This is part 1 of the Finding Yourself series. Read parts 2 and 3 here.
I love watching viral videos of small children doing or saying adorable things. My mom and I can sit on the couch and giggle for hours as kids babble funny phrases or explore new things around them.
I once stumbled upon a clip of this adorable little girl named Abby, however, that might just take the cute kid video cake. I would guess she is about four years old and the video shows her sitting at a table with a piece of bread in front of her. She is wearing a shirt that is both pink-striped and has a flower print. Her brown curly hair has been put in pigtails on either side of her head.
Like I said, adorable.
Abby is taking small bites of bread and as a woman (who I assume is her mother) from behind the camera asks her a question: “Abby, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Abby gets an adorably confused look on her face and says, “What do you mean?” Her mom restates the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up? What would you like to do?” Then with absolutely no hesitation sweet little Abby replies in the most matter-of-fact, confident tone I’ve ever heard: “Take care of monkeys.”
Give yourself a laugh and watch the video.
I smile and laugh in love every time I think of her sweet innocence—Abby will take care of monkeys when she grows up. Of course! Why did Mom even have to ask?
I am not kidding at all when I say that I really hope that when Abby grows up she does take care of monkeys. Although, if I had to guess, I bet that sweet little girl will slowly start to see how big the world is and may come to question her drive to peel bananas forever. Maybe she will learn about other fields of work and develop new passions and interests that will take her away from the beloved monkeys. Whatever happens in Abby’s life, she is going to have to make choices—and a lot of them. Choices not only about her job, but about who she will be and what she will and won’t do.
What dreams will she determine to chase with ferocity and which ones will she choose to lay aside?
What voices on the internet will she believe and which will she choose to turn away from?
What teachings from her parents will she hold on to?
Who will she invite to come along with her on the journey?
Quite a lot of questions for a four-year-old with pigtails.
But Abby, and all of us, can walk forward in this world of choices and opportunities—and sometimes fear and disappointment—with all the confidence of a four-year-old with pigtails. We have a long road ahead of us, but with the gospel of Jesus Christ along for the ride, that road is one to look forward to. It’s going to be full of beautiful views and exciting destinations. We will likely also find ourselves face-to-face with heartbreak or struggling to step forward after someone or something smashes our confidence. In moments like those, I think one of the scariest things you can ever think is that your life is going nowhere. Please don’t ever give in to the temptation so ever before you to believe that you’ve done it all wrong and that you are headed nowhere and so is everyone and everything else. We are indeed all going somewhere!
This series is meant to provide a little guidance on how to discover your passions, how to build an identity you can stand on, and find joy in who you are.
Like little Abby, we have a lot to do as we figure who we want to be when we grow up. But we can do it! By understanding and following the teachings of Jesus, we don’t need to feel overly intimidated by the many decisions that lie in our path. Instead, we can take life by the hand and run joyfully into the sunset. Like many of us sung in Primary, Jesus is going to “help [us] find the way.”
So without further ado, here is part one of three on finding yourself.
Repeat After Me: Life is Going to Be Glorious
If I were to ask you who Ammon from the Book of Mormon is, what do you think you’d tell me about him? I bet your gut reaction would be to say that he was the guy who chopped off his enemies’ arms. (If you aren’t familiar with that scripture story, don’t panic; I’ll explain later.) While that fight was definitely a memorable moment in Ammon’s life, I think there is something much, much cooler about Ammon’s story that we should be talking about. Why? Because I have yet to be in a situation that required my ability to wield a sword, but I have needed a healthy dose of hope that good things are coming for me. And if you read between the lines of Ammon’s experience with the people of King Lamoni, I think you’ll be amazed at what his story teaches us about the power of having faith in the future.
When I read Ammon’s story, I am reminded that when we don’t stop believing, life can far exceed our expectations, even our wildest dreams.
Allow me to set the stage.
Let’s start at the moment Ammon sets off on a grand adventure: he leaves his home in Zarahemla to share the gospel he’d recently been converted to. The next chapter of his life had begun. Maybe he was feeling some of the same emotions you did when you left on your mission, or moved into your first college dorm, or settled into an apartment about to start your first full-time job. You are prepared, excited, and hopeful, but also a little nervous and crossing all your fingers this whole plan doesn’t end up in flames.
You are a big, happy, but possibly explosive, bag of anticipation.
Ammon says goodbye to his friends and walks alone into the land of Ishmael to preach. And the first thing that happens to him? The scriptures say that as he entered the land, the royal guards grabbed him, bound him up, and carried him before the king who would decide his fate. Ammon barely made it through the front door before encountering a serious problem! If you thought your first day of school or work went bad, well… I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say Ammon probably one-upped you.
Poor bound-up Ammon is taken before the king, who, if he wanted to, could put Ammon in prison for the rest of his life. Not the ideal beginning to what was supposed to be an exciting next chapter for Ammon. The king asks if Ammon wants to live among his people, and Ammon’s response is simple but very interesting to me:
“Yea, I desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die.”
Did you catch that last part? Ammon thought he might be living here with these people until he died! He was willing to stick around with them for the long haul but didn’t really know what would happen. He was just here. Doing what he thought was right one day at a time. Maybe he was hoping there would be few people here who would accept the gospel, and then he would stay here forever and live a quiet life with his faithful few. But anyone who knows Ammon’s story knows that things are about to get wild. The Lord had much grander plans than Ammon perhaps had in mind for himself.
Ammon ends up taking a job as a servant of the king working with the royal flocks. He soon learns that the other shepherds are having quite a serious problem: enemies of the king keep coming and scattering the flocks and the shepherds are punished—by death.
When the enemies come and scatter the flocks for the first time while Ammon is there, the other men start crying because they are so distraught. Ammon’s response to their plight almost makes me laugh: “Now when Ammon saw this his heart was swollen within him with joy.”
Wait, enemies just attacked you and now the king might kill you, yet your heart is swelling up with joy? Interesting reaction to say the least. But then Ammon explains himself: “Now when Ammon saw this his heart was swollen within him with joy; for, said he, I will show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me, in restoring these flocks unto the king, that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe in my words.”
Ammon is hoping that if he can get the flocks back, then the men he works with will be so grateful that they will become friends and give Ammon an opportunity to share the gospel with them. Seems like a good plan. So with Ammon’s encouragement, the other shepherds gather up the scattered flock and stand in a protective circle around. The enemies soon return, but Ammon is ready this time. First, he takes the bad guys out one by one with his slingshot, and then when they get closer, he uses a sword to cut off the arms of every man that tries to approach—a mental image I don’t like to dwell on for too long, but unarguably impressive. The other shepherds are so impressed, that they gather up the arms (again, seriously, ew), present them to the king, and explain what happened. The king is so impressed that he questions if Ammon is more than human, wondering if perhaps he is the great spirit the king has heard about. He asks where Ammon is, and the other servants report that Ammon is prepping the king’s horses for an upcoming journey the way he had been asked to. Again, the king is shocked.
“Surely there has not been any servant among all my servants that has been so faithful as this man; for even he doth remember all my commandments to execute them,” the king says.
What happens next is far beyond Ammon’s missionary dreams: The king commands that Ammon is brought before him, and Ammon ends up teaching the plan of salvation. In quite a dramatic fashion, the king, his wife, and many other people are baptized and a church is established in the land. Chapter 19 ends with this happy message: “And thus the work of the Lord did commence among the Lamanites.”
Talk about a plot twist!
Not too long ago, Ammon had been a prisoner! Then he was just hoping to maybe convert a few of the other shepherds. But instead, his efforts rippled out in magnificent ways: King Lamoni’s father and his whole household ended up being baptized (Alma 22:24) and the king then sends out a proclamation to all the land that no one is to interfere with the missionaries’ teachings. This allowed them to teach with “no obstruction” and “they began to have great success. And thousands were brought to the knowledge of the Lord.”
The ripple effect of Ammon’s efforts gives us some of the most inspiring stories from the Book of Mormon: those thousands of converts become the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s who covenant to never fight again (Alma 23:7), and their sons are the famous 2,000 stripling warriors who we all had a crush on as teenagers. And throughout all those years, the converts to the church kept coming (Alma 25:13). After witnessing the conversion of the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s, it seems like sweet Ammon is almost going to explode with joy and surprise:
“My brothers and my brethren, behold I say unto you, how great reason have we to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started from the land of Zarahemla that God would have granted unto us such great blessings? … My joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God. . . . I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.”
Wow. Ammon’s life truly became a rollercoaster of joyful (and sometimes difficult) experiences that accelerated beyond what he could have imagined when he left Zarahemla to start it all.
Now, what does this have to do with you and me in the 21st century? We likely don’t need to learn to use a slingshot or yield a sword, but Ammon does demonstrate something that we cannot live without: a belief that good things—really good, glorious things—are going to happen in our lives. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught:
“Every one of us has times when we need to know things will get better. . . . For emotional health and spiritual stamina, everyone needs to be able to look forward to some respite, to something pleasant and renewing and hopeful, whether that blessing be near at hand or still some distance ahead. It is enough just to know we can get there, that however measured or far away, there is the promise of ‘good things to come.’”
And if we look closely at Ammon’s life, the good things that happened to him can all be tied back to his trust that the Savior could work miracles in his life.
Think about it: Ammon had no idea what was soon coming in his life. All he knew was that he was going to the land of Ishmael. I’m sure he was nervous when he was immediately caught by the guards, but he stayed cool and answered the king’s questions honestly. Then, for three days, he shows up for work with the other shepherds.
But I imagine he wasn’t just showing up for work.
He was watching and waiting, and I’m sure praying, for an opportunity to do what the Lord had sent him to do. So, instead of panicking or complaining when the enemies scattered the flocks, Ammon’s faith-filled eyes saw opportunity. Then after the drama of the fight against the enemies, Ammon simply goes back to work like he is supposed to. This man, whom God was going to work mighty wonders through, is found in the stable taking care of the horses because that is what he was supposed to do. Ammon was working with what he had, when he had it, trusting the Lord could make things work out for him.
I think we’d do well to follow Ammon’s example. A beautiful, motivating power settles into our lives when we begin to believe that good things are waiting ahead for us.
And I mean the kind of good things that we almost can’t even imagine now but that are going to make us gasp when we realize life can be that sweet, days that joyful, and satisfaction that lasting.
That kind of belief can motivate us to keep doing the right thing even when life is unexciting or perhaps even painfully dull or stagnant. If you’re like me, maybe there have been times when you’ve stared at your bedroom wall and just wondered if life was ever going to pick up pace. I’ve wondered if my current situation is going to be my permanent situation.
Will I always live in the same apartment, work the same job, use the same annoying dating apps, and follow the generally same routine that I do at age 25?
The obvious answer to those questions is no—life over the course of years is rarely that consistent, even when we want it to be. But in the routine of day-to-day life, it really can be hard to see anything besides what is right in front of you. And while we should aim to be present and invested in our current circumstances, there is a power that comes into everyday life when you believe something big is coming—something you need to be prepared for. Because the fact is that God has a lot of work He needs done on this earth, and I think He wants all of us to be a part of it.
When we see ourselves as part of a bigger plan, things like daily scripture, physical exercise, honest work, school assignments, every church activity and act of kindness, become not isolated events, but drops of preparation in our lamp for the moments when who we are is needed.
What you do today matters, no matter how normal it all feels.
Isn’t that glorious?
One of my favorite parts of my job writing for LDS Living magazine is really getting to dive into the stories of inspiring people and figure out what practices and experiences made them who they are. And I’ve come to the realization that all of these people we’ve featured on the covers of magazines are just that—people. The unifying factor between them all, however, is that they consistently (not perfectly) made good choices in their normal lives, exercised faith in the Savior, and then bravely took opportunities when they arose.
I’d like to give you a little inside look at a few of these people that were on the cover of our magazine. I hope their examples will help you see how glorious life really can be when we believe in the future. So allow me to set the stage once again. Well, this time it’s a court.
Thurl Bailey: Envisioning the Dream
Now, before I tell you about why I love NBA player Thurl Bailey, you should know that I am not a sports fan in even the slightest. I feel the need to admit that I’ve never even watched an entire professional basketball game before. But when my friend and coworker Morgan Pearson wrote an LDS Living cover story about Thurl, I was captivated by the story and have honestly thought about aspects of it for years since.
Thurl played college ball for North Carolina State and professionally for the Utah Jazz, the Minnesota Timberwolves, as well as internationally in Italy, where he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The part of his story that really gets me excited, though, is Thurl’s experience playing with NC State when they won the national championship in 1983, a game Sports Illustrated dubbed the greatest college basketball moment of the 20th century. Pretty impressive coming from a player who was told by a coach in middle school that he “wasn’t meant to play this game.”
Through a lot of hard work, Thurl was recruited by several universities by the time he graduated high school.
After one year, the team unexpectedly got a new coach, Jim Valvano, or Coach V as they called him. And while at first the whole team was skeptical about the change, Coach V was about to teach them all the value of believing really good things are possible for us. Morgan Pearson explained in her story:
“Once a year, he came to practice with a pair of gold scissors in hand, and, rather than running drills, Valvano had his team practice cutting down the nets—a longstanding postgame tradition in college basketball. He’d have them run around the court in celebration as if they really had just won.
‘What in the world are we doing this for?’ Thurl asked himself at the time. ‘We [were] trying to manufacture these cheers and emotions and [I thought,] ‘I’m not running around a 12,000-foot empty gym like I’m crazy, right?’ We did it, though. He convinced us to do it.”
And before long, Thurl found himself lying in bed at night imagining how he would celebrate if his team really did win the championship.”
Now, like I said earlier, I don’t know much about sports, but it takes only some basic reasoning to be astonished at the wild ride NC State had Thurl’s senior year. They fought their way through, winning some games by the skin of their teeth in overtime or by just a point or two. The final championship game was just as exciting. And when his team won, “Thurl fell to his knees—just as he’d practiced—tears streaming down his face,” Morgan wrote.
That win became an inspiration for people all over the world, and I love what he told Morgan about that game taught him and the world that was watching:
“I think . . . the biggest thing that we taught and continue to teach is that you can be extraordinary. You don’t have to be someone who has a lot of money or fame; you just have to believe. You have to have this sense of wonder, … Somebody’s going to win a national championship, so why not us?”
Why not you? Maybe you don’t dream of being a sports champion. Maybe you dream of a stable, happy family of your own, a published book with your name on it, a marathon medal around your neck, or a medical degree hanging on your wall. Why not you? Follow Thurl’s example and envision it: What will it feel like to meet the people who’ve read your book? Or really help someone get back on their feet after a traumatic injury as a doctor? Sit with those emotions and mental images and then ask yourself, what little thing can you do today to make it happen?
Now there is just one more person we featured on our magazine cover I have to tell you about—she is both too cute and too much of a powerhouse not to bring into the conversation.
Jenny Doan: Our Own Oprah
In May of 2022, LDS Living published a cover story I wrote about quilting extraordinaire Jenny Doan. Yes, I said quilting, but don’t you dare skip over the next few paragraphs. Through writing the article, I learned that the quilting community is a force to be reckoned with and respected.
Let me paint you a quick picture of Jenny and see if can do her justice: she is the cofounder of the Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton, Missouri—a town CBS News dubbed “the Disneyland of quilting.” Her company draws 100,000 visitors per year to a town of just 1,900 people. They are also the largest supplier of precut fabrics in the world. Missouri Star grew so quickly that teams from Google, YouTube, and other high-profile Silicon Valley companies came to Missouri to learn the company’s formula for success.
Jenny, whom Forbes has called “the Oprah of quilting,” even released a book that she wrote with Mark Dagostino, one of the most respected celebrity journalists in America. (Not to flex on Jenny’s behalf, but Dagostino also helped with Joanna Gaines’s first book, so he’s a big deal.) And if that wasn’t enough, Jenny posts quilting tutorials on YouTube that have garnered well over 251 million views. She travels the country with her husband going to quilt shows and giving inspirational speeches that people line up to hear.
But all that success did not come at once nor did anybody involved plan on turning it into the empire it is today. In fact, in 2008 Jenny and her husband Ron lost all of their retirement money in the great recession and the future was likely looking a little daunting. Jenny had been a stay-at-home mother and now that her kids were grown and out of the house, they wanted to find a way to help their parents have a more financially stable future.
One day, Jenny’s son Alan was at home when Jenny mentioned to him that she needed to pick up a quilt she’d been waiting over a year to have bound. Alan perked up—someone had enough orders to be backlogged for over a year? That sounded to him like a service in high demand. So without doing any further market research, he proposed the idea of buying a long-arm quilting machine for Jenny so she could make some extra money for retirement by finishing other people’s quilts.
While Jenny had always enjoyed sewing clothes and in the past few years had fallen in love with quilting, she’d never used a long-arm machine before. But she felt confident she could figure it out.
Business was slow at first, so Alan suggested they post videos on YouTube of Jenny giving step-by-step instructions on how to make a variety of quilts. They gave it a shot, and at the end of their first year, the channel had almost 1,000 subscribers. By the end of the next, 10,000.
By 2013, Jenny was a YouTube star and their annual revenue had topped $4 million.
In our interview, Jenny told me that as she looks back over the past 14 years, she is still in awe at the joy and opportunities that have come from a simple idea during a difficult time. And while Missouri Star has won business awards, generated revenue, and brought Jenny a degree of fame, for her the work is all about bringing joy and creativity to as many people as possible.
“When my first letters [from customers] came, that wasn’t even on my radar. I just thought I was going to teach people how to sew, then they’d send their quilts to me, and that’s how I’d make money,” she says. “The letters that always stunned me were ones that came from overseas in places I’d never heard of, never dreamt of being able to go. Their lives were so different from ours, but they wanted to bring the same joy to people [through quilting] as I brought to them; they wanted to be able to teach people. They didn’t have fabric, but they had clothing, and they would cut up their clothing. It was just so amazing to me.”
She went on to tell me,
“Who would have ever thought that sewing would be the catalyst that would take care of my family and get me to where I am? It’s so fascinating to me and lets me know that whatever we do, it’s enough. … When we get to heaven, there won’t be a whiteboard with all the good things we’ve done and all the bad things we’ve done. The Savior will look on our heart, and if our heart is like His heart, that will be enough.”
Oh, do you love her as much as I do yet? Jenny wasn’t a highly trained, exceptional quilter, she was just willing to work hard. Nor was she a natural on camera for the YouTube videos, in fact, she told me she actually tripped over a cord and broke her leg the first time they recorded a video. What she is, is a woman of faith who was willing to try and bring good things into her life and into her family’s life.
Ammon, Thurl, and Jenny all were ordinary people who consistently (not perfectly) tried to do and be good. They are people who latched on to their dreams with all their hearts and then walked toward those dreams day by day. I like to think about them when I start to feel like life is going nowhere, or that maybe I am just not capable of what it takes to be successful.
Right after I graduated college, in particular, I was weighed down with a feeling of inadequacy and just the fear that nothing was really going to happen in my life. I’m not sure why, but I started visualizing my life as pulses on the screen of a heart monitor. Each previous spike on the monitor had been triggered by an event or accomplishment in my life:
Graduate high school— beep.
Enroll at Utah State University— beep.
Visit Europe— beep.
Go on a mission— beep.
Graduate college— beep.
But now I feared the beeps would stop. Nothing else would happen and I would figuratively flatline. All the work I’d done would amount to nothing, and I would be jobless and lost.
I did a lot of praying in those days to not feel so afraid. To be reassured. This brief excerpt from a book by Emily P. Freeman, who belongs to a different Christian denomination, that a friend of mine shared online was my answer:
So often, right after Jesus performed a miracle, he gave a simple next thing to do. To the leper, he said to tell no one, “But go and show yourself to the priest. To the paralytic, he said, “Get up, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” To Jairus and his wife, after raising their daughter from the dead, when he had their full and complete attention, and when chances were good he could get them to swear their lives away for his sake, he did not perform a lecture about dedicating their lives to him or about what grand plans he had for their girl now that she was alive. Instead, he told them to give her something to eat. After raising their daughter from the actual dead, the one thing Jesus told them in the face of their rapt attention was to go make lunch. At first glance that seems like a waste of a captive audience.
Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jarius and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next—and only next. Perhaps he knows something about our addiction to clarity. He knew if we could somehow wrangle a five-year plan out of him, we would take it and be on our merry way.
After Jesus performed miracles, he made the next right thing unmistakably clear. But what about for us? Let’s take our cues from Jesus by considering what it means for us to do the next right thing now. Not the next big thing. Not the next impressive thing. Just the next right thing in front of us.
That’s what Ammon did: he walked into the land of Ismael. He showed up to work. He went and got the horses ready. All one step at a time, but with a heart trusting in the Savior’s ability and willingness to guide each of those steps.
The Savior Jesus Christ is the one we can rely on to lead us toward greener pastures than we can imagine. It is in His nature to work for our success and happiness.
In The Infinite Atonement, Tad R. Callister wrote, “As naturally and regularly as we seek air, He sought to bless.” And the way we open ourselves up to receive those blessings is something Ammon, Thurl, and Jenny all had in common: they made and kept covenants with the Savior and lived in expectation of His loving help.
President Russell M. Nelson said something in a young adult devotional in May 2022 that I have only repeated to myself about a million times since. The next time you find yourself staring at your bedroom wall feeling like you are in rut headed nowhere, I’d suggest reading these words over and over until they start to settle in:
“My dear young friends, I love you. I believe in you. As the Lord’s prophet, I bless you to know the truth about who you are and to treasure the truth about what your glorious potential really is. I bless you to take charge of your own testimony. And I bless you to have the desire and strength to keep your covenants.
As you do, I promise that you will experience spiritual growth, freedom from fear, and a confidence that you can scarcely imagine now. You will have the strength to have a positive influence far beyond your natural capacity. And I promise that your future will be more exhilarating than anything you can presently believe.”
We can do this, friends. Keep showing up to work on time even if it isn’t your dream job yet. Keep taking care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually day after day. The Lord needs both the contributions we can make today and the people we will be in the future. Futures of joy, of opportunity, of exhilaration await us as we walk the covenant path—I’m sure of it. So repeat after me: Life is going to be glorious.
That was part 1 of the Finding Yourself series. Read parts 2, 3, 4 (as they are published!) here.