What the Resurrection Means to Me

“The Resurrection is at the core of our beliefs as Christians. Without it, our faith is meaningless.” 

-Elder Joseph B Wirthlin 

Last Sunday, my husband and I had the opportunity to speak at our LDS Stake Youth Fireside (for youth ages 12-18).  We were asked to speak on: 'What does the Resurrection mean to me?'  Here is my talk:

When I contemplated the question we were asked, ‘What does the Resurrection mean to me,’ the answer that shortly came to my mind was: “Everything!”

The hope and assurance I have of a glorious Resurrection is the major driving force behind my desire to keep God’s commandments and my covenants in this life, so that I will be able to receive the blessings God has promised in the next.  

There are 3 specific blessings we are promised through the Resurrection that give me the hope and faith to endure the trials of this life.  I would like to share with you some personal experiences that illustrate how important these blessings are to me. 

The first promise to each of us is that at the Resurrection our body and spirit will be reunited in an immortal state, no longer suffering disease or death.  No one needs to look far to see the suffering and heartache caused by disease, and the pains of a mortal body strike at every age. A perfect, healthy body is a blessing that our four-year old daughter, Bri, speaks of regularly.  

Here is a picture of her and my four-year old niece, Taleah, who is currently battling leukemia. Every prayer said in our home includes a plea for the renewed health of her, Ethan, Sharon, and other family & friends.

Bri often shares with me her strong and sure testimony of the Resurrection. She frequently says, “When Jesus comes again, I won’t have PKU and Taleah won’t have cancer.”

Here are a few more pictures of Bri:

This beautiful daughter of ours was born with a rare genetic food processing disorder called PKU that she will have her whole life.  To stay healthy, she has to be on a very strict and limited diet that excludes many of the foods that the rest of us eat every day.  She has daily medications, regular blood tests, and frequent contact with a dietitian and genetic specialist.  As she gets older, it will become an even greater challenge and trial for her.  

 I will share with you an excerpt from my journal that describes how I felt the day we received the news of her diagnosis. I wrote:

“I took Bri to the pediatrician’s office to do the follow-up tests that were needed.  The next hour was an overwhelming blur.  My sweet and tiny twelve-day old baby had to have her blood drawn from two locations and have a catheter inserted for a urine sample.  I stood in the hall, listening to her scream, with tears streaming down my face as I tried to process the words I had just heard coming from the doctor’s mouth: “metabolic disorder...no cure...can’t process protein...treatable through a severely restricted diet...can cause severe mental retardation, seizures, eczema, restricted head growth, hyperactivity, and IQ loss.”

To sit in that room and look at my beautiful brand new baby and hear the words ‘severe brain damage’ seemed so irreconcilable in my mind...I was so worried that her brain had already been affected and that every second without treatment was harming her.”

The frailties of a human body truly cause much of life’s heartache.  In the four years since Bri’s birth, I have gained greater knowledge and understanding that I couple with faith in God to help me feel peace and comfort for her future.  Even at a young age, Bri handles her health difference with great strength and maturity, but she and I already know and rejoice in the knowledge that one day she won’t have PKU anymore. 

Elder Dallin H Oaks described my second reason for rejoicing in the Resurrection. “The assurance of immortality also helps us bear the mortal separations involved in the death of our loved ones...We should all praise God for the assured resurrection that makes our mortal separations temporary and gives us the hope and strength to carry on.”

This is my mother, Kristin and me.  

By the accounts of everyone who knew her, she was a truly remarkable woman with a heart of gold and the kindly attributes of an earthly angel. She died when I was a two after a several week illness caused by a virus that attacked her organs and shut her heart down.  She was 26 years old.  I was two, my older brother was four, and my baby brother was 6 months old when she died.  And although I have also gained great blessings because of this trial, not having her here in this life with me is a painful separation.  I cannot talk to her or ask her advice.  She wasn’t visible at my side in the temple on my wedding day.  She can’t be with me physically at the birth or milestones of my children.  Death is truly another of mortality’s heartaches.  But again, the assurance of a Resurrection keeps my sorrow from becoming despair, and fuels me to live a life that will gain me the blessings of being eternally reunited with my mother.  I know that I can be with her again and that the length of our separation now is but a small moment in the scheme of our eternal relationship.

Which leads me to the 3rd reason I rejoice in the Resurrection.  The Prophet George Albert Smith explains, “The assurance that our relationship here as parents and children, as husbands and wives will continue in heaven ... fills us with hope and joy.” 

This is a picture of the things most dear to me.  

My husband, the four children here, and the little girl that will join our family in a few months.  My opportunity to be a wife and mother is my greatest blessing, and these people are the treasure I want to have in heaven.  Because of the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the covenants I have made with him, God has promised me that I can be with my family forever, IF, and I emphasize IF, I enact the power of the Atonement and strive to keep those covenants I have made at baptism and most importantly, in the temple.  I want those blessings.  There is nothing more important.  

As you continue on your path in mortality, each of you will have your own trials and heartaches to endure, at which time a testimony of the Atonement & Resurrection will be vital to your faith and hope.  Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin explains beautifully the enduring strength that comes from an understanding of the Resurrection:

“I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross...

On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled.

It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.  But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord...ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

In an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried...for Jesus the Christ, stood before them as proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence."

Elder Wirthlin continues:

"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you...—Sunday will come...No matter our desperation, no matter our grief... In this life or the next, Sunday will come.”

Thank you for letting me share with you a few of my Fridays, and my strong and steadfast testimony that Sunday does come.  I know without hesitation that the Savior Atoned and was Resurrected for us.  I know because I have asked my Heavenly Father through prayer and have received multiple witnesses through the Holy Ghost.  I know that we will each receive an immortal body free from pain and sickness, and that we have been given the tools to seal our families together, that we may be reunited with the loved ones we have lost and will lose through death.  I know that a testimony of the Resurrection is a treasure we all need, and encourage you to seek & strengthen your own. Because when those trials do come, that testimony will mean everything to you too.