Almost Two Years

In just under a month, I will have reached the two year anniversary of my baptism. Coming up on this mark, I can't help but be grateful for the past two years. In two years, everything has changed. Sure, I've still endured trials. I've still experienced pain and heartache. But the good has significantly outweighed the bad. Standing at my two year mark, I'm looking to the future with great anticipation and excitement.

Because of the life changing decision I made when I was eighteen years old, I have so many opportunities that were never an option to me before. In just a few months, I will have the opportunity to go through the temple to receive my endowments, and then to be sealed to my best friend for time and all eternity. Because I decided to be baptized, I now have the opportunity to have a family that lasts. Not just for this lifetime, but for forever. And that means the world to me.

I know that what the future has in store for me won't be easy. But I don't think our time here on earth was ever meant to be easy. And even though it won't be easy, I know that with this gospel in my life and Heavenly Father by my side, everything will be so much better than just okay. I love Heavenly Father so much. I'm so grateful for all that He has done for me and all that I know He has in store for me.

Because He Lives

‪#‎BecauseHeLives‬, so can I. Because He lives, I can have hope. I can have the strength I need to keep going. To not give up. To endure my trials and afflictions. Because He lives, I know that I am not alone. And I never will be. My life has been saved, time and time again, #BecauseHeLives.

http://www.mormon.org/easter

One Year

A year ago today, I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One year. Wow. That’s kind of hard to wrap my head around.

It feels like it was practically yesterday when I made the decision to be baptized, yet so much has happened since then. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve grown a lot, and I’ve experienced more things than I could have possibly imagined.

I think when I initially joined the church, I went into it with the mindset that this gospel was going to solve all my problems. I thought that because I'm a Mormon now, I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, that my trials would all disappear. In the past year, I’ve realized that my initial expectations were far from the truth. I’ve learned that just because I’m a member of this church now, and just because I’ve gained a better understanding of this gospel, it doesn’t mean that I’m invincible. I’m still going to hurt, I’m still going to struggle, and I’m still going to experience trials.

The pain didn’t come at first. The first few months were great. I was on a spiritual high unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life. But eventually, the high began to wear off and the pain slowly returned. However, in the past few months, I’ve learned something perhaps even greater than the lesson I learned initially. I've learned that just because I’m hurting, doesn’t mean that I’ve been abandoned. It doesn’t mean that I’m not loved. Al Fox, one of my favorite LDS speakers can be quoted, “Hard times will consistently be there. But so will Christ.” I might still hurt and struggle, but I always will have somewhere to turn when things get rough. I just have to be humble enough to admit that I need help and ask for it. I’ve learned that when I ask for help, I will receive it. Maybe not as quickly as I want to, or how I want to, but help will come eventually. Because I’ve experienced these lows, I now have a greater appreciation for spiritual highs when they come.

In the past year, I’ve learned that it’s not always going to be easy. In fact, sometimes things are going to get really difficult. But I need to hang in there. I need to keep going. In the end, the pain will all be worth it. And in the meantime, I have someone by my side to give me strength and courage, and that someone is Heavenly Father. He will always stand by me, and I am so grateful for that.

Joining this church has changed my life. It has saved my life. Although sometimes I might still seem bitter, I know that I will always be grateful for this gospel and the power that it has to heal. Everyday, I gain a better understanding of the atonement and all that it can do for me. I love this church, I love this gospel, I love our Heavenly Father.

One year down, an eternity to go!

Wandering

You know, I think it's hard. I think it's hard to understand our own circumstances. To comprehend why exactly we're put into the situations that our Heavenly Father has placed us in, seemingly wandering aimlessly. Sometimes I look at the mess that I call my life and try to figure out: just what exactly is He thinking? Why would he make me go through all of this suffering, this confusion, this anguish? But then I have to remind myself of something. I don't need to know why I'm going through these things. I just have to do my very best to endure these trials, and have faith that God has a plan for me. As messed up and complicated as it might seem right now, everything is happening for a reason. If I just have faith and try to do my very best, the Lord will pull me through.

My Conversion Story

Hi, my name is Elisabeth (Lissa) Legg. I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on May 13, 2013.

Before sharing my story, it's important to have a little bit of background knowledge about me. My family is not LDS, but my mom was raised in the church. Both of my parents have very bitter attitudes towards Mormonism. I've lived in Utah since I was five years old. Growing up in Utah and not being LDS, a fair share of people have tried to convert me. That given, I had always been really stubborn and shut them down right away, saying no as quickly as possible.

Even though I was baptized in May 2013, the story of my conversion really began in November 2012. I've always been a pretty happy, optimistic person, but that fall, I found myself falling into a depression. I remember days where I would come home from school on the verge of tears. I felt so alone, but I didn't want to be around people at all. There were days when everything went so well, and I should have felt happy. But I just didn't. I felt empty and miserable.

These feelings continued through December. I felt as if whenever I was in public, I was putting up a front. I was pretending to be someone I wasn't. I was pretending to be happy, and it was exhausting.

In January, things got worse. I started having suicidal thoughts. Whenever I would drive my car, I had uncontrollable urges to crash my car into anything that had the potential to kill me. It was terrifying. I felt that I wasn't the one controlling my car anymore, but that someone else had taken over me and was doing everything in their power to get me to kill myself.

In February, these feelings got even worse. Just before Valentine's Day, I came forward and told my mom what was going on. On the night of February 16, I had a horrible anxiety attack after driving my then boyfriend home from our high school Valentine’s dance. My dad had to come pick me up because I knew that I couldn’t drive myself home. The next day, my mom decided that she had to do something. She took me to the emergency room, where I was hospitalized. While in the hospital, I had all sorts of blood tests run. The doctors were trying to figure out if there were any chemical imbalances that could be causing my severe and seemingly sudden depression. The tests came back completely fine. As far as they were concerned, I was completely healthy. Before being released from the hospital, I had to talk to a social worker who would decide if I was mentally stable enough to go home. He asked me why I was feeling so depressed, and I told him that I honestly didn’t know. I had absolutely no reason to be feeling this way. Everything in my life was going so great! I had just received a four year full tuition scholarship for Utah Valley University, I had recently won a prestigious dance scholarship at school, I had a boyfriend, I was on the high school dance company. Everything seemed about as good as it could get for a senior in high school. However, I was miserable. The social worker told me that I had a positive outlook and because of that, the hospital allowed me to go home that very same day, under the condition that I wasn’t allowed to drive my car for at least a week.

The night that I was released from the hospital, I began cutting myself. It was never anything that I had planned on doing before, but when I was at the hospital, I was asked if I had ever cut myself, and that planted the seed. It gave me the idea to give it a try. After all, there had to be a reason so many other people had cut themselves right? I’m still not sure what exactly my motives were behind cutting myself. But after talking to a therapist, I’ve learned that often times, people cut themselves because physical pain is much easier for us as humans to understand than emotional and psychological pain. My parents did catch me cutting myself that night, and I got all of the sharp objects confiscated from my bedroom. Looking back, I think that a part of me wanted to get caught. It was my cry for help.

While going through all of this, I turned to my boyfriend’s older sister a lot for comfort. She too had experienced a brutal depression, one that included multiple suicide attempts. It was nice to be able to talk to someone who actually understood exactly what I was going through. She had felt the things that I was feeling and wanted to help me. However, even with her help, my depression continued into March.

However, in early March, something happened that would change my life forever. One day, my boyfriend asked if I would ever read the Book of Mormon. Now, I’ve been asked this question before a lot, and every time, I had easily said no. But this time was different. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get myself to say no. So I handled the situation the best way I knew how. I very awkwardly said “I don’t know” and did my best to change the subject. Later that night, I was thinking about what my boyfriend had asked me, and how out of character for me my reaction had been.

That was when I decided to give him a chance. I told him that I wasn’t committing to anything, but that I would let him talk to me about the Church. I thought that I should hear him out and see what he had to say, he at least deserved that much from me.

My boyfriend, who was preparing to serve a mission, started teaching me later that week. During the next week and a half or so, he ended up going through all of the missionary discussions with me, as well as lending me one of his copies of the Book of Mormon. While taking discussions from him, I also turned to my best friend (who is LDS) and asked her for some scripture verses to help me with my depression. One of the verses that really stood out to me was the last portion of Alma 36:3, which reads, “...for I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.” That was a verse that I really clung to. It gave me hope that maybe things would turn around for me, maybe things would get better.

On Sunday, March 17, I was at my boyfriend’s house on the same night that a set of missionaries had been invited over for dinner. After dinner, the missionaries did a little lesson with us and then asked if there was anyone we knew that hadn’t been baptized and could benefit from lessons with them. My boyfriend squeezed my hand and I smacked him. The missionaries saw me smack him and asked me why I had done that. I was forced to tell them that I actually wasn’t LDS. At this point, they got really excited. They were very quick to set up a lesson with me for the following Wednesday.

On March 20, I had my first discussion with the missionaries. At the end of our lesson, they told me that they felt that I would be ready to be baptized by April 13. This terrified me. That was less than a month away! I was very quick to say no to that. I wasn’t even sure yet if this was what I wanted, and I was not about to agree to a baptismal date.

Even though the missionaries freaked me out, I agreed to continue taking lessons from them. On the night of March 25, three missionary lessons later, I was praying for guidance and help. I found myself asking Heavenly Father if what I was doing was the right thing. I wanted to know if I was going down the right path, and if it would bring me happiness not only now, but for the rest of my life. At that point, I experienced this completely overwhelming feeling of warmth and happiness. I heard a voice very clearly in my head repeating the word “yes” over and over again. That feeling of happiness was something that was so crucial for me. It was a feeling that had been missing from my life for four months. I don’t think people realize how important happiness is until it’s gone. But to go for that long without feeling genuinely happy, having that feeling again in such a powerful form was a miracle to me. After that night, my depression was seemingly gone. The Christian pastor Rick Warren has said, “Your most profound and intimate experience of worship will likely be in your darkest days- when your heart is broke, when you feel abandoned, when you’re out of options, when the pain is great- and you turn to God alone.” That quote perfectly describes how it felt to receive my answer.

The following day, I had another discussion with the missionaries. At the end of their lesson, they asked me if I knew that the Book of Mormon was true. Hesitantly, I said yes. They smiled and asked if I knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Again, I said yes. They asked if I believed that the Church was the one and only true church on this earth. I nodded. After that, they asked me if I had thought that I had received my answer. I said, “Well yeah! I actually received my answer last night!” The missionaries were shocked. They couldn’t believe that I hadn’t told them right away. I kind of laughed and said that it just hadn’t come up.

After the missionaries found out that I had received my answer, they began to pressure me even more to be baptized on April 13. I still didn’t feel ready for that. Even though I had received my answer, I felt that I still had so much to learn. I've never been the type of person to jump into something without doing my research first. I also still needed to talk to my parents about what was going on. I also had a trip to Disneyland coming up in about a week, and I was really worried that if I told my dad, he wouldn’t let me go. In retrospect, I feel bad for the Elders. That probably frustrated them so much. But hey! It’s Disneyland!

After I got back from vacation, we set my baptismal date for May 13. I didn’t end up telling my dad about it until the week before... over the phone... when he was in Japan. I guess I felt safer knowing he was on the other side of the world with a limited amount of international cell phone minutes, he couldn't yell at me for long. He ended up taking the news better than I thought he would though, and he told me that while he didn’t necessarily agree with what I was doing, he was my father and he would support my decision.

My baptism was a beautiful experience. I had two very close friends give talks, and I cried three different times. Which for me is saying something, because I don’t cry in front of people very often. Immediately after emerging from the water, I started shaking. I was just so happy, I couldn’t stop myself! I was confirmed on May 19, the following Sunday.

Doctrine and Covenants 64:34 reads, “Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days.” To me, something that really stands out about this verse is the willing mind. I had to reach an ultimate low in my life, be torn down to near defeat, so that I could be humbled. So that I would finally put my pride aside and have an open heart and a willing mind. So that I would finally give someone a chance to share the gospel with me. But because I reached that ultimate low and was humbled, I have now had the opportunity to reach an ultimate high.

Some of the happiest times in my life have been since my baptism. I’ve been to the temple multiple times, three times in the very first week after my baptism! I’ve received my patriarchal blessing. I’ve developed a love for everyone, and a genuine appreciation for life and all of the little things that come along with it. Even something as simple as waking up in the morning and being able to get myself out of bed, I now see as such a blessing. The fact that I can stand here today and be grateful that I’m alive is a miracle.

In June 2013, I was reading my scriptures before bed, and I came across a verse in Mosiah that really stood out to me. It seems to be a great reminder of the journey that I have gone through to get to the point that I’m at today. The verse is Mosiah 27:29. “My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more.” The Lord saved me from the darkest abyss and showed me a new kind of happiness that I never even knew existed.

My friend shared a quote with me while I was in that dark abyss that really stood out to me. It says, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”