Six years ago, I wrote an essay called “He is Risen” that has been on my mind the past few months as we approached Easter Sunday, and so I have to pattern my thoughts this Easter Sunday after that easy but with a story from a close friend who authorized me to share her story as well. I hope each of you can feel the love of Jesus Christ and the hope of His resurrection today.
Both of my parents attended Emery High School in Castle Dale, Utah. My mother’s side of the family has lived in Emery County for over a hundred years, and it has always been my home away from home. Growing up, Easter was always the most important holiday of the year. Parents and grandparents would hide the cousins’ Easter baskets in the most devilishly tricky locations. After we eventually found them, we would all head into the desert of the San Rafael Swell. Dozens of trucks and ATVs would descend on the desert with kids in truck beds, tucked in blankets, laughing with anticipation of an afternoon of exploring, food, and fun. When the sun began to go down, we would head back to Ferron and play a Rook tournament until after midnight. All of this would happen on Saturday, and in the morning, we would all get dressed up and head to the local ward for an Easter Sunday sacrament meeting.
One of my favorite cousins of that group was Stephanie Snow. She had a smile and laughter that would make even the grumpiest of people grin and chuckle. I was much younger than her, but I always looked forward to seeing her on those wonderful Easter weekends.
When I was about 14 or 15 years old, I was home, sitting in our kitchen with my mom. It was a normal day, but then our phone rang, my mom answered, and a few seconds later, she burst into tears. My cousin Stephanie had passed away tragically. She was recently married and expecting her first child. Stephanie and her baby had both died. I fell to the ground in shock and began to sob. I had never experienced pain like that before, and I didn’t know what to do or what to think. Even now, the memories of that grief seem so raw. I was in a daze for days. It was the first time I can remember praying with any sort of passion. I had been a good kid, I went to church and participated, I knew many of the stories, but my faith was being challenged for the first time. I prayed to know if Stephanie was in heaven, for peace for our family, and I began to ask God if He was even real.
The days leading up to and most parts of the funeral are a blur to me after all these years. Fortunately, there are parts of that funeral service that are still very clear in my mind. I was in the pews of the church building I had been in so many times on Easter Sunday, but this time I was feeling incredible grief and loneliness. I remember looking up when my sister, who was asked to sing for the funeral, went to the stand. When she sang, something happened to me. It was more than the emotions of her angelic voice and powerful lyrics; it was a clear and piercing feeling that went straight into my heart, telling me that God was real, that Stephanie lived on, and that everything would be fine. I wept again, but this time my tears of grief were mixed with tears of relief and hope. My faith in Jesus Christ was born in that moment, but it was still so small at that time, and I was still innocent and young.
Over the next several years, many small miracles happened to get me on a mission. Then I had several very spiritual experiences that helped me grow into a missionary who was, after 18 months, finally making a difference. So here I was, serving in the Thousand Oaks Stake in California, at the pinnacle of my missionary experience – I was truly helping people. All of that came to a halt when I got really sick; sick like I had never experienced before (I was a sickly child, so this is saying something). At about the same time my sickness came upon me, I was hit with the news that a second family member I was close to had passed away. My Great Grandma Snow was very old, in her nineties, but she was an important person in our family, and I wished I could be home with my family to comfort them.
My illness escalated quickly after that, and I was hospitalized. I had a real fear that I would have to go home early from my mission. In my missionary-mind, that would have been the worst thing possible, and to top it all off, no other missionaries were allowed to stay with me in the hospital, and so for the first time as a missionary, I was alone. I do not like being alone. I always prefer to spend time with friends and family, and as a missionary, I was never alone. I had also been in hospitals many times before, but my mother had always been with me when I was in the hospital.
So as I sat in the hospital, many terrible thoughts were racing through my head. My family was grieving at home, I was potentially going to be sent home, I was sick and not sure if or when I would get better, I was alone in a hospital room with no one to talk to – it was probably the loneliest moment of my life.
One night after receiving a blessing from my mission president, the moment of Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was on my mind, so I went to the Gospels to read about it. It was like I was learning the story for the first time as I read. I never recognized before that Jesus was “exceedingly sorrowful even unto death.”It hit me that Jesus had begged his friends to be with him in the Garden. He was afraid, lonely, desperate for someone to be there as He suffered. Yet they fell asleep, not once but three times. I started to feel a little guilty about my own sense of loneliness. Not only did Jesus beg His friends to be with him, but He also asked God if there was some other way to make this eternal sacrifice, yet the answer was no. Yet, in Jesus’s most lonely moment, God sent an angel to strengthen Him.
As I was lost in that moment, I had an impression that this angel who visited Jesus Christ in His darkest moment was there to represent all of us. To represent the reason He was suffering. In my mind, the angel told Jesus that we loved Him and that because He loved us, our eternal reunion would be worth it. In that moment, as if God were speaking to me personally, special knowledge came to my mind and heart. “Jesus loves us all, and because of Him we are never truly alone in our lives, and death is not the end.”
These two experiences from my past have had a lasting impact on my faith in Jesus Christ, but I must admit that there are so many who have been tested much more than I ever have. With permission from a close friend, I am going to share her story of unimaginable loss.
15 years will have gone by this June, and my daughter would have been 32 years old. Sophie Rose was walking with me at girls camp, just off of a relaxing peddle boat ride in the little lake at the Heber girls camp spot. She and I splashed one another and played a bit of bumper cars in the water.
The morning started with Sophie standing in the kitchen quite early, getting packed for camp, and my husband mistaking her for me. This is something that to this day fills my heart with some joy. I don’t know why it makes us as parents feel close to our children when they have our look, our demeanor. But it does.
That morning as well, as I was getting ready for the camp before the girls arrived in Heber, I scattered little gifts on my daughter’s bed …knowing she would arrive shortly and I wanted to surprise her. I am grateful I did what I was prompted to do that morning.
Earlier on the day before camp, as I was fixing dinner for my family of 7, on this beautiful June 9th with a blue sky and a soft breeze, while setting the table, I could see Sophie with her guitar in hand practicing, singing on our back deck. I took a moment…a long moment….looking at her, listening to her, loving her. As I stood there in wonder at her beautiful soul and self, a perfectly bright yellow butterfly whipped its way round about her. Flying in lovely circles, wrapping an imaginary web around her, I tapped on the glass door…. She looked up…..and I said “Did you see that?” With our eyes wide open, she looked to me without missing a word in her song or a strum with her fingers….and simply smiled and nodded at me with assurance.
These are two of the three experiences that preceded the hours before I lost my middle child. There was one more experience that led to the moment of our goodbyes.
After getting off our little pedal boats, we walked along a little dirt path, sun shining, and many of the women in the group and our daughters, and others were around us. I said something to my daughter, calling out her name as “Roses”…..She turned back to slow down and walk next to me. The folks around us were surprised at that name. They knew her only as Sophie…. They were curious where the name came from. I began to lovingly mention all of the names I have for her….”Roses”…more obvious with her middle name, but still, unique and one she loved.
I mentioned “Sweet Beggar” as we have called her that since she was little, because she never asked for too much, never demanded, never gave us any attitude, and if she did wish for something, she asked for it in such a way that we could never deny her. “Oh, and we call her ‘ANGEL BREATH, I said.”
At that moment, without notice, without any earlier health conditions, without any forewarning, my daughter fell down as if to faint. Only, she never got back up. She never spoke to me again. That was it. That moment of telling of her most favored nickname and why we called her that so lovingly…was the last of what she heard her mother say of her.
3 weeks prior, I was watching a movie, and there was a poignant moment in the movie that caused me to feel great emotion. Benjamin Button talked of how life can pass you by, and you must take the chance to improve it, dig in, and make the life the life you want it to be. Whatever came over me was beyond the movie’s message, but that of the Spirit’s message. I got out of bed, moving directly into Sophie’s room, where I woke her up a bit and lay next to her.
I begged for her to hear me….” If anything ever happens to me, you know Sophie. You know….You know without a doubt how much I love you. You know. And we will always be looking at the same moon….which was the moon we laid there looking at that night through the arched windows in her bedroom with tears in our eyes as we embraced and promised that there would never, ever be a doubt of how much I love her and she loved me….we said that night…no matter what”.
The story of losing my Roses at age 17 is not the story of how. It’s not the story of why. It’s the story of WHEN.
I screamed and yelled at the top of my lungs, I begged the lord to help us while up in the hills of Heber, so very far from the hospital. I begged, and yet the Lord did not help us. A blessing was given, and yet it did not save her. She was lifted from us right then and there, and she was gone.
It has taken many years to understand that our Father and Heaven could have helped, certainly…but he didn’t. I had to forgive Him. Time has been the greatest gift for a suffering heart, as over time, I have gained immense understanding and deep peace. I forgave my father in heaven for not saving her. I realized that he can not do that for all, and that life has its own course for each of us.
I realized what the Atonement actually means. As for me, it means that no matter what, all will be ok. That there will come a time when we will be together again, and it will seem as if to were just a moment. I realize that God is not a respecter of persons, that all come in and go out. This is part of life, that we die. I accept the plan now more readily. I watch others suffer, and I am grateful for the compassion I now feel and can bring to others who are suffering. I am grateful for the example she was to me through the ways she blessed the lives of others while she was with us, as well as the way she proved the atonement to me. I have released my anger, my fear, my grief to God now, allowing him to work with my heart and soul, to strengthen me so that I can bring joy to others again.
We have a foundation now, and our charity is named Sophie’s Place, where we conduct music therapy for children’s hospitals in special rooms dedicated to those who can be healed through music.
Sophie was a volunteer herself at Primary Children’s Hospital. She sang and played for children and their families via a volunteer program during her junior year of high school. She would come home overjoyed by the chance she had to bring love and belonging to those who were in need and suffering. We now spend our spare time working with hospitals, visiting those where there is interest in her special room for the healing power of music in their hospitals. It is amazing what healing can take place through the use of music. Reno, Stanford, Wake Forest, Scottsdale, Sacramento…children’s hospitals all have a busy and active Sophie’s Place where Sophie just seems to be in those rooms, ready to help.
It has taken many years as well to realize that the times when I was given the chance to indulge her, to feel her soul, to share with her, to delight her, I acted upon the gift of the Spirit. When I was prompted, ever so slightly, I listened and reacted. When I feel there is an opportunity to meet with a hospital or mention to someone who might help us raise money to build one in their hospital…I follow it.
When is now. And I realize that. It took great pain and healing to get to this place where I rely on God’s timing and I act on His schedule, when He prompts me, when He sees fit. From there, the joy will surely come.
If you click on the song you see here….you will hear the song Sophie wrote for me that Mother’s Day, not many days before she left this earth. She and my daughter Tezza were singer-songwriters. They traveled in and out of Utah, performing together with the songs they wrote. After church on that lazy Mother’s Day Sunday, Sophie and Tezza went into their room and came out with this gift, a song they dedicated to me that they later recorded for me to have.
As it turns out, they knew WHEN to follow His promptings as well.
Thank you, Anne Marie, for sharing your story. I could feel the love you share with Sophie in your words.
Over the past decade, I have watched friends and family members have experiences like this. When someone dies, it leaves a void in our lives and hearts. On a few occasions, I have thought about my own death or the potential death of someone in my family, and I would get overwhelmed with feelings that are hard to express. It felt like I was looking into the deepest abyss with no end to the nothingness in front of me. The fear that gripped me was visceral, and yet I couldn’t move as I was paralyzed with this thought of a permanent end to something so special to me. In the Hebrew Bible, this abyss is often referred to with the word tehom, meaning the deep or the void, and over time it also became tied to evil spirits and the dwelling place of the spirits of the miserable dead.
For many thousands of years, people have experienced this void and the fear of permanent separation from the relationships we cherish so much.
So when we think of a small group of Jesus’ disciples over the hours after his death. They must have been devastated, hopeless, fearful. How could the King of Israel be killed before their deliverance? How could the One who healed hundreds, fed thousands, and even raised Lazarus from the dead be gone? They were looking into the abyss and felt like all was lost.
Then the greatest words ever spoken changed everything.
“He is not here but is Risen.”
Easter is a day for hope. It is the best day for hope.
It is a day to think of that joyful moment when we will embrace our loved ones who have passed on. It is a day to feel confident that our reunions will be eternal. It is also a day to recognize that while nothing can fully heal us from the kind of wounds that come from losing our loved ones, especially those taken too soon, we can go on and we can continue to build relationships that matter. We can cherish the moments we have with our loved ones just a little longer.
I believe in Jesus’s glorious gift of living again. I am firm in my witness that I will see my cousin Stephanie and many other loved ones again. I hope I get to witness the certain and beautiful reunion of Sophie with her family. The joy of that moment will be incomprehensibly amazing.
While my witness of the joy that Christ’s resurrection will bring is important to me. I have an even stronger witness in the power of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with others. We can also become helping hands to lift up the lonely, those without hope, and be a light to the world that gives people something to believe in. Our world needs people who bring hope and love to the world, and that can be us in actions both big and small. Think of how many people have been lifted up in Sophie’s memory because her family shows up and brings love and hope to those who need it most. We must be Jesus’s hands while we are on this earth. We can love more, reach out to others in need more, understand each other more, forgive each other more, and pray for ways to lighten others’ burdens more. Death can be a bittersweet reminder that life is about our relationships. It can remind us how important our relationships are. When we seek to bring Christ’s love to our relationships, we feel Christ’s love for us more, His hope and grace fill us, and fill those we love. I believe that those moments when we truly share and express comfort, love, and hope with each other are when God is most able to speak to our souls and heal our wounds. It is then that He will tell us in our hearts and minds the most glorious truth in all of eternity…
He Is Risen
Gospel Essays 