One Brilliant Morning

When I was on my mission I often read the conference talks in the Ensign. One talk, in particular, really touched me and I am reminded of it today. It was given by Boyd K. Packer in October of 1995 and described the feelings of one of the surviving members of the Donner Party, who spent a ferocious winter trapped in the snowdrifts below the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He had survived days and weeks and months of starvation and indescribable suffering. Years later he said that although most of the incidents were gone from his memory, he would never forget the first morning after his rescue. It was a beautiful spring morning. The birds were singing, the grass was green, and that cold, brutal, dark winter had been replaced with one brilliant morning.

As I think of this story I imagine a young man standing at the foot of a great mountain range on a beautiful spring morning, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on his face for the first time in months. He may have stood there in shocked disbelief that he had survived the horrifying ordeal. I can almost feel the tension of months of fear being replaced with peace and hope.

I've described the past few years of my life as mostly dark and cold, interspersed with moments of peace and joy. But lately, I'm finding that the moments of warmth, happiness and peace are becoming more and more frequent. Maybe it's the dawning of a new season for me!