Emily Freeman Greg Sick

 Emily tells this story in her book Even This.  It's four days before her wedding.  Greg is sick.  The doctor asks if they can postpone the wedding.  They won't.  So they schedule an appointment with an oncologist for right after their honeymoon.  Greg might have thyroid cancer.  Right after their honeymoon, there was a biopsy, then surgery and then three months of recovery without work.  

Her most vivid memory from the first months of their marriage took place in the hospital after the surgery to remove the tumor.  Greg had been given pain meds.  Greg's parents had gone home.  The doctors had left.  She sat next to Greg and held his hand.  She felt scared and alone and unprepared.  She saw a light flooding in under the door and she focused on that light, "on the truth that all is not dark".  She begins to pray.  A feeling of love settled over her and words to scriptures came to mind.  She grabs a paperback book and finds a pen to write the words down.

She wrote this:  

"Early morning, January 1990

  I can't describe this moment.  ...Sometimes it has to hurt to make you strong, to make you realize how much you need God.  I don't want to forget this.  These words.  His words.  Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you.  My peace I give unto you.  Be still, and know that I am God."

She writes that this is the first time she realized that God can be trusted, that He is a personal God, that she can turn to Him in her hard.

She writes, "It was the first time I had let myself be vulnerable with Him.  The rawness led me to experience His realness.  In that moment I felt His goodness."

LESSONS LEARNED:  

God is there.  We can turn to Him with our HARD...no matter what it is.

We are never alone.

God is good.  He can be trusted.

We can find peace even in the midst of hard. 

 D&C 88: 63, "Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you."

D&C 101:16  "Be still and know that I am God."

John 14: 26  "27 ^aPeace I leave with you, my ^bpeace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be ^ctroubled, neither let it be afraid."