The Remarkable Truths I've Learned While Presenting at TOFW

The year I shared a message at TOFW called “What Are you Waiting For?” I had just turned 40 and thought maybe I was finally dating towards marriage. What better time to try to share with others the principles I had learned about patience and waiting?

It seemed like a great idea until I had the heartbreak of my life just a few months into sharing that presentation. I remember the first time I had to stand and teach those principles about patience and waiting when I once again found myself very much waiting…yet again. I simply don’t think I would understand those principles the way I do now without living them while I was trying to teach them.

And just last year I felt compelled to share some truths I had come to understand about the Atonement—one being that we can find peace amidst pain.

The second time I gave that message, my father was ill; by the third time, he we learned it was cancer; and by the fourth, he was gone.

It all happened too fast.

Each time I gave that message last fall, I questioned the truths I was sharing before I got up on the stage. But as I would stand and speak the spirit would confirm for me that there was power in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I can see now that sharing the scriptures and nuggets from that message all fall saved me. Literally. I learned He could heal our hearts because I witnessed Him heal mine.

There is an old Latin Proverb that says: “By learning, you will teach; by teaching, you will learn.” And I’ve seen it time and time again on the stage at TOFW. We teach what we have learned—and sometimes what we are in the process of learning even as we are teaching.

And so here we are, all preparing for the 2017 TOFW Tour: ARISE. As 2016 was wrapping up, a phrase kept going through my mind. I would hear the words at random times: “the goodness of tears.” Was I to believe there was good in all the tears of the last year? It wouldn’t leave me. And I realized maybe the tears of the prior year—the things I had learned from those tears—could be shared in a meaningful way.

My husband and I began 2017 determined that the grief of losing my dad and some other personal losses we had experienced throughout the year would be put in the background of our lives. We had spent much of 2016 in stages of mourning. I wanted to capture what I had learned and approach this new year benefiting from that learning.

Though I had previously considered maybe it was time to take a break from TOFW, I found myself thinking my TOFW message could be great way to memorialize these learnings. When I turned in my outline, I remember feeling grateful for what I had learned this past year and I almost an excitement about sharing it.

Then a few weeks ago, I received a text from my husband while I was wrapping up a meeting at work: “urgent please call.” I excused myself. I was not prepared for what he would say.

His eldest brother (and dearest friend) had died unexpectedly. Randy and his incredible wife had arrived in Romania in August to serve a mission for The Church. It was a normal day of missionary work for them. But unbeknownst to anyone, it was Randy’s last day in mortality.

I hung up the phone and rushed home so I could cry with my husband. More tears.

That night we spent time with our niece and her family who were dealing with the loss of their beloved dad and grandpa. And in the course of our family time together, we shed tears of sorrow and tears of sacred and then eventually tears of laughter as we recalled family memories. I realized on the drive home that all of the tears were important; all of those tears brought us closer together. And I saw the beauty in the tears—all of them.

Tears invite connection and growth. There is a something about tears that I have discovered in this last year that I believe is key to us learning what we need to learn and becoming who we are meant to become. And I want to understand that even better. There have been so many tears the past few weeks. And I have found myself thinking differently about the TOFW message I had been working on. And what better way to understand something than to teach it? And what better way to teach something than to live it?

That is one of the remarkable things about TOFW, I think. Women coming together experiencing connection, and learning a little more about the truths we are actually living. We have a chance to break away from the world and focus, as fellow sisters, on what truly matters most. And the hope is that that focus and that chance to renew ourselves helps us go back to our homes and communities with new insights in how to help those we love along their journey as well.

Perhaps seeing the way some of these messages come about will help you see the event with new eyes. We teach what we have tried to learn. And, in the process, often find out how much we have left to learn.

So, come learn with us. We can’t wait to be with you!
(and bring some tissues for all the tears—the healing and the happy and the sacred kind of tears. Xoxo-Laurel)