“How Being Broken Down Helped Me Rebuild My Foundation of Faith,” Liahona, Sept. 2024.
Young Adults
How Being Broken Down Helped Me Rebuild My Foundation of Faith
After some serious mental, physical, and spiritual challenges, I discovered what it means to find healing through our Savior, Jesus Christ.
I was serving as a missionary in France when the world collapsed and COVID-19 hurled the whole country into a strict lockdown. I have struggled with depression throughout my life, so I worried that the confining circumstances would cause me to slip into a depressive episode. But the first week of quarantine—the week leading up to the historical April 2020 general conference—was one of the most spiritual weeks of my life.
Looking back, the experiences I had that week felt like the Lord was fortifying me for a storm.
Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a talk that conference about the repairs that would be made to the Salt Lake Temple’s foundations. He likened the remodeling to our own lives and asked us to consider this question:
“What are the foundational elements of my spiritual and emotional character that will allow me and my family to remain steadfast and immovable, even to withstand the earthshaking and tumultuous seismic events that will surely take place in our lives?”1
As I listened to his talk, the Spirit impressed on me that, like the temple, I was going to be broken down in certain ways during the next period of my life. But I also felt that if I turned to the Lord during these challenges, He would help me strengthen my foundation of faith.
Feeling Broken Down
As expected, I soon grew depressed, and it wasn’t long before I felt trapped in an endless cycle of suicidal ideation. I felt torn down mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
After two months of quarantine, things got a little better. Thanks to changes in my circumstances, like antidepressant medication and the end of lockdown, I started to feel better mentally. But soon after, I started feeling sick and noticed three large lumps at the base of my throat.
At first I ignored the bumps, but when my symptoms worsened, it became clear that I could no longer stay in the mission field. I returned home, where I was promptly diagnosed with blood cancer—Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Because my antidepressants had a bit of an emotional numbing effect, I felt pretty apathetic as I started six months of chemotherapy.
But even so, I began to break down physically.
Rebuilding My Spiritual Foundation
A year after my chemotherapy treatment ended, I was starting to feel better physically. I was back at college and making plans. But the searing spiritual pain and numbness I had felt on my mission and during chemotherapy had now turned into a general feeling of indifference about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.
I was struggling with my feelings about what I had gone through and felt as if They had abandoned me when I was at my lowest.
But Heavenly Father knew what paths I needed to take so I could heal.
I felt like I was grappling with the rubble and remains of my once-strong faith and my once-vibrant personality. I felt so disconnected from myself. My heart was softening toward the Lord’s attempts to reach out to me, but spiritually I felt guilty, anxious, and unworthy because of my indifference toward the gospel.
After pondering my spiritual health for a few months, I was prompted to make small spiritual changes in my life. I had ignored the pain for a while, but I wanted to address the hurt I felt in my soul because of the challenges I had experienced.
Soon I could see Heavenly Father’s hand in my life. Without knowing how spiritually numb I was feeling, friends and loved ones brought up the topic of healing. One of them even shared a devotional address by Elaine S. Marshall.
Reluctantly, I read it.
As a nurse, Elaine drew parallels between physical healing and spiritual healing, saying: “Healing is not cure. Cure is clean, quick, and done—often under anesthesia. … Healing … is often a lifelong process of recovery and growth in spite of, maybe because of, enduring physical, emotional, or spiritual assault. It requires time.”2
I don’t think it was a coincidence that the treatment for my cancer required six months of chemotherapy. The effects of chemo are drastic, dramatic, and demanding. Interestingly, learning to let my body heal physically taught me a key principle of spiritual healing—how to draw upon Jesus Christ’s grace and allow myself time and space to heal my relationship with Him and Heavenly Father.
Receiving the Savior’s Grace
Grace is divine help, enabling and strengthening power, and spiritual healing. It is a gift from our Heavenly Father, “extended to us through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.”3
My favorite example of someone accessing the healing power of Jesus Christ through His Atonement is Alma the Younger. As he lay in a coma state for three days, racked with “the pains of a damned soul,” he remembered his father’s teachings of Jesus Christ (see Alma 36:16–17). He first desired help and then turned to Christ, which changed his trajectory and allowed him to be healed spiritually (see Alma 36:18–22).
The first step I took toward spiritual healing was finding a desire to connect with God. Alma taught me how to start when he said, “Exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words” (Alma 32:27).
I testify from personal experience that this teaching is true.
We can develop a desire, plant a seed (the word of God), and nourish that seed until it becomes something real and concrete. Eventually, the fruits of our faith in Jesus Christ are produced when we see changes in our actions, our opinions, our beliefs, our hearts, our minds, and then our souls. Our foundation becomes built on Him (see Helaman 5:12).
Similar to Alma’s experience, my desire to feel the Spirit and the joy of the gospel again set off a whole trajectory shift that took me through the process of healing. Since then, the Savior has helped me to reconcile my past feelings as I’ve learned to let go of my resentments toward God, Him, and my own weaknesses.
Because of Him, parts of myself that I thought I had lost in the mists of my trials—like my personality, my desires, and my love for the gospel—have been returned to me and have made me feel whole, renewed, and restored.
A Stronger Foundation
Pain and challenges changed me, but as I found healing through Jesus Christ, I truly rebuilt my foundation of faith on Him. As time passes and I heal, I see that because of Jesus Christ, I can learn to have joy despite my struggles. I now understand that the most important part of going through a trial isn’t what breaks us down or the pain we feel—it’s what follows as we experience healing and reconstruction through the Savior’s grace.
Elder Patrick Kearon of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught: “Dear friends who have … borne the injustices of life—you can have a new beginning and a fresh start. In Gethsemane and on Calvary, Jesus ‘took upon Himself … all of the anguish and suffering ever experienced by you and me’ [Russell M. Nelson, “The Correct Name of the Church,” Liahona, Nov. 2018, 88], and He has overcome it all!”4
So, to those who feel broken, I plead with you to be brave, to hold on, and to trust in the Lord and His healing power. With time, patience, and even the slightest desire, His grace can transform you, rebuild your foundation, and help you feel whole again.
That’s the gift He offers every one of us.
The author is from North Carolina, USA.