A mother's first talk!

Editor's Note: This talk was given by Catherine on July 28, 2013 in church 6 days after giving birth to her son.  Here it is presented in draft form.

Be Not Moved           

            Good morning brothers and sisters. My name is Catherine Valdivieso. I'm Kevin and Brenda Miles' oldest daughter and they're very kindly letting us live in their basement. For those of you who know me you might notice I'm looking a little smaller this week. Our dear son decided he could not wait one more minute to join our family and arrived feet first on Monday evening. He is 8 weeks early so he's in the NICU but he's surpassed all of our wildest expectations with how well he's doing. His lungs were a little under-developed so they had him on oxygen for the first couple days but he's off of that now and just needs to keep gaining weight and reaching his milestones so we can bring him home. His name is Marek and he's currently 4 pounds 3 ounces. Brother Webb actually called and offered to let me off the hook for this talk, but we've been so incredibly blessed through our trials that I figured the least I could do is stand here as a witness today that God really does have a perfect plan for our lives.

            The subject of my talk today is the talk by Sister Dalton that was given at the Young Women’s Broadcast this year entitled “Be Not Moved”. I had to laugh a little bit when I first heard the title because in the little over five years Navarre and I have been married we have moved nine times. Hopefully that won't continue too much now that we have a baby – the stuff that you accumulate seems to triple once you have a kid and I thought we had too much stuff to move to begin with. We've been all over Utah and down to Texas twice in all of our moves and there are three main points I want to make that connect to this idea of “Be Not Moved”. The first being – did you know that Latter Day Saints in Texas eat the same food at activities as the Saints in Utah?

Stand In Holy Places and Be Not Moved

            No, but really the first idea is the main bulk of Sister Dalton's talk which is Stand in Holy Places and Be Not Moved. Now when I heard this idea first in Young Women’s from some of the very ladies in this room, I thought obviously of the temple and church meetings and our homes as the places we should most often be found if you're living a virtuous life. Over time through the many apartments we lived in and many paths we walked I realized that a Holy Place can be wherever you are standing. Or laying, as the case was this week as I discovered what it really means to have pain that rates as a 10 as my son came into the world. Throughout the whole day even though my brain was trying to tell me to panic because it was too early and I couldn't possibly be having the baby today I was comforted and felt that I was standing in a holy place because the Lord and my husband were standing next to me holding my hands telling me that everything was going to be fine. As soon as I decided to just accept that as fact, it was like all the pressure went away because I knew that God was in charge and it was his day to drive and I was going to be happy to be along for the ride even though I didn't know where we were going. In Isaiah 49:25 it says “But thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.” It seemed particularly appropriate for this week and I can say with full confidence that when God is driving you don't end up in ditches. And even if you did, be not moved because it would be a holy place.

Be Not Moved in His Atonement

            The second point is towards the end of Sister Dalton's talk and it is Be Not Moved in Your Acceptance of of the Savior's Atonement. In Ether 12:27 it says “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” When we were sitting in our last Stake Conference I was reflecting on the statement that adults make when you're a kid that you don't understand why your parents won't let you stay out all night. “You just won't understand until you have kids of your own.” I wondered if maybe the Lord would say something similar to us when we're going through the trials that don't make sense. I know the trap I always fall into is feeling guilty for not being a better person and being constantly apologetic in my prayers for things on my checklist undone. While I was thinking of this I had this moment of clarity where I imagined my son as a young man coming to me and apologizing for all the times he let me down and perhaps thinking I loved him a little less than I could have if only he'd done everything right. If only he'd done all of his chores every time or if only he'd been more diligent in expressing his love. Of course that's not true! Naturally just on merit of being my son I'd think he was the greatest thing ever already. And then to see him trying to do something and be better even though he wasn't perfect at it and made lots of mistakes would be the greatest thing ever. I realized that I wouldn't want my son to spend his life dwelling on the ways he may have offended me and worrying that every thing he did might decrease my love for him. Obviously it's impossible for me to love him any less and it would lead to a fruitless life for him. I would want him to wake up every day and just do a little better than he did the day before and live the happiest life he could choosing the right and dwelling on his goals instead of his failures. I would want him to come to me when he had a problem so we could deal with it and get him back to having a great life. In that moment I knew that that is how the Lord feels about us. He thinks we're the greatest thing ever and loves to see us succeed.  He loves to watch us try to be better people even though we make mistakes because he knows it will make us happy and bless His other children around us. So now every time I'm tempted to beat myself up about something that's not quite perfect I ask myself if that's what I'd want for my child. If the answer is no then let it go. Just keep moving forward and be not moved in His Atonement

They Shall Not Be Ashamed That Wait For Me

            My last point comes from a series of verses in Isaiah that have become particularly close to my heart this year. When I started pondering Be Not Moved it came into my mind as something that would naturally follow. It's the very last phrase of Isaiah 49:23 and it says: “for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” So together it popped into my mind as “Be not moved, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” I know that all of us have reached that time in our lives where we feel like we're doing mostly everything right and still the blessings seem to be slow in coming to deliver us from the trial we're inevitably being squished to death by. The world and even our own families and friends question our choices as we continue in faith just waiting and waiting for the moment when the storm will break and we can start reflecting on the trials we've had instead of living through them.

            We tried for two and a half years to get pregnant with Marek because I have a rare physical malformation that we discovered only by chance the same month we found out we were pregnant. I know two and a half years is short for many people who have incredible fertility challenges but for us it seemed like forever. We finally came to the conclusion that we probably wouldn't be able to have kids of our own and were moving on to preparing ourselves to adopt. Then we found out about my condition and additionally realized it would probably be risky and complicated for us to get pregnant so we decided to stop trying for good. Two weeks later we found out we'd won the proverbial lottery and that we were going to have a baby after all. It was surreal and slightly terrifying to see our dreams that we had so carefully put away resurrected before our eyes on the ultrasound screen. It was incredible and comforting to realize that obviously the Lord wanted us to have this child at this precise moment in time and in this way. Even though the doctors warned me that I had additional risks the pregnancy was very uncomplicated and my confidence waxed strong that everything was as it should be. Even now that my son was born premature you might expect that I feel abandoned but it's quite the opposite. I firmly believe that there's a reason that he needed to come now even though I probably won't ever know what it is. Although as far as silver linings go in the meantime – my mom isn't back at work yet for the new school year and she's been able to take amazing care of me that would have been more difficult if he had come later. Also I got to have the natural child birth that I thought I wanted instead of having a C-Section at full term because he was likely to stay breech so my recovery has been fast. Most of all we've been supremely blessed by Marek's good health since the moment my water broke. We joke that he was calmer than we were the day he was born because his heart rate never wavered through the whole day of monitoring. I'm constantly impressed by the leaps and bounds in his progress every time I go to the hospital to see him. He was off his oxygen within just a couple days of being born and now not even a week later they're talking about doing away with the extra fluids he's been receiving intravenously besides his regular feedings. It would be easy to look at my life and this situation and let the bad things pile up around me until I drowned in it, but it's far more fun and better for my attitude to continue to see the tender mercies of the Lord wrapping up my little family like a huge warming blanket against the chill of despair.  So be not moved because they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.

            In conclusion I want to also mention that I have a firm testimony of tithing. Last Sunday Navarre wasn't feeling well and was at home and my feet were so swollen that they barely fit into the shoes I was wearing but I knew I had to at least come to sacrament meeting and pay our tithing. I know that because I did so we were additionally blessed this week when we absolutely needed it the most. This is something we've seen in our family time and time again – if you need something pay your tithing and watch the good things come to you even if it's in a way you might not expect. It has a funny way of solving your problems or at least helping you deal with them. Also I have a testimony that the Lord is intimately aware of us and our challenges and he knows exactly when to hold our hands and when to let us walk a few steps on our own just to teach us that we are more capable than we think. I have a testimony that the more we count our blessings instead of our problems that the problems will gradually take care of themselves and our blessings will increase. We talked recently in relief society about love languages and I know that the Lord talks to all of us in our love language if we're paying attention. I'd love to give an entirely different talk about that but I'll suffice to say that if you think about how you feel love you will see the way that God is reaching out to you in your life and it will make you so much happier to see it on a daily basis. So Be Not Moved because the Lord is already standing right next to you. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

 

In His Constant Care by Simon Dewey