With the craziness of this last year (homeschooling, preparing for the foreign service, moving, etc.), I haven't written in my journal for months! And yet I want my children and other posterity to know (if they care ) why we applied to the FS and how we got here. Briant and I know without doubt that it was the hand of the Lord. As I said before, we knew there was about a 2% chance of being accepted in. So why did we even try? This is why.
Over the
last 11 years, Briant has never really been satisfied with the practice
of law. There were many aspects of the law that he loved, but these
were outweighed by the negatives. He truly felt he was withering
away or, as he said, “going to work feels a lot like picking
scabs.” He tried several different flavors of law practices, but
every day he felt like his life was on the wrong track and he
couldn't get over it. As his unhappiness continued, I was very
concerned about how he was doing, and went to my room one afternoon
and prayed. I remember feeling so helpless,
frustrated, and even hopeless. I poured out my heart in prayer, and
asked for help to know what we needed to do. After I ended my
prayer, I sat on the floor, wiped away my tears, and just waited in
silence, trying to keep my mind clear. And then, loudly and clearly,
it was as if I heard and saw the words “foreign service” in my mind.
I quickly opened my eyes in shock. What? The foreign service?!?!!? I closed my eyes again and waited.
That was it. And I was at
peace with it...this time.
Briant and
I had never prayed about the foreign service before, but had talked
about it about 3 1/2 years before this point. We brushed it off at
the time saying that we wanted to give our children stability and
hometowns like we had. And why would we ever leave Alpine? It's a
great place to raise a family! We were also dealing with my new
thyroid/Hashimoto's issues that were causing a lot of havoc for me
physically and emotionally. But here it was, plain as day – I had
an answer to my prayer as to what Heavenly Father wanted us to do!
Still
though, it took me a few weeks to talk to Briant about it. :) I was
thinking through it and making sure
that I had the courage to follow through with the inspiration that
came before I got him
excited about applying. Ironically (but not coincidentally I'm
sure), at the time when I was
feeling like I needed to talk with him, my stepsister Jennie was in
town and we met at a park in
Alpine to let our kids play. She and her husband have been in the
foreign service for about 10
years at that point. So when Jennie and I got together, I asked her a
ton of questions. And I continued to feel at peace about it, despite
the "realities" of life in the foreign service that Jennie
described. So I called Briant at work right after Jennie and I
parted. He was excited, but he still wanted me to continue to think about it for a
couple of weeks to make sure, and then we talked some more and he
happily signed up for the test. At that point, there was no going
back. :)
From June
to early October 2012, he studied and prepared for the exam, which is
just the first step. Briant passed the test beautifully and went on to write the required
essays in November (the 2nd
step). Then we waited until mid-January to see if he would be asked
to go on to the last phase, oral
assessments. He was not! We talked to my stepsister's husband about
what may have happened and continued to think about it for a few
months before we decided to take it again.
Briant
again took the test in October 2013 (you have to wait a full year to
the day, to retake the exam! Our
patience was wearing thin). This time, my prayer was, "Please
don't let him pass this time
if we are supposed to move on and this detour can end!" Sure
enough, Briant came out of the
test and said that he felt he had crushed the multiple choice section
of the test, but that he
didn't think he would pass overall because he did poorly on the essay
section. You have to get a 6
on the essay (a possible 8 points) in order to pass the entire test,
no matter what your performance
was on the multiple choice section. You're given 30 minutes to write
an essay about a
topic they give you, but after about 22 minutes into it, he realized
that he was going the
wrong
direction and started over. He was only able to write 3 paragraphs
before the timed test ended. It
was unedited. He called me and said, "There is no way I passed.
If I do, it is only because of
divine intervention."
We had to
wait three LONG weeks to find out that answer. We expected the news
to come the day after Martin Luther King Day 2013. I
had a presidency meeting scheduled that morning for the stake YW
presidency that I was serving in, but Shelly texted me and said that
she thought we were okay to wait until the following week to meet. So
I decided to head to the temple that morning while my kids were at
the Waldorf school. I drove to the temple saying a silent prayer to
Heavenly Father, asking for his comfort to be with us if this wasn’t
going to work out again. Especially for Briant. I knew he would be
devastated after waiting for two years with all the time, energy, and
hard work he invested, only to have bad news again. He was at
the end of his career as a lawyer and ready to leave Alpine to join
the Peace Corps or an NGO or to be nomadic travelers and find our own
foreign adventure if we weren’t going to be able to do it with the
State Department! So with all of this in mind, I went to the temple.
I received the name of the person for whom I was doing the work –
“Isabel Winlock, 1896” – and then I saw where she was from: to
my utter surprise, it said, “Washington, D.C.”!!!! At that
moment, I felt completely overcome with the spirit that calmed my
worries instantly and testified that this was a tender mercy from Heavenly Father, and the tears flowed. I felt giddy and almost
wanted to laugh, but yet I felt sobered and humbled by this tender
mercy that Heavenly Father was blessing me with. I couldn’t stop
thinking about how great Heavenly Father is! Truly He answers our
prayers in such personal ways. I started reading a book a few years
ago entitled “Divine Signatures” by Gerald Lund. That’s how I
would describe this answer to our prayers . . . Heavenly Father was
putting his divine signature on this, and He did it to
offer consolation and hope to us. He knew I needed to know my
prayers were being heard. After I got home from the temple, I
checked Briant’s email because he was on the road taking
depositions down South in St. George that day. The email had just
arrived about 15 minutes before I got home. I called him, and we
laughed and cried and began preparing for the grueling oral
assessments which would take place in D.C. in a couple of months.
I’ll
quickly summarize the miracles at the end of the qualifying process. Briant signed up for the oral assessments (the last step of testing)
to be the very first week that they offered them. He prepared
for a month and a half. I remember him saying that he needed to get
a 5.6 on the test so we
could get on the register high enough so that we would be called up
sooner than later (you need a 5.25 to pass). In fact,
his goal was a 5.6 and to get into the July A-100 class. I knew that
he was shooting for the moon
because a higher score keeps you from being stuck on the register for
a long time – scores lower than 5.6 can take several months to get
off of the register and called up to an A-100 class, and you can only
remain on the register for 18 months before they kick you off and you
have to start the process all over again! So the goal was a 5.6 and
the July class. At the all-day orals, he did well, and topped the
testing cohort with a score of 5.6! He then had his security
interview, and that process which usually takes months only took a
month and a half. To cut a long story and a lot of angst short,
Briant was placed on the register on May 12, and called up for the
June 30 A-100 on May 13. We found out later that he was the last
person called up for his cone.
There is a
purpose in all things and we have to trust that the Master chess
player is placing the pieces
exactly where we need to be! Apparently this also involves our
assignment to Angola. :) I’m sooooo grateful we had these miracles and
tender mercies all along the way! I’m grateful that Heavenly Father
sent me, specifically, the inspiration to apply to the foreign
service and the tender mercy in the temple. These experiences have
strengthened my faith in prayer and my Heavenly Father’s love for
me and all his children, as well as my resolve to do His will. I have
a feeling that when things get challenging as the wife of a diplomat
and raising kids abroad, that I am going to need to relive these
experiences to have it reconfirmed to me that this is exactly where
we need to be, doing exactly what we need to be doing.
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