Book of Mormon Challenge Accepted—and Mangled

 

[image error]This past October, when President Nelson issued the challenge for LDS women to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year, I could hear my father’s voice booming in the back of my head:

“If you are going to do something, do it right.”

I had just accepted a full teaching load after years of part-time work, and the materials were all new to me–including one section based on ancient Athenian democracy. The classes were all writing intensive; the paper grading load was immense. How was I going to read the 239 chapters of Book of Mormon between October 7th and December 31st?  That’s 531 pages on top of all my other work.

But his challenge came with a promise:

“As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help find a way to achieve it. And, as you prayerfully study, I promise that the heavens will open for you. The Lord will bless you with increased inspiration and revelation.”

(from “Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel” 2018 October General Conference).

I had no confidence that I could set aside time to read, mark up my scriptures, pray and ponder. I was failing to keep up with paying bills, doing laundry, washing dishes, and buying groceries. My daughter had recently made herself just a sandwich on one half slice of bread. Why? The only bread we had in the house had green mold on the other half of the slice. If I couldn’t keep mold-free bread in the house, how was I going to find time to complete the challenge?

So I didn’t even start.

Until November. After hearing other women at church and online talk about their efforts to clear roadblocks so that they could read, I was eventually motivated to start the challenge.

Altering that authoritative voice in my head, I declared, “If you are going to do something, you just have to do it—even if you do it very badly.”

I downloaded an app to help me keep pace and found a paperback copy of the Book of Mormon that I could shove into my purse. I gave myself permission to be a careless reader as long as I completed the chapters assigned to me by the app.

To encourage me to get something out of my “just get ‘er done” method of scriptures study, I committed to annotate at least one verse per column and to write at least one key word on the top of each column.  I often had to go back and reread if I noted that I wasn’t marking up anything as I sped through my chapters for the day.

Did I read the Book of Mormon in quiet moments in the morning with sunshine filtering through the window as I enjoyed epiphanies? No.

I read while my bread was in the toaster, which is why I have crumb-laden and butter-smeared pages. I read in the waiting room at the mechanics where I could barely hear my internal narrator over the sound of cable news and electric screwdrivers. I read between work tasks where half of my attention was spent yelling internally, “I don’t have time for this!” I read during Sacrament meeting where their words mashed up in my head with Mosiah’s or Alma’s or Ammon’s.

I sometimes read so quickly that my internal narrator was merely summarizing passages that contained recurring themes: “righteous will prosper, wicked will be destroyed, contrite heart, preaching of the word, covenants, battle, secret combinations, records, contention, pride….”

Nevertheless, I did experience some moments where I felt as though God was delivering messages to me personally–messages that addressed conflicts that I am experience right now as my nest is emptying, my paid work keeps shifting, and the feedback I’m getting from my ward appears to devalue me as an older woman with no children in tow to help me secure a pew in the chapel.  I marked those speaking–directly-to-me passages with huge five-pointed stars.  I intend to read those verses of the Book of Mormon more carefully in 2019.

More than once, I put the book down and cried.

During the challenge, I find myself thinking more about the Book of Mormon even when I don’t have the Book of Mormon in front of me. Because I am splashing a little bit of oil in my lamp, I can call up verses of scripture as I commuted to work, as I folded laundry, as I walked laps at the gym, or as I woke up in the darkness of the early morning and enjoyed some quiet before I got out of bed to tackle my “to do” list.

So instead of being ashamed that I’m not completing the challenge perfectly, I wonder what gospel-based challenges I might meaningfully mangle in 2019?

 

 

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