Emily Watts's Blog

I've thought about this for a long time. And now that the perfect book has come along for it, we're going to leap into it. Below is an invitation for a learning journey that will change your life. It's changing mine.

Increase in Learning Virtual Reading Group

An Official Invitation

As an editor, I've had a chance to work on a lot of books over the past three decades. Many have lifted me, taught me, helped me, and entertained me, but only a few have truly changed me. Increase in Learning is one of those rare books that has made a real difference in how I see and behave in the world. Working with Elder David A. Bednar's words was an experience I'll always cherish. So I'm excited to have a chance to dig deeper into this incredible book and find out how it is changing you.

Here's the invitation: Come explore Increase in Learning in a live chat with me every Wednesday, starting January 18, at 1:00 p.m. MST. Just visit seek.deseretbook.com/learning. Each week, we'll be reading one chapter or section and discussing it online. We'll talk about the questions Elder Bednar poses at the end of the chapters and the questions we've thought of ourselves, the things we've learned, and the actions we're being motivated to take. For January 18, be prepared to discuss Chapter 1.

Here's the full discussion schedule:

January 18: Chapter 1

January 25: Related Readings for Chapter 1

February 1: Chapter 2

February 8: Related Readings for Chapter 2

February 15: Chapter 3

February 22: Related Readings for Chapter 3

February 29: Chapter 4

March 7: Chapter 4, continued

March 14: Related Readings for Chapter 4

March 21: Wrap-up

Please join our virtual reading group! And if that hour doesn't work for you, we'd still love you to weigh in with your comments later on. Come visit the page and share your thoughts anytime. We can't be "live" 24/7, but we still want to hear what you have to say.

Talk to you soon!

Emily Watts

Senior Development and Communications Editor

Deseret Book Company

I've been in the LDS publishing industry a long time, so a lot of books have washed over me through the years. Many have inspired me, uplifted me, and helped shape my testimony. But few have truly changed the way I see the world.

Increase in Learning, by Elder David A. Bednar, is one of those few. Its basic premise, that the answers to all of our questions are found in the truths of the gospel, is deceptively simple. It's one thing to believe the answers are there. It's quite another to figure out how to find them.

What this book does is give me a new way to approach the questions I'm asking. It helps me understand how to go deeper, both in my studying and in my praying. It gives me tools and makes me want to learn, to explore, to ponder—and I've got to admit, I don't always feel that way. As Elder Bednar tells one young man on the DVD, "If this has taken you out of your comfort zone, I am deliriously happy!"

This reminds me to mention the DVD. It is a priceless opportunity to feel like you're being taught directly by an apostle. There's a wonderful Q&A session with a group of young adults and a personal interview with Elder and Sister Bednar talking about the concepts in the book; both are crucial connection points that help you digest the book's contents much more effectively. The more you see the pattern Elder Bednar follows, the more excited you get to go out and try it out for yourself.

I find myself now applying the simple question he asks over and over in an unbelievable variety of circumstances. It helped me address a poignant question asked me by a woman I was visit teaching. I pondered it when I was trying to figure out how to help a child who was struggling. I think about it in the quiet moments when I'm reaching to become who Heavenly Father needs me to be.

I'm not going to tell you the question. It won't make enough sense outside the context of the book. But you have to believe me when I tell you that the deeper you get in to this material, the brighter it gets. It felt like work in the beginning. (Remember when you were learning to drive a car, and you wondered if you'd ever get the hang of it? Or maybe you were better at it than I was; I had the girls in my driving group hanging on for dear life in the backseat for the first few weeks.) Similarly, I wasn't sure I understood at first what Elder Bednar was driving at; in fact, I wasn't sure I even cared. But the more I tried, the clearer it got, until now I can't imagine viewing the world any other way.

This book is an incredible gift from a uniquely gifted teacher-thinker-leader. I will be forever grateful that I accepted Elder Bednar's invitation to become "an agent who acts." It has helped me feel reengaged in my own life.

My husband and I have started reading the Book of Mormon aloud together in the evenings. We decided we needed to close out our days on a higher note than we'd been doing. We've tried family scripture study with varying degrees of success over the years, but this is quite different. When it's just the two of us (or three, when our son joins occasionally if he's around), no one gets bugged if we stop reading for a minute and bring up what's on our minds. The slower pace mandated by reading out loud allows for better thinking time, a greater chance to digest what's being read. And, of course, because the whole world turns around in the course of a year (not just literally, but figuratively as well), I'm reading with new needs and hence new eyes.

I've been struck this past week by the Lord's plan for his people as manifested by the people of Limhi and Alma and their escape from bondage. It's in Mosiah 21-24, if you want to read along. This has always been one of my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon because of how the Lord eased their burdens upon their backs so they could bear them "with ease" (Mosiah 24:15), but this time through I found myself fascinated by the string of "coincidences" involved in these chapters. Whenever I see a "coincidence" in the scriptures, I just substitute "hand of the Lord." From that vantage point, consider this:

1. The people of Limhi–a whole colony, with women and children and animals–flee through the back pass, and their Lamanite pursuers lose their tracks after two days and get lost in the wilderness (22:16). Really? A group of warriors can't catch up with a war-weakened civilization or even follow the trail they left?

2. The lost Lamanites, wandering through the wilderness, just happen upon Amulon and the other wicked priests of king Noah, whom Limhi and his people had been unsuccessful in finding although they had made a diligent effort to do so. Amulon's group joins up with them.

3. Amulon and the Lamanites, trying to find their way back home, just happen upon Alma and his group in the land of Helam and bring them into subjection.

That feels like a whole lot of coincidences to me. So when I see the hand of the Lord working in that way, I ask, "Why?" I understand why he would confound the Lamanites so that Limhi's people could get safely away, but why bring them down on Alma's people? And then it occurs to me that Alma's people were happily established in the wilderness. They were prospering. They were doing just fine. It's possible–likely, even–that they never would have made their way to Zarahemla to join up with king Mosiah and the body of the Nephites if they hadn't been driven there by their persecutions. And clearly the Lord needed them there, because Alma's whole purpose became to build up churches and establish God's world throughout the land among the Nephites and the even more numerous Mulekites.

I'm trying to remember that although the Lord wants us to prosper and do just fine, sometimes he wants more for us than we have envisioned for ourselves. And sometimes it takes some really hard things happening to drive us to where He needs us to be. I'm not saying that He sends the affliction, necessarily–mortality has a way of providing plenty of afflictions all on its own. But I do think that He sometimes stays His hand from preventing our trials, although he then intervenes in other ways (easing our burdens on our backs) so that we know He hasn't forsaken us. He can give purpose to all the circumstances of our mortality. Our task becomes to "submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord" (Mosiah 24:15), believing that he has more in mind for us than we could ever have thought of.

I'm ready to admit this now. I wanted to get a little way into it before I committed myself, but it's starting to feel like it's really going to happen, so I'm just going to say it.

I've been exercising.

I have been going to the gym every weekday for the past two weeks, and walking "recreationally" on the weekends. Now that I am into my third week without missing once, it feels like the next step is to commit to somebody else that I'm going to keep going, so I'm doing that. Because, frankly, the only time I've found for squeezing the gym in is before work, and while it's relatively easy to get up before 6:00 when it's light and warm outside, it's going to be a lot harder to drag myself out when winter comes. I'm hoping the habit will be so ingrained by then that I'll just keep it up.

What have I noticed, half a month in?

I started at Total Wimp Level: twenty minutes a day on the exercise bike at settings 1 and 2. My joints would get so sore on the treadmill that I just couldn't make that work.

After a few days, I got on the treadmill for 10 minutes at 2.5 mph first, then did 15 on the exercise bike.

I've been increasing ever so gradually, until this week I'm up to 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3 mph average and 20 on the bike, up to level 6 for part of it.

I haven't lost an ounce of weight, which was an outcome I'd been hoping for, but this week that seems to matter less to me, because I really, truly do feel stronger.

I started the year out making one change in my life: getting up early to think and read scriptures. That one little change has led to others, and now this is the change I never thought I'd be able to bring myself to make. The key has been to move slowly. It's taken me a good 35 of my 55 years to get myself into this physical pit in which I've dwelt for so long. I can't expect to climb out of it in a month or two.

But, week by week, I'm getting better.

For me, most movies are fun, a night's entertainment. Some are romantic, some are thrilling, some are filled with action, and some just make me laugh. And some few, rare movies stick with me long after the credits roll.

My husband and I saw one of those rare movies on Saturday. 17 Miracles will be seen by most as a "Mormon movie," but it is so much more than that. It is a story beyond belief, but one that must be believed because it really happened. Not in exactly the way it is portrayed, of course, but all of the seminal events really did occur. It is the story of the Willie handcart pioneers.

You'd think it would be such a sad story—and it is, in parts. But on the whole it is a life-affirming, faith-renewing reminder that even when He doesn't take away our pain or the hard things we go through, God is there. He's there. He's with us, helping us just enough to give us the courage to take the steps we have to take in order to be the people we need to be.

I have long felt that the suffering of those handcart pioneers was largely for us, for our generation, so that we would know what it meant for there to be people who would give everything for what they believed. Now, as their story is made known in this amazing and beautiful way to a whole lot of people who really had no idea, and to others who did have some idea but never saw it quite so clearly before, I believe that more than ever.

I found myself wanting to run home and call the stake president and MAKE him take all the kids who are doing the pioneer trek in our stake this year to see this movie. And then I thought of all the people who AREN'T doing trek who need the message of 17 Miracles—because we're all on trek, aren't we? Just pushing our little handcarts through life and muddling along through storms and wolves and snakes and hills and raging rivers the best we can. And God is there. That's what 17 Miracles did for me—and it's going to stay with me for a long, long time.

So, I went to lunch with my husband yesterday, and we were going to take a walk afterwards, so I slipped on the pair of athletic shoes I keep in my office for just such purposes. Shiny, white athletic shoes that have been worn all of three or four times. And white athletic socks to go with them. I just pulled on the socks over my knee-high nylons because I was too lazy and rushed to take them off and (truth be told) I haven't shaved my legs for a while. Unfortunately, while I was putting on the second shoe, I felt a little tear in the seam of the dress I was wearing, which was not really a seam at all but the inches above the hemline where I had sewed up the side slit, which I always have to do because I'm so tall that the side slits on an ordinary dress come, like, up to my thigh. I've already whined about this somewhere, I'm sure. But a good complaint bears repeating, don't you think?

Anyhoo, we took a lovely walk and then he drove me back to my office and dropped me off. I had to leap out quickly because he was blocking the entrance to the parking garage, and I realized, as he drove off, that I had left my dress shoes on the floor of his car. Which left me in my shiny, white athletic shoes and socks, worn over knee-high nylons, which now revealed themselves even more readily to be knee-highs through the torn-open slit in the side of my dress. I couldn't decide which was worse, the nylons or the hairy legs, so I just left the nylons on and barricaded myself in my office for the afternoon and then hustled out to the TRAX station after work and tucked everything in as tightly as I could and buried my face in my book and somehow managed to get home.

I was reminded of how we sometimes used to put on our socks over our pantyhose when we were in junior high so it would look like we had more of a tan. And, of course, if I'm going to start having emotional flashbacks, what stage of my life would I rather visit than JUNIOR HIGH?

We had this great Relief Society activity the other evening titled "What's in Your Bag?" Various people talked about the bags we carry at different times in our lives, such as The Diaper Bag, The Book Bag, The Church Bag, The Makeup Bag, and what they might represent. After each segment, we earned points for assorted things we were carrying in our purses. One of the points was for a grocery list. I had to peek to be sure I still had one in the little notebook I carry, and I realized that not only did I have a grocery list, I had several other kinds of lists as well.

This caused me to ponder about how much of my life is ruled by lists, and the natural next step seemed to be to make a list of some of the lists I've made over the past few months. It turns out to be an interesting chronicle of the year:

Many, many grocery lists
A Master Menu list of all the meals our family eats regularly, so I don't have to start from scratch when I'm pondering what to fix for dinner
A list of what I planted in my garden, and when
Assorted Christmas lists: family gifts, Christmas cards, neighbor gifts
A list of everyone to invite for my son's wedding ceremony/luncheon, and a separate list of people to invite to the reception
A detailed walk-through list of what to buy and do for when I was hosting a big family party
A list of personal "best practices" for the year to try to be more effective at work
Individual to-do lists for almost every day
A running book list of titles recommended by friends
A list of things to remember to ask my doctor at my physical next month
An ongoing list of talk ideas
Several really depressing lists detailing what I ate on a given day and how many calories it had
A list of movies we want to bring in from Netflix if we could ever get around to sending the old ones back
A list of recipes I'm meaning to try someday

This doesn't even count all the checklists and phone lists and rule lists and number lists that govern my professional life.

Heaven help me if I lose my lists!

It is a beautiful day outside today. We have had only a handful of these this year, scattered in among a practically endless stream of rainy, blustery, cold, gray days. At least the precipitation is coming in the form of rain now instead of snow, but there has been nothing else to really signal spring. So odd.

I have felt like I was drowning, like I wanted to just bury myself in the covers and stay in bed all night and all day and all night again. The malaise has seemed inexcusable to me–I mean, we’re not flooding (yet), we have no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no tragedy. How dare I mope? But I couldn’t shake it–until this morning, when the sky was clear and the sun was out and it was finally warm.

It’s not supposed to last. More storms blow in tomorrow and hover over the Memorial Day weekend like a grumpy houseguest. But for now, it’s enough to give me hope.

It is a beautiful day outside today. We have had only a handful of these this year, scattered in among a practically endless stream of rainy, blustery, cold, gray days. At least the precipitation is coming in the form of rain now instead of snow, but there has been nothing else to really signal spring. So odd.

I have felt like I was drowning, like I wanted to just bury myself in the covers and stay in bed all night and all day and all night again. The malaise has seemed inexcusable to me–I mean, we're not flooding (yet), we have no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no tragedy. How dare I mope? But I couldn't shake it–until this morning, when the sky was clear and the sun was out and it was finally warm.

It's not supposed to last. More storms blow in tomorrow and hover over the Memorial Day weekend like a grumpy houseguest. But for now, it's enough to give me hope.

I slept in a little the other day and came running into the kitchen shortly after 7:00 to find, to my astonishment and joy, the room flooded with sunlight from the east-facing window. Accustomed to it being dark at that hour, I had somehow failed to notice that the days were imperceptibly moving us gradually closer to the light. I hadn't realize how much I missed it until I greeted it streaming into my life again.

This is why I love spring: because with all its fickleness, all its 60-degrees-one-day-and-six-inches-of-snow-the-next unpredictability, it brings with it light. And I love light. I long for light.

I've found a similar awakening going on for me spiritually over the past few months. I've come to think of it as  a "soul spring."  As I have worked harder to incorporate meaningful study and meditation into my days, I have felt an increase of light streaming into my heart–light that I have needed more desperately than I had ever imagined I would when I first made the commitment to seek it. It makes it so that life, with all its fickleness and unpredictability and potential darkness, can still be filled with joy. Even a little bit of light is stronger than a whole room full of dark.

I love this light. I long for it. And I am grateful beyond measure for its Source, who IS the Light.