Gethsemane

Standing in the warm waters off Ulua Beach, I lifted my feet and began to float. The week before I had been losing it. Like in a way that made me question what I was made of. I had a bout of nerves so intense I threw up several times. The next day, I stared into space.

As a mental health professional, I knew these symptoms had a name, and I wondered if I was going to make it through or if this was my new normal. Acute or chronic? Marathon or sprint?

Thankfully, the hospice my mother-in-law was on provided respite for caregivers, and we had taken it. So I was in Maui, still queasy and trying to find a reservoir of . . . calm? Strength? Resilience?

In my experience, if I could identify my feelings, I could start applying tools and cognitive resources. So what was eating me? As my very independent, strong-willed mother-in-law became bed-bound, the physical care had not fazed me. Changing her, taking care of medications, and bringing in food didn’t take that long and had no more effect on me than changing a baby.

But the emotions packed a wallop! I wanted to call all my friends who had already done this or were doing it and say, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know! I didn’t know what you were going through!”

I realized what I was feeling was how hard it was to see someone suffer. How to not know what the right thing to do was. How to see her refuse things in her best interest, like lying on her side to provide relief and healing for the gaping bed sore on her back, even though she grimaced in pain while lying on it. Do I respect her autonomy or force her to turn? Do I keep replacing hearing aid batteries knowing full well the problem was ear wax that she refused ear drops for while also crying because she couldn’t hear anymore?

And these weren’t even the big things like the deterioration of her health, like death, like her dignity.

So there, in that salt water, I started to release her burdens from my shoulders. I said aloud, “I release her frustration. I release her disappointment. I release her sadness, her agony, her confusion, her stubbornness, her anxiety.” As I sent these emotions heavenward, I realized I was being crushed by just one person’s circumstance. Just one person’s agony. And a thought crystallized: Christ had carried everyone’s. Mine and hers. Everyone’s!

I thought of my morning prayer for peace on earth—for all those suffering from gun violence, for Ukraine and even Russian families in sorrow, for Gaza and Israel, and now Beirut. Also Sudan. Also all in the paths of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. There were so many more categories!

One time my daughter was in San Diego’s Level 1 trauma hospital. She was in treatment in a room with four beds, and as people cycled in and out, I began to be weighed down by my daughter’s pain and by their pain. We were on the same floor as the burn unit, and as I walked the halls and saw how many were in these very desperate rooms, my mind began to calculate. I started to think about the number of people suffering on that floor multiplied by the number of floors in that high-rise hospital, multiplied by all the hospitals in San Diego, then California, then America, then the world. I couldn’t stop my mind from rolling. It was as if my head had opened, knocking back and spilling out.

I had to close that down. It was too much.

Now here I was again, gawking down the abyss. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for being God. I can’t imagine how difficult it is. I don’t really want to ever be one. Thank you for volunteering, for being one. For being mine.”

Then that weekend, the sweet children singing “Gethsemane” in General Conference opened my eyes wider. We have all heard sentiments like “in our own Gethsemanes.” I have thought of my Gethsemane as my own personal, very hard times, and yes, this situation was ranking up there as one of my most difficult. But this time, I wasn’t actually the one in difficulty. That was my mother-in-law. This was so difficult because I was watching her difficulty. This was vicarious. This was crushing empathy.

I understood Christ had paid the price to succor me in my difficulties, but that was not what brought him to sweat big drops of blood. That winepress was having to watch me, watch us, sit with us, witness the agony and suffering of our lives, and instead of giving it away—as I tried to do—walking into it, taking it, saying, “I’ll watch. I’ll stay with you. It hurts so much to see you suffer so.”

I thought of Elder Villar’s talk during the October 2024 conference, which followed right after the children sang. He told about almost drowning in the ocean as a young boy. He described being pushed under the waves as all-encompassing, sudden, and terrifying. He said his older brother, Claudio, rescued him. Claudio saw what was happening and, thankfully, was able to reach Elder Villar and pull him out. Claudio’s desperate attempt to help, to get there and save his little brother, was also terrifying—and what if it had not worked? What if, despite his best efforts, instead of saving his brother, he watched him drown? That’s a lifetime of sorrow, of suffering, having witnessed the suffering of his brother. Elder Villar was experiencing the cross, but his brother, Claudio, was experiencing Gethsemane.

This insight was changing me. A new dimension deepened my understanding. I had only thought of the atonement as revolving around me—my heartaches, my trials, my crosses to bear. Now I understood those were Golgotha, excruciating but time-contained. Now I saw Gethsemane revolved around our Savior. Infinite, personal, crushing. I can’t even shout a hallelujah. The gratitude is much quieter, stiller than that. It is the bathing of feet with my tears.