Who is Christ to me?

Happy Summer! We are well into summer and Jon and I are enjoying our time in Portland. Jon loves his internship and we feel very blessed to be in such a beautiful place. We also announced recently that we are expecting our first child who will be due in December 2018. This has been such a blessing in our life and we thank Heavenly Father every day for such a gift! In a couple weeks we will find out the gender, but for now, we’re relishing in all the new challenges and growth (literally) that come with pregnancy and later with parenthood.

Recently, a friend reached out to me who is in the midst of a super inspiring project. She is interviewing her friends with a bunch of different questions, but they all center on the idea of “Who is Christ to you?”, and she asked me to be a part of the project. I was a little intimidated and hoped I could give her answers that would be worthwhile.

The night before we met up for breakfast to talk about her project and my answers, I decided to spend just a little time thinking about what I wanted to share. That experience I had that night and thoughts I've had since have really helped me to greater solidify who Christ has been in my life. I thought I would share some of them here.

First off, I believe that Christ is the Savior of the world. Though He is the Son of God, He lived on this earth and taught us how to live and suffered for our sins and all our pains. He is the one who helps us repent and be forgiven of our sins. This is all very significant information to me.

But as I’ve reflected on who Christ has been and is in my life, in big and small moments, some other roles of the Savior came to my mind. They all seemed very personal to my experiences, but I wanted to share them in hopes that they would resonate with people reading this and prompt you to think about what roles the Savior has played in your life personally.

Also, in thinking of these roles, I realized that all of these came from either an experience I had with the Savior or from scriptures I had read that taught me of His role in my life. We learn so much from the Savior and about His character as we read the scriptures and then see those character traits in our lives.

Who is Christ to me:

Supporter/Comforter

• In John 11:32-36 in the New Testament, Jesus has come to the house of His friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. A few days earlier Lazarus had died and Mary and Martha are mourning the loss of their brother. If you know the story, you know that soon Jesus will go to Lazarus’ grave and raise him from the dead, which is one of the greatest miracles He performs while on this earth. But in the moment that He sees Mary and Martha mourning, instead of reassuring them by saying that everything will be okay, he takes time to mourn with them. The scripture says “Jesus wept”. Through reading this and through personal moments in my life I have felt that Jesus takes time to weep with me instead of just trying to fix the problem. He takes time to be right where I am and experience the emotions that I experience. He is sad when I am sad and he rejoices when good things come my way. I have felt that this is true multiple times in my life.
• See also Doctrine and Covenants 84:88

High Priest of Good Things to Come

• This title comes directly from Hebrews 9:11 and has been a favorite of mine for a while. As I thought back through my life so far, especially through my twenties, I thought of all the good things the Savior has brought into my life. Some of those that I specifically feel came from divine intervention are: my husband Jon, some very important friends, a chance to become a nurse (after a very long rode to get there), my current job that has absolutely fulfilled all my hopes and dreams, and now a chance to be a mom. I don’t know how to describe how much these gifts mean to me. And at times in my life, these gifts seemed out of reach to me, but I always felt like the Lord was personally trying to whisper to me to just wait on Him a little longer.
• There are so many other small things that have come into my life that I feel He has helped guide me to. For example, our ward and our neighbors that we live by in Salt Lake have been such God-sends in our lives. We felt like He led us to the apartments we have lived in and to the people we have met. Also, this summer we are in Portland with one of my dear high school friends, Lindsey, whose husband randomly (or not so randomly) is studying in the same program as Jon and got an internship in the same city as us. It has been such a blessing to have her and a couple other friends here in the Pacific Northwest this summer.
• The more I learn about Jesus, the more I realize that He is a high priest of good things to come because He wants to give us great futures, not just in this life, but after. He wants to shower us with all His blessings, because His love for us is so big.
• See also 2 Nephi 2:25, Ether 12:4, Moroni 7:22

Refiner

• Though the Savior wants to bless us, some of those blessings come in the form of challenges or struggles in our lives. They give us a chance to come closer to the Savior and make us better, not bitter. These trials come sincerely out of love.
• See recent blog post here.
• 3 Nephi 22

Miracle Worker

• One of the biggest evidences of this in my life is when, in 2013, I felt so protected during a fall off a waterfall. There are so many details of this story, and many of you know them, but I will say that the miracles just kept on coming. It was so clear to me that I had been saved in so many ways. I knew that only the Savior could have made sure all those coincidences/miracles happened.
•  Getting pregnant took longer than we expected. In a blessing we received after finding out I was pregnant, I was told that this was happening faster than it would have because of prayers and faith from us and from those that love us. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is. 
• 2 Nephi 27:23 and Mormon9:11

Strengthener

• The Savior gives me strength to do things I know I cannot do on my own. While serving as a missionary, I was very afraid of approaching others that I did not know, especially in Spanish. But I felt that as I prayed for the courage and the strength to do that, it came. A couple months into my mission, that fear was gone and it was completely natural to me. At other times in my life when I felt like I could not bear the burdens I had, I prayed that God would take the weight of that burden away. He did not take the trial away, but almost immediately, the pain and weight of that moment was alleviated. 
• Mosiah24:13-16 and Moroni 7:33

“See”er

• The Savior sees the big picture and knows what we need more than we do.
• Looking back on my life I can see moments that it seemed like everything was going completely wrong, but now I can see how perfectly all those aspects of my life have fallen into place. I loved seeing this concept in Ether 6:5-12 and also in The Chronicles of Narnia. In the book The Horse and His Boy, it seems like everything is keeping Aravis, Shasta, and their horses from making it to Narnia, but later they realized that all the things that went wrong were actually times that Aslan had been redirecting them toward the right path.

Bold Example

• The Savior lived his life in His own unique way. He was not ashamed of who He was or His mission and shared that with all He met.
• In college, I had a professor teach us that we cannot be like the Savior while we are in our comfort zones. I liked that thought a lot and have realized that in order to become more like Him, I have to embrace making changes and doing uncomfortable things.

The Perfect Judge

• One big lesson I feel like I have been learning lately is that Jesus is someone who sees my weaknesses and sins, but also sees my reasoning behind them and understands me more than anyone else. He knows my history sees me with a perfect love. Only someone who can see all of the pieces of the puzzle can adequately judge me. And He is the only one that has to.
• He is not a respector of persons: he loves people of all backgrounds, races, religions, gender, etc. He understands what each person has been through and why they do what they do.
• I have also been taught that because He is the perfect judge and because He is no respector of persons that I do not have to judge others. I can just love them and try to see the best in them.
• Matthew 7:1-5, John 8: 3-11, John13:34-35, 2 Nephi 26: 24-28

Personal Friend

• Of all the roles I have thought of, this is the one that I think encompasses them all. He is our friend. He knows us, He loves us, and He will always be there for us.
• In very personal ways, the Lord speaks to us and reassures us. Recently I had a very dear experience when I was feeling lonely here in Portland. In a church meeting, all of a sudden the words “Let me be your friend right now” came into my mind followed by the sweetest feeling of love. I believe Jesus finds those quiet moments to speak to us and encourage us when we really need it. And He wants to be our friend. He will be the most faithful, loyal friend to us if we let Him.
• D&C45:52, D&C 84:63, D&C 98:1-3

As I think of these roles Christ plays in my life, I am in awe by all the ways He has blessed my life. The more I learn about Him, the more magnificent He seems to me. The more loving, compassionate, understanding, and faithful He becomes. And I realize that He's been that way all a long, but I just had to pay more attention. 

It has been interesting that as I have been preparing for motherhood, one of the things I have been impressed to do is to study the character of Christ. I have felt that as I learn more of Him, I will learn more what type of mother I want to be. I cannot wait to share these thoughts and my testimony with our new little one!

I would love to hear from you the roles that Christ has played in your life, so please feel free to share those with me.