Suddenly the past ten years weighed down on me. In 2010 I was diagnosed with leukemia and had two years of chemo to achieve remission. In 2013 I relapsed and needed a bone marrow transplant. In 2016 the leukemia came back, this time in lesions on my sternum, ribs, and spine, requiring targeted radiation and a second transplant. That effort was delayed with a severe bout of pneumonia, the source of which was finally discovered after a bronchoscopy, a lung biopsy, and three months on oxygen. Since then, due to side effects and a weakened immune system, I have worked through graft versus host disease, where my donor bone marrow has attacked my own body, interstitial lung disease (a chronic condition), cataracts, dry mouth, and dry eyes. I don’t think I should be old enough for this kind of body! Scars, radiation tattoos, bouts of baldness, infertility, and now my second bout of shingles. How in the world am I supposed to honor mortality when some days I’m not even sure I want to wake up to this body? This is certainly the depths of mortality.

I resonate with Jane Snyder Richards’s account. Her husband had been sent on a mission soon after the family fled Nauvoo in 1846. Her two-year-old daughter became ill, and Jane delivered a baby boy in her wagon, who died an hour after birth. Two months later, in September, her little girl grew worse. Jane wrote, “There was a time when I had thought she might live and then it seemed as though all I had suffered would seem but a dream.” Unfortunately, the toddler died, and Jane continued her account: “Now she was taken my own life seemed only a burden. My Husband was to be away for two years and the hardships he might suffer made his return seem most uncertain.” Jane was all alone in the middle of the mud and the inhumane conditions. I think she could hardly summon up her strength, because she wrote, “I only lived because I could not die.”[1]

Have you ever felt the burden of mortality? Handcart pioneer Priscilla Evans wrote upon reaching the Salt Lake Valley in 1856, that she was “tired, sick foot sore and weary.”[2] Both Melissa Morgan Dodge and Ann Marsh Abbott separately described at the end of some pretty extreme afflictions that they were now “in the land of the living.”[3] The physical part of mortality is just so physical. Physical and mental health, disabilities, broken bodies, disease, virus, age—strangely, by design, all these things wear us down. I have had a lot of reactions to my physical trials: “Everything happens for a reason.” “You should try a plant-based diet.” “Maybe you needed a course correction.” “This is part of Heavenly Father’s plan for you.” I reject these trite explanations. I believe that I chose to come to earth, to be born into an imperfect body in a fallen world with the possibility that my DNA might slip and produce lymphoblastic cells rather than regular blood cells. I also believe in the law of compensation, the gospel of restoration, the good news of Jesus Christ—that a way would open for me, whether that be through well-trained medical doctors and new drugs and technology or through fasting and prayers of my family, friends, and ward or through a combination of both faith and science. It is part of my mortal existence.

At this Easter season, we celebrate the good news of the gospel—the resurrection and redemption of Jesus Christ and his gift of salvation and exaltation offered to all of us. I believe the best way to understand this gift is to recognize its cost. I want to talk about what it means to honor mortality. I think we need to understand this time and recognize the physical, emotional, and social aspects that could be achieved only with a physical body, with its limits and far reaches, its sorrows and joys, and the promise of renewal, restoration, compensation, and hope.

There are some amazing things that we experience with our mortal bodies. I used to be a fit, healthy young woman who ran marathons and loved hiking, the gym, and physical activity. There is nothing like that finish-line energy spurt where your heart pumps and your blood flows and your muscles stretch as you suddenly find a very last bit of momentum to stretch across the finish line. Or when you finally reach the top of that never-ending mountain and gaze over a breathtaking view. Now my lungs and legs allow me to walk through my neighborhood or do yoga, where I engage deep breathing to establish core balance, then spread my limbs and my back in ways that invigorate me beyond my own capacity. Sight! Sound! Taste! Touch! Smells! All have so many incredible sensations. We can sing and dance; we travel and work and plant and reap. We are living the law of the harvest. Oh, it is so good to be alive!

And yet it’s so hard. So much ugliness, chilling sounds, bitter tastes, abusive touch, and stench. Exhaustion, depression, addiction, so many emotions. Sometimes I wonder, knowing what I know now, if I really did shout for joy upon hearing about this mortal part of the plan (see Job 38:7). Or celebrate the courageous act of “our glorious mother Eve” in choosing the bitter fruit that would bring us here (see Doctrine and Covenants 138:39). I think to an extent, we all experience what she and Adam did: a creation, a Fall, a covenant, and time—time to learn how to fill the measure of our creation; to multiply and replenish and create good, beautiful things; to wander through our own wildernesses and deal with the briars and noxious weeds.

Balm of Gilead, by Annie Henry Nader. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Have you ever thought about the doctrinal aspect of the human body? The restored gospel reveals the need to perform proxy ordinances for the dead, those that do not have bodies, including baptism. Like Eve, those of us who have made sacred covenants in the temple know of the very physical blessings that come in the initiatory, that each part of our bodies can be made strong and holy. As an ordinance worker in the Salt Lake Temple before it closed, I grappled a lot with those promises, myself having an imperfect physical body, broken down by chemo and radiation and life. I realized that some of those promises are for here and now, like bearing the burdens I am called to bear. But some of these are for my future, like health in my navel, marrow to my bones, and running without weariness or walking without fainting (see Proverbs 3:8; Doctrine and Covenants 89:18, 20).

Take, for example, the way we learn about Christ. We know that he was born to “dwell in a tabernacle of clay,” wherein he would suffer “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind,” and “the pains and the sicknesses of his people,” including death, infirmities, and sins (Mosiah 3:5; Alma 7:11–13). When he was resurrected, he continued to bear the marks of the crucifixion. At a most sacred, intimate moment when he appeared on the American continent, he asked those who had survived earthquakes, mass destruction, and chaos to come thrust their hands into his side, to feel the nail prints in his hands and feet (see 3 Nephi 11:14; Mosiah 2:9). Two of my favorite hymns express that physicality:

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?[4]

And

Behold His wounded hands and feet!

Come touch, and see, and feel,

The wounds and marks that you may know

His love for you is real.[5]

Scriptures teach us to open our eyes that we might see, our ears that we might hear, and soften our hearts that we may understand (3 Nephi 11:5). If we do these things, we can have the living water and the bread of life (see John 4:10–14; 6:35). These are very physical acts.

Mortality also allows for emotions. Let’s take a closer look at what the Lord teaches Job about our reaction to the plan of salvation: we shouted for joy (see Job 38:7). Did we have joy at that moment? Or perhaps did we shout at the potential joy we could have by coming to earth? Lehi uses that same word—joy—to explain that Adam and Eve fell that we might have joy (see 2 Nephi 2:25). Is joy only attainable by the Fall, the condescension into a mortal, physical world? In mortality, we experience fear, anxiety, discouragement, depression, and a myriad of other emotions. Do we need to feel these in order to understand joy, peace, and hope?

Mortality takes our social relationships to a new dimension. God told Adam that it was not good for him to be alone (see Genesis 2:18). It is not good for any of us to be alone. It is only with our physical bodies that we know the sanctity of marriage, of cleaving to another human being. Again, we become Adam and Eve as we embody this earthly opportunity. We also become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Hannah and Elkanah, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, Joseph and Emma, both in struggles of fertility and in the trouble offspring can bring. The Abrahamic covenant is only realized through the physical experience. Moroni quoted the words of Malachi several times when he visited Joseph Smith, that the hearts of the children would turn to their fathers (see Malachi 4:6; 3 Nephi 25:6; Doctrine and Covenants 2:2; 110:15; Joseph Smith—History 1:39). Joseph expanded the kindred of the house of Israel to include dear friends: “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:2). I know in this life I have drawn upon the fasting and prayers of my family and friends to find health and peace, and to find comfort and joy. As Marjorie Hinckley said, “Oh, how we need each other!”[6]

That same mortal sociality, however, would include broken relationships, mortal enemies, and nemesis, even “frenemies.” Some of my greatest struggles have been with the people around me. Elder Neal A. Maxwell noted that “we serve as each other’s clinical material,” meaning that only from interaction with others, sometimes tough and harrowing, allow us the opportunity to repent and forgive, to fill our bowels with compassion and mercy, as Christ did.[7] These too are mortal experiences.

Clinical material is a much nicer phrase than thorns and noxious weeds. There are a couple of reasons why we have broken bodies, broken relationships, and broken promises. Eve realized this after being cast out of the garden: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption” (Moses 5:11). There’s that word joy again. Lehi taught, “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so,” he continued, “righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness, nor misery, neither good nor bad” (2 Nephi 2:11). Mary Fielding Smith learned this same profound truth after leaving the harrowing trials of Missouri, where her husband Hyrum had been imprisoned in Liberty Jail, and she became extremely ill after delivering her first baby. She wrote her brother, Joseph Fielding, in June 1839, “I have, to be sure, been called to drink deep of the bitter cup; but you know, my beloved brother, this makes the sweet sweeter.”[8]

Your Faith has Made You Whole, by Jorge Cocco Santángelo. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

The combination or opposition of hard things and good things in mortality equips us with experience. Again, Mary Fielding Smith provides a good example. When Hyrum was in Liberty Jail, communication proved challenging. Letters crossed in the post or were entirely lost, and, as we all know, not hearing from someone we love and are concerned about can cause tenuous friction. Mary wrote to Hyrum, “I believe all our afflictions will work together for our good, altho[ugh] they are not joyous while passing through them.”[9] Liberty Jail was certainly a trying experience. When Joseph reached the end of his rope, he pleaded to the Lord: “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:1–4). Where are you? Why must I experience this separation from you? These verses remind me of what Christ must have felt in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. But Joseph had to experience it for himself. Finally, the Lord responds, “All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7). We, like Mary Fielding Smith, or Joseph Smith, even dare I say like Jesus Christ, need that experience to run through us, to break us down, and to allow Christ to fill us up and to heal us from the travesties of mortality and make us whole.

Experience and opposition allow for proof. We prove or proof our bread dough, allowing the yeast to ferment and rise. Some recipes require proofing two times. The plan of salvation required that proof. God said, “We will prove them herewith” (Abraham 3:25). This could mean a trial or proof by a test (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:12). Moroni taught that we would receive no witness until after the trial of our faith (see Ether 12:6, 12). To prove is also to refine—a mortal period of refinement. Laura Clark Phelps stated, “We have to be tried like gold, seven times tried.”[10] Since our Heavenly Parents are all-knowing creators, they know who we are. Through experience, I have learned to listen to my body, to recognize its limits and bounds, to push it when necessary, and to provide it with tender repose. Oh, how grateful I am to prove me to myself that I can, indeed, do hard things.[11]

These hard things also prove to me how much I need Christ and his Atonement. I simply cannot do all that mortality requires of me by myself. Mary Fielding Smith became an expert at this recognition. Mary, her sister Mercy, and their brother Joseph left their home and family in England to seek better opportunities in Canada. They found the Church and were baptized there, then moved to Kirtland, where Mercy married her husband and went with him on a mission back to Canada, and Joseph returned to England on a mission. Mary was left alone in Kirtland—no family, no job, and no friends. Maybe Kirtland was one of her desert places. She participated in the charismatic and sacred experiences in the Kirtland Temple, a balm to her lonely soul. And she wrote to her sister, “I feel more and more convinced that it is through suffering that we are to be made perfected.” She continued, “I have already found it has the effect of driving one nearer to the Lord and so has become a great blessing to me.”[12]

I love the lesson she learned—to allow her suffering not only to refine or prove her, but to draw upon the Lord. We see this unfold throughout the Book of Mormon. At the beginning, Nephi learns that Christ “shall manifest himself unto [those that hearken unto him] in word, and also in power, in very deed, unto the taking away of their stumbling blocks” (1 Nephi 14:1). His younger brother Jacob learned from Nephi, claiming that the Lord shows us our weakness so that we understand the power of his condescension and grace (see Jacob 4:7). Mormon teaches that instead of being upset or judgmental about imperfections, we should “give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you [y]our imperfections, that ye may learn” (Mormon 9:31). Both Mormon and his son Moroni, who had read and edited the accounts of the American inhabitants, realized that a loving, graceful, merciful Savior will actually show us our weakness. If we humble ourselves, with the full recognition of our imperfections, and we turn to Christ and seek His salvific power, our weakness—our thorns in the flesh, our briars and noxious weeds—can be made strong (see Ether 12:26–27; 2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Hallelujah and hosanna—save us now, O Lord.

I came to understand this with my first bone marrow transplant. A successful transplant required the obliteration of my marrow—my immune system—in order to receive new stem cells from my brother. His cells noticed a lack of marrow and worked to build up a new immune system. But in order for that to happen, I came to the brink of death by radiation and intense chemotherapy. I literally felt like a blob of mass. While receiving my new marrow through a transfusion, I felt myself separating from my body, floating high above my bed in my hospital room. When my nurse slowed the flow and pulled me back into my body, it was just the beginning of my wreck and havoc. My esophagus became so enflamed that I could not eat. I was on IV nutrients and fluids for weeks, as well as a pain pump. Several times I just wove in and out of consciousness, but those IV lines pulled me back down. It was a long journey. My second transplant, from my other brother, happened on Good Friday, 2017. His blood literally saved me.

I have some good news: I have been in remission for four years. That’s incredible and not normal for someone whose cancer has recurred four times. The longer I go, the more chance I have of a cure. The other good news is that if or when my DNA shifts again to make leukemia, there are amazing medical advances that could provide me with more time earthside. And if not, I’m going home—home with the big H. How joyous that reunion will be. I can’t wait to meet my Savior, my dear friends Jane Snyder Richards and Mary Fielding Smith, my dear grandparents, and so many others.

The good news, the message of Easter is this: we can honor mortality, and we can indeed shout for joy because the Son of God has prepared a more excellent way (Ether 12:11). Physical and emotional experience, along with social connections made along the way, allow us to choose God and be saved. Condescension produces resurrection. Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.[13] The Lord will remember the covenants I have made, and he will verify his word in every particular (see 1 Nephi 19:15; Alma 25:17). His eternal purposes will roll on (see Mormon 8:22–24). Because of that, I shout for joy.

Notes

[1] Jane Snyder Richards, Reminiscence, 1880, 19–21, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

[2] Priscilla Merriman Evans, Autobiography, [ca. 1907], 42; Emma Priscilla Evans Little, Papers, 1879–1941, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT; see The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 221.

[3] Melissa Morgan Dodge to William T. Morgan, June 23, 1839, William T. Morgan Correspondence, Church History Library; Ann Marsh Abbott to Nathan Marsh, June 20, 1843, in private possession.

[4] Isaac Watts, “Crucifixion to the World by the Death of Christ” [“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”], Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707).

[5] John V. Pearson, “Behold the Wounds in Jesus’ Hands” (1998), https://churchofjesuschrist.org/music/library/music-for-choirs?lang=eng.

[6] Virginia H. Pearce, ed., Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999), 254.

[7] Neal A. Maxwell, “Content with the Things Allotted unto Us,” general conference, April 2000; 3 Nephi 17:6–7.

[8] Mary Fielding Smith to Joseph Fielding, June 1839, in Edward W. Tullidge, Women of Mormondom (New York City: Tullidge and Crandall, 1877), 255–56.

[9] Mary Fielding Smith to Hyrum Smith, April 11, 1839, Church History Library.

[10] Laura Clark Phelps to John Cooper, 1839, Zula Rich Cole Collection, Church History Library; Psalm 12:6.

[11] Elaine Dalton, “A Return to Virtue,” general conference, October 2008; “Guardians of Virtue,” general conference, April 2011.

[12] Mary Fielding Smith to Mercy Fielding Thompson, August–September 1837, Mary Fielding Smith Collection, Church History Library.

[13] Thomas Moore, “Come, Ye Disconsolate,” Sacred Songs (1816).