4th term is a really big stress fest for me--especially with 4 AP tests and possibly another for CE--and honestly, the best way for me to relieve it is to cry. A lot. Luckily, I've recently discovered that
17 Miracles is a great movie that is both uplifting enough and emotionally exhausting enough for me to cry out everything I need to without needing a therapy session about
my problems. I watched it one Sunday just by chance, because I was cleaning the kitchen and hadn't watched it in a while, and after the first 45 minutes I was bawling whenever Sarah and George were together, whenever Levi spoke from his journal, when the children played or raced, and every time that weird folk-song theme swelled and you just KNEW there was going to be a miracle that would make you cry.
After that, it became my every-other-Sunday tradition to watch it (every-other because if you watch it too much, you get used to it), and it never fails to make me weep and wrench my heart out of my chest. But I've started wondering: why? They're pioneer stories that I've heard all my life from growing up in the heart of Zion, and I've walked the trails and seen the mountains they saw a hundred and fifty years ago so many times, shouldn't it all be commonplace by now? My dad was watching me today, and was astounded that I felt so connected to these stories: "How can you watch this movie? It makes me feel so depressed, like I don't want to get up tomorrow." And I didn't really know what to say, other than, "Well, it gives me
strength to get up tomorrow."
I realized today that these stories--a mother being given dried meat by a strange man, hard biscuits and water turning into thick, warm bread, daughters rising from the dead--were not just miracles for their time, but testimonies for ours. It wasn't the movie that made me cry, but what the miracles meant. In everything they did on their perilous journey, these people testified of the goodness of Christ, not just in words, but in their endurance and faith which wrought miracles like unto those of the Savior's personal ministry on Earth. Their journey is a huge metaphor for our own personal journeys through this life--hard, dangerous, wrought with tears and strife, but ultimately rife with a miriad of miracles and greater happiness than we could have hoped for.
And it's not just the big miracles that testify of Him--it's everything. I leave at 6:00 to go to Early Morning Seminary every other day, very tired and not very happy to leave so early, and I look at the sky--some mornings still dark with twinkling stars and wispy clouds, and some days a deep grey with a rosy pink just reaching over the mountain peaks--and I am filled with gratitude. It's a little thing, but it is always incredibly, immeasurably beautiful, and it testifies that he loves and is mindful of his tired, distracted, imperfect servants, who are spiritually just scraping by.
He knows we're studying hard to get good grades, that we're trying to be better and get things done, turned in on time, clocked in and out promptly, with bread on the table and time to spare, but he also knows that no matter how hard we try, some days don't work out. At all. But even these destitute times testify of his grace and mercy and infinite love.
Everything He does, He does for us. Jesus Christ works 24/7 to make sure we can take every opportunity to raise our heads from our desks and remember who we are and who is always behind us. He never fails us, and nothing in this world fails to testify of Him.
