I Will Go Before Your Face with Brent

The Lord has promised us that He will go before our face and prepare a way for us to accomplish the things He has asked. More often than not, it is difficult for us to notice and see what He is doing or how He will provide. Brent shares through three very different experiences how God specifically protects, comforts, directs, and leads us through various challenges in our lives and how through His Spirit we will receive this revelation. 

Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)

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Transcript

Lily: 0:06

Hello everyone and welcome to More Than Coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your Story. As the author and finisher of our faith, our Savior writes personal experiences into each of our lives which can later strengthen, empower and bring us peace upon reflection. This podcast is dedicated to sharing these anchoring memories from everyone's unique stories in order to collectively remember and testify of the reality of Jesus Christ and His presence in our lives. I'm your host, lily, and I'm very excited to share these experiences together. Okay, so everyone. Today on the podcast we have Brent. Welcome, brent.

Brent: 0:45

Hey, welcome. Thank you for having me on today.

Lily: 0:47

Would you mind just introducing yourself a little bit.

Brent: 0:49

Sure, I am the youngest of five kids. I've been born and raised in Utah my entire life. My wife, jessica and I got married 17 years ago. We've got four kids. I lived in Utah for most of it, but we did have a little briefspin stint in Pennsylvania and we had a longer stint, a five-year stint, out in Kentucky. I work in the accounting and finance world. I'm 40, so that means I'm really interested in World War II history as well as barbecuing and smoking meat. That's what you do when you turn 40.

Brent: 1:29

That's really where I'm at in life is just that's my weekends, Our kids. We've got a couple of teenagers, we've got a couple of youngers, and life's adventurous and it's good.

Lily: 1:42

That sounds so much fun. Man, you do have an adventurous life. I love it. Brent, what story would you like to share with us about what memories you have that prick your heart and remembrance of our Savior Jesus?

Brent: 1:54

Christ. As I was giving some thought to this, I really like to share three experiences. I feel like that really reinforces the truthfulness of something as I've thought about just the topic thoughts on remembering Christ in my life. One of the scriptures that came up as I was preparing this was Doctrine and Covenants 84-88. I'm going to paraphrase because I've got to bring down my paper scriptures, but it says I will go before your face, I will be on your left hand and on your right hand. I've really seen that many times in my life where the Savior has gone before my face, where he's been on my left and on my right. Many times, when I haven't been aware of it, I felt His guiding influence in my life. That has really strengthened my resolve to be a better disciple of Him and strengthened my testimony that he is here, that he does care, he is watching over us.

Lily: 2:56

Yeah.

Brent: 2:58

And so, uh, one of the first ones I wanted to share, uh, you know really it. It harks back to when I was a teenager. It was probably, like I think I was 12 or 13 years old. Um, I'm the youngest of five, uh, but we had five under five. So my oldest brother, uh, is adopted and, uh, this is one of those cases. So it's kind of cliche, but my parents couldn't have kids, so they adopted my brother and they found out they were pregnant with my sister.

Brent: 3:26

Yeah, Um so my sister is only seven months younger than my, than my oldest brother.

Brent: 3:30

And then they had, and then I've got twin brothers that are just behind her, and then I was born just behind them and I was the oops of the family, um, but when I was 12 or 13, my oldest brother was getting ready to graduate from high school. This was going to be like the last vacation that we did, yeah, um, as a family, and I was super close with one of my brother, sean, and we stopped at a place in central Utah called big rock, candy mountain.

Lily: 3:54

Hey, I know the song, the big rock candy mountain, yeah.

Brent: 3:57

I actually don't know that song, oh really.

Lily: 4:00

Oh, just show that to you at the end.

Brent: 4:01

Yeah, I don't Um so ironically uh, it's kind of ironic when we get to the end of this story. I'll tell you why it's ironic, but Jesse and I stopped there for a day or two uh, you know, during our honeymoon.

Lily: 4:11

Yeah.

Brent: 4:11

But, uh, but anyways. So while we were there, this is the last garage trip with the whole family Um, we had read about, uh, this hike, or Sean and I had read about this hike to a place called lemonade springs and we thought, well, that sounds really cool, lemonade Springs.

Lily: 4:27

Yeah.

Brent: 4:27

Um, we should go and do it. So we decided to get up one morning and start trying to find it. We stopped, uh, we stopped over by I don't know one of the shops in town and they told us where to go in order to, in order to go to lemonade springs and get on the right trail. So, uh, we start hiking this trail, and I don't know what trail it was, but at some point we got very, very lost and, um, we continued to hike until we came to pretty much a dead end in the trail and, uh, we were pretty high up in the mountains, I. And when we came to this dead end, I kind of peered around the edge, I, and it was, you know, pretty steep, but I peered around the edge and probably around I don't know, 30 feet across to the other side there was another trail, and so I thought, well, I guess maybe, like we just need to scale across this very steep area um.

Brent: 5:24

To get to the other side and to go on that, to go on this trail and, uh, as I mentioned, we were very high up.

Lily: 5:33

Yeah.

Brent: 5:33

And so I was an idiot and I uh indestructible, 12 year old.

Brent: 5:38

we are not afraid of death, Uh and until I was about halfway across, uh-huh. And when I was about halfway across, I realized that the and I mean I'm probably on a, I'm probably on a 45 degree incline, I mean it's very steep, uh, and I start to feel the rock crumbled between beneath my fingers and I, uh, I, I start to slide down and at that point I started looking down, uh, and I noticed that about I don't know 10, 15 feet uh, below my feet. Very steep drop off. It was a cliff. Uh probably went two or 300 feet If I remember right. I'm probably exaggerating, um, but I would have been.

Lily: 6:23

That's how it feels in the moment, though.

Brent: 6:25

If I went over it, I would have been very dead.

Lily: 6:29

There was no.

Brent: 6:29

I would have. I would have been jelly at the bottom of the cliff, that is for sure. Yeah and um, I had this. I had this panicky moment where I realized oh shoot, it doesn't matter how hard I dig in my toes and my fingers, I I do not have a stable foundation here. Yeah, Um, and there's a very good chance that I could just slide right on over that cliff.

Lily: 6:53

Right.

Brent: 6:53

Uh, and so I froze and um, I looked over at my brother uh. Sean who was standing. I mean he was. Fortunately he wasn't stupid enough to start scaling across.

Lily: 7:04

I guess his life preserving instincts, since he was two years ahead of me you know, kicked in earlier than mine, or maybe he's slight, he has it, he just slightly yeah.

Brent: 7:12

He wanted to see what was going to happen to me first. Um, so he, you know, he saw what was happening to me and he's like, no, I'm not going over there.

Brent: 7:19

And, uh, I was frozen there for probably 10 minutes, um, and just every time I'd move, just slightly, I would start to slide a little bit, yeah, and I looked down, um, I looked down and I could see my other brother, rob I, you know several hundred feet below me standing on another trail, and he had noticed us and I later found out that he was, he was falling because he knew what was going on. He saw the prediction, the, the, the predicament that I was in, and he would just say my brother's going to die, my brother's going to die. And um, anyways, uh, sean, being the wonderful brother that he was, uh, he did like he, he started scaling over and he grabbed my arm and, uh, and you know, by God's grace, uh, we didn't both slide down the mountain and die.

Lily: 8:14

Right.

Brent: 8:15

Um and so we, you know, we ended up coming back to the original path, and we were completely flustered at this point.

Brent: 8:21

Uh it was, um, it was very much a near death experience and we were both, you know, we were lost. We were a long ways away from where our cabin was at Right, um, and we just wanted to get back. And I remember, as we hiked back on this trail, we came to this meadow area that probably had seven or eight different, you know different offshoots from it, and we had no idea which one we had come up or how to get back.

Brent: 8:50

And I remember, turning to my brother, sean and I can't remember if he's the one that out that said we should say a prayer or if I'm the one that was but, regardless of the fact, we set a prayer and we had complete faith and confidence that the Lord was going to tell us how to get back to safety. And, uh, as I, immediately after I opened my eyes from the prayer, I looked right in front of me and there was a ravine, um, and it was not with the way that we had come up, but I knew with a hundred percent confidence that it was the way to get down. And so we, we hiked down that ravine and the the feeling that I had, um, and this is kind of the theme of them that I'm getting at in this episode is that I Knew where to go, and it wasn't because I'd been there before, it wasn't because I I'd seen a map. I knew I knew where to go because Heavenly Father made it known to me and he guided me, you know, and my brother, by the power of the Holy Ghost, down the mountain to safety.

Brent: 10:02

Wow, and that that was that. That was an experience that I had at a very young age that really taught me that I, heavenly Father, is aware of you and he, he, will communicate. He will communicate with you in your times of need right, and it helped me understand what the spirit feels like and when. When you're feeling, when you're feeling the Holy Ghost, he can take away all fear, he can take away all doubt as you move forward and and and do what you've been directed to do.

Lily: 10:39

That's actually really interesting. I don't think I've ever thought of of that, of that the Holy Ghost I guess that's another way just to say peace but the fact that he can Withdraw all the negative emotions, like you didn't necessarily feel pieces and like, oh, I feel like Zen right now, but you felt confidence. You felt, or even just enough confidence just to take that next step Right and just to keep going, which I think. I think that's really interesting.

Brent: 11:04

Yeah, and, and I think a lot about Nephi. You know when he was With his failed attempts to go into Jerusalem and get the and get the brass plates right. You know, his last failed attempt? Yeah, or is it his successful attempt? Yeah, you know he was flustered, he had a really terrible, he had a few terrible experiences.

Lily: 11:23

Yeah.

Brent: 11:24

But he knew what he needed to do and he knew that the Lord was gonna help him do it. And so he says you know, I went not knowing beforehand, you know being led by the spirit, right, and that's always a story that's resonated with me because I've been like, I have felt that yeah.

Brent: 11:40

You know, I have felt that the Lord has gone before me and he's led me by the spirit to do certain things, and this was a very early experience where that happened awesome. So the the next one I wanted to share I Accurred early on in our marriage, so we got we got married in 2006, at the end of our freshman year, so it was great Is. Jessica was a very fresh 18 or no 19, 19. Sorry.

Lily: 12:09

I can relate to that.

Brent: 12:12

You know, when you, when you, when you know, you know so yeah.

Brent: 12:16

So we got married very young and very poor, and a couple or a few years into our marriage we had two kids. We had Adelaide and Bryson, and I was doing my master's degree up at the University of Utah. And this is in 2009, and I'm gonna set a lot of backstory here just to just to kind of illustrate a point In the way that the Lord understands who we are and how any works with us. And so we were. We, we had just we had been in Pennsylvania. I did summer sales, was awful, but but I made a little bit of money while we were out in Pennsylvania and we had Bryson in mid-July and had to move back to Utah, or move back to Utah to start my program in mid-autumn in mid-autumn, mid-august, and we were just so poor I moved into this little, we moved into this little apartment up in Murray it was, I mean, half halfway underground.

Lily: 13:22

It was very dark.

Brent: 13:23

It was very depressing and I Didn't know it at the time, but Jessica was going through some pretty serious postpartum depression. Yeah, I was still of the mindset that mental health I had to do is just think happy thoughts and you can get over that Very ignorant mindset to be in. But I just I dove right into school. So I was doing, I was doing full-time Masters degrees, so I think 17 credits the first semester and 15 the second, and then I was working full-time because I had a family to support. I had, you know, two kids. Right, they were both.

Brent: 13:58

Bryson and Adelaide are about less than a year and a half apart from each other. Yeah, so they're very, very close and and it was hard, it's the hardest part of our marriage, the hardest part of my life that I've ever been through. I, you know, definitely including my mission, and it was. It was because I was just, I was so busy, I was so stressed, I we had money in the bank but I wouldn't allow us to use it because I wanted to save it for a down payment on a house, and so we were so poor that I do remember one time going to Costco and being like you know what I'd like to get a hot dog, but I can't really afford one of those. And and those were a dollar fifty back in 2009, just like they are now.

Brent: 14:44

Yeah, we had our membership for diapers and that's it. So I was, I was not in a good place, I was, I was grouchy, I was, I was very irritable, I was depressed, I was sleep deprived, going through this time. But I was fortunate enough in the fall, to go through recruiting, and this is in 2009. Mm-hmm, nobody was hiring in 2009 right, right after the crash.

Brent: 15:11

Yeah, right after the crash is not a good time to find a job, but I was fortunate enough to find a job and, and and it would start in August you know, in my, in my professional career and we decided to start looking for a house because this apartment was not cutting it for us.

Brent: 15:33

This is not what we wanted to do, you know, long term, and so we started house hunting all winter, and it was very stressful to do all this house hunting but we found something. I think in February or March it was a town home out here in Eagle Mountain that we fell in love with. It was bright, it was beautiful, it had nice finishes, nice appliances. It was like perfect for us. And so we put it under contract and we weren't going to be able to close on it until I started my new job, because I wouldn't be able to qualify for the loan, but we were so excited about it.

Brent: 16:18

Whoever owned it, they did summer sales, so they actually didn't live there, and so we started moving a few of our things, even into it before we closed Wow yeah.

Brent: 16:28

Because our intention was to start renting this town home before we started, before I started the jobs, we'd rent it for a few months because our other contract was coming up, and so we were just so excited and so we spent months thinking about this, looking forward to moving into it and then when I? Finished up my program in May. We had a move in date for the town home and I was on my way home from work and I was going to pick up the moving truck because we had the entire apartment packed up.

Lily: 17:05

You were ready to go, we were ready to go.

Brent: 17:08

Like the lease was up, we were ready to go, we were excited and I got a call from the appraiser and because he had been in that day appraising the house and he said hey we've got a problem.

Brent: 17:21

I was like this is you can't say we've got a problem, like I'm going to pick, I'm moving right now I am moving right now and he explained to us that the house was actually a lot smaller than it had been listed at, and so I think it was 500 square foot smaller than it had been listed at. Wow, and that came as a shock to us. And but he said because of that, there's just no way that I can appraise this property for the purchase price. Yeah, and so you know, this was a huge wrench in our plans. We couldn't start moving our stuff in there if we weren't going to be able to eventually buy the house, and so we we were literally homeless. All of our stuff was packed up in the apartment. We didn't know where we were going to be able to go and what we were going to do. And we reached out to some very good friends of ours, the Bristos. They'd been friends with our. They'd been friends for years.

Brent: 18:22

And they heard our situation and they said well, why don't you just come stay with us for the weekend while you sort this out? And so we came down to their house and we stayed with them and while we were there, I remember our agent calling us and saying hey, the house won't appraise, the sellers refuse to drop the purchase price.

Brent: 18:43

They think somebody will come up with the money to just pay it, and so this deal has fallen through. And you know, just with all that, you know that that backstory like we were desperate to get out of that apartment. It was a very depressing place for us to be. It was, it was. We didn't have good memories from being there and so when this happened and we found out this was not going to work out, we should have been devastated. And I remember looking out their back window over at the Bristos house and with Jessica, and just feeling completely calm about the entire situation.

Brent: 19:24

And you know, commenting to her we should be devastated, like how are we not having a really terrible time right now, Because we've been focused on this for so long and we we knew that it was. It was the gift of the Holy Ghost, it was the power of the Holy Ghost taking away that pain, and then the string of miracles that happened after that, you know, we're just astounding. It was obviously not where the Lord wanted us to go. We did end up finding a great apartment in West Jordan, and again it was one of those. Oh, we can't believe this is open, but it's open.

Brent: 20:06

And you can move in like tomorrow, and it's only a six month term.

Lily: 20:09

And you know so literally everything everything that we needed.

Brent: 20:12

It was bright, it was sunny, it was cheerful. It was what we needed.

Lily: 20:15

And then we found it was closer. Was it closer to your job too?

Brent: 20:18

Yeah, it's close to my job, and then and then it was, and then we ended up finding a great house up in Salt Lake, that that it was definitely where we were intended to go. But I think that this, this story, really illustrates the Lord understood, like my mental position. He understood that I was unwilling to, I was unwilling to, and he understood that I was unwilling to Like okay. Let me rephrase the Lord understood that we needed something to hope for.

Brent: 20:50

Okay, yes, the townhouse was not it okay, that was not it, but that was not going to be our final destination. But we needed something to give us a glimmer of hope, because we were depressed, we were stressed, we needed something to focus on outside of our current circumstances. And he gave that to us, even though that wasn't where we were supposed to go. And then, when it didn't work out, he helped us to feel confident that he was there and that he was going to support us and help us through finding the right place and being in the right place. And that was just a testament to me that he knows me. He knows that I'm bullheaded, that I am going to say I'm going to find a house, I'm going to find a house, and so he gave me one, and that wasn't the right one but it distracted me for long enough so that we could get into the right one.

Brent: 21:45

Wow.

Lily: 21:46

Yeah.

Brent: 21:47

And it's hard, you know. There's so many times where it takes a long time for the sun to come out and you have to tread forward in faith and it takes having these experiences to know that, like he really is in control. The scripture that I wrote down as I was thinking of this was Psalms 4610, which a lot of people are familiar with.

Brent: 22:12

It says be still and know that I am God, he is the one that's in charge and that he will. So long as we place our faith and our trust in him, he will place us where we need to be and help us to do what we need to do.

Lily: 22:30

Right Awesome.

Brent: 22:33

You know, the last story I wanted to share was again another one where the Lord he just knows me, he understands me. He understands that I'm a bullheaded red and that it takes a while to get through to me because of that. But we had Adelaide and Bryce and when we were in school, so it was very stressful, poor times I felt like a bad dad. I did not feel like I was a good father to babies because I just didn't have I didn't have patience for them and.

Brent: 23:13

I didn't have the time to spend with them, to really enjoy them. And so, you know, after we kind of got settled in I up in Salt Lake, I was we were both very comfortable with not having more kids. Anytime the thought of having kids come up, you know, having more kids come up, I was like nope, absolutely not, like I am. I am so not open to this idea. And that was the case for a few years. And then one Sunday evening we were over at my parents' house for dinner and we got I got a call on my cell phone. It was our stake president and I was like oh crap.

Lily: 23:57

Yeah, what's going on? This is never good.

Brent: 24:00

And then he said well, brother, brother, I'd like to speak to your wife and I was like gladly, fantastic, like here.

Brent: 24:06

She is, here she is, you know go ahead and take the phone and he spoke to my wife and he said that he'd like to invite her to speak in state conference and when she asked about the subject matter, he just left it open, which is terrible. If you're a stake president or in a bishopric or whatever, don't leave an open topic. That's. It's intimidating. It's intimidating Unless you feel inspired to do so, which I know that he felt inspired to do so on this, Because he gave he gave her several weeks to really prepare this, and one of the things about my wife is she just prepares so well for everything. She puts her heart and soul into everything, and and so she prepared, I think, two or three complete talks, you know like MGS citations and references and scriptures and relevant stories and all that stuff.

Brent: 25:06

But she, she prepared all these talks and she didn't feel like she had the right one until she arrived on one that was about motherhood and and that's where she really felt directed to go, and that was not a convenient place for her to go, because I was definitely not supportive of having more kids. She was in the best shape of her life, very healthy, and she was looking to go back to school.

Brent: 25:37

She had done her undergrad and exercise science, was looking to become an MD, and so we were looking at studying for the MCAT and doing all that wonderful stuff, so this is really bad timing for it, but she felt like that was the talk that she was supposed to give. And then, of course, as she thought about motherhood and prepared that talk, the stirrings of the spirit crept into her heart and and then she started talking to me about it. And then my heart was softened and that's really the only way to describe it is, my heart was very hard and my heart was softened towards the idea, and a lot of that was driven by my insecurity. I knew that I had not been a great dad to my first two babies and I was afraid that I wouldn't be a good dad to to my next child no-transcript. But I went ahead and we pushed through that and we decided to have our third kid and he's been such a blessing to me. We had him and I was able to spend several days off of work.

Brent: 26:53

Paternity leave wasn't a thing back then, by the way, that's kind of a new thing but I was able to spend a few days with him and I remember just watching him fall asleep on my chest and just breathe in and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out, and just seeing him rise and fall over my heart and feel his little heart on me. It was an experience that I'd never had before. And it was an experience that I'd never allowed myself to have before because I felt too much responsibility to do too many other things, and so I took great joy in having him as a baby. As soon as I'd come home from work, he was in my arms always. He was my little football. I carried him around like a football all the time and I just really loved having him as a little baby, and it helped me to improve my relationship with my older two as well and to cherish them and their stages that they were going through.

Brent: 27:58

And then, of course, not long thereafter, we got pregnant with our youngest, our baby. She's not even a year younger than our third, but what a blessing she has been in our life as well, and we felt the spiritual confirmation when we found out that she was a girl. We knew that she was the last and that our family, at least the spirits that we were to have, was complete. And shortly thereafter, jessica couldn't have any more kids. But the Lord, he, understood the way to get to me in that situation. I was so closed off, and so was Jessica, for that matter, but he understood that he needed to reach out to our stake president and he needed to have him give a talk, and that would soften her heart and then her words would soften mine and allow us to bring eventually two additional kids into our family.

Brent: 29:03

That have been such an enormous blessing to us and I'm really grateful for that. I'm really grateful that we have a heavenly Father who has known us ever since we were organized and he understands us. We have a Savior who has been through everything that we've been through. He has gone through the crazy master's degree stress. He has been stuck on the side of a mountain. He has felt what it's like to feel inadequate and feel like you're not a good father and you don't want to bring kids into a situation where they're not. They don't have the best dad. He knows what that's like and he's able to comfort and guide us through the power of the Holy Ghost, and to me that's a pretty magical thing to have a Godhead that is constructed so perfectly, to have a plan of salvation that is so forgiving and has so much allowance for people to make mistakes. It's something that I'll always be very grateful for.

Lily: 30:23

Right, well, do you mind just leaving us with a testimony, and then yeah.

Brent: 30:31

I just I want to express my testimony to those that are going through hard things right now. You know where, you don't know how you're going to keep yourself from sliding off the cliff. You have an uncertain decision. You feel inadequate, you know. All these examples that I've shared I think can resonate with a lot of people, because I think we go through a lot of the same things. I want to share my testimony that there is hope in sight, that you are the son or the daughter of a loving Heavenly Father, that he is the most powerful being in the universe and that he knows you and that he cares about you more than you care about your kids, more than you care about your parents, more than you care about your friends, and that he is going to be there for you. He will never leave you hanging, and I share that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lily: 31:32

Amen. Well, thank you, brent, for coming tonight, and hopefully we'll get to hang out again another time soon, alright, Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks again for tuning into More Than Coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your story. Please follow us on social media or share us with a friend. If you have an experience you'd like to share, feel free to reach out to morethancoincidencerememberhim at gmailcom. I can't wait to hear all of the amazing memories you all have of our Savior. See you next time.