Building Our Foundation on Christ

Back in January, Tonya Taylor asked me to share in Relief Society how building my faith and foundation on Christ had blessed my life.  This is what I typed up in preparation to share with the women of my ward, but I ended up adapting it a little on the spot to what felt right.  In many ways, this question helped me to write down elements of testimony and was yet another affirmation for me to look back and see the hand of God guiding my life, especially when I tried my best to keep the commandments and follow the promptings of the spirit.  I am so thankful to parents who raised me to know right from wrong.  I am so grateful for Burke's parents who raised him to know right from wrong.  I am constantly pleading with Heavenly Father that he can iron out my imperfections and my glaring flaws as a mother to help me teach my children these same truths.  Here is what I wrote.

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When Tonya sent me this question, "How has building your faith and foundation on Christ blessed your life?" I began pondering the question throughout the day and decided that my answer was better given by rephrasing the question rhetorically to, "How has building your faith and foundation on Christ NOT blessed your life?"  The answer of course is - it has blessed my life in every aspect!

I was raised in a home where Christ was the center of everything we did.  In fact, I remember my mother frequently quoting, "Christ is the center of our home, a guest at every meal and a silent listener to every conversation."  Now, that is not to say that our home was perfect - far from it!  With 6 girls and 2 boys, you can imagine that there were often dramatic fights, thrown hairbrushes, stolen clothes, etc, however, we always came back to that quote and tried to realign our lives so that Christ's spirit would feel welcome in our home.  Every single day my parents led us in family prayer, family scripture study and weekly family home evening.  I was too little to remember this myself, but I often heard the story that once when my sister's musical rehearsal fell on a Monday night, my mom dragged all of us to the high school to watch the rehearsal so we could be together as a family on family night!  At the time my sister was mortified, but the message was clear - we WILL do what the Lord has commanded us no matter how inconvenient!

I'm not sure if it was because of this environment that I was raised in or simply because I have been blessed with the gift of believing - probably a combination of both, but as a child and teenager, I never doubted the truthfulness of the gospel or the reality of Jesus Christ and his love for me.  It wasn't until my senior year that I began to experience my first "REAL" trials and began to see the consequences of my decisions.  In a few short years I learned very quickly that when I followed the commandments and the promptings of the spirit, my life was filled with peace and happiness - when I did not, there was turmoil and heartache.  Through mistakes and sins, I learned for myself that repentance was real and that I WANTED to live the way Christ had taught because it brought me so much joy.

Since my early 20's, I have built upon that foundation that was created for me as a child and youth at home, and have developed my own very personal and strong relationship with Jesus Christ.  My husband Burke has likewise forged a strong relationship with our Savior.  I attribute the great peace and happiness in our marriage directly to our desire to do what is right and follow his plan for us.  

Those of you who know us, know that I am head over heels for my husband and I want to testify that our strong marriage is a direct result of trying to consistently do the things that Christ has asked of us. I can count on 2 hands the days that we have missed reading our scriptures together as a couple and probably on 1 hand the days that we have missed praying together.  When we lived in St. George we went to the temple every single week and once we moved away we have made it our goal to go every single month.  As a result, in the nearly 6 years that Burke and I have been married we have had only 1 fight that lasted a grand total of 3 hours.  Again, I don't say these things to boast, but to show that when we do the small and simple things the Lord has asked us to do, the blessings are innumerable.

Now, that doesn't mean we are anywhere near perfect or that we don't have our trials, but because our foundation has been built on Christ, I feel that we have been able to bear up whatever trials have come our way.  I truly feel that Christ is the center of our home, our marriage and our lives and I can see the blessings directly linked to following his commandments. I testify that you can have that too.