They Did Not Doubt Their Mothers Knew It (Orignially started on 12/23/07 Finished on 7/7/08)

Or

Always Listen to Your Mother

I woke up early Saturday morning in almost a cold sweat after having a horrible dream and feeling like I had been under a lot of pressure and stress for a long time. I began to wonder if I was doing the right thing. I began to wonder if it was right for me to be two thirds of a country away from all of my family and most of my friends. I began to wonder if going back to school full-time after all of these years was right and if I was right to quit my job like I did and move to Utah and eventually to Idaho. I began to feel like a strange man living in a strange land amongst a strange people.

Then, all of a sudden the words, "Remember Mom, Remember Mom," came into my head and I remembered how excited, almost uncharacteristically so, she was about me going back to school and getting my degree. And about how much she was encouraging me to go forward with it. I couldn't remember any other point in my life where she had given me such encouragement and was as excited about what I was doing. That made me feel a little better.

I then began to remember about a group of young men that I had read about in The Book of Mormon--Another Testament of Jesus Christ, about a group of young men who listened to their mothers and were protected in the face of grave danger. They were sons of the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. Their parents had been a wicked and murderous people. They were converted by a Nephite prophet called Ammon, were convinced of their wicked ways, covenanted with God to never shed blood of another human again. They had buried their swords and choose to lay down their lives rather than risk killing again and displeasing God. Because of this they were taken in and protected from their enemies by the Nephites who were in the middle of a vicious battle.

Because of the protection that the Nephites were providing them, these people desired to help them and were about to take up their swords again. Just before they took up their weapons they were stopped by their leader who did not want them to risk breaking their covenant and displeasing God. Because of this, 10,000 of their sons, who had not covenanted against going to war, decided to help out and go to war to defend their people. These were some of the strongest, most faithful soldiers to ever walk the earth. They were in many fierce and bloody battles and none of them were killed. They showed their faith by fighting alongside with their brethren even though they had never seen war before. They believed that because of the faith and prayers of their mothers that they would be protected and they were. They got their faith from their mothers.

"Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." (Alma 56: 47,48)

"Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them." (Alma 57: 21)

I am grateful for the influence and strength that my mother has had in my life. I started to write this in January when I was in between homes and school. I was temporarily living in South Jordan, Utah waiting to come up to Rexburg, Idaho to go to school. I am grateful for my mother's support during that time and for her continued support while I have been here in school. Knowing that she supports me in my decision really helps. I wish her and Don (my step-father) the best in San Antonio.

Clarification

Hi folks. I received a voicemail message this afternoon that bothered me a little bit and made me feel that I needed to clarify something. I apologize for not addressing the individual personally yet, but the time difference between here and the east coast makes it a little bit difficult.

The message that I got thanked me for the recent update and said that neither he nor his wife understood how destitute I had been prior to my move to Utah and shortly after. Although I have been short on material wealth, I feel that I have been far from destitute. This is definitely a learning situation for me. I feel that I am learning what it takes to truly be a disciple of Christ. At least I hope that I am.

I had another friend say that there were a lot of trials that I have been through that I did not have to go through. That is probably true, but everything that I have been through has been a learning experience. Unfortunately, we seem to learn the most when we experience the most adversity. I am not trying to purposefully seek out adversity either, but I am not going to run from it either. Hopefully I will emerge from the refiners fire a better, more grateful and more humble man.

I feel that I should also clarify a point that I made on a previous blog about it being difficult for me to find strenght to go forward. I am in no way considering not going forward. Quitting, in any way, shape, or fashion has not entered my mind. I desire to live "after the manner of happiness." And the only way for me to do that is to "Keep Moving Forward," as is the motto in my favorite move of all times, Walt Disney's Meet the Robinsons which ends in a fabulous quote from Walt Disney himself:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”–Walt Disney

Thank you all for your friendship, faith, prayers, and support. I hope to be able to return the favor some day.

Movin On Up

Thanks to a good night's sleep. I woke up to a new prospective. I now feel like George Jefferson.

Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.


Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin',
Just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues,
Gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
There ain't nothin wrong with that.


Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

The Law of Undulation

Forgive me if this entry is a little long. There are some feelings that I need to get out. I feel that I need to start with an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (1942, HarperCollins, New York, New York.) The Screwtape Letters consists of a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior devil to his young nephew Wormwood, who is just learning the art of tempting mortals. In this letter (pages 37-41) he discusses what he calls “The Law of Undulation.”

My Dear Wormwood,

So, you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? ...Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully, you would have seen this undulations in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty…

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (the Savior’s) efforts to get permanent possession of the soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us (demons) a human is primary food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours… But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least form their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is through such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…He cannot tempt to virtue…He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hands; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why hey has been forsaken, and still obeys. (Emphasis added)

I feel like I am going through a trough. I have had so many trials and heartache during the past few years that I am beginning to wonder when it is going to end. I am beginning to wonder how I am going to get the strength to go on. I know that school is only a month away, but it seems like that month might as well be a year.

There are several things that keep me going. One of them is a talk from Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entitled, Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence (BYU Devotional 3/19/1999), in which he quotes Hebrews 10: 35-36, 38-39:

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise…

…If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him…

…We are not of them who draw back unto perdition. (Emphasis added.)

I do not want to stop climbing the mountain just before I get to the top, even if it is obscured by fog. Although I do not look like it, I am familiar with weight lifting. I am aware of the theory that says that it is when the muscle has been worked so much that it can barely function, and a spotter is required, that the most growth occurs.

I know that with Jesus at my side I have the best spotter in the world. I also know that I am surrounded by a team of spotters who are my friends and family. I also know that I am meant to do most of the work. I am thankful for all of you who are spotting for me, praying for me, calling me, and encouraging me. Your support means the world to me and I could not do it without you. I will keep you posted of my progress.

Love,

Mark

Go and Sell All That Thou Hast, and Give to the Poor...and Come, Follow Me

Many of you may have been wondering what on earth I am doing in Utah if I loved (and still love) Florida so much. Well, I have decided that it is time for full disclosure. Although my time in Florida was one of the best times in my life, it was also one of the hardest times in my life. I have often said that socially, emotionally, and spiritually it was tremendous. I have grown more in those areas then I would have ever thought possible. Financially, it was a disaster! I burned though all of the money in my 401k, accrued thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and had a car repossessed, all in a space of two years.

The week before my car was to be repossessed I found myself sitting at my job as a telephone customer service representative for a major software company one day and had just gotten off of a particularly nasty call. I said to myself, "I don't have to take this any more," and instantly went online to Brigham Young University's web page and began to apply for admission to their undergraduate program. I had not been thinking about going back to school at the time and I don't know what came over me. I just knew that I was sick of the kinds of jobs that I could get without a degree and knew that I had to do something so that none of the problems that I had been having would ever happen again. As an after thought, I also applied to go to school at the BYU campus in Idaho. I didn't really want to go to Rexburg, I had been there before and was not all that impressed. It was cold! (It had earned itself the nickname of "Iceberg!") But I felt that applying there would be the right thing for me to do.

The day that my car was repossessed I decided to quit my job. I could not justify spending 6 hours commuting to and from work on a bus to work for 8 hours at a job that I was not satisfied with. I really enjoyed the people there, but working there was sucking all of the life out of me. At the same time I told my landlord that I would be leaving at the end of the month. The plan was for me to move to Utah and go to school because I was convinced that BYU in Provo, UT was going to accept me.

The next few weeks were tough because my landlord had agreed to let me out of my lease if I would vacate my apartment before the end of the month so that he could rent it out and I had no where to go. I had not heard from either one of the schools yet either. I was scared. I didn't know what was going to happen and I was running out of options. I was talking about my situation with a very good friend of mine and Matthew 19: 16-21 came into my head and I felt that Heavenly Father had given me a task to do and I needed to trust him. I also though of the scripture further down in the chapter that says that it "would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19: 24) So I decided to do exactly what The Savior had told the rich man to do so I sold or gave away most of my stuff. I sold my Select Comfort Sleep Number 5000 bed to some very good friends of mine who will be getting married in July. (This was very hard because it was the only bed that I have ever been able to sleep comfortable on since I became an adult.) I sold several of my books on amazon.com, sold some more books, videos, and furniture to a friend of mine from Church, and gave away most of the rest of what I owed to either the Goodwill or the Salvation Army. I now can fit the bulk of all of my earthly possessions in two suitcases, two duffel bags, and a few boxes.

I was not accepted to BYU in Utah, but I was accepted to BYU in Idaho. When I found that out, plans to move to Utah were already in the works. I stayed with my brother Keith and his wife Caroline in Florida for a few weeks and then, thanks to my bishop, hopped on a plane bound to Salt Lake City. This haven't been easy since I got here. I had to stay with the brother of a friend of mine in SLC for a week until I could get a ride to Provo. (Thanks Naomi!) Then I stayed with my friend Elliot for two weeks in Provo where I subsequently got the stomach flu and had to go to the emergency room to have fluids pumped back into me. Now I am staying in South Jordan with the parents of a friend and former co-worker of mine from New Hampshire. And I just started working at Target after being unemployed since October.

Like I said, things haven't been easy since I have been out here. If it hadn't been for the generosity of others I would definitely be on the streets at this moment. But I feel exceedingly blessed. The Lord has allowed me to reconnect with many old but good friends. He has helped me to get everything but my housing worked out with the school, and he has helped me to get a job. I am excited for this new beginning and am grateful to all of those who have helped me, encouraged me, and prayed for me. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

I hope that this wasn't too long. I will write more later. Until then, God bless.

A Little Bit About Me

Since I am going to be inviting people to my blog who probably don't know a lot about me, I decided that I should write a little introduction. My name is Mark Trombly and I recently moved from Orlando, FL to Provo, UT. I am 33 years old, the son of Brian Trombly, Sr. and Ellen Rodriguez. I was born in 1074 in Gainesville, FL and am the second of four boys that my parents had while they were together.

My family moved around a lot while I was younger, that's why it's always hard for me to answer the question, "Where are you from?" I always have to ask people to qualify that by asking in return, "What do you mean by that? Do you mean, 'Where do you live; where were you born; or where did you grow up?' As I said previously I was born in Gainesville, FL but shortly after I was born my family moved back up to New Hampshire (where they were living when they got married) and then back down to Florida. Shortly after that we moved to Denver, CO, and then to Dallas, TX. It wasn't after my father's mother died when I was five that we relocated once again to New Hampshire. We lived there for a few years and then moved to Maine where my mother and father got divorced. My three brothers and I stayed with my mother and we settled in the Kennebunk/ Kennebunkport area. I graduated from Kennebunk High School in 1992.

I am a convert of 14 years to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can honestly say that joining the Church has been the best decision that I have ever made in my life. I love what the Church teaches about families, my relationship to Heavenly Father, and service to others. Being a member of the Church has literally changed my life. I can honestly say that if it wasn't for that, I might not be here today.

I hope that you enjoy reading my blog. I plan to share some insights that I have had recently and continue to have as time goes on. I hope to also share some fun stuff and will hopefully be able to throw in a few pictures here and there. This might be a little difficult because I don't have a camera at the moment. But I need to try to make my cousin Tim happy, and he says that blogging without pictures is just so boring, so I'll try.

I will be writing soon. Lots to catch up on. See you later.

A Few Thoughts

I woke up this morning and went for a walk at 5:20 am. I have been doing this off and on. These days it has been more on than off, thank goodness. During these walks I have adopted something that Anthony Robbins calls the "Hour of Power." I give thanks for the good things in my life and make a point to look for things during the walk that I can be grateful for. I envision the way that I want my life to be and shout out affirmations to reaffirm those visions. It sounds corny, but it works.

This morning I walked for 1:20. During the end of my walk I could feel that change was happening in my body. My body began to feel thin, fit, and strong (one of the affirmations that I tell myself). I noticed that that feeling is different than anything that I had felt in a long time. I could sense that a dramatic change was getting ready to take place. And this time it was going to be permanent.

I then thought back to the last time I had lost a lot of weight and why it didn't last. It had been in early 1999 and I had gotten a job working on the shipping dock of the Wal-mart distribution center in Raymond, NH. I lost 60 pounds in three months and I looked good. This morning, while I was finishing my walk I thought about that moment, why I didn't maintain the weight loss after I stopped working for Wal-mart, and why I felt different now.

I realized one significant difference between now and then. Back then, my weight loss was controlled and dictated by outside sources aka a job that kicked my butt. Even thought I had lost a lot of weight and changed physically, I had not changed mentally. I still saw myself as being fat. I still had a fat mentality. I had stopped eating and had even been asked by a dental assistant if I had been anorexic.

This time was a period of a lot of stress for me. I had just moved from NY to Maine to NH. I had never been in a physical job before and I was living without any reliable form of transportation. I was also making choices and decisions based upon what I thought other people thought of me. I was trying really hard to serve a mission although my patriarchal blessing specifically mentions serving a mission later on in life. And I did not see myself as having the power to make lasting change in my life. All of this came to a culminated into a nervous brake down and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital for 1 week.

I took me a while to recover from this. I still saw myself as being fat, I subconsciously did whatever I could do to force my body to match the mental image that I had of it in my mind. I didn't exercise and I ate all of the peanut butter cups and candy bars that I could.

So, what's different now? Instead of focusing on external forces to help me loose weight (I mean achieve my ideal weight of 198 lbs) I am using internal forces. I am developing a mental picture of how I want to look and then taking steps to make my body comply with that image. I actually am beginning to see myself as having power to effect positive change in my life. I am making conscious change instead of unconscious change. And I am making changes in my life based upon what is good for me and not what other people want me to do. Nobody buy myself could have helped me to come to this point in my life. No amount of well-intentioned friends, family, and/or doctors could have led me to make this decision. I had to make it myself and I had to be conscious about it.

Living in Florida has been both difficult and rewarding. Although it has been a real struggle financially (I am literally on the verge of either loosing my car or being evicted from my apartment, and yes, I am accepting donations.), spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and socially it has been one of the best decisions of my life. I have grown more since moving down here than I have in the past 10 years.

I would like to thank all of you who have contributed to my success though your faith and prayers. I could not have done it without you. More updates to follow.