SCA7 Through My Eyes

My dad is an amazing speaker. Many of the talks that he has given throughout his life have had a significant impact on me, especially this one. When my dad gave this talk at Carolyn’s funeral, I had just graduated from high school. At this time my mom was in a wheelchair, and life with this disease was becoming very difficult for her. We also knew that my younger sister Aubree had SCA7. She had bad vision but no balance issues. I was scared for her, as was my entire family. My cousin Lance at this time was in a wheelchair, and my cousin Callie was beginning to have balance issues. I really did not like seeing my immediate and extended family struggle with this disease. While I did not know if I had the disease at this time, I suspected that I did.

During this time, I had a lot of emotional struggles. First of all, I felt like the disease was way too much for God to ask. It is plenty hard for one person to have to have to face a life with SCA7, but for all of these people who I loved so much? Again, it just felt like way too much to ask. I wondered if God really loved and cared about my family and me.  I also felt scared about the future, not just for me, but for my mom, sister and cousins.

I have been to a lot of funerals, and at all of them I have strongly felt the Spirit of God. At Carolyn’s funeral in particular, the spirit was powerful. When my dad gave this talk, I was filled with hope and felt that things were going to be OK. My dad’s faith in Christ and eternal perspective were a great comfort to me. I hope you enjoy this talk as much as I have.

 

CAROLYN CANFIELD FLAKE

by Rick Balling

When a loved one dies, especially at a relatively young age, our hearts and minds fill with questions. Big questions.

Where is Carolyn now?

When will we get to see her again?

What will she look like?

Why didn’t the Lord make her better?

Why did the Lord take away our mother, our wife, our sister, our daughter?

On the surface, it may not make any sense to us. But if we ponder and look deeper, we can make sense.

Everyone that knows me knows that I am obsessed with fishing, and in fact, it is impossible for me to give a talk without saying something about fishing. The first time I saw the magnificent salmon in Alaska, I was amazed at their tenacity. After four or five years, the salmon return to the rivers to spawn. As they enter the fresh water streams, they stop eating, and their bodies begin to decay. They are driven to spawn, and these beautiful fish may swim hundreds of miles. After they have laid and fertilized their eggs, they simply waste away in the stream-beds. Their flesh softens to the point where you can poke a hole through their bodies with your index finger. Finally, they die and their carcasses pile up on the riverbanks and sandbars. In fact, if you visit Alaska in September, you are overcome with thousands and millions of dead King, Red, Silver, Chum, and Pink salmon everywhere along the rivers. It is a depressing sight and the odor is terrific. You exclaim, “What a waste of life — it doesn’t make any sense”.   But if you look deeper, you realize that these dead carcasses sustain life in Alaska. The grizzly bears, the bald eagles, the foxes, and other animals depend on the food found in these carcasses before the long winter hits.   The fish in the streams including the newly hatched salmon fry also feed on these carcasses, and thus the parents literally give everything for their young. I have visited Alaska several times in June at the start of a new summer, and I am continually amazed that there is no sign whatsoever of the carnage from the previous season. Not a single bone or shred of evidence can be found — everything has been used, and the annual cycle of life begins again. Everything follows the marvelous plan of its supreme design. Our lives, too, follow a marvelous plan called the plan of salvation. This plan has been revealed to us by prophets, and we can understand it and make sense of life and death.

We lived before this life with our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in the pre-existence. We were spirits. Our heavenly parents had resurrected bodies. Only a resurrected body can receive a fullness of joy. We wanted to become like our parents. We wanted to grow up. Therefore, our parents decided to send us away to school. That’s why we came to this earth. We received our bodies, and we are here to learn how to become like our parents. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”. You could say that we are all enrolled in Godhood 101.   This earth-life is a carefully designed closed-book testing center where we learn by experience. When Joseph Smith reached the end of his rope in the Liberty Jail, the Savior told him “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good”. Even the Savior had to learn by experience. Are we greater than he? What if Heavenly Father decided to cancel the whole idea of creating an earth and simply give us a big lecture in the pre-existence on how to be like him? It would certainly have been less trouble for him. However, I’m afraid we wouldn’t have learned a darn thing. Real learning requires experience, and experience requires opposition, free-agency, consequences, trials, problems, sweat, and pain.

I have learned by experience that teenagers learn by experience. Let me tell you about my son, Dan. One day before his mission he brought home an old beat up car and told me that he and his friends had a great idea. They got this car dirt-cheap and they were going to fix it up and sell it and make a lot of money, basically without having to work very hard. Easy money. I lectured him on the law of the harvest, and that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but I could see that he was not learning. The car didn’t have license plates because it couldn’t pass the state emissions test. Occasionally, they would hop in the car and go somewhere. I warned them that they were taking a big chance by driving around in a car without license plates. But again, they were simply not learning from my preaching. Sure enough, I got a phone call one day from one of Dan’s friends. He needed to get to work, and he jumped into the old car that was conveniently parked outside. A policeman pulled him over and impounded the car on the spot. He was given a court date. Three months later when the court date arrived, he appeared before the judge and was fined $750. He then went over to the impound lot only to learn that they charged a $15 a day for the car that had been there for three months. Let’s see, 90 times 15 is $1350. Fortunately, when they went to get the car, it had been stolen from the impound lot, so impound fee was waived. Dan and his friends learned from this experience. After I repeatedly told him, “I told you so”, he exclaimed in exasperation, “Look dad, you got to be young and stupid before you can be old and wise”.

Now, look at the particular homework problems that the Lord assigned to Carolyn. Not many of us can possibly know what it is like to experience the loss of eyesight. What would it be like to lose the ability to walk? How would it be to have to depend on others for almost everything? To slowly lose control of your emotions and thoughts. And then to see both of your children struck down with the same affliction. Only the Savior himself knows the burden Carolyn had to bear.

Was all this imposed because Carolyn was a particularly rebellious spirit that had a lot to learn in this life? Even though Carolyn was known to be feisty at times, I don’t think this was the case. Were the Savior’s burdens imposed on him because he was rebellious? Of course not. The purpose of the Savior’s burdens and Carolyn’s burdens were mostly for the rest of us. We need to know that people walk the face of this earth and get through incredible things. We need to know these people up close and personal. We need to learn by serving them. Looking at the burden Carolyn bore gives us a glimpse of the burden that the Savior bore, and suddenly our own issues seem puny indeed.

In the world today, fame is awarded to athletes, movie-stars, singers, presidents, senators, and the like. Even in our church we often wrongfully attach prestige to callings. But who are the real heroes? If we could see on the other side of this one-way window called the veil, and observe the throngs of angels, spirits, and heavenly beings watching us in this Superbowl game called Earth Life, who do you think they would consider for MVP? I think Lance would get a lot of votes. So would Callie and Scott. And Marlene and Cindee, and of course, Carolyn, Cathy, and Paul. What a privilege we have to know and play along side these MVP’s. They are the salt of the earth.

Who did the Savior spend his time with when he was upon the Earth, both in Jerusalem and in the Americas. He was with the sick and afflicted. If he were on the earth today, I think he would be right here in this chapel in Snowflake, Arizona rather than in the White House.

About ten years ago, our family was traveling through Wyoming, and we took a detour of about ten miles on a dirt road to the Willie handcart site at Rock Creek near South Pass. There are no trees around, just sagebrush. There was a small rectangular area roped off with a little plaque listing the names of 14 people who had died in one night and were buried there. I gathered my family and wanted to say something to them, but I found that I couldn’t speak. I don’t think that had never happened to me before. My brother took over and said something, and we left. Eight years later, our ward trekked out to Martin’s Cove and pulled handcarts. We met in Martin’s Cove with a brother Kitchen from the Riverton, Wyoming stake presidency. He told us stories of the many saints from the Martin Handcart company that died in Martin’s Cove. He told us how the Church was able to recently acquire that property, and that President Hinckley came out to visit the site. The prophet walked back into the cove and later came out and told them, “This is sacred ground”. Brother Kitchen then told us some stories from the Willie Handcart company. The story that stuck out in my mind was the story of James Kirkwood, age 11, from Scotland (retold by President Faust in July, 2002 Ensign). On the trip west, James’ widowed mother and older brother Robert had to pull the handcart carrying his other older brother, Thomas, who was crippled. James’s responsibility on the trek was to care for his little four-year-old brother, Joseph. As they climbed Rocky Ridge, it was snowing and there was a bitter cold wind blowing. It took the whole company 27 hours to travel 15 miles. When little Joseph became too weary to walk, James had no choice but to carry him piggy-back. Left behind the main group, James and Joseph made their way slowly to camp. Imagine, an 11-year-old boy carrying his brother piggy-back, 15 miles over Rocky Ridge, in a snowstorm. When the two finally arrived at the fireside, the journal says: “James, having so faithfully carried out his task, collapsed and died.”   James Kirkwood is one of the 14 people buried at Rock Creek. President Hinckley also visited the Rock Creek site. He went off on his own and came back and told the stake presidency that this was hallowed ground. Later the stake presidency was pondering why the prophet had used the term “sacred ground” for Martin’s cove and “hallowed ground” for Rock Creek. They wrote a letter to the first presidency asking the difference between sacred and hollowed ground. They got a response from President Faust. Sacred ground is where saints have given their lives for the Kingdom of God. Hallowed ground is ground where the Savior has walked. No wonder I couldn’t speak when I first visited that site. Indeed, the Savior walks with those that bear heavy burdens.

Let me close with an experience I had a few years back high in the Stone Creek Basin of the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. My family has heard this before, but my daughter Mandee suggested that I bring it up again. While I was laying in my sleeping bag, I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of cannons in the distance. The light flickered on the side of my tent. A storm was approaching. I lay there motionless for several minutes and listened as the sound of the thunder grew stronger and stronger. My father lay in the sleeping bag next to mine, and his steady snoring indicated that he was fast asleep. But after awhile, the sound of the thunder caused his snoring to stop, and I knew that he was also lying there motionless, listening to the approaching storm. When it hit, it hit hard. The gusts of wind caused our dome tent to deflect down near our faces. Especially terrifying was the thunder and lightning. At such a high elevation, it seemed as if every lightning strike hit the ground or the lake, and I’m sure many of them did. I think that when these storms are forced to climb up high mountains, it puts them in a particularly nasty mood. With each thunder-clap, I could hear my sons and nephews in the nearby tents hoot and holler. Then it started to hail with great intensity. We feared that it would literally rip our tent. When we placed our hands up against the tent, the hail would sting.

I have a book of cowboy poetry, and without question, my favorite is a poem by Baxter Black where he calls such storms “The big high and lonesome”:

When it hit it hit with a fury                                                                                                                           The wind had its saber unsheathed                                                                                                             The lightning cracked and the sky split apart                                                                                        The storm was a barin’ its teeth                                                                                                                   The blackness shook like a she-bear                                                                                                     Whose raging made my heart run                                                                                                               The hail fell like bullets around me                                                                                                      Scattering dust like a gun

Suddenly, as if someone flipped a switch, the hail stopped. The intensity of the thunder and wind began to diminish. The storm passed by until, again, it was only the sound of cannons in the distance. The steady snoring of my father started up again. I just lay there. I unzipped the window of the tent, and to my astonishment, the sky was filled with stars. It was breathtaking. The moonlight shone bright on my face….The big high and lonesome is only God’s way …. of putting a man in his place.

Scott, Lance, and Callie. Storms are only God’s way of teaching us and those around us. Storms don’t last forever. The day will come when the sky will be filled with stars. Scott, you remember Carolyn when you were first married before she was saddled with this disease. She is waiting for you, and for Lance and Callie. You will yet have many wonderful experiences together….a fullness of joy. Brothers and sisters, behold, today we are in the presence of a latter-day saint, even Carolyn Canfield Flake. She has carried her burden up and over Rocky Ridge. As she always told you, Scott, you are lucky to have married her.