From Hawaii:

“We have been talking a lot in church about learning to live by faith and not fear.  I am reminded of a tender mercy given to me from the Lord to assist me in learning this principle in my everyday life:

I have been in the airline industry for almost nine years now.  When I first started, I became interested in something called the “Care Team.”  The care team is organized by the airlines and is a group of people designated to go out to places where airplanes have crashed and there are fatalities.  When there is a plane crash, the airline sends their care team members out to assigned families to inform them of their losses.  One of the things you learn in the training, is that people have a hard time allowing themselves to believe that their loved one died.  In most cases, in a fatal plane crash, there is no corpse.  There is nothing for the family to say goodbye to, and therefore a lot of people suffer from trauma in refusal to believe their loved one is gone.  They are given the option at the end to go to the crash site so they can say goodbye to their loved one, as closure and to be able to see the crash if they can handle it.  I reflect on this often, and have throughout my life, as this training assisted me in one of the biggest leaps of faith I have ever had to take:

I moved to Hawaii when I was 19.  I met him there.  We were married within 4 months in the temple, and the problems started almost immediately after the ceremony.  It was one of the hardest years of my life, and when it finally leaked out to my family after a year that he had been physically abusing me, my parents went straight to my Stake President.  I wasn’t allowed to move home unless he could resolve some of these things, in the meantime I was to work on what I was contributing to the problems in the marriage.  My car sat in my parent’s driveway untouched for almost 3 months.  I shuddered when I looked at it, as it held the haunting memory of the worst physical abuse that happened throughout the whole marriage.  I made the decision to leave him, and 6 months after moving back to my parent’s, the divorce was final.  I still drove the car as little as possible and was very emotional every time I was in it.  My parents and I decided we were going to sell it.  During this time, I was praying for help from the Lord to go forward with my life in faith.

I had wanted to be a dolphin trainer since I was 3.  When I left Hawaii the first time I had made the contacts that I needed in order to get a job and follow my dreams.  I wanted more than ANYTHING to move back to the ocean and be with my dolphins, but I couldn’t bear to move to the place that led me to him.  It held too many bad memories.  I tried everything to get Hawaii off my mind.  I even started mission prep classes and decided I was going to serve a mission.  The Lord, however had other plans for me.

One morning I woke up and it hit me all at once, as most lessons from the spirit do for me.  I remembered the care team I was now a part of.  I thought of how we give people a chance to go back to the crash site and say goodbye.  I thought about how hard that would be, and how freeing at the same time to be able to finally let go of this person they had been grieving over for a year or more.  I thought about how much courage it would take to face the site of the horrible place that determined someone’s fate.  And then I realized mine.  If I wanted to grow and go forward with faith, I had to move back to Hawaii.  My loving Father in Heaven wanted me to not only face my fears, but to grieve, let that year of marriage go.  He wanted me to forgive, and then to move on and create a new life.  In order to do that he wanted me to follow my dreams.  Looking back on that experience, it is the most healing, positive thing I have done for myself.  I not only moved back to Hawaii, but I shipped my car- that’s right, the one thing that stood for all my haunted memories.  I shipped that car with me to the Island.  I moved to another side of the Island, I didn’t contact ANY of the old friends I had (most of them were friends of both mine and my ex-husbands.)  I was able to get a job as a dolphin trainer, I worked for the airlines at night and was able to be a member of the care team.  I accomplished the picture I knew the Lord had in store for me.  Those first few months back were agonizing.  I’m not going to lie.  It was like scrubbing off charred, burned skin from a fire.  It hurt.  I drove around in my car and faced the memories.  I embraced the pain, and let myself grieve.  I learned SO much about the Atonement.  I learned that pain is a part of life.  It was a time for me to allow myself to hurt and to heal.  Slowly I made new friends, new memories, and finally was able to forgive and let go of the past and my ex-husband, which I’ve since learned that forgiveness is an ongoing and eternal process.  There have been times that I have struggled in my new marriage and have had the past haunt me, and I’ve had to remember my forgiveness and the lessons I learned.

It was my gift from my loving Savior and Heavenly Father.  I lived a dream.  I trained dolphins, worked with the airlines at night, managed to make it up to Laie, once a week to attend the temple, and was engaged in my calling, which ironically at the time was a branch missionary (since I wanted to serve a mission before I left, I was able to embrace ALL my dreams at once.)  The experience was special.  It was a miracle.  I had to sell my car when I finally made the decision to leave the Island, I couldn’t afford to bring it back again, but I knew that I didn’t need it anymore.  I healed in that car.  I faced my fears, my demons. My testimony of THIS church was RE-born in there.  I re-built my testimony of the Priesthood, and re-opened myself to the possibility to be able to love again.  This time, its deeper and stronger than I ever imagined.  My testimony and understanding of this church is at a level I could have NEVER reached, without having that experience.  Am I saying the Lord WANTED me to go through a marriage where I would be harmed?  NOT a chance.  However he knew there was so much we would both learn from the experience.  He knew the person I would become, and that I would embrace him through my tears.  I learned to be accountable for every aspect of my life through that divorce.  I learned to take MY accountability for the things I contributed to, and walk away.  To work on my self progress and to strive to be a better person.   I left his accountability with him.  The Lord holds each of us accountable for our lives and for our actions.  I love my Father in Heaven so much, and am so thankful to be able to share my experiences with others so they too can learn to live by faith and not allow the fears we have to overcome us.”