A Cup of Water

God uses the lowliest of instruments to accomplish His purpose, even a cup of water.

By Tim Frodsham, 14 September 2020

I was awakened by my wife’s distress and scrambled from my hospital chair to check on her. We had arrived two days before, an early August morning, on one of what had become routine visits as her cancer spread and the symptoms she suffered in turn became life-threatening.

LaNae had been diagnosed with leukemia five years earlier and after chemotherapy, complications, blood transfusions and a lot of prayer, her cancer had gone into remission. At what we hoped was to be her last oncologist appointment, test results confirmed the leukemia had returned and in addition, she was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Months of chemotherapy and medical interventions followed and, at the time of this visit, we had exhausted all options.

At her side, I spoke to her for a brief moment and fetched a cup of water. I promised to find her a straw, but needed a quick detour.  As one gets older, the distance to the restroom seems to increase while the time allotted is shorter; I am sure Einstein is involved in there somewhere. I returned to a commotion from LaNae’s bedside where a nurse on the floor heard her gasping and was trying to assist. Drinking without a straw, she had aspirated the water I had given her and was having difficulty breathing. Her situation deteriorated hour by hour through the day and without regaining consciousness, she passed away that night.

I had cared for my precious companion through her five-year fight with cancer and the 10-years before as her slowly deteriorating condition remained undiagnosed. To have my last offer of service be the very act that took her life left me in an emotional and spiritual turmoil I cannot describe. I was shocked beyond feeling. For years afterwards, I ran through my mind again and again the last morning of my wife’s mortal existence.

I knew in my mind LaNae was so weakened that regardless of what happened, she had days or at most weeks to live. We had exhausted all medical options and were simply waiting for cancer to finish its course. In my heart, however, I had been responsible for my wife’s death. I could talk to no one about this raging inward conflict, not even my own children. I could not verbalize the turmoil I felt, but I could talk to the Lord. I prayed, not in anger or accusation, but with a plea to Him to help my heart understand what my mind already knew. To reconcile in my heart, why the loss of my wife had to be at my hand. More than at any other time in my life, I needed the healing power of my Savior’s Atonement.

To give you a backdrop for my state of mind, I believe life should be taken by both fists, then shaken and squeezed until every last drop of goodness seeps out. As a youth, I tinkered with radios, built model rockets, and spent countless nights under our rural night sky with a star chart and a pair of binoculars. I shared the same night sky with my children as well, admiring God’s awesome creations moving in majesty and power. My daughters would lie out on the lawn with me, vying to best my count for the most satellites seen in one evening. 

As my children grew, we built sheds and green houses, patios, porches and fences, fixed cars, grew gardens, and bottled the bounty. Even my youngest as a six-year-old would perch on the radiator of our old jeep and help me diagnose a pesky electrical problem. I was the go to dad for help with homework, especially if it involved science or math. Mathematics is something I have always loved, and with it came a talent to understand and solve problems. 

I was also known, however, as the family pessimist, considering the worst-case scenario in everything I saw and did. It was this comprehensive look on every possible outcome that I harnessed in my engineering career. My consuming curiosity led me to work for a high-tech company in Oregon, a manufacturer of world class microprocessors, where one of my responsibilities was to solve engineering quandaries no one else could handle. At times, it was only a colleague and me standing between a technical dilemma and 10’s of millions of dollars a day in corporate revenue. I thrived under the pressure and the required creativity to crack these engineering obstacles. I was grateful that the Lord had directed me to an employment I enjoyed, and allowed me to provide for that which was most important, my family. 

LaNae’s illness entailed dozens of hospital trips to treat the side effects of her chemotherapy, complications due to her non-existent immune system and what eventually tallied up to more than 250 blood transfusions. My ward provided incredible service to my wife and family, and I will be eternally grateful. 

Through all of this, though, I was never brought to a point where I was forced to trust and rely on my Savior. I was good at solving problems and simply brought this home. I know I was a frustration for our Relief Society President. There were so many in our ward who respected and revered my wife and lined up to render aid, but for the most part, we had things in hand. Though I will never understand the will and mind of the Lord until I sit at his feet, over time, I came to realize that among my many faults, it was this can-do, I am in control outlook on life that my loving Heavenly Father wanted to address. He drove me to a situation where I had to give myself completely and without reservation to Him. To trust that He could heal my heart of a wound I had no earthly power to address.  To immerse me in the healing power of His Atonement.

My Savior brought me to my knees with a nothing more than a cup of water. I was pressed with a problem I could not shoulder, a despair I could not touch. As I prayed for insight, I had to trust that He would answer and bring me to a point that If I could not understand His purpose, at least I would feel in my heart an acceptance that He did. I had been reconciled for months to His desire to bring my sweet companion home and had known for several years that I would lose her; the shock was why it had to be at my hand. Like the pre-dawn hours of twilight, my understanding, trust and appreciation for my Savior and His Atoning sacrifice slowly filled with light. I cannot point to any one day when healing and understanding blossomed, but in retrospect, from year to year, I see and feel His gentle, mending influence. “Whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions and shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 36:3).

I have come to a glimmer of understanding how fully the Lord choreographs our lives. Is every event we experience, every moment of every day meticulously orchestrated by Him? I believe His only goal and desire is to lead us carefully back into His fold, and in His wisdom and infinite power, He is aware of each breath we take. Each minute of our life is presided over by Him. He is also the best of friends, the one who would willingly, in a heartbeat give His life for us, and in fact He did. Would a Father and a Son who loves us so deeply not mold the very details of our mortal existence to our good?  We are taught to “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), (Mosiah 18:8). Though our capacity to bear burdens, ours or others, is finite, He who descended below all things has an infinite capacity to lift. The burdens of loss and guilt are not always the result of evil and are tools in the hands of the Master Craftsman to break us down so He can build us up. 

“Our mortal life, however, was never meant to be easy or consistently pleasant. Heavenly Father[… ]knows that we learn and grow and become refined through hard challenges, heartbreaking sorrows, and difficult choices. Each one of us experiences dark days when love one’s pass away, painful times when our health is lost, feelings of being forsaken when those we love seem to have abandoned us. These and other trials present us with the real test of our ability to endure” (Thomas S Monson, Joy in the Journey, May, 2008). These tests of our ability to endure are not random events in a world where a dispassionate God looks on with lethargic indifference, but are carefully crafted by a personal, infinite, loving Father.

For 37 years, I had at my side a choice daughter of our Heavenly Father, working through temple covenants to teach and raise valiant children in a gospel centered home, to bless those around us and receive from a caring, loving God blessings and insight throughout this mortal existence. As I have contemplated the workings of the Savior in my life, the lives of my children, and the last mortal years of my sweet wife, I stand amazed at His knowledge, His wisdom, His Mercy, His love and the power of His infinite Atonement.  He is the Master Craftsman. I am in awe at what the Creator of our universe can accomplish with something as simple as a cup of water.