Be Prepared

Stories in this episode: The sudden loss of his corporate job throws Dave into a new and sometimes confusing role at home; Jenny's once-thriving life is upended by an unwelcome diagnosis that offers her a powerful connection to some of her Church History idols.

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TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn  0:03  
Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," a LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith everyday. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay. 

When my town experienced a hurricane-level windstorm this past fall, it uprooted century-old trees and it knocked down power lines. And I learned two things very quickly: First, that I take my easy, daily, access to electricity totally for granted. And second, that I am only partially prepared for the loss of that daily access. 

We were without power at our house for over five days. And honestly, if it wasn't for our camping gear and a very long extension cord that our neighbor Steve generously draped over the back fence that allowed us to share his generator, I mean, we totally would have survived, but the contents of our freezer wouldn't have and we wouldn't have had access to our cell phones. 

Now listen, I know there are many people in other parts of the country and the world who have faced even more perilous natural events than our tiny little windstorm. And I don't want my experience to diminish those struggles. Those are really hard things. But for me, this was a particularly important reminder to think about preparation with just a little more urgency. 

The word preparation comes from the Latin root for "Prae," which means before and "Parare" I don't think I'm saying that right, "to make ready." And I love that idea of "to make ready" because isn't that exactly what this earth life is all about? It's getting our hearts and our minds and our bodies ready for whatever comes next. 

But President Nelson reminded us in his general conference talk, "Embrace the Future with Faith" that it's not just about making ready for the life after this. If we want to be of good courage and find peace right here, right now, during this most remarkable dispensation, being temporally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared is the key. 

We have to make ready before the windstorms and the tumults and the ocean waves come for us. And what that looks like in practice, to make ourselves ready as disciples in our world of disruption, probably doesn't include my most recent plan to hoard Slim Jims and get a longer extension cord. So today, we're gonna explore the many sides of preparation with two very different stories from people who learned how preparation opens the door to opportunity and growth. Our first story comes from Dave.

Dave  2:28  
I was working at my day job for a luxury hotel and it was 9:15 on an idle Tuesday and I was called into the general manager's office. And they said that across several of their hotels, they were dissolving my position. Effective immediately, I would be released, and "Here's a severance," and "We're so sorry, and it's not your performance. It's not anything you, it's just we dissolved the position. Let us know if there's anything we could do." 

My mind is spinning. Well, what's next? You know, will we stay in the valley? Will we need to sell our house and move? Like, you can imagine the tornado of thoughts and ideas. But as that kind of settled in, I was also quickly reminded, wait a second, like my wife, she's an entrepreneur and her business is really picking up right now. And wait a minute, this coaching program that I'm in has really become my passion project. And I realized that, you know . . . and other people's stories of getting laid off or losing their jobs like that is really stressful, and that they might not have backup options. But in this case, it was so clear that Heavenly Father had prepared us with these other business endeavors to allow us to take that initial hit, and run with it. 

And now we had the time and the space to dedicate to these other causes that really fulfilled us and really excited us to share more of who we are and to build other people and in lines of work that are sharing light, and love and strength. 

My wife and I are both entrepreneurs and her business was growing and is growing and so she had great momentum as Rio's business was in a great place to then take off even more and she now had time. Now I'm an at-home-dad trying to grow his business. I had this lull. I had random coaching calls here and there so it was this almost awkward time of being being dad while still coaching. 

I think the hardest part for me in this new role as a stay-at-home dad at first was, that was a role I never thought I'd be in. Like all growing up I thought I'd be the breadwinner, I