More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story

Anchored in Faith with Lauren

• Lily • Season 1 • Episode 25

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Navigating the tempestuous seas of parenthood while anchoring oneself to a spiritual foundation can be an odyssey of its own—just ask Lauren, the devoted mother and faithful soul who graciously joined us this week. As we sat with her, stories unfolded of her Pennsylvania upbringing, instilled with the robust religious beliefs of her family, and how these beliefs have rippled through her life. The tapestry she weaves between nurturing her children and nourishing her own soul is riddled with the beautiful complexities of sustaining faith amidst the relentless pace of adult life. Lauren's poignant memories serve as a lighthouse for parents striving to impart sacred values in their young, even when the pressures of the world loom large.

Her journey reveals those quiet, intimate moments when we seek a higher comfort, and the universe responds in the most unexpected ways—like the time Lauren, hesitant and in need of solace, found an answer in Brother S, the newly appointed bishopric member who would become a testament to the reality that we're never truly alone. Our conversation traversed these cherished memories and the solace they offer, acting as beacons of hope and reassurance that divine support is ever-present. It's in these shared experiences that we uncover our own earthly angels and the strength to carry us through life's trials, a message that resonates deeply with anyone searching for meaning in the chaos of their daily 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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Lily:

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 tonight on the podcast we have Lauren. Lauren, how are you? I'm good, thank you.

Lauren:

Good. Will you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes, so I am 35 and I have a husband and two kids, and I grew up in Pennsylvania.

Lily:

I didn't know that, yeah, okay, you're East Coast, east Coast connection.

Lauren:

Yes, I grew up in Pennsylvania and I grew up as a member of the church and my parents are. They have fantastic, strong testimonies Right and so growing up, I loved the church. I loved the church, I loved the gospel, I loved the culture of the church and I loved like all the EFYs and all the activity days back then and mutual.

Lily:

Yeah.

Lauren:

Going home teaching. I have five sisters and no brothers where and where do you fit in? I'm the third, okay, the third, uh-huh, yeah, and so my dad would take us home teaching with him. Oh, that's awesome, uh-huh yeah, and so and and I just loved it. I loved, yeah. I feel like that was kind of like the spiritual highs in my life for my teenage years.

Lily:

Right yeah, is your family still in Pennsylvania?

Lauren:

No, they're not, they're here oh they are.

Lily:

Was it hard for them to leave? Because I feel like the East Coast, just I don't know. We lived in Virginia for four years and I miss all of the greenery. I miss, just like I don't know we get the four seasons here and it's really pretty here, but I don't know if the East coast, just there's something special about it. I love the East coast.

Lauren:

Yeah, I actually lived in. I was born in California and lived there and then we moved when I was nine to Pennsylvania and we were all mad about it. All the kids were so mad about it. But now we claim it.

Lily:

Really, yeah, see, that's awesome.

Lauren:

We all love Pennsylvania and the East Coast, but we're all out West. Now what? Yeah, I have a couple sisters here in Utah and my parents just moved to Midway in November.

Lily:

Well, I'm glad to know that you love the East Coast and that's where you're from, because that's really fun. Yes, so I'll just ask you the question then. So, lauren, what memories do you reflect on that prick your heart and remembrance of our Savior Jesus Christ and anchor you to him?

Lauren:

Well, so. I've been a mom for eight and a half years, and I'll just say that it's been more difficult to feel the spirit since I've become a mother.

Lily:

Yes, I would agree.

Lauren:

And I won't go into depth with that. Like I said earlier, I feel like the teenage years and early 20s, being I went to BYU were very was a great time to develop my testimony, and the last decade or so has been more it's more work. When you're an adult, you have a lot more pressures surrounding us, and I feel like, as a teenager, the testimony is almost handed to you. Yeah. Because my parents have very strong testimonies and I went to EFY every year and I went to EFY at SVU.

Lily:

Oh, did you really? Oh, my gosh, that's where Michael graduated from. That's hilarious. I love that campus. That's so wow.

Lauren:

Okay, we'll have to talk about that after this but, um, yeah, it's just. It's a lot more personal work. You don't have as many people surrounding you when you're an adult that are trying to yeah, like make you believe and make you feel right right or sometimes Right right, or sometimes even as an adult, it's like more pressure to not believe.

Lily:

I feel like sometimes.

Lauren:

Yes, so when I teach my children the gospel too, there have been moments in the back of my mind where I've thought do I? This is good? Right, I want to be teaching them this, right? This is not a lie, right and so right, like because I'm teaching it to someone and it's going to affect their entire life.

Lily:

yeah, that I have a worldview.

Lauren:

Yes, so I have to really ask myself how deep is my testimony and how strong am I and how strongly can I stick to these things that I'm teaching them. So I look back. I have a couple experiences to share, and these are ones that I've looked back to over and over again from my youth and early years and that helped me remember that, yes, this is real Jesus Christ. He was a real person and he was also the Savior and is my Savior, and so the first one I'd like to share is from when I was about 14 or 15, living in Pennsylvania and out on the East Coast. Everything is spread out.

Lily:

Yes.

Lauren:

So, like here in Utah, church is maybe a mile away, Right right In Pennsylvania we were driving up to 35 minutes to get to church.

Lily:

There you go, yeah, and so anyway so how far was the temple from you? Because we had to drive three hours to the DC temple. Yeah, we were there. You're DC.

Lauren:

Yeah, we were assigned to the DC temple and so our youth group would go once a year Yep. And now they have the Philadelphia temple, so that would be maybe 40 minutes from my home. That's awesome. Yeah, it's so cool. Yes, it's very exciting. When they announced it, my friend and I just jumped up Yep. So I was 14 or 15. It was about the year 2003. And there's not a lot of church members out where I lived and I had a couple of friends in our ward and my best friend in the ward was moving. Yeah, so she's gone. She moved.

Lauren:

And I don't make friends easily and I'm an introvert and I actually really am okay with being alone.

Lauren:

So I just wanted to point out I didn't have a lot of friends and I had a couple friends girlfriends in the ward that were my age age and soon after my best friend moved, it was announced that our ward was splitting, so they were taking half of our ward and half of another ward in the stake and combining them into a new ward and I was sad. I was so sad because I thought well, I just lost a friend and now I'm losing. I think I had two other friends and now I'm losing both of them. Yeah. And we have to now go to a different building Right With other people that.

Lily:

I don't know, and it's a lot. It's like starting over. It honestly is starting over in a way.

Lauren:

So yeah, and that's not good to do when you're that age. Right, it's very dramatic, yeah, and so, anyway, long story short, this new board gets formed and there are a couple other girls my age. They're a year younger than me in school, but they ended up becoming my best friends and I don't know that I ever would have talked to them because we would see each other at girls camp, but I don't know that I would have ever talked to them if I hadn't been placed in the same ward as them and my two friends from my previous ward.

Lauren:

They both moved, they were gone, like within the next year. No way, yeah, they were gone, and so I think that, if this, I think that it was. God's hand. Yeah that this new ward was formed because I had been praying to make new friends. And my friends felt like they were taken from me, right, and so I was upset. Why is this happening? Well then, the new ward was formed and, ta-da, I made new friends. Yeah, and these friends, they never moved away. They were here to stay.

Lauren:

Yeah, we were with each other for the next four or five years wow and I even roomed with one of them in college, yeah, yeah, and so I look back at that and I think that was so formative in my testimony. Yeah, because it helped me to know that Christ was aware of me, yeah, and that he was looking out for me yeah so fast forward several years, it um, and I was serving a mission, and I served a mission in Utah. Oh, which mission was it? So it's it or I don't know. Well, it was.

Lily:

It was called yeah.

Lauren:

Because missions are always changing. Yeah, it was called the Salt Lake City South Mission. Okay, so I was. I was just up the road in Riverton, south Jordan, west Jordan, cottonwood.

Lily:

Heights. Coming from Pennsylvania, getting your mission call to Utah.

Lauren:

Yes, and I had already done a couple of years at BYU.

Lily:

At BYU.

Lauren:

Uh-huh, yeah. So I opened my mission call and I kept saying I'm going back, I'm going back. It was very strange for me, uh-huh, and I actually even had family that lived in my mission, and so I got and I actually served in their ward.

Lily:

No way, so you got to see them.

Lauren:

Yeah, I got to see my cousins my aunt and uncle and my cousins and had dinner at their house. Wow, I know that's really interesting. It was. Serving a Utah mission is very unique. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, and one of the unique things about it is that you are assigned to so many wards at the same time. Right, and at one point I had three stakes. My companion and I were over three stakes. So why I bring that up is because you you're assigned to so many different wards. You're always hopping around to them. You might attend a sacrament meeting in a ward and not go back for a month to that ward right, and so you don't get to know the members very well.

Lauren:

Right, you're really only talking to the members who are serving in leadership positions yeah, or like the world mission leaders and stuff yeah, or or who?

Lauren:

those who have a referral for you or helping you teach, right, so you don't get. You don't get to be very close with the members. So it was 2010. I had been on my mission about a year, about a full year, and I was serving in West Jordan. Uh-huh and the sisters who were there before I got there had become close with this one family, and so then I came in and it was just very natural because my companion already knew them. So I got to become close with this, yeah, one family as well. So I'll talk about them again in a minute.

Lauren:

But, um, I got to this point on my mission where I felt very good and confident in what I was doing, but that can be kind of dangerous as a missionary. Interesting, okay, because, like I felt I was, I loved my companion, right, I was in a great place and we were teaching really good people and, like I was friends with other missionaries and just in a happy place, but then also not following the rules with exactness, and that's very much expected of you, right, at least it was.

Lauren:

You know, 12, okay, this was 14 years ago you're not old, I promise it doesn't feel that long ago, but so, anyway, you just are told exact obedience, follow everything, exactly Right. And I wasn't and it's not that I was doing anything naughty Right or anything bad Right or anything that a member of the church shouldn't do.

Speaker 3:

It's just that. As a missionary, I could have done better.

Lauren:

And so I felt I started getting this feeling like I needed a blessing Because I knew I knew that I could be better. And so I had had a few blessings priesthood blessings on the mission, for when I got sick, right but I had never had a blessing of comfort, right. And that was something that I got a lot when I was young, because my dad would give father's blessings, right, and it was something that I started to miss and realized that I needed. And there was a Sunday that we were, my companion and I were sitting in sacrament meeting and we were far back in the overflow and I just kept thinking about how I needed a blessing, but I didn't know who to ask and I don't remember why I didn't ask the elders. And I don't remember why I didn't ask the elders, right, because they're not that far away. My Utah mission was very small, right, and we even like I could have even asked the stake president that we lived with to give me a blessing. I don't remember why I didn't, but this sacrament meeting that I was sitting in, this, the family that I mentioned earlier yeah, I don't know if I can use their name, so I'm just going to use their initial Uh huh S. Okay.

Lauren:

So, brother S, uh huh. He had just been called to the bishopric, yeah. And so I'm sitting in the overflow. He's sitting up on the stand. And I looked up and when I saw him I thought, oh, just ask Brother S for a blessing, right.

Lauren:

And after the meeting I started to walk up to ask him and I chickened out. But I met his wife like halfway up and so I asked her hey, can we come by later? Can I get a blessing from your husband? Oh, yeah, sure, right. So later we were at their house and they asked me why do you need a blessing? And I told them well, I'm not sick, I just feel like I need this blessing of comfort because I haven't had one.

Lauren:

Yeah, and this sister, she said what? You've been on your mission a year and you haven't had a blessing of comfort. Yeah, and she just made me feel very normal and relaxed, right. And she just made me feel very normal and relaxed, right. And so Brother S gave the blessing and he blessed me with comfort, and he blessed me to. He said that Heavenly Father was pleased with the work that I was doing and to just continue on, and he blessed me that I would be calm waters to those around me, and it was everything I needed. And then, after the blessing, his wife turned to him and she said tell them what you told me earlier.

Lauren:

Tell them what happened. And he said that in sacrament meeting that morning when he was sitting up on the stand and this is a man probably in his 50s, see, and he's sitting up there, newly called to the bishopric and he said that he was looking around and thinking what the heck am I doing up here? Yeah, I'm, I don't know what I'm doing in a bishopric. I don't know how to be in a bishopric, yeah, and he was looking around everyone in the congregation and he said, when his eyes, when he looked at me, that everything else faded away and he just saw my face just for a few seconds and then everything came back into focus and he thought that was weird and that was it.

Lauren:

I wonder if the moment that happened to him is the moment when I thought ask Brother S Right For the blessing. I believe that day God was reaching out to both of us and we didn't understand the significance of it until later, when we were able to connect and each share our side of the story. Brother S had been looking at the congregation as a newly called member of the bishopric and he was looking out in humility and fear, wondering what could he offer, and Heavenly Father showed him that he was capable. He was there to serve me in a way that I wasn't able to receive from anyone else, and I love this story because it's not like anything too miraculous, but it was a message from heavenly father that he was aware of me and that, even though I was thousands of miles from home and I was serving in a mission where I didn't know most of the people other than the missionaries that he would still work through someone to take care of me.

Lily:

Yeah.

Lauren:

And it made me cry later on when. I was recounting it to some of the missionaries, because I just felt like I wasn't alone and and that has been an anchor to me when I have felt alone, and most of the time I don't mind being alone. Yeah, yeah, I enjoy it, right, but sometimes it gets to me and I can look back at these experiences that I had and remember that I'm never on my own, that Jesus Christ is aware of me, right, and he is taking care of me. Yeah.

Lauren:

He's not doing everything for me, right, but he's there watching out for me, yeah, and he is calling angels to help To minister and stuff, mm-hmm, that's awesome. To help me along the way and to Right. I don't know if Brother S would have reached out. I think for him it was just what just happened. Right, you know, and she's not even I was a missionary, I wasn't a member of the ward, a member of the ward Right Right.

Lily:

You literally could have just been there the one Sunday and then left and not come back for two more months, but it had to. It happened that one Sunday that you happened to be there.

Lauren:

Yes. So I'll just say that I love looking back on these experiences when you know how it is when you've got a newborn and your husband's at work and you're home all alone taking care of them, just thought, what have I done having this baby? And literally looked upward and said why is this happening? You know, when you're rocking I would be holding the baby. It's crying. I literally looked up, even though I thought they only do this in the movies, but looked up to heaven and said yeah why is this happening?

Lauren:

where are you? Yeah, and and I could look back and remember that he's been there for me before and not to lose my faith or my testimony that he's still there. Right.

Lily:

Those are some wonderful experiences and I think that those what I do see, though often as people are sharing their testimonies and sharing these experiences is a lot of the things have happened when they're younger.

Lauren:

Yeah.

Lily:

Either you know little well, little girls, little boys, or you know teenagers, and I think that it just is impressed upon my mind the importance of that, and I was flipping through my scriptures today, and I remember I can't even.

Lily:

I think it was a scripture master.

Lily:

I can't remember where it was, though, but it was the scripture. That's like you know learn wisdom in thy youth and learn to keep the commandments in your youth, and so I think it's cool hearing your stories as just another testament to the importance of our childhoods and the importance of doing our best to teach our kids in righteousness, and I think that I loved your concern of like okay, well, as a parent, do I truly believe this, because if I'm going to be teaching my kids like I want to teach them good things, I want to teach them the truth. I don't want to lie to them, and I love how you brought that up, and I think, as we reflect and remember these experiences that we've had in our youth and the way, the feelings that we've had in our experiences, then we are able to more confidently say to our children or to whoever you know, these are the feelings that I've felt, and I know it, and I know that God knows it Right and I think, at the end of the day, like that's all you can do.

Lauren:

So yeah, the church and the gospel were such a huge part of my upbringing, right. I believe that it it shaped. It shaped me more than anything else, right, and I loved it and so I want that for my kids too, right?

Lauren:

I want them to be able to turn to the savior. I know that he's there for them, right? Uh, because the teenage years are hard. And yes, yes, right, because the teenage years are hard and yes, yes, and it's just great to have the Savior when you're a teenager. It really is, because the hard times are going to come, friends are going to come and go, your relationship with your parents is going to be tried and it's going to change.

Lily:

And it's just lovely to have the church there for you. Something constant, right, that's cool. Well, would you mind just leaving us with a testimony then, of course?

Lauren:

I just was thinking about. When I was 12, I think I was at my first girls camp and we were standing, we were around the fire for testimony meeting and I got up and I told everybody if I, when I die, and I get to the other side and somebody comes up to me and says it actually wasn't true, yeah, I said. If that happens and somebody says, like the church actually wasn't all that it said it was, and there actually are no three kingdoms and whatever, yeah, and I said, if that happens, I won't care because this way of living has made me so happy and I will still have been proud of the way that I lived. Yeah, and you know, here we are a couple decades later and my testimony has developed since then. Right, but I still share the same sentiment that being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and following the teachings and the gospel of Jesus Christ lead to happiness. Yeah.

Lauren:

And I'm proud of the life that I live, and I know that the Savior is a resurrected being and that he's alive and that he's watching over us. I know that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are his teachings and that when we study them we will draw closer to him, and that's the best thing we can do. And I know that joy a member of his church can be more simple than we think and that following him is more simple than we make. It is more simple than we make it. And I know that when we do follow him, we can be at peace. And I know that Jesus is the Christ and that we have prophets and church leaders who love us and only want the best for us. And I leave that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen, amen.

Lily:

Well, thank you for coming tonight and I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and your testimony with us. Thanks again for tuning in to 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.