helped me rebuild my personal temple.
Discovering my love for learning and my passion for the brain has also been an aid to rebuild my temple. Grieving the fact that family are the only ones that really matter has supported this construction. But finding the joy that family brings has enhanced the process. Finding ways to serve little children – whom I adore – adds stones to this temple. Serving people I’ve never met in the Philippines and bringing them to Christ, rebuilding my body and how it’s supposed to function, creating strong relationships with therapists and receptionists, living my life in the weird, contorted way that I can now, are rebuilding this temple. I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I don’t have the master plan. I don’t know what the next step is. But I trust the one who does. It has been a long, hard ten years, and I am no where close to being the finished product, but I can firmly say that I believe in Christ. With him, come what may, because I can do anything with Him by my side.
