Laurel Christensen - The Faith Experiment

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ISBN 978-1-60907-464-7

(CIP data on file)

Printed in the United States of America

R.R. Donnelley, Crawfordsville, IN

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

With love and gratitude to Tiffany Yeates Gust, who, with the help of a treadmill, helped me find the courage to see.

Journey of a Cheerful Pessimist

Commit to something that feels beyond your reach.

That was the counsel I was given as I left a two-week experience at a fitness and health spa. The entire two weeks had already felt beyond my reach, but I had made a commitment to change my life and I was ready for the next step on the journey.

As I drove the highway back to my home, I passed a billboard advertising a half marathon through Provo Canyon in Provo, Utah. The date was six months away. And six months sounded like plenty of time for anyone to get ready for a half marathoneven a girl like me who had yet to run a full mile.

When I arrived home, I told everyone I knew about my plan; I knew the peer pressure would be helpful and I was actually excited about the thought of doing something big. I created a training plan that would require me to stay on the path I had begun the previous two weeks.

Then, two months later, when I was still working my way up to running a full mile without dying, I had a back injury. It felt like such a big obstaclethe kind of obstacle that begins a spiraling downfall. I had a pattern of spiraling fast when something big and disappointing appeared to be in my way. A really good friend of mine was watching this happen, and she said, Well, at least youre the most cheerful pessimist there ever was.

Honestly, when she said it, I was a little offended. My reaction was, Im not a pessi oh, yes, yes, I am. I think I actually am a pessimist. I said to her, You know, if I was a superhero, I would be Worst-Case Scenario Girl. That is who I would be. I had always been so good at going to worst-case scenario. It was a world I knew well. It was a world I had become very comfortable with.

The truth is that I was generally really positive and really happy and really believing. I believed in happy endings (for other people). And I believed that God would hear and answer prayers (for anyone but me). And I absolutely believed that good things happen (not as often as bad things, but good things nonetheless).

But I also knew heartbreaking disappointment, I knew that sometimes the answer is just no, and I knew that sometimes what we want just doesnt happen. And so I suppose, because I had experiences on both sides, I had started to develop some thoughts about my lifeand, more seriously, some thoughts about my Father in Heaventhat were neither accurate nor healthy.

During those times when things started looking like they werent going right, I would start to panic and retreat and my mind would go south ... and go south quickly. It was almost as if I was setting myself up so that when things didnt work outlike I already knew they wouldntI could be okay. My faith could still be intact and my relationship with my Father in Heaven could be spared from damage.

The problem with that kind of behavior is that the very thing I thought was protecting my faith was actually weakening my faith.

So after a couple of weeks of playing Worst-Case Scenario Girl with my back injury, I knew I needed to do something to get myself back on track. I had only a couple of months before the half marathon and I was not about to let this big goal go by the wayside like so many others in my life had. I decided I needed to embark on some kind of an experiment that would help me in the faith department, and I started something I called The Optimist Experimentan experiment in which I would commit to be optimistic and fight the tendency to go to worst case just because I hit an obstacle. I knew I needed to see my world differently. I knew I needed to see myself differently. But I wasnt entirely sure how to do it.

It was about that time that I heard a talk by Elder D. Todd Christofferson in general conference. He said, Our Heavenly Father is a God of high expectations (As Many as I Love, 97). That opening statement pricked my heart, and I dont know that I consciously heard anything else in his message. I heard those words and I immediately thought, If thats true, then I wonder if I can have high expectations too.

What would happen if I continued on this journey not just asking for help from heaven but expecting it? It wouldnt be easy for me, but I couldnt help but feel like it would make a significant difference.

I went to my scriptures, as I often do when Im beginning something difficult, and I opened them to the book of Moroni. In Moroni 7:20, Mormon says, And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? I love that question because a question in the scriptures is often followed by an answer, but I particularly loved that question at that moment because I knew that what I was trying to do was a good thing. Sure, it wasnt the most important thing on the planet. I wasnt trying to solve the Middle East crisis. I wasnt trying to fix the world economy. My losing weight and training for a half marathon wasnt the biggest deal in the world, but it was important to me. I knew it was a good thing. And I wanted to know how to lay hold upon it.

The answer to this great question is found a few verses later: Wherefore, by the ministering of angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing (Moroni 7:25; emphasis added).

I read that and thought, Oh, if its just a matter of faith, were fine.

Well, heres my little confession: Of all the principles of the gospel, I would have to say that faith has been the hardest one for mewhich has created a little bit of a problem, because its the first principle, and if you struggle with the first principle, youre probably going to be in trouble on all the rest. I realized that optimism comes from faith, and so I changed the name of my experiment from The Optimist Experiment to The Faith Experiment, with a commitment to do three things:

1.PRAY with faith

2.THINK with faith

3.LIVE with faith

And thats how the journey really began.

Our Heavenly Father is a God is high expectations.

-Elder D. Todd Christofferson

Pray with Faith

I dont know about you, but I had a plan A for my life. (Surely I am not the only girl who attempted to plan out her life.) I remember sitting around with some of my girlfriends one day when we were all in college. We were discussing my plan A, and that led to plan B ... which led me to think about plan C. I sort of wrote out my life plans and realized that I was already on plan K. (And this was a problem because I hadnt even served a mission yet. By the time I went on my mission, I was beyond plan K.)