Reaching for the Savior’s Light

By Alison Wood

Church Magazines

My pandemic plant taught me that in times of light or darkness, we always need to turn toward the Savior’s light.

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I bought a potted orchid.

I didn’t have high hopes for it—I lived in a basement apartment with limited sunlight, which wasn’t ideal for me or this plant. But I put it up on my highest windowsill, a place that received light for just a few hours of the day.

To my surprise, the orchid thrived, opening big purple blooms and putting down new roots, apparently unconcerned that it was living in less-than-ideal circumstances.

It was adapting to its environment—since it received such limited sunlight, the plant had begun growing in the direction of the sun, tilting its leaves to catch as much light as possible and blossoming right up against the glass of the window. After a couple months, the orchid was comically lopsided.

But it was also healthy and happy.

Waiting on Happiness

While I would normally describe myself as a cheerful person, I, like many people around the world, was struggling to adjust to the difficulties of the pandemic. Every day I was waiting for my life to change, falling into the trap of “I’ll be happy when …”:

“I’ll be happy when I can see my friends again.”

“I’ll be happy when all of my prepandemic activities resume.”

“I’ll be happy when I don’t live in a basement anymore.”

I was doing the opposite of what my little flower had done—rather than adapting to my difficult circumstances and finding ways to thrive, I was withering away, insisting that the sunlight better accommodate me. I wasn’t changing myself or my outlook; I was just hoping that my circumstances would change.

Letting My Trials Transform Me

During that time, I hoped that one particular trial would go away. I felt I’d done everything I could think of to change it or fix it or move past it, but it was continuing to make my life difficult. I asked my husband to give me a blessing, hoping for an instant miracle.

Instead, through my husband, the Lord gave me a beautiful list of the ways that this difficult problem was changing me. He blessed me with resilience, growth, greater compassion for others, and increased knowledge and wisdom. And while the words of the blessing did give me hope that my circumstances would improve, they also helped me see that I shouldn’t try to get through this trial without allowing myself to be changed for the better.

There was a holier way to approaching my difficulties than just trying to push through them. As the Apostle Paul taught, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed” (Romans 12:2). I had been busy looking for worldly solutions to my troubles, but what I really needed was a mighty change of heart (see Mosiah 5:2; see also Alma 5:14).

In the gospel, we use a few different words to describe this concept of change. One is repentance, which is “a change of mind and heart that brings a fresh attitude toward God, oneself, and life in general.”¹

Another word is conversion, which “denotes changing one’s views, in a conscious acceptance of the will of God (Acts 3:19). … Complete conversion comes after many trials and much testing (see Luke 22:32; Doctrine and Covenants 112:12–13).”²

Conversion and repentance are positive and necessary principles of the gospel—which means that by extension, experiencing “trials and much testing” is also necessary. We can’t experience these miraculous changes without challenges.

Growing toward Light and Truth

I learned that sometimes Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ allow sunshine to be placed just a little bit out of our reach so that we can learn to become the kind of people who grow toward light and truth, facing toward and reaching for the things that will help us become celestial people. As Sister Rebecca L. Craven, Second Counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, taught, “Enduring to the end means changing to the end.”³

Although I no longer live in that same basement apartment, I still have that potted orchid, and it serves as a good reminder—even in a time when I now feel I have more sunlight (metaphorically and literally) in my life, I still need that “change of mind and heart” on a constant basis. I’m still engaged in “a lifelong process of becoming more Christlike through the Atonement of Jesus Christ,”⁴ and I’m still learning how to find hope and healing, even in the darker times of my life, by reaching for the Savior’s light.