For several months I have been holding in tender and powerfully strong feelings concerning my engagement in family history work. No longer! I want to share how doing this work has been changing and brightening my life. It truly has been miraculous.
Family history can be a touchy subject for some people. We are urged a great deal in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to engage in this work, to save our ancestors by allowing them to have ordinances performed for them that open the doors to exaltation. Like many others, I grew up seeing "genealogy" as boring; it was something I heard spoken of by an aunt and uncle once a year at family reunions.
As a young adult, three times in three different wards I was called to be the Family History Specialist. By the second time you'd think that I would have realized the Lord was trying to tell me something! Although I felt that way and regularly joked about it, I didn't do more than dabble in it. I honestly felt guilty for teaching the Family History course and telling others about the importance of it, when I didn't do more than indexing myself.
Fast forward a few more years; I'm married and have a little baby girl. I hit an extremely rough patch: postpartum depression and anxiety that swallowed me whole. I've struggled with depression and anxiety pretty much my whole life, but after Gracie arrived, it blindsided me, sacking me so hard that I yearned to no longer be in the game. The worst of it was constant anxiety over losing my innocent baby girl, or my husband, to some type of tragic death, or some other type of harm or injury coming to them. Words cannot describe what the thought of those did to me. It's the darkest place I have ever been.
I did all I thought I could; reaching out for support, trying to retrain my thinking, going to counseling and trying to give it all to the Savior. I struggled, and I prayed, and then I prayed some more for direction from the Lord, something that He knew would help me. I made some little leaps, but was far from making healing bounds.
Then, on a night I remember well, after a particularly exhausting day of battle, I received my answer. I knelt on our bed and pleaded desperately to my Heavenly Father for something that would help relieve the anxiety. I ended my prayer, then opened up a book I thought earlier in the day I could read in bed before going to sleep. My mother had given it to me five months earlier for Mother's Day, but that I had never started. I want to make it clear that I felt prompted to read this book; it wasn't just some coincidence. In that book, "Covenant Keepers", by Wendy Watson Nelson, was the answer: engage in family history and temple work for 21 days and you will have the help you are seeking for whatever distress you are having in your life right now. That distress will fall away.
Sister Nelson offered several examples of young women, in such positions as myself, who undertook her 21-day challenge and the results they had. They were truly stunning! But there was one in particular that stood out to me: that of "a young mother who experienced a significant reduction in anxiety that required the use of medication", so much so that others in her family noticed the increased spirit in their home.
My eyes pretty much bugged out of my head when I read this! I knew at that moment that Heavenly Father had answered my prayer! I wanted this same result as this young mother for myself and did not doubt that it would happen if I tried it. I wanted to and committed right away to take that 21-day challenge. But I didn't end my reading there that night; I digested more and more until I was half-way done with the short but powerful book.
I read Sister Nelson's own experience of discovering for herself the power that covenants hold for us. Our covenants with God in the temple aren't just for ourselves, but they are for others that haven't been able to make those covenants.
The truth is that we don't realize how much power we have access to in our covenants. The more we keep our covenants, and the more we seek after our kindred dead, the more help we will receive in our lives. In doing family history and temple work, we will be unlocking the power of our covenants. She gives real life examples of how in holding to our covenants and helping others on the other side of the veil who want to make those same covenants to enter into God's kingdom, "Heaven has to respond." God will be unrestrained in blessing us.
Do you know what that means? Unrestrained? Nothing can hold it back! That does not mean that our problems will be removed, or that life will be easy and perfect. But it does mean that heaven can not be stopped from raining down more help that will, in Sister Nelson's words, "be more than we could ever imagine."
I loved that! I'd quote her entire book here if I could, but you'll have to read it for yourself to feel the power for yourselves. I will tell you that the way she puts this casts the whole concept of covenants and the power they hold for us if we keep them in a whole new light. It changed the way I see life as a whole.
Why would we choose to live our lives in mediocrity when the power we can receive from keeping them is unlimited? Why would we choose to not unlock and access more and more of the power of God that is so readily there? I don't know about you, but I want and need as much of that heavenly help as I can receive. I need as much strength, as much light to combat the darkness, both physical and mental.
Now, I am not doing this just for the benefits that will come to myself. I am doing it for the souls in the Spirit Prison that are yearning, some most desperately, for us to complete their work so they can receive exaltation and be with their families forever. They cannot be saved without us! How can we ignore them?!? I cannot!
Oh, the change I have experienced in my life since I took up Sister Nelson's challenge! I sacrificed some of my time doing other things like baking, watching TV or working out, to sit down at my computer and immerse myself in Family Search. It was hard at first to rearrange my "me" time, but the effects of it have been more than worth it. I don't miss that time very much, because I truly enjoy doing family history! It is fun! Kind-of like my own detective work! The Spirit that I feel as I find and complete the ordinance work for those who haven't had the opportunity to yet do so fills me with some of the greatest purpose I have ever known.
Several times the Spirit has washed over me in warm and glorious waves when I found certain names that needed work done. I most literally felt the joy of the people to whom those names belonged as they realized that they now will be in Spirit Prison no longer. Tears couldn't stop running in my eyes! For the first time, I took names I had found myself, to the temple. It is so much more meaningful than using temple names.
I have found that my days flow better and I am better able to handle the challenges in them when I spend that sacred time. Surprisingly, I often have more time to do some other things for myself! Though it is still there, I experience a momentous reduction in my anxiety when I am consistently involved in the work that has allowed me to better enjoy my life without the incessant fear and darkness. Most of all, I have a peace I haven't felt in a long time. I can feel that Heavenly Father is pleased with my life, and that is one of the most wonderful feelings I have ever had. I know that as I continue, heavenly help will be evermore present to aid me with whatever life throws my way.
The power we unlock as we keep our covenants and do family history and temple work is real and truly marvelous. Heaven must and does respond! I have seen it do so during the last 9 months of my life, and I am not about to stop. It's almost unimaginable the blessings, peace and heavenly assistance that will flow to us.
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