It was a little nervy of him to accept the call and leave this earth without me, I must say. But because of it, my family and I have seen many tender mercies, too numerous to enumerate here. But here's a small summary:
The six children, their spouses (and girlfriend) and children learned how to cope with the death of a father and injury to a mother and be strengthened by it.
We all learned to recognize that Graham had experienced progression from one plane of existence to a superior one, and to be grateful that he did not survive the accident with multiple injuries that would have been disabling to him, perhaps permanently. He would have hated that. Instead, we believe that he is now busy learning and growing, serving others. We have had experiences that validate the reality of vibrant life after death, and are confident that when we pass through the veil he will be standing there vibrating with energy, with a bright smile on his face, saying, "Come with me -- you just HAVE to see THIS!"
Graham was/IS a good man: a good and loving husband and father, and an excellent grandfather! Those of us still working our way through the earthly trials have pondered and appreciated the lessons we learned from Graham during his life.
The effect of his life on our lives is expressed with great honesty, feeling and wisdom by Vanessa, who gave me permission to post this talk she gave in Sacrament Meeting a week ago. Grab some tissues before settling in to read her thoughts.
*****************************************************************************
Stand up Inside and be all in : Elder Gary Sabin of the
Seventy
Good afternoon, we are the Eborns. I am Vanessa, you will
hear later from my husband Brian, and we have 2 beautiful girls, Morgan (in Sunbeams
this year) and Gray, who is excited to join nursery in 6
weeks....ok....I'm the excited one.
·
This weekend we will be celebrating our 8th wedding
anniversary. We met at work, I was his trainer and technical guru
when he came into the company, and when he first started asking me out, I was
adamant that I would not date anyone from work. I turned him down
time after time because he had an encouraging friend who loved seeing him crash
and burn. Finally he tricked me into a "friend date" and
due to my fear of commitment, has had to trick me into this relationship ever
since.
·
We have been in our current house for 4.5 years, and came to the
ward when it was created about 3 years ago.
·
I have been teaching in primary from Day 1 of this ward until
very recently.
·
My husband has had a Sunday shift for the longest time because
it gave us what we wanted in terms of balancing work and family.
Bishop Olsen gave us a few conference talks to choose from
and speak on. I chose Stand Up and be All In by Elder Gary Sabin of
the Seventy. In my decision process, I downloaded all 3 talks and
found all of them to hit a very personal note with me. This one
though made me laugh more, and also spoke the most towards what I am striving
towards. I would like to share a bit of my flawed background before
I go into the points of this talk.
·
I grew up in a large, strong and amazing LDS
family. It was a family that made believing in and following the
teachings of the church easy. Growing up, I never questioned my
faith. I was All In.
·
I moved out of my parents house and went to college at 18. I
maintained my strength and faith through college, but I started to notice that
my commitment started wavering...I was Chin Deep In.
·
After college, I got roommates, and a career, and I started
getting tired of my time in the singles ward. For no real reason...I became Waist Deep In. My faith and love of the church was still as strong
as it was, but I was not as committed to the practice of attending.
·
This decline of commitment continued to the point where I never
thought I would find myself, I was officially Inactive. I met my
husband around this time, and he saved me from sinking further into my inactive
state. We found comfort in our similar faults, but we also
strengthened each other.
·
When marriage became a reality in our future, we knew we wanted
to be married in the temple. We recommitted to the church, and
through repentance and love, we achieved our goal and became sealed in the
temple on July 17th, 2009. We maintained our All In commitment in the
church for a time into our marriage.
·
Gradually our lives started to become difficult and at times
traumatic. Through struggling with infertility and battling an
unknown chronic disease, we found ourselves wondering why we weren't receiving
blessings. For a couple of years, we returned to our inactivity.
·
Upon the birth of my first IVF baby, we agreed that we wanted to
raise her in this Church. With the support of an amazing Relief Society
presidency, I started attending church again....but, sporadically, and often
only when I was asked to teach Relief Society. I was about Knee-Deep In.
·
Trying to balance job and family, Brian took a shift at work
that required him to work on Sundays, but allowed us to minimize the time we
had to use a nanny. We felt the sacrifice was a noble one, and was
worth it. We stayed knee deep.
·
With the creation of this ward, I was called to teach in
primary. The weekly commitment of teaching, coupled with my daughter's
age allowing her to go to nursery, I was able to accept that I was more
in....and I loved the weekly reminder in Primary of my youthful faith and
commitment to the church. Remembering my own youthful innocence
started my healing process, and dragged me In even further.
From this talk, Elder Sabin shares how a GPS system does
not correct your route with the chastisement of calling you a fool. It
pleasantly states, "Recalculating route, when possible, make a legal
U-turn." Redirection helps us get to our
destination. I have too often found myself taking a different route; redirection has brought me back. I have too often found myself not
being All In, being like the anonymous man Elder Sabin shares as sending a
letter to the IRS which said "Dear IRS: enclosed please find money I owe
for past taxes. P.S. If after this my conscience still bothers me,
I'll send you the rest." That shouldn't be how we do it; we
can't hold back to see what the minimum is we can get by with. The
Lord requires our whole heart with a willing mind."
In preparing this talk, I came across my Young Women's
project where I collected inspirational quotes and stories into a
binder. One of these was titled "Close to, round about, or
nearby." I won't read the whole thing, but it talks about a minister
preaching a sermon and stating that baptism should be performed by sprinkling,
and not by immersion. The minister mis-interpreted some biblical
stories where baptisms didn't happen "in" the river Jordan, but close
to, round about or nearby". A man approached the minister
afterwards, saying how grateful he was for the sermon, because it cleared up
confusions for him, such as Daniel wasn't IN the lions den, he was close to,
round about, or nearby. He provided a few more examples and ended
with "and...next Sunday, I won't have to be "in" church; I can just
be close to, round about, or nearby."
We don't want to be close to, round about or
nearby. We baptize by immersion as a symbol of our promise to fully
follow the Savior. We want to achieve our blessings by being All In. When we are lukewarm or only partially committed, we lose out on
some of Heaven's choicest blessings. When we are complacent with our
covenants, we are complicit with the consequences.
Elder Sabin says, "In reality, it is much easier to be
"All In" than Partially In. When we are partially in or
not at all, there is "a disturbance in the force." We are
out of sync with God's will, and therefore out of sync with the nature of
happiness." Another symbolic story he shared was about a father and his
young son who went into a toy store where there was an inflatable punching bag
in the shape of a man. The boy punched the inflatable man, who
tipped over and immediately bounced back up after every punch. The
father asked his young son why the man kept bouncing back up. The
boy thought for a minute and then said, "I don't know. I guess because he
is standing up on the inside."
Through some of my trials, I was
standing up on the outside, but not standing up on the inside. I was hovering
in a corner begging for it to stop. I wasn't All In. I wasn't
patiently waiting upon the Lord to remove or give me strength to endure my
thorns. I found myself in survival mode, putting on the strong face
for my family, but knowing that a strong wind could blow me over.
I was desperate for some redirection. Two years ago, I got
a shocking slap in the face that gave me my redirection. My dad, and
nearly my mom, was taken from this world by a reckless driver. In preparing for
his funeral, my family and I spent a lot of time focusing on how he lived his
life, and where we believe he is now. I got to revisit my childhood,
and the way I was raised in my strong LDS family. Being surrounded
by my family, we didn't focus on the person who took my dad's life; we focused
on how his life has led him to opportunities in the afterlife.
My
dad was All In. He taught his family to be All In. I was reminded
what it was like to be All In. Being All In for me was happiness. We
didn't have much in terms of material goods when I was growing up, but we had each other, and we had the Church. We
were happy. At the time this happened, I had happiness...but I did
not consider myself to be happy. More than ever before, I realized
exactly what was missing in my life, and I started working to get it back.
Happiness was not immediate, I struggled with the loss of my father, the
hormones of my 2nd IVF pregnancy and my husband's worsening health.
This year has been the year that I have started seeing the
blessings of being All In. Earlier this year, my widowed mother
started serving a mission, I get to see her grow and discover what her life
means on her own...and she is thriving. Due to some new schedule flexibility at
work, Brian has been able to start attending church every week with
us. It has allowed us to actually be All In as a whole family
unit.
We firmly believe that our change in our commitment to church
has made us happier, more fulfilled and, best of all, we have enjoyed 2 months
so far of being free of Brian's chronic illness that had steadily been growing
worse for 7 years...an illness that, at times, had him in a
wheelchair. We don't believe it is coming back, and the only
explanation we can use to explain this is Divine Intervention, nothing else can
explain his symptoms disappearing, literally, overnight. Being All In has given us our lives back.
While we continue to be imperfect,
and we have a lot more work to do, our redirection in our life has blessed us
with health and happiness, and I know that redirections in our future will not
need to be nearly as severe as our previous ones.
[Vanessa Eborn]
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