In August I moved into my brother’s duplex in Provo to go to BYU. One of the guys living in back offered me a car. Everything was ready for me when I got there. My path was paved. I had a good time at school, at work, at Church, and at home with Haydn and his wife Doris. Haydn and I were close. We both had very strong feelings about God and His righteousness, and talked a lot. I often prayed about questions we discussed and then told him my impressions. He finally told me that he didn’t think I was talking to God because I received answers too easily. There was something different about the way the Lord treated me; I asked why he spoke to me so easily.
My impression is that we go to the Lord to get not to give: for help with our money, health, and social problems. We treat Him impersonally, despite our worship; He’s our divine store keeper and prayer and worship our coin. We should go to Him instead seeking to offer Him our time and best effort, or simply to share some precious experience, because we like Him. Too often we leave Him alone once we’ve got what we want. My strongest motive was to give something back. The Lord had worked a wonderful change within me. I wanted to give not get.
We ask God for the candy and gum of life instead of the fruits and vegetables of the Spirit. Why seek health, money, and romantic love, when we could have forgiveness, faith, and the Holy Spirit? Praying for the worldly keeps our prayers close to the ground. Greater goals give prayer lift.
People are exactly as far from the Lord as they submit their lives to Him. We are as close to Him as we can bear to hear His ‘no’. We struggle with the Lord over their lives. I do it, though its childish. But giving in is better than bitterly free. Explaining these ideas to Haydn made him laugh because I am not famous for being submissive. He agreed with me about why some people communicate with the Lord better than others; he wasn’t sure about my communication with the Lord, especially after I told him about my impression of whom I shall marry. I reminded him that each of us have different gifts from the Spirit. Perhaps mine was revelation. It didn’t mean I was special: just that in God’s wisdom things would work best this way.
The sum of it all is that we’re sold on a definition of righteousness we’ve bought from our religions; it’s better to receive the righteousness we’re given by God.
I was impressed to try to meet the Osmonds. I wrote them, but that got no response. Friends of mine knew the ward they attended and invited me to go with them. Watching Don reminded me of myself in my ward in Washington. He seemed to want to reach out to everyone in the ward. I walked out the building behind him and spoke to him. His reaction was indifferent and I was startled to realize he thought I was a fan. (I am a fan of Christ and no other!) It disgusted and embarrassed me; I left. Other impressions came but I refused to cooperate. Nothing more ever developed.
I was discouraged and disillusioned by now. On the way home to Washington for Christmas I listened to the BYU/MSU football game. When the score got to be 25\45, MSU winning and only five minutes left in the game, the driver turned the radio off, commenting that we already knew the outcome of that game. Feeling BYU’s chances of winning the same as mine; I prayed and told the Lord that if BYU won, I promised never again to doubt His word about Donny and Marie. BYU, I found out later, did win. Because of that promise, though I have not actively sought fulfillment of His word to me, I allowed it place in my heart.
There were almost no blacks where I grew up. I never had the chance to discriminate because of color. I noticed it on my mission when the other elders refused to let an Indonesian friend of mine come on a trip because “He’s not one of us.” Since he was Mormon, I could only conclude the problem was his skin color. I made sure he came anyway.
In a communications class I was exposed for the first time to a low-level form of racism. There was a very dark black girl in the class called Mary. She was fun to tease and at one point we were all laughing at her embarrassment over something minor. I pointed how lucky she was to be black: if she were white, she would be red. She laughed even harder at this, but the rest were rather quiet. Afterwards she came up to me and I asked her if I had said something wrong. She pointed out to me that if I were the slightest bit racist, I wouldn’t have said that. Because the others, still sensitive to their own racism, couldn’t laugh. I realized that not being a racist caused me to feel free to mention color anytime. I see it, but it doesn’t matter.
It was a relief from my own problems when I got involved with two friends of mine: My Elders Quorum president, Jeff the Relief Society president, Ronnie. I was in the ward for months before I knew they had anything to do with each other let alone that they had such a romance growing. I found out and was told to keep quiet. They didn’t want rumors in the ward to complicate things. They had a difficult relationship. He was a river of thoughts and strong feelings determined in his course. He wanted her to immerse herself in his stream before he was going to start acting the way she wanted. She wanted to hear a simple ‘I love you’ and feel a hug or a kiss now and then before getting wet.
They broke up and I tried to draw them back together. Jeff told me that he would write and propose to her. I was only allowed to tell her she was about to receive a significant letter. She received the letter and they got together for the Christmas holidays at great expense to her. I heard nothing more until a phone call later in January.
She didn’t even say hi, “Laird, this is Ronnie, what was the big deal with the letter?”
“Ronnie! how are you! How did Christmas go with Jeff?”
“Not great.” She said shortly. “What was the big deal with that letter?”
“He said he would propose to you.”
“I thought so. There was no proposal in it: nothing even close.”
“There must have been, He promised.”
“No, the letter was just newsy, there was no proposal.” Ronnie continued, “I let my sisters and my mom read it and they didn’t find anything either.”
“No way, it’s got to be there or he wouldn’t have written. Do you still have it?”
Ronnie left the phone to go find it. I knew there was no resurrecting their relationship; I just wanted to figure out what had happened. She found and read it to me.
It talked about the fall leaves leaving the tree limbs in the park and dropping so gently to the earth. He spoke about his students and others on the faculty. His walks in the park were mentioned as well as were the two old men who sometime came there to play chess with each other under a large tree.
When she finished it, she said, “See there is nothing there about marriage.”
I replied, “Ronnie the whole thing is about marriage. Look how poetic and beautiful it is. He is saying here is my life, are you interested? Would you like to join me?”
I felt so sad, she started to cry and so did I, but it was too late. She had been so busy looking for a specific tree, she hadn’t noticed the forest. Their time together had ended in an emotional explosion. She was searching for a certain set of words before she could accept him. He could not say those words without a certain level of acceptance from her.
I had discovered I had put a lot of myself into their relationship hoping for its success. Their break up also hurt me. They were tremendously fine individuals. I loved and admired both of them. I felt much the same way as when evil spirits came and destroyed the friendship of Buddy, Chris, Judy, and I. Why are the things I give myself to destroyed? The most precious and lovely things I’ve tried to create are wiped out. I feel I’m trying to build a house of cards among the trampling feet of the enraged elephants of life. Would success draw me away from thoughts and devotion to Christ? Would I trust in my own arm and not in His?
When Jeff was leaving the ward, he told me that he had recommended to the bishop that I replace him as the Elders quorum president. At first, I was surprised. I thought about it a lot. I began to think of myself as Elders Quorum president and what I would do. Though I waited expectantly no phone call came and eventually another man was given the position. I was quite disappointed. But I knew my disappointment was irrational. This didn’t change my place with God. Nothing had been done to affect my salvation. It only affected this life. So, I shouldn’t be bothered; but I was. I resolved to keep this weakness in mind and try not to let such things either excite or hurt me.
While I was at BYU the US embassy being taken over by the Iranians and Jimmy Carter’s denial that the US had done anything wrong. Anger and resentment was strong in both countries. I learned in Indonesia that the American intentions can be short-sighted and foolish. They are not always received as we expect. I found some Iranians attending BYU and asked them why this had happened. They were afraid to talk to me at first. I told them about Indonesia and what I learned there.
Then they told me that while many good things were built in Iran with American money, the Shah had also used US money to hold on to power. His hit men killed people who opposed him. Each of the Iranians I talked to knew of someone in their families who had been question, tortured, or slain by the Shah’s men. He could not have been so powerful if it had not been for the money the US was giving him. Paying for his tenure bought our seized embassy. So much intelligence, so little wisdom.
Later when I learned to pray for my enemies, I recalled that there was no one I knew who had done that with Iran. Everyone I knew prayed for and Americans in the embassy. I don’t think that we should be too quick to call ourselves Christians if we are going to ignore Christ’s teachings.
Chad was one of my favorite friends. He had become my companion in Indonesia after an earlier elder left me feeling depressed. We were both at BYU and I used to talk to him about God. One day after expressing some of the things the Spirit was showing me, he told me he was having too much trouble getting along with his roommates to think much about what I was telling him. He said he’d wait until he could live peacefully with others before he began to strive with the Spirit like I suggested. I thought about what he said and then realized I was not having any trouble with my roommates. They weren’t perfect. A couple of them were borderline crazy. I think my success with them was due to the fact that I was too caught up with the things of God to be troubled by them. Trouble yourself with the things of God and He’ll not let the things of life trouble you.