Why I Love Elder Holland

It was Spring General Conference of 2006. I was sitting in my 4-month-old baby's pitch black nursery, with a white noise machine running, my hand paralyzed on her back. I had read somewhere that being right there at the moment your baby wakes from a catnap so that you can pat/shush them right back into another sleep cycle was a good no-cry sleep solution for better naps. I had been warned by a sleep doctor that, while he advocated crying it out for most bad sleep habits, he didn't recommend it for Malia until her colic was officially gone.

So, as I did three times I day, I sat in her dark room during naps. It had to be dark. It was the only way she was capable of shutting out distractions. My left arm would be draped over her crib, constantly resting on her back as I played Tetris on my cell phone with my right. It had become a ritual.

While this sounds depressing, I had actually come to grow quite used to it. Some people suggested it was better for me if I just let her catnap so that I could actually have even a brief moment of free time. But that wasn't my reason for wanting to extend her naps. I wanted her to be as healthy as possible due to my ignorance as to what was causing her pain at that time. And I knew sleep could make a world of difference. Good sleep, that is.

However, despite it being a regular part of my daily life, it hit me kind of hard one Sunday Morning during General Conference. I have to admit, a tiny part of me was saying a prayer in my heart, asking the Lord to help her sleep better than usual so that I could listen to what He wanted me to hear. I figured this was the one time He might be willing to intervene.

Nope.

So, there I was, crying softly to myself in Malia's room, as she slept soundly, due only to the fact that I had eliminated all possibilities of her senses being stimulated and the comfort of my hand on her back.

Elder Holland has always been my favorite speaker. Even when I was younger and couldn't stand when my mom made us sit to watch Conference, I enjoyed him. There was a charm in his voice... a gleam in his eye. He smiled more than many of the apostles. I had hoped that he would speak while Malia wasn't napping so I wouldn't miss it.

As I was crying to myself, feeling somewhat bitter towards God due to His lack of making one exception to, what I thought, was a pretty righteous desire, I had an idea. I called our house phone on my cell phone. I could hear it ringing faintly in the living room. David picked it up, sounding a bit confused (we had caller ID).

"Um... hello? Are you ok?"

I replied as quietly as I could.

"Yes. I just thought of something. Can you put the phone on speaker, so that I can listen to Conference through my cell while I'm in here?"

"Oh... hey, good idea. No problem."

At that precise moment, through no coincidence, I'm convinced, Elder Holland began to speak. And through, yet again, no coincidence, he began to speak on a topic I was beginning to feel all too familiar with. Adversity.

"I speak to those who are facing personal trials and family struggles, those who endure conflicts fought in the lonely foxholes of the heart, those trying to hold back floodwaters of despair that sometimes wash over us like a tsunami of the soul. I wish to speak particularly to you who feel your lives are broken, seemingly beyond repair."

(Broken Things to Mend, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2006)

And so it was, I will always favor him over most of those wonderful men who speak to us every 6 months. Not because he's a better person. They're all phenomenal men. But because, I feel like he speaks to me.

And today, as he spoke on the Book of Mormon and was as straightforward as I've ever heard anyone be regarding its authenticity, it was no different.

Conference rules.