Be Ready Always

Once, on a bad day, in a bad month, in a bad year, Tal got a flat tire out at the Payson temple, and for a variety of health reasons, he couldn’t take care of it himself. So he called Sarah (who didn’t know how to change a tire) who called me (who didn’t know how to change a tire) who called our roommate Kaylie (who did know how to change a tire, but who weighed less than 100 lb and definitely would not be able to do it by herself). We wandered over to an apartment of boys, where one of them was sick and had just taken a lot of DayQuil and the other was dressed in a suit and tie and headed out, but both of them agreed to come anyway, because they felt bad saying no.

As I mentioned, it had been a bad day in a bad month in a bad year, and I didn’t know how to change a tire. I was along for the drive and the people with no personal feeling of responsibility towards either Tal or the tire, so when it turned out that that, out of the six of us, none of us knew how to change Tal’s specific tire, it was a welcome relief to sit down on a curb and laugh for a while.

That was when Joe showed up. Joe was old. He had white hair and a nice car and hands that said he labored for a living. He looked like someone who I disagreed with about politics but desperately wanted to learn woodworking from. He was there picking up his wife to take her out to dinner after her temple shift. They did this every week. He got out of his car and changed the tire for us while offering us outdated dating advice. (“The answer to everything is ‘yes, dear,’” he told the boys, who nodded solemnly since they already felt their manhood in question.)

Joe was climbing back in the car when he turned around and looked directly at me for the first time. I was the one standing closest to him (the farthest away from the tire), so it was me he started bearing his testimony to. He testified of God and Jesus and of their love. He said things were scary, but they were going to be OK, because God loves us, and Joseph Smith is a prophet. Then he got into his car and went to pick up his wife.

I was crying by the time he left. Ben, who I’d been irritated with on the drive down, because he had not yet figured out he was supposed to date Kaylie, gave me a hug. “You OK?” he asked. “Hey, you’re OK.”

Ben, me, Sarah, and Kaylie, later that year, after Ben had figured out that he was supposed to date Kaylie. It’s not a very good picture of any of us, and for some reason I find that endearing.

The year before this bad day/bad month/bad year I’d been in a British Detective Novels class where our professor gave us extra credit for memorizing 1 Peter 3:15: “Be ready always to give answer to any man that asketh you the reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). I was uneasy with the verse, because testifying has never been my strong suit. I worry about drawing attention to myself, about being self-righteous. I worry about misrepresenting God or pulling people away from Him instead of walking them toward Him. I worry about everything as unimportant as my status to as important as the ways that Christianity has been weaponized in colonization, slavery, etc.

I still worry about all those things, but even in my worry I testify a little more often than I used to because of Joe. Joe didn’t know that I’d just broken up and was struggling with depression. He didn’t know that my friend group was falling apart and I was having a hard time getting up in the morning. He didn’t know any of that; he was just ready to give me the reason for the hope that was in him. He didn’t worry about anything other than giving love to me and God, and someone who has struggled to have hope and feel love at various points in my life, I’ve come to think that that’s one of the nicest things we can do for each other.