There was a time when there
was some turmoil in the area of Afghanistan where I knew
Brent was serving. And I saw a news story, I reached right out
to him through a text message. I said, “Are you okay?” He said that he was fine, but the several men he knew had
been killed. And that was the closest to home it felt, but even in that moment, I didn’t think,
“Well, what if it’s your turn next?” On our second date, Brent and I
were driving and it was just a 45-minute drive in the car, and that’s where we really started
to get to know each other. One of the first things he mentioned
was that he wanted to join the military. I'll never
forget that moment. My stomach hit the floor, and I was really caught off guard by
how caught off guard I was. Why do I care if this kid from Arizona
wants to join the Army? All of our conversations
and dreams about the future involved that desire
to serve in the military, that shared commitment again
to this country. We'd been dating about
two weeks when I had the thought pop into my mind
completely out of nowhere that said if Brent Taylor were to ask
me to marry him, I would say yes. And I reacted just like that. And I thought, “Oh my goodness, I don’t
even know this man. That’s terrible. You can’t get married that quickly.” We ended up dating nine months, but we
just both knew. Early on in our marriage, right after we found out we
were expecting our first baby, Brent learned of a possible deployment.
Newly pregnant, we’s just spent a year apart
for his basic training and other initial training with the
military, and it was in that moment, I'll never forget that long, long
night in December of 2004, when we stayed up all night
talking about what if. In that moment, I remember both of us
being very emotional, very reflective, very prayerful, and very tearful. But by the time the sun rose that
morning, we had decided, yes, he would go where he needed to
go to serve our country. We would answer that call without fear,
without hesitation. And I can honestly say it’s the only
time we really ever had those “What if” conversations. Service is what leadership is all about. And today I'm announcing that I will be deploying to Afghanistan to
continue my service as a member of the Army National Guard. He ended up doing two tours of duty
in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. In the middle of that, we had
seven children, and he ran for public office in my hometown. And then he had run and won reelection the second time shortly before
his final deployment. Right before he left, I looked him
right in the eye and I told him, “I can’t do this. If you
don’t come back. I can’t explain to these kids and our
family why you chose to leave. I just can’t do this.
Are you coming back?” And he looked right at me with that
know-it-all grin that he always had. And he said, “Yeah, I’ve prayed
about it. I’m coming back.” And that was enough for both of us. So every Saturday, Brent took a lot
of the Afghans on a rock march, which is a fancy name for a hike. He did it for two reasons. One,
physical fitness. He was really concerned that
the Afghans didn't have the physical fitness that they
needed to have in place. And so he looked at this as an
opportunity to take a day off, but get that exercise in. But he also
really used it to build relationships. They’re laughing. They’re smiling.
They’re racing each other. They're giving each other a hard time. And so it was a workout, but it was
also a team-building exercise. And they did it every single Saturday,
every Saturday. And I knew that every Saturday
morning that's where he was. And so that morning I got a
phone call first thing in the morning from my mother who
was home with my children. And she said that there were two army
officers at my house in full dress uniform, and they were asking to
speak face to face with me. And that can only mean one thing. I remember they read whatever script
it is they read on behalf of the Department of the Army. “We regret
to inform you dot, dot, dot.” And I remember the first words out of
my mouth were, “They killed him on a hike.” This man’s been deployed
to combat zones four times. He survived the Taliban, al Qaeda, all kinds of really high level advising
with top level officials. He'd been there four different times
and they killed him on a hike. You certainly didn't see that coming. At first the grief was really scary and the anxiety would have consumed
me far more than the grief. And I'd be so afraid that I would
always feel that way. I would never get through this.
I would never be happy again. I would never be able to
breathe or look ahead. And that anxiety is crippling. But some of the hardest parts
of grief for me are the little things that catch me off
guard. A song on the radio. A rose growing in the garden.
And it made me so mad. It was the first spring right
after he had died and that rosebud came back to life. And I was so angry because Brent
wasn’t here to see it. And it wasn’t just the one spring he
wouldn’t see that rosebud bloom, I knew that year, after year,
after year, it’s almost as if Mother Nature would
mock me and come back to life and he would remain dead. I will admit I have not found myself
asking why Brent Taylor had to die at age 39. I have found myself
asking every single day, “How are we going to do this?” And I think that's sometimes
the most frustrated I get is when I’m overwhelmed
with my kids and I find myself talking half to God and half
to Brent, just saying, “Where are you? I can't do this alone. I told you
I couldn't do this alone. I can’t raise four boys and three
girls and I’ve got teenagers.” And he never knew teenagers. I joked a lot that he was deployed
through a lot of the diaper days and he died right as we got our first
teenager. That's really unfair. That's a lot of weight on a mom to say go raise seven kids
in today's crazy world. So my greatest frustrations
come when I feel the weight of just how much
responsibility there is in raising a family and keeping my head up
and trying to make ends meet and get everything done on the
to-do list of mortality. And I’ll find myself very frustrated saying,
“Where are you? Why are you here? I can’t do this.” And inevitably,
every time I get to that place, I'll find some kind of tender mercy,
whether it's a thought in my mind, a text from a friend, a knock on the door— just something that I know in that
moment both God and Brent reminding me, “We’re right here.” Bless us in the
name of Jesus Christ, amen. My daughter had had a church lesson one
day, not long after Brent died, where they talked about prayer,
and isn’t it beautiful that we can pray to God, and God will answer our
prayers. “Who taught you how to pray?” And she said, “I prayed every day
for God to keep Dad safe.” And her question, of course, was,
“So what do you say about prayer?” And it would have been easy to
try to explain around that. And instead I just told her,
“Isn’t that true?” Sometimes we don’t get the answer
to the prayers we need. And I think the kids need to hear that. I think they need to realize
it is unfair. They need to know that life
is going to have ups and downs that are out of our control.
And that's part of the plan. And that doesn’t mean God’s not there,
and it doesn’t mean He’s not listening, but it means we might need to trust Him
in His ways and still hang in there and have hope that it will work out. I don’t really love when people say,
“Oh, God needed a hero,” or “It was his time to go.” And while I understand the sentiment
behind that, I completely disagree. I think a lot of times mortal life
ends because we're mortal, or our lives might be taken by a foolish decision someone
else has made. I don't view God as short handed
on the other side. He has a lot of remarkable, amazing men and women who have
lived for thousands of years. We could make a list of prophets
presidents, inventors, scientists— He's got quite a few people over there. I could make a pretty convincing
argument that nobody needed Brent Taylor more than Brent Taylor’s
seven little kids. I remember the very day
after Brent died. I can picture where I was in my bedroom
when that thought came into my mind: “This will be good for me. This will bless me and my children.” And
I remember hating that thought. How can you possibly say such a tragedy
is possibly a blessing? And yet now I’d be lying
if I didn’t say it’s been an incredible blessing, though I still have a hard time
forming that sentence. I hate saying my husband's death
has blessed my life so much because that hurts, but I can't deny it. God has blessed us so much through
what has happened. Again, I don't think God caused it and
I don't think it had to happen so I could learn those lessons. I think God's let us learn those lessons
because of what happened. And I pray we will never forget what
we see and feel here this morning. Every parent has said more than
once: “Life is not fair.” In some of my darkest moments,
some of my deepest anguish. I've come to believe that life is
incredibly unfair in our favor. “Whom do men say that I,
the son of man, am?” If we want to talk about who had the
most unfair life on this planet, of course it would be Jesus Christ. “What shall I do then, with Jesus. who is called the Christ?” No one was more abandoned or more
betrayed or suffered more or greater than He did.
And yet He did so so that He could make everything
right in our lives. He took all of the unfairness so that He could help us
right these wrongs. And again, some of them get made right
in this life and a lot of them don't. But to me, the greatest miracle
of all is knowing things really will work out. I think it's important to recognize that
even though we want everything to happen for a reason, it's probably a better mindset to let God help make
reason of everything that happens. If Brent were here, I would tell
him thank you for dying for me, for literally being willing
to give his life. I look at him and Jesus Christ as
two amazing gifts in my life. The Savior clearly who gave His life
for all of us to overcome death and sin through His infinite Atonement. But over the last three years, I’ve come
to know Him in a very intimate way. I know Jesus Christ is real. I know He’s
closer to me than I might think. I know He loves me and He’s aware of
all of my weaknesses and my fears and my anxieties. And I know He’s
willing to walk with me hand in hand and make sure that I can get through
whatever it is I need to face in a day. And then I look at this
great symbol that I have in my own husband, that he
too laid down his life so that I could have opportunities. My husband's death has
opened a lot of doors for me to be able to do God's will
and help other people and learn and grow. And I think every
day how grateful I am that he would be willing
to die for me. That's a pretty overwhelming statement
to make that my husband literally gave his life for me. I guess I'll get out
of bed this morning and go try to do the best with the time he gave me. We in mortal life live a lot
with “or” as our thought, we can be here or there.
We can be happy or sad. We can be heartbroken or hopeful. And I think I’m learning how to use the
word “and.” I can remember and love and miss the past, and be optimistic
about the future. I can be heartbroken and happy
in the same breath. I can be devastated and determined
to keep going all at once. And I think that’s what the gospel
of Jesus Christ offers, is that “and.” We don’t have to choose this
or that. He lets us find healing. He lets us be whole in Him so that
we can face the struggles of life and know that life really
is a beautiful Gift from him.
Beautiful and powerful