On Opposition

I don’t understand everything about adversity and opposition. I’m still learning. I may edit this post as I continue to consider these ideas.

I have temporarily set this blog to public just for a week or so. After that, anyone will only be able to see it by requesting permission.

The first time I remember getting mad at God about opposition was when I was sixteen years old. I felt too old and too feminine for a paper route, but I had one. The newspapers I was supposed to deliver, using my ten-speed bike around a large area of the neighborhood, arrived much later than usual. It was already getting dark, it was cold, I was afraid of angry customers and their dogs, and I was afraid of a part of the neighborhood where a man would often stand out in his yard and watch me. Even in daylight, I would peddle as fast as I could past that scary man so he wouldn’t grab me off my bike or attack me if I stopped. I knew by the time I reached that area, it would be totally dark. I was terrified.

My mom was gone, my older sister was busy doing homework, and my dad was reading one of those newspapers. Though I pleaded and cried, nobody would help me deliver the papers by car. I was on my own. I felt unloved and alone.

With the saddle bags on my bike weighing it down and banging against the spokes, I quickly rode up Atkin Avenue. Tears clouded my vision. Then a scripture from my recent reading in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ came to mind: 2 Nephi 2:11, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” I was experiencing opposition, but I couldn’t understand why. Why did I have to go through this? Why wouldn’t anybody help me? I felt hurt, neglected, and angry with God that life was so hard and somehow needed to be.

Now, it’s 42 years later. I had no idea how difficult my life would become at times. 

For years, I believed that I would be happy if I kept all the commandments to the best of my ability. I would be blessed and protected. As it says in The Book of Mormon, Alma 41:10, I knew "Wickedness never was happiness." I thought being sad or having big problems was a sign that I was doing something wrong, that it meant I needed to repent so I could be worthy of blessings again. 

Logically, I knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t internalize that in my heart until around 2019. From a podcast, I learned the truth that it’s unrealistic to expect to be happy all of the time. In fact, sometimes we want to be sad: like when we feel grief, when we are disappointed, when we are hurt, when someone we love has been hurt, and so on. Sometimes we will be lonely or depressed. I don’t always want to be happy in such circumstances. It wouldn’t be a natural or normal response to certain negative circumstances. 

The podcast told me it’s likely we’ll have both positive emotions and negative emotions throughout life. We can expect it to be a 50/50 situation, half negative and half positive. Like the scripture says, there needs to be opposition in all things. If we feel a negative emotion, it doesn’t mean anything has necessarily gone wrong. It’s just part of life. 

This is a simplification, but we can not only expect negative emotions, but we can also accept them as part of mortality. If we don’t, and resist the emotion by burying it, hiding it, or buffering because of it (eating too much or indulging in other coping mechanisms), we will likely make our experience more difficult and complicated, or pile on judgments that intensify the negative emotions. We might be depressed about being depressed, or feel anxious that we’re experiencing anxiety.

Instead, at times it might help if we can name the emotion, try to understand where it came from, be honest with ourselves, and let it exist. Then we can work through it without resistance. If we understand it, and where it came from, we can decide whether or not we want to feel that emotion. Feelings come from thoughts, so it’s possible to choose to change our thoughts. Though there are ways to expedite a change of emotions by thinking different thoughts, if we can withhold judgement and simply identify them, negative emotions will frequently pass relatively quickly on their own. 

This particularly applies to “clean pain” from useful emotions. There are also emotions that are not useful or helpful, like self pity or jealousy. If we decide an emotion is not useful, we can think different thoughts or reframe a situation so that we can potentially alter those emotions more quickly. 

The truth is, we can expect to feel negative emotions, especially in the midst of difficult experiences. We can expect that there will be opposition in life. Bad things happen to everyone, not just so-called bad people. Terrible things happen to good people too. All kinds of experiences are meant to be part of our lives. 

But why? Why would a loving God allow such things? Even innocent people suffer so terribly on this earth.

There’s a scripture in The Doctrine and Covenants section 122 verse 7 that says, “All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” So we learn from difficulties. But punishing circumstances as a way of teaching and learning just feels mean. Even though I understand the concept of learning from difficulty, I was angry about that scripture for a while too.

Later in The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi, Chapter 2, there is more explanation about the necessity for opposition in all things. Verse 16 says, “Wherefore, God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save that he should be enticed by one or the other.”

So that describes the necessity of possible alternatives, opposites, to enable our ability to act or choose. If everything was always good and easy, we would not be able to identify and choose between good and evil. We need difficulty to grow and become stronger. Agency is so central to God’s plan, that we sometimes experience the negative effects of our own and other people’s poor choices. Natural consequences are generally allowed to happen. Though I believe God can and does intervene at times according to His will and our faith, sometimes He doesn’t.

Sometimes it’s like learning to walk or learning to ride a bike. Falling is often part of the process. If we are too afraid to fall, we won’t learn those things. Getting back up, learning from where we went wrong, and trying again helps us gain the strength we need to successfully walk or ride a bike. Opposition is part of the growing process.

I believe God is interested in who we are becoming. It’s through the use of agency that we change and grow. Something I’ve learned recently is that when we go through a difficult experience, we are given an opportunity to choose who we want to be in that situation. Who do we want to show up as? Those hard experiences allow us to practice being the type of people we want to be. Do we want to complain, be paralyzed, and fall into despair? Or do we want to try to be optimistic, to try to feel grateful and hopeful, to show up, and be among the helpers? Without those difficult experiences, we wouldn’t have that practice to become who we want to become.

True caring includes believing that people can learn, grow, and change. If we truly love them, we encourage others to be their best selves. We believe in them. Not only that, we’re there for them. Through many experiences, I have learned, if we turn to Him, God will not leave us alone in our difficulties. As it says in the Bible, John 14:18, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” We can rely upon the Lord to help us in our difficulties. We can pray for help, for strength, for comfort, and for understanding. 

That evening 42 years ago, when I was feeling angry and alone on my paper route, I had a profound spiritual experience. As I turned the corner, riding along 20th East between Atkin Avenue and Mary Dott Way, I saw in the west one of the most beautiful and bright yellow and orange sunsets I’ve ever seen. The words came into my mind, “I love you.” I knew the words were from Heavenly Father. I felt that sunset was just for me. I knew that though I didn’t feel love from my family at that time, I felt love from Him. He was aware of me. I was not left alone. I was truly comforted. 

For the rest of the paper route, no dogs came after me, no people yelled at me, and that scary man wasn’t out in his yard watching for me. I felt God’s spirit with me the rest of that evening. I felt at peace.

Since then, I have had numerous similar experiences. I know we can receive the strength, hope, peace, and love from God as we go through the necessary opposition we experience in life. Because there is opposition, we have freedom to choose. We can recognize the difference between good and evil. We are slowly becoming who He knows we can become. He loves us enough to allow us this mortal experience and to help us along the way.

February Walk From Hidden Valley Park to Rocky Mouth Falls

We parked our car in the Hidden Valley Park parking lot. It was a spontaneous decision to try to walk to Rocky Mouth Falls from there. We'd done it before, but never in February. We haven't had snow in a long time, so we thought the trail would be clear. It wasn't snowy, but it was sometimes very muddy in places. The trail is sometimes narrow, but sometimes we managed to keep our shoes clean, and keep ourselves from slipping, by putting one foot on each side of the trail as we made our way along the path.

It's quite a steep walk up to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. The rocky road seems to go up longer than you'd expect since there are no switchbacks on the north side of the park. It's easier to go up on the south side, but we were eager to get straight up there.

It almost felt like fall since you can still see some leaves on the trees and the temperatures were in the low fifties.

I was surprised to see hard, frozen, super slippery snow at the base of the falls. We couldn't get too close without falling, so this is a faraway picture. You can barely see the trickle of water coming down on the rock right above the snowy part.

A couple was there using rocks to write on the light grey, painted-over graffiti. They made one of the patches of paint look like a leaf and wrote something underneath it. I hope the rock residue washes away in the rain. It's better than graffiti paint I guess.

There's a trail of steps, as well as neighborhood roads, directly down to Wasatch Blvd from the falls. We decided to go that way rather than back up the switchbacks that lead to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. Though the sounds, sights, and smells of cars and their exhaust on the road aren't particularly pleasant, it was mostly a flat, dry sidewalk and a relatively quick and safe walk back to our car at Hidden Valley Park. 

It was good to spend time outside.

Bear Canyon, Salt Creek Canyon, Mt. Nebo Area

This is the last of several posts I've written about our recent anniversary trip down a little bit south.

It's not easy to get clear information quickly from a phone while cruising up the freeway toward home. In the car, I did an internet search on "easy hikes near me" and found one just past Nephi, Utah up a side off-shoot of the Mt. Nebo Scenic Byway. It was supposed to be a mostly level, relatively short hike. 

The Nebo Loop was closed just after the Salt Creek Canyon Road, which was also closed. There's a parking area at the bottom, so we stopped there and intended to hike up the canyon.

On our way up the road, we started seeing signs for the Bear Canyon Campground. So then we thought maybe we'd gone up the wrong canyon, that we were actually in Bear Canyon. Here at home, I did more internet searching and discovered we were in the exactly right place. It's both Salt Creek Canyon and Bear Canyon. I guess Bear Canyon is a subset of Salt. I'm still a little confused about that. 

If I had known we were in the right place, I would have wanted to push forward. Unfortunately, we stopped walking at the end of the road, at the entrance to the last campground, since we thought we'd gone up the wrong canyon. The waterfall trailhead starts at the end of that campground. We were so close to the trailhead and didn't know it. 

However, if we had continued, we would have had to walk over another mile. There was snow covering parts of the area, we were tired, we were a little concerned about time, and we had left our lunch in the car. So it was probably good we turned around. I definitely want to go back. It's so beautiful up there even in a warm winter.

We saw one couple on our way up that were walking back toward the parking lot. We saw a few other people on our way down. Otherwise, we had this beautiful, quiet wilderness area all to ourselves. It was 2.3 miles up and 2.3 miles back to our car. We walked on the road the whole time. We ate lunch, and then headed home. I'm excited to return there in summer or fall. By then we'll be able to drive up to the trailhead. It's a beautiful area. I'd love to drive the Nebo Loop, the Mt. Nebo Scenic Byway sometime.

Pando and Fish Lake

Our hotel was right next to the Black Bear Diner in Richfield. The Quality Inn where we stayed wasn't any better or worse than the average Best Western Hotel we've stayed in, but it had the advantage of being right next door to the Black Bear Diner. I was happy to be able to just walk there for dinner. Roger ordered the pot roast dinner to share with me. I just ordered a dinner salad, so we each also had our own salad. We had room left over to order Huckleberry ice cream and a giant bear claw pastry for dessert. It was no time at all to be able to walk back to our room and enjoy an episode of our latest TV series. We even managed to go to sleep around our usual bedtime with plenty of time for me to read in bed as I often do.

The plan for yesterday morning was to drive up to Fishlake National Forest. We planned to stop somewhere to hike along the way, but the ultimate goal was to see Fish Lake itself. I was curious about the cabins they have for rent. I wanted to know if it's a place I'd like to visit in another season. I envisioned we'd at least be able to hike around by the lake. I did not anticipate it would be as cold and as barren as it was. When you're used to temperatures in the forties, the twenties feel mighty cold.

When we were almost to the lake, we saw the Pando, the Aspen Clone Organism. I'd heard about it over the years, and was interested in seeing it. The highway runs right through that area. The gate to a road that runs through some of it was closed, but you can walk around nearby. 

Roger wasn't really interested in getting out of the car, but I walked up and touched a tree.

Then we drove over to Fish Lake, got out of the car, and walked around a bit. We could hear the ice on the lake cracking and popping. While we watched, there was a very loud crack and pop and a huge fissure opened up near where we stood on the shore. You can see it in the first lake picture. There was a guy ice fishing nearby, but he wasn't too close. 

We got back in the car and drove all the way to the north part of the lake. The ice must be thicker there. There were a lot more people ice fishing. They even had tent huts to sit inside. Two little boys were chasing each other around, pushing camping chairs like go carts, spinning, and crashing into each other while laughing. We saw what we thought were a couple of bald eagles flying around, landing in the trees by the lake, then one landed on the ice itself and seemed to be watching the fishing people. It was just too cold to wait around for them to keep flying long enough to get pictures of them. We wished we'd brought binoculars.

Since the Fishlake National Forest didn't really work out for a hike, nor was it warm enough for us to want to wait around until lunch, we decided to head for home. The plan was to stop somewhere along the way toward home.

Once we had cell phone service again (we had none up by the lake), I started an internet search of the area. I was hoping to at least find a nice place to have lunch. We'd told Mariel to expect us sometime between 3 and 5 PM, and it was just after 11 AM, too early to go home. I'll post about where we ended up in the last post about this trip.

Red Hill Hot Springs

The Red Hill Hot Springs is just about a 16 minute drive from Richfield, Utah to the hills above the little town of Monroe, Utah. There's a dirt road that leads to the springs. A pit toilet structure is right next to the ponds. 

It's cool to touch the hot water that falls over the rocks. The little cave is not very big or deep. The water wasn't deep either, but in places it was deep enough to sit in and feel covered.

This was a highlight of our trip. It was wonderful to relax and soak in the water after a day of temple visits and driving. It was fun to talk with other visitors.

We left just as the sun was setting. We wanted an easy drive back to our hotel. Thankfully, there's a diner right next to the hotel where we stayed so that made dinner fast and convenient. It was a lovely day.

Payson Utah and Manti Utah Temples

It's been a long time since I've used this blog. So much has happened since April of last year. I posted a lot on Instagram. It's a pretty good record of places we've been and stuff that has happened. 

As of next week, on February 11th, Roger and I will have been married for 37 years. Every year, we try to get away near our anniversary. It frequently happens before or after the week of Valentine's Day since our anniversary is so close to when everyone is celebrating love. We also like to watch the weather closely; and Alena needs a babysitter so we have to make sure Mariel is available, which generally means these trips are often booked last minute.

This year, we took a trip just a few hours down south. It was difficult to decide where to go, but I was inspired that we could visit two temples on our way to Richfield, Utah. Richfield is only 16 minutes north of Monroe, Utah which has some free hot springs on the hills above it. I learned about those hot springs when I did a general internet search about Utah hot springs. There's another hot springs nearby, Mystic, which has more facilities, more people, and requires reservations where you pay around $28 per person for a two-hour visit. I was not interested in visiting there. The Red Hill Hot Springs looked perfect. I was also very interested in seeing Fishlake National Forest which is sort of near Richfield. Also near there is Fish Lake and Pando the Aspen Clone organism.

The Payson Utah Temple is one hour from our home. The Manti Temple is one hour from the Payson Temple. Richfield is one hour from the Manti Temple. It was the perfect first day of our trip and a fabulous way to celebrate our Sealing Anniversary. 

I don't know if we've ever before gone to two endowment sessions in one day. This felt extra special.

The Payson Temple has gorgeous stained glass throughout. I'd been there for a wedding a few years ago on my own. It was Roger's first visit.

We drove straight to Manti after our session. We had lunch in nearby Ephraim. It didn't take us as long as I'd planned, so we were able to make it into an earlier session. 

The Manti Temple is probably my favorite temple. I absolutely love that they were able to preserve most of Minerva Teichert's murals. There are now screens that block some views, but you can see around them as you move around. You still go from one room to another which makes the session fly by. I don't sit still for as long or as well as I used to. I stayed alert the whole time. It makes me wish we lived closer to Manti.

We walked around the temple and took pictures after the session. 

The stairs at the back of the temple lead up to the main level which is on a hill above the parking lot. So we walked down the grassy hill to our car. The grassy hill had clearly been visited by many deer, so we watched where we walked.

Then we drove to Richfield to check into our hotel. We changed into swimsuits and drove to Monroe, Utah's Red Hill Hot Springs right afterwards.

I'll post pictures from the hot springs and later destinations in separate posts.