An Answered Cri de Coeur

The anguished cries of my three-year-old grandson, combined with a statement by Dostoyevsky and hymn lyrics by Isaac Watts, prompted me to ponder how we can discover and attain our deepest desires. 

While visiting the family of our youngest son some years ago, the adults in our group were startled one evening by the sudden, impassioned crying of our three-and-a-half-year-old grandson, David. He was apparently having a nightmare. Our daughter-in-law attempted to calm him with soft words and rocking, but he continued to cry out and talk nonsense which related to what he was dreaming.

She carried him downstairs to join the rest of us, and mentioned that this sort of thing had happened before. Once David was fully awake, she assured us, he would calm down. For a couple of minutes he continued to wail and display deep distress, despite his mother’s efforts to awaken and reassure him.

Strength through Submission

The following is a revised version of a post originally published on  “A Prayer of Faith”  6 July 2006.  It was inspired by Elder Henry B. Eyring’s talk “As a Child” delivered in the LDS General Conference of April 2006:

From the time I was a child, foreign languages fascinated me. Growing up, my father taught me some Esperanto and a few German phrases; and after dabbling in Latin and Spanish in high school, I decided to take on the challenge of Russian at Brigham Young University. Soon after beginning my study, I began to have an intense desire to visit Russia—to see for myself the land of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, which was then under the iron rule of Communism. This was back in the early 1960’s, when the Soviet Union under Khrushchev routinely issued dire threats to the free world, but welcomed the chance to earn dollars by conducting carefully chaperoned showcase tours for Americans.

I was thrilled when BYU announced that they would be participating for the first time in a Russian summer study program. I immediately applied, was accepted, and started saving money for the trip. I obtained a passport. My whole family sacrificed to help fund my study abroad experience, and I was elated at the opportunity to realize my dream.