Life before Life

I am going to take a turn here, and write some extremely personal stuff. This week has given me new perspective on life in general.  I don't know if a person can fully understand what a unique and incredible gift life is, unless they experience the opposite of life - death.  This week I experienced death, for the first time with such closeness and intimacy. I had a life growing inside me for nearly three months.  I saw the very essence of life...the heartbeat...many times via ultrasound.  I was told by my doctor, at the first sign of impending death nearly 6 weeks ago, that I would likely not carry this baby much longer.  But the life inside me held on, week after week, as I watched on the big screen.  I saw it form from a tiny yolk sac and fetal pole to a 5 week embryo with a beating heart to a 6 week embryo with a slowing heart.  Sadly, though my little one's heart was still beating at 10 weeks, it never grew past that 6 week phase and the life we had created was ended on July 14, 2008 at 5:33 p.m. 

So what do I know of life and death?  Even at 31, I had been fortunate not to have lost anyone in my immediate family, though I have lost loved ones, who I miss dearly.  And here I am professing to understand something about this complex, yet inevitable part of life as we know it - death. 

I know that life does not begin here, at conception.  I know that you lived before you were delivered as a newborn.  You lived in heaven, with God the Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and every other person that you have ever seen, met, interacted with, heard about, read about, hated or loved that has existed on this planet. We are His children, thus we are brothers and sisters, and we lived with our Heavenly Parents in a Heavenly Home. 

Now, this gets exciting to me.  I am deeply confounded by it, and want to jump for joy at the same time.  We chose to come here. Despite the perfection and promise of the Father's everlasting plan, He has always given us our agency, even before we were born.  We had the freedom to choose to be tested here on Earth, or not to come at all. We were spirits in what we call the Premortal Existence, where we attended a council with God.  We were given a couple of choices, and you chose to follow God.  Everyone born to this earth chose to follow the Savior's plan. There is much more information to be learned concerning this choice.  There are people who are ready to teach you about it, if you desire to know more or simply have it explained to you.  Click here, then click on Ask a Question.

So, if we lived before we were born, then surely it follows that we live after we die.  I believe that we do live after we die, and the scriptures teach us that the same sociality that exists here, exists when we return to the heavenly realm from which we came.  Our attitudes, personalities, convictions, perhaps even addictions, carry with us to the afterlife.  All the knowledge which we gain here will only help us there.  Of course, there are many different types of knowledge.  We learn from books, from teachers, from experience, from faith, from loss, from pain, from joy. It is imperative that we try to learn something from our trials, for greater will be our knowledge.

While my emotional pain is still fresh and my body is not yet healed, sadness and loss try to steal from me that which I hold precious - my faith.  Faith is a hope for things which are not seen, which are true. (ref. Heb. 11:1; Alma 32:21) I hope that I will see my little one again.  That hope is based on true principles of life that exists before and after this earthly experience, which makes it faith. I also hope to take many lessons from this heart wrenching time, that I might turn my weaknesses around and begin to grow and develop compassion, charity, patience, and strength.

What I do know I learned from someone else.  And I have learned since, that teaching what you have learned reinforces that knowledge and can help you grow in it. I also, as you know by now, feel it is my obligation to share vital information with others.  If someone gave you the procedure and knowledge of how to cure a disease, but you were to afraid to tell others for fear some would not believe you or would ridicule you, saying it was impossible, or arguing that surely there must be other ways, wouldn't it be a grave mistake to keep that information to yourself?  The life saving knowledge I have acquired is no different.  You may not know how it works, it may sound strange and foreign to you, as would a lengthy description in medical terms, and I may not be a scholar or religious leader, but it is real, nonetheless.  It is knowledge that is truth. And it is my job to let others know of it, for I have been instructed to do so by my Creator, through personal revelation found in the scriptures.