Continuing from a previous post, “On Earth as it is in Heaven” Patricia T. Holland (deceased) wrote:
One of my husband’s favorite scriptures is from Isaiah: “Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither doth he worry?. . . He giveth power to the faint, and to them who have no might he increaseth strength. . . . They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-31.) Jeff’s ebullient attitude is so incredibly infectious that I don’t think many people can be around him very long without them feeling, they too, have wings. I have had the opportunity of seeing him put this scripture — the others — into action in his life many, many times. One experience occurred when we were in graduate school, It was a very demanding time for all of us, but especially for Jeff. He was a devoted husband and a loving father of two small children — and was taking a full graduate load in a difficult program at Yale University. To make ends meet on a very limited budget, he taught an institute of religion class at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and one at Amherst College in Massachusetts; the latter required a ninety-mile drive each way every week. He also served as a counselor in the stake presidency every week. We seemed to have very little money and even less time. And we seemed to be running out of both pretty regularly.
Because of our family situation and the responsibility Jeff felt for us, he determined, with encouragement from his professors, to take his oral examination considerably ahead of the schedule of his classmates—nearly a year ahead of some of them. He threw himself vigorously into preparation for the exam, but the pressure was immense. He knew that his examining committee would be particularly conscious that he was coming to the exam very early and they would be certain not to let him slip past with poor preparation. Worst of all, to fail an aggressive first try would almost certainly set our schedule back more severely than if we were to wait and go along with the mainstream of students.
For as long as I have known Jeff, the minute he has had a burden of any proportion, he has always begun a fast and taken a discussion of the problem directly to the Lord. I will never forget that night of decision when we had to schedule or not schedule — sort of “To be or not to be,” New Haven style. Those hours of anxiety and unrest and, yes, outright fear of failure, fear of responsibility, fear of over confidence or lack of confidence, fear of seemingly limitless number of consequences that would affect at least four people, not just one. It was a heavy burden of responsibility we all felt, but one that was ultimately on Jeff’s shoulders. ~ Patricia T. Holland, “ON Earth as it is in Heaven”, p. 40-42 (continued)
