More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story
Your Story Matters! with Lisa
Her simple yet impactful habit of journaling gratitude, which started with a mere three words a day, later unfolded into an inspiring account of finding joy and contentment in the face of life's trials she was able to look back on when she needed it most!
Wrapping up our soul-stirring session, we explore the art of storytelling, particularly through the lens of the powerful narratives found within the Book of Mormon and Bible. The tale of Shez in Ether 10 becomes a platform for discussing the enduring significance of spiritual legacies and the ability of personal stories to forge deep, meaningful connections. We ponder the spaces left within parables for personal interpretation and growth, sharing how even during times of uncertainty, such as the pandemic, stories have the power to guide us to introspection and profound life lessons. With every anecdote and reflection, we celebrate the mosaic of redemptive journeys and the pervasive presence of Jesus Christ within each chapter of our lives.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
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Website: https://morethancoincidencerememberingjesuschristinyourstory.buzzsprout.com
Email: morethancoincidence.rememberhim@gmail.com
**Transcripts available on website!
Her simple yet impactful habit of journaling gratitude, which started with a mere three words a day, later unfolded into an inspiring account of finding joy and contentment in the face of life's trials she was able to look back on when she needed it most!
Wrapping up our soul-stirring session, we explore the art of storytelling, particularly through the lens of the powerful narratives found within the Book of Mormon and Bible. The tale of Shez in Ether 10 becomes a platform for discussing the enduring significance of spiritual legacies and the ability of personal stories to forge deep, meaningful connections. We ponder the spaces left within parables for personal interpretation and growth, sharing how even during times of uncertainty, such as the pandemic, stories have the power to guide us to introspection and profound life lessons. With every anecdote and reflection, we celebrate the mosaic of redemptive journeys and the pervasive presence of Jesus Christ within each chapter of our lives.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook: More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story
Instagram: mtc.rememberingjesuschrist
Website: https://morethancoincidencerememberingjesuschristinyourstory.buzzsprout.com
Email: morethancoincidence.rememberhim@gmail.com
**Transcripts available on website!
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. All right, good evening everybody. Today we have Lisa on the podcast. Lisa, you want to introduce yourself a little bit. I will.
Speaker 2:I am a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I learned about the church when I was a teenager and I have now been a member of the church for several decades. I'm super happy about that. I love the Savior and I love the gospel and I have a wonderful family and, yeah, so super happy to be here.
Speaker 1:That's awesome Heard. You just got back from a mission, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yes, we did. My husband and I both served individually as young adults. But we said at the beginning of our marriage, in fact the day we got engaged, we said we're going to serve a senior mission someday, and so it finally got to the place where our youngest son was at an age where he could be here and take care of the place and everything.
Speaker 2:And so we did, and we served on the border of California, mexico, in a city called Calexico, california, in the California San Diego mission, and we've been home for three weeks, that's awesome, wow.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome back, and I'm sure it's mixed feelings, emotions being home, but I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me and to share your testimony. So I'll just ask you, lisa what memories do you have in your life that you reflect on, that prick your heart and remembrance of our Savior, jesus Christ, and anchor you, you, to him?
Speaker 2:well, the one that I pulled out, of all the ones that I could think of, were very impactful and life-changing, and I, you know, I don't think that any as a story collector, I will say, and a family historian, I don't think there's any story that's too small to note and I just really think that sharing stories is important for a number of reasons that I hope to touch on. But anyway, the first one that I'll start with is that when I was a kid not naming the decade or the year that I was born, that I was born with there was something called a five and dime store, which meant that you could go in and get stuff for, yeah, for like five cents a nickel or a dime.
Speaker 1:Right, I feel cheated. There was like all a dollar and family dollar now, but there was a point where there was only a dime or a nickel.
Speaker 2:Well, not everything, because the thing that I got was that was really special and I don't know why I don't have it with me and I was going to bring it just to. I know you wouldn't see it on the recording, but anyway, just to show you. But it was across the street from the grocery store that we went to every week and this was a place that if we got to go to it I was pretty sure I was going to come out of it with a coloring book, which was a big deal to me, because my family didn't shop for no reason. You know, we weren't that way with our funds and we didn't have the funds to just do that. So it was a big deal. Yes, you know, like I always wanted to have the 64 crayon box of Crayolas, but you know we didn't. It wasn't my family. So to get to go to the five and dime was a big deal. And so I found and I can't remember cause I was, like I don't know, eight years old, I think. So I can't, I just can't remember the details but I found a little one of those with the thumb edges in the paper five-year diary with a little bitty key. I still have it even though I got it when I was eight and I still have the key. Now it's the the. The key latch is falling apart a little bit, but yes, I have it all these decades later.
Speaker 2:Um, and it survived a lot and I just thought it was the coolest thing and my mom was so sweet and she bought it for me and I know that that did not cost a nickel or a dime. It was adorable. It has it. I mean it is, it's cute. It's got little gold. Well, I thought it was real gold, you know, like designs and the gold edge on the pages. And you just open it up and it just says five-year diary and you just fill in the decade or the year and you just, and it's very small but it's, it's just adorable, yeah, it's special, special to you, yes, and and special to me in that when I was little, I just like to fill up blank paper and it's just like I would grab notepads and just fill them up and draw and write.
Speaker 2:I I don't know what I wrote. I wrote a lot of stories, I know that, but um, just, I just like doing that and it was somehow it served to de-stress me, you know, to calm me down to soothe me and stuff, and so I wrote a lot of stories. It was just my thing and I love to read. So I I read classics I love, like Jane Eyre, and anything by Dickens or Twain or any of those. Um right, so stories are my favorite thing in the world and that was what I like to do and I kind of feel like a journal is kind of a story, you know, because you're great 100 it's your story.
Speaker 2:It's your story, right? Yeah, and so the diary? Yeah, it just became this little place where I could go and just write my thoughts. I mean, I didn't. When people, when people hear the word journal, it can either make them feel really bad, like I should be doing that and I should do it every single day for paragraphs and paragraphs, or they're like me and they think out of the box and they say well, you know, journaling is really just me writing whatever I want or recording whatever I want, however I want, which is what I hope that people will take away from about journaling. But anyway, so I kept the habit up. I did not write every day. I want to say that I haven't journaling for decades, yes, but write every single day, no, right, I don't think that's really the reason why, at my age now, as a mother and grandmother, my writing has evolved to the point where I write to fill my soul. I don't write to just write words anymore.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that has more meaning, like more soul to it, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so you know, like I said, I kept, I kept going kind of hit and miss when I was a little girl with this little journal, and then a teenager, and then finally, when I was baptized as a member of the church, as I referred to before, I was 19. And that's when I really got serious about it. And then I served a mission really soon after I got baptized. So I was writing in a mission journal and it just kept going and just kept going, um but um. To me I think that the, the reading and the journaling went together, just like I said, because I love stories and I think stories are amazing.
Speaker 2:But as time went forward, after my mission and my husband and I were married and we had all, we had three children we have four, but we had three and our family was passing through a very stressful time and as a mom, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't able to take good care of myself. I kind of just gave up on that, you know, and all of my energy was was putting out fires. I just remember thinking I'm just putting out fires, that's all I'm doing every day. I would get up and I would think I'm going to drag through this day and I'm going to hope that I can catch two hours of sleep and then I'll get up and I'll do it all again.
Speaker 2:And that was about where I was mentally and emotionally at this point. And I remember that we went this is back in the day went visiting teaching with a friend of mine and I don't know what came what. I don't know how the conversation went, but I know it got to be about gratitude and and showing thanks and being grateful for life or good things in our lives or whatever. And I remember sitting there thinking, suddenly the thought came to me and I thought gratitude, I'm feeling very grateful.
Speaker 2:At that time I was thinking okay, you know what heavenly father I'm here, I'm serving thee by, you know, taking care of these children that thou has sent me. But gratitude, really. And so I didn't, yeah, I, I just left the aren't you grateful that I'm doing this?
Speaker 1:yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Aren't you grateful that I'm doing this? Yeah, I know. Is that?
Speaker 2:what you mean. Where do? Sorry to say this, but where's the payback in that?
Speaker 2:I don't get it right now, like I'd like to be in bed like a lot of the time, have somebody you know, bring me my meals and whatever, but. But so the problem was that I mean, that was a really pivotal thing. That was a pivotal thing. Getting that little five-year diary was absolutely a momentous thing. Even though it was, it probably took two minutes for my mom to check out at the cashier box, but that changed my life literally.
Speaker 2:And then this moment where my friend just happened to say something to the other woman about gratitude, and I remember going through what I just described and I just I thought well, number one, even the thing that I love the most, that comforts me the most, which is journaling. Well, music also, I'm a musician, but those two, you know, the journaling was really a place where I could just let off steam. Yeah, it was a safe place for me to write and I didn't have to worry about someone else reading it, and I knew better than to write things that I wouldn't want someone to find, but I still let things out Right. And so I was frustrated because that wasn't comforting me anymore. I mean, I was really in a dark, dark place, and so I remember that after that meeting, I just kind of pushed it away and didn't think about it. And then I think, just out of sheer frustration, I think I of pushed it away and didn't think about it. And then I think, just out of sheer frustration, I think I must've just said well, father in heaven, I just don't know. I, I, I need to journal, I need to write, but I just I'm so miserable, I don't feel like it, and this is comforting to me. So what do I do?
Speaker 2:And the thought just came to me, with a picture in my mind of myself writing in different color inks. I know that sounds really dumb, and people sticker and glue and collage and bullet journal and do all these things. But this was not then. It's a long time ago. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense Because visually I could see that if I flipped through my paper journal and saw one colored ink for things I was grateful for and the other color ink just sort of whatever, then I could look back at the journal which people don't talk about, but you should, right. And I could see the purple popping off the page. Yeah. So I just said yes, and so I probably went ahead of myself. But, yeah, I decided well, I've always liked the color purple, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go and get a purple pen. And it was.
Speaker 2:It didn't go very well. I found a purple pen. It didn't go very well because the first thing I wrote was three words, and those words were. I got up. Yeah, that was it, that was it for that day. Yep, that's how bad it was. And so, um, but I pushed myself on it. I was like, no, I feel like this is the spirit talking to me. I'm going to do this. As hard as it is, I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2:And pretty soon I noticed that there was more and more purple, there's more and more things. I mean cause I was honest, I was honest with heavenly father, I wrote, I got up. That is the best thing that I can find, the most positive thing I can find, in the days that I actually got out of bed, feeling the way I feel right now and dealing with everything that I'm dealing with. And so, just like I said, it's a little by little. I just kept a purple pen around and yeah, and so, anyway, so that those, those two things, those two events as decades, as apart as they are. Those are, yeah, those are the two stories that came to my mind and I also just wanted to share one thing about, about the whole, the whole idea of like stories and remembering. Yeah, Because I took a journaling class because I thought it would be fun and it really was, it was at the university that my husband finished his graduate degree in in Houston and cause we met it at in Utah, at BYU, and then we moved to Houston.
Speaker 2:Anyway, so he finished his upper degree there, upper his graduate degree there, anyway, and I took a class and one of the things that one of the what's the word I want, the ways in which you can journal. This teacher was amazing. She was a writer, so she knew what she was a writer, so she knew what she was doing. And she said you know, every other day, for example, like on you could say odd days and even days on the odd days, write about where you went and your grocery shopping and whatever. On the even days, write about your feelings, write about your emotions or your impressions and interesting, yes, and I thought that sounds like the book of mormon and it sounds like a little purple pen, right, somehow all of this is coming together and so I I guess it's just anyway. So, studying the scriptures, it's very obvious that it's a commandment from father in heaven to write things down. That it's a commandment from Father in Heaven to write things down, right, it's all a surprise, right, and it's also a commandment to remember every week or at any time we participate in an ordinance, a sacred ordinance, and you know, for the sake of our audience here, I will just say that those are rituals that are considered sacred that we do in remembrance of Jesus Christ, exactly, exactly that are considered sacred. That we do in remembrance of jesus christ, exactly exactly. That's the best way I could say it, because we believe. Our theology teaches us that everything on the earth is in his similitude. It's all symbolic of him, so we can see him every in everything around us if we look. That's that's the problem, is that we need to look, but anyway. And so father in heaven is saying we need to tell this story, which is the biggest story of all. It's a story of redemption, it's a story of renewing, it's a story of rescue right, and so if he's commanding us to do that and he's saying you know, the children of israel have the passover right, that's repeated, that's their story. They look back to moses and say that's where we were saved, you know we were saved. And they tell that to their children, right, all down the generation.
Speaker 2:I found this really interesting spot in the book of mormon. That was really random, oh, I don't know. Years and years ago and I've never forgotten it. It's very, very short. It's in the book of Ether, chapter 10. And it's about a person named Shez. That's S as in Sam H-E-Z. Yeah, shez, and there's not so Ether 10, there's not a lot there because there's not either 10. There's not a lot there because it there's 30 something verses, but what it does is it just goes down from king to king to king to king to king, right right right.
Speaker 2:All of these leaders and you know, maybe like four out of the 20 mentioned there were living the covenants that they made with God, right, and so so what it does, is it kind of shrinks? So what it does, is it kind of shrinks? You kind of see this picture in your mind of, wow, when things were going great for these people, they remembered the way their fathers had been saved. Yes, yep, they remembered that. They repeated that to their children and did whatever rite or ordinance or sacred ritual they were supposed to do. However that looked, they shared that story with all the generations that went down from them, and so that's when things went well. And you can see that in the Bible. You know over and over. You see where people are. If they forget the story of Moses and they kind of worldly, go worldly, and they don't remember the spiritual things that happened to their forefathers, how they were rescued, then they don't connect to anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what I learned and that's what my that's part of what really inspired this entire podcast and that's what my entire first episode was about, that I finally realized that the Book of Mormon is these individual people telling their stories right. It's these specific things that the Lord knew, because stories are powerful, that these are the lessons and these specific testimonies are what's going to help everybody. Right, because stories do have power, and I feel like, especially stories, stories which I feel like testimony is also kind of basically another word for like they can not, they're not exactly interchangeable, but I feel like when we share our personal stories, that is where this I felt the spirit the strongest, not just for me, but but from other people as well, because that's where we see Christ ministering to the one. That's where we see these incredible things of how he truly is, in the small and simple things that when we look back and we remember them, we see the picture.
Speaker 1:We see it right.
Speaker 1:So I love that you bring this up, because I I'm the same, like I love reading stories and I I feel like the book of mormon didn't have as much meaning for me until I realized, oh my gosh, this is like enos's journal, this, like this is the.
Speaker 1:These are their things, and I love how you brought up that. It was well, maybe it was in our conversation before we started recording, but I think you're bringing up about how, now that you're older, you write in your journal differently, and it made me think about nephi, like I think all the things that he recorded were his reflection upon what happened, right, and so it was on his reflection of those memories and him remembering those memories that he was able to see. Oh my gosh, I didn't know the Lord was going to tell me this, but I went and did it and this is what happened. I didn't know all these things were going to happen, but this you know, and, and so I think that that puts it in a different light and it just makes it, at least for me, so much more personal, I guess, and relatable, because I relate.
Speaker 1:I relate to stories and I relate to people more than I relate to I don't know like sermons, like big old sermons right, and that's just me personally right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think most of us are that way. I think that was one of the things that I relearned as a missionary, and since it's so recent in my mind is that people, you know, for example, if we would go into someone's home and we would sit with the missionaries, obviously they would lead out. They would, you know, say here's what we're going to talk about tonight. We, they, you know, we'd have the prayer and whatever. But the missionaries would look at me and ask me about my conversion story.
Speaker 2:That was, most of the time, what they wanted me to share. Sometimes they would, but they would always. In other words, they would always ask the question in a way such that it was hey, sister Coffee, how did you feel when you first read the Book of Mormon? Or how did you feel when the missionaries talked to you about, you know, joseph Smith and everything you know? And that's how I am and I think that's true and it's kind of interesting. This is a little bit scientific and I won't stay on it too long, but I was. I'm so fascinated by the idea of storytelling and stories that actually I made a little bit of a study of it on my own. That's good.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I learned. I know, I know it sounds really, yeah, it's just who I am. Anyway, I reached out to a psychologist that I found online who is a member of a storytelling group she's brilliant and I just said I know you don't know me from anybody, but I know that you tell stories and that you're in a guild that tells your group that tells stories, stories whatever. And you studied, you know, the effects of narration on psych, in psychology and psychological ways. And so she gave me a few resources and I learned that, getting to it, I promise our brains are physically hardwired for narrative.
Speaker 2:Yes, we think that way. We think in opening, introducing characters, little bit of rise in conflict, and then you know some action, and then way up here to the super high conflict, I mean there's an arc, right, the story arc, yeah, and there's this rising action and oh my gosh, and then there's a resolution at the end, right, that's how our brains are wired. And so the idea that the Lord has commanded everybody to tell stories is not really a surprise. It's, yeah, it's a confirmation that this is how we're put together. This is what we should be doing. We should be telling our children's stories, and right, well, in christ taught in parables a story that's my next thought.
Speaker 2:yes, yes, that was my next thought, because they're so simple. My husband and I were talking about that the other night because we wanted to pick something to read together and we were reading out of Jesus the Christ, and I said let's talk about parables because I love stories so much, and OK, so we were reading about that, and you're right. I mean, there's just all these different layers, like well, what does that mean? And then it can be analyzed in a different way. Someone can learn. You can learn one thing from a parable. Lily and Lisa might learn another thing, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Right, you know Well, and I think the unique thing about parables is that you don't necessarily know all the details.
Speaker 1:Like there, there are so many parables that I'm like okay, either this was not recorded correctly or I need some more details because, I have these questions, but I think it's because there's that gap in the narrative, that there's this like there isn't a resolution all the time, or maybe there's. You know there's, there's something that I don't know, it makes me think about it and it makes me kind of like insert different ideas. You know, one of the ones that I kind of struggle with sometimes is the parable of talents and the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I think that's I know the one, the talent one, that that's what that was called. But like for you know, for example, with the vineyard, I just wonder. I'm like, because an elder like I really have really looked into this because they kind of make the people who are sitting out on the highway like elder holland's talked about them in a couple conference talks. He makes them sound like these bums on the side of the road, just like not wanting to go to work until the 11th hour, right, like there's just so much that I just I feel like there's something I'm missing here. And as I and as I sat and I thought about this story and I and I pondered on this parable the Lord taught me no Lily.
Speaker 1:These people at least for me, these people were doing their own things. They were moms rushing around doing all these things. It's not like all of them were idle. It did mention that some of them were idle, but I felt in my heart that there were also some who were like me and I feel like, oh my gosh, I have all these things I want to do. I can't go serve in the vineyard yet, or I want to serve in the vineyard, but I have all these other things. And then, and then the Lord came to me and said, lily, now is not your time to be serving in my vineyard. I will come and get you when it's time for you to serve in my vineyard. Oh, I love that, right.
Speaker 1:And so, and then I and and it was like, even lily, if you are the 11th hour serving in my vineyard, you're fine, like I see these other things that you're doing, right, yeah, and so that's why that's, and that was something you know, and we can go into parables, we can go into stories, but I think I love that you bring that up, because it's true that the savior taught in parables and he taught in stories. The scriptures are replete with stories and the reflections of people's lives, and it's as we start seeing those as not just like a narrative of like, oh, the bad guy and the good guy, and which it's, it's good to look at that, it's good to look at those too, but but also just kind of see it on that human level, like the humanity in it and like what the?
Speaker 1:lord, like connecting to these people. I think that's, at least for me, where the power comes, and I'm like, oh yeah, like I get you guys, like this totally makes sense. God, doesn't become like this weird, nebulous thing. It's like no, no, this is how he taught, this is how he spoke, this is his way that he delivers his messages, and it and it means more to me.
Speaker 2:So yeah, didn't mean to go on a long tangent, there.
Speaker 1:No, I've been going on tangent.
Speaker 2:No, I've been going on a lot of tangents. The thing is that first, before before I do forget, though, back to the thing about the deliverance every single story that you've collected and everybody, okay, every single story you've collected has been about redemption or recovery or renewal. Every single one of them. Yes, if I listen to them, and that's what people talk about, and the reason we talk about those things is like I'm saying to you about the little, the five year diary, the, the moment that my friend started talking about gratitude and I picked up a purple pen. I mean, you know, those sounds so silly and dumb, but for me, they changed my life and they came to me through the holy spirit. Yes, so we think that, oh, it's some, gotta be some big story or whatever. Or I guess what I'm saying is I wish I could go out into the world and look everybody in the eye, one at a time, and say you know what? You probably have an amazing story.
Speaker 2:And maybe you're having a really cruddy day right now, but I want you to know you have probably been delivered from more than you know. Find it, figure it out and tell it to yourself every time you feel cruddy. Really, though, I can't put it that I'm not good at putting things, not good at putting it the way I want it to be, but I know, know, know, know inside of myself that every single one of us has a Christ-like redemptive story in our lives. Every single one of us has had multiple times where we didn't see a way out and we're kind of like, oh great, now I'm stuck. And then something happens. But like the parable of the 10 leopards let's go back to parable it's the idea of making a note of it.
Speaker 2:Now, for me, I'm a writer. That's what I do for other people. Maybe they have other ways of remembering. Maybe they, I don't know maybe they, or maybe they don't struggle with remembering as much as I do, or they don't feel a need to keep track of it Because I don't want to get off on. Oh, this lady is going to say journaling is the answer. No, for me, writing is the way I keep track of things. Other people will have other ways of remembering Christ in their lives. I'm just saying that for me, that's where the power comes, is through stories. And then to go on to farther from that is being a very active family history consultant and a very active pursuit of stories.
Speaker 2:And I could even go off into that, even, and just say like I love what you talked about, how you said some of the parables, of moments like these, the parables have blank spots and you're like, right, okay, so what does that mean? Run, let me, who's gonna fill that one in for me? And it's true, because if you didn't have the curiosity that you had, it would just be blank and you could just go right by it. But you had the curiosity, you know, and during COVID my planner went blank. You know, like I had all these travel plans and you can see I have a picture of my planner, I took a picture of it, all these travel plans, and you can see I have a picture of my planner. I took a picture of it and I just crossed with red, you know, and I was. And then, and then it went from having the, but when it went from that to being just blank, right, nothing was getting filled in those little boxes, and so that's kind of how I feel, like like what you're talking about, those blank spots.
Speaker 2:You know father in heaven doesn't spell things out on purpose so that we can wait till the story resolves.
Speaker 1:You know, we sometimes we just have to do that and it's not fun or act and not be acted upon, so many main characters kind of have to go do things or else they'd be a really boring story I wouldn't want to read.
Speaker 2:That's true, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's wonderful. I didn't mean to go on a huge long digression, but I think this was wonderful.
Speaker 2:No, it's not a digression at all, because I mean, I just I can't say enough about what I think the power of stories are. I mean, my mom, for example, mentioned once that they lived in Michigan when she was really little. And as I was writing my personal history during COVID, which was another thing that came to me, I should my personal history during COVID, which was another thing that came to me. I should probably preface that by saying when COVID broke out and it was time in the state where we live, where the governor said we are not going to go out randomly and we're going to follow, you know, whatever the other, there are other states that had plans similar to this way, anyway, and I, I, my husband, could still work from home on Zoom and I said I cannot live in this much fear and darkness. And I literally just prayed to father in heaven, what would you have me do? And he said, lisa, write your story. Yeah. And I thought, okay, I guess I'll do that. I've been journaling all these years. Surely I can put together this. And it turned out to be the most amazing experience of my life Another one because of the resolution I got from telling all kinds of stories and I did not start like I was born on March, whatever.
Speaker 2:It was not like that at all. It might my personal history or my memoir. I like to call it because it's a book, it's bound, it's a book of stories. That's all I did. I just, I just not all I did. Oh my gosh, it took me a year and a half. That's a lot of work and editing, and editing, and editing, and writing, and writing, and edit, and scanning, and scanning, and I just I mean it was really, really healing in a lot of ways for me.
Speaker 2:But what I would like to say just here, as a testimony, if I could, just before I forget, is that I noticed a pattern in each of the chapters which was a story. Every single chapter was just a story. And I noticed a pattern that every single one of those stories started out with a conflict, some rising action. You know the huge, the climax, everything at the yeah, the climax, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? Yeah, and every single time, at the end of the essay and the end of the story, I found myself writing and that's how I knew the Lord was with me. Yes, that's how I saw his hand in my life. Yes, because of this. And so that's that's, I guess, to me.
Speaker 2:That's just why I think stories are important, because, you know, like going back to Passover, going back to Shez, you know, he, he remembered. I mean, in the verse in the scripture it's very, very short, it just says he remembered the deliverance of his fathers. This is really short and I'm probably not even quoting that, right, it's like four words something. And and so there's, there's, there's little blanks in between all these other Kings and leaders, just like we're talking about the blank in the story. And but the thing that they did, that the prophet did record to fill in that blank, was that the reason they recorded? Shes saying that is because he did remember, and remembering was the key that kept them on the covenant path.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that, that's incredible man. All the goosebumps tonight. I love that, that's incredible man. All the goosebumps tonight.
Speaker 2:All of the wonderful feels tonight. I'm loving it, thank you, yeah, I love it too.
Speaker 1:So yeah, would you mind, Lisa, if there are no final thoughts, or I should say, if there?
Speaker 2:are no other thoughts. Would you mind leaving us with a testimony? Well, I don't mind leaving with a testimony For me.
Speaker 2:I believe that every person on the planet matters. Every person has a story. You don't have just one story either. You have plenty. All of us have been redeemed or renewed somehow or rescued somehow, and I just want to say, especially to people that are struggling with depression and anxiety because I know those things personally that you matter, your voice matters, your story matters, and that the Savior is in your story, with you. You may not know it or you may not recognize it, but he is, he's there. He created us, he gave us life, he gave us breath, he gave us everything that we have, and there's no way that he would just walk away from us and leave us alone on our path. Absolutely not. And, yeah, and I love the scriptures, I love the Old Testament and its focus on stories and passing stories down, and the same with the Book of Mormon, and I know that those are both sacred records given to us by prophets who were called by God.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, and I just want to put in a little plug. So you just started a Facebook page called A Little Purple Pen.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I did, and it's under construction, but be patient, there's much more to come.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, thank you, lisa, so much for sharing your testimony and nerding out about stories with me, because I love stories too and it's been so much fun and I yeah, thank you for coming on tonight. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lily, thank you.
Speaker 1: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.