Me, My Father and the Currant Bush

Years ago my Father gave me a book by James E. Faust called “To Reach Even unto You”.  It was a collection of his speeches over the years.  He told me to read it because he had just finished it and it had helped him quite a bit.  (It was a time in my life when I was quite confused and was struggling with a lot of tough life issues.)  I took the book and let it sit for a while.  It stared at me, night after night, from my dresser where I had flung it.

 One night after some significant arguments with my parents I lay in bed fuming.  I wondered why my life had to be so hard.  I wondered why things did not seem to be working out the way I planned them.  I reached over and picked up the book which seemed to have alerted itself to my awareness.  Not sure how, it just seemed to stand out from the other objects scattered around my room.  When I opened it a page had been turned down and made the book open up to that page.  The page corner had been put back into the proper place, but the crease was still there and the corner had not been flattened back out, so it opened created a bias when opening the book. 

The talk was called “Be Not Afraid” and it is quite a good talk, but it was a story by another General Authority that he quoted that stood out to me.  The following is the Parable of the Currant Bush by Hugh B. Brown: 

You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what He ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than He does about what you ought to do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story. It has to do with an incident in my life when God showed me that He knew best.

I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet (two meters) high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and clipped it back until there was nothing left but stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it and smiled and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush say this:

“How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”

That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”

Years passed, and I found myself in England. I was in command of a cavalry unit in the Canadian army. I held the rank of field officer in the British Canadian army. I was proud of my position. And there was an opportunity for me to become a general. I had taken all the examinations. I had the seniority. The one man between me and the office of general in the British army became a casualty, and I received a telegram from London. It said: “Be in my office tomorrow morning at 10:00,” signed by General Turner.

I went up to London. I walked smartly into the office of the general, and I saluted him smartly, and he gave me the same kind of a salute a senior officer usually gives—a sort of “Get out of the way, worm!” He said, “Sit down, Brown.” Then he said, “I’m sorry I cannot make the appointment. You are entitled to it. You have passed all the examinations. You have the seniority. You’ve been a good officer, but I can’t make the appointment. You are to return to Canada and become a training officer and a transport officer.” That for which I had been hoping and praying for 10 years suddenly slipped out of my fingers.

Then he went into the other room to answer the telephone, and on his desk, I saw my personal history sheet. Right across the bottom of it was written, “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.” We were not very well liked in those days. When I saw that, I knew why I had not been appointed. He came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.” I saluted him again, but not quite as smartly, and went out.

I got on the train and started back to my town, 120 miles (190 kilometers) away, with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul. And every click of the wheels on the rails seemed to say, “You are a failure.” When I got to my tent, I was so bitter that I threw my cap on the cot. I clenched my fists, and I shook them at heaven. I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?” I was as bitter as gall.

And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.” The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness and my bitterness. While kneeling there I heard a song being sung in an adjoining tent. A number of Mormon boys met regularly every Tuesday night. I usually met with them. We would sit on the floor and have Mutual. As I was kneeling there, praying for forgiveness, I heard their singing:

But if, by a still, small voice he calls

To paths that I do not know,

I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:

I’ll go where you want me to go.

(Hymns, number 270)

I arose from my knees a humble man. And now, almost 50 years later, I look up to Him and say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.” I see now that it was wise that I should not become a general at that time, because if I had I would have been senior officer of all western Canada, with a lifelong, handsome salary, a place to live, and a pension, but I would have raised my six daughters and two sons in army barracks. They would no doubt have married out of the Church, and I think I would not have amounted to anything. I haven’t amounted to very much as it is, but I have done better than I would have done if the Lord had let me go the way I wanted to go.

Many of you are going to have very difficult experiences: disappointment, heartbreak, bereavement, defeat. You are going to be tested and tried. I just want you to know that if you don’t get what you think you ought to get, remember, God is the gardener here. He knows what He wants you to be. Submit yourselves to His will. Be worthy of His blessings, and you will get His blessings.

This story swept through my heart.  My mind at least for a time cleared and my anger-filled soul was calmed.  I could feel the love of the savior and could almost hear him say to me “I am the Gardner Here…”   I was comforted, and given hope that the Lord had a plan for me.  My  seventeen or eighteen year old self could teach me a lesson or two, as I have once again been feeling cut down and pruned.  The problems of a seventeen year old seem insignificant when you compare them to the scope of an adult.  Yet in both instances I have felt like the world was against me.  That there were unfairly placed obstacles in my way that did were not there for others.  In both cases I allowed myself to blame others, the world, and even God for my problems.  I felt like I was suffering more than others.

Then the light came on.  Several weeks ago I remembered this little anecdote from Elder Brown.  And it re-taught me the same lessons I learned in my teenage years, but with new insight.  I began thinking back on the circumstances in which I received this book.  I began remembering the dynamic surrounding that time in my family’s life.  And began catching glimpses of why my Father gave me the book and also about why he had folded down the corner of that book.  He had tried to place the corner back into place before giving it to me.  But that story obviously had been one he had read and more than likely re-read.

My Father had received wounds during the Vietnam War that eventually caused the removal of his leg.  For most of my life this is how I knew him.  He was quite independent.  I remember being told many times how amazing he was.  And in many ways that was true.  He was a skier, he one downhill races against other individuals with similar situations.  He awards, and was honored for his courage in the face of adversity.  But he lost his drive, he allowed himself at one point to sink into a depression.  The Veterans Benefits he received kept him from needing to find work and he lost his confidence.  And it would be hard to blame him.  He had been dealt a poor hand.

When I was 15 near the end of 1989 my father lost his second leg.   And then in June of 1990 my parents lost their youngest son Joel to an automobile.  Every other hardship they had endured paled in comparison.  My father once told me that it seemed easier to handle things and keep faith when it felt like it was only happening to you but when he could do nothing to bring Joel back it was almost unbearable.

My father who had been living with his hardships by staying home and doing no more than most people would expect him to do.  Decided that he no longer would stay inactive and let things simply happen to him.  He was going to make things happen.  He never actually said this but by his actions from then on we knew he was never going to let his disability stop him from being who he knew he should be and accomplishing his dreams.

At a time when strong men and women would give up, or at least give in.  This is the time surrounding my Father giving me that book.  He must have felt comfort in those words, “I am the gardener here…”  He must have understood that God had a plan for him.  It must have helped to know that the pain which he was feeling would bear fruit.

My Dad went back to school.  Even though when he was younger he had graduated in Business he now went back to school to become a teacher.  In three years he had graduated from Weber State University with a teaching degree.  

He started to look for work.  Even though working was financially a risk because if hired he could lose all or most of his V.A. disability and Social Security payments.  He didn’t care he wanted to teach.  He applied for every opening he could.  We thought in a state in such need of teachers he would get hired.  He was turned down again and again.  However this proved to be incorrect.  They looked at a work history of the last 10-15 years that was pretty nonexistent, and even his honors and recognition from the M.S. Society and others could not persuade them to hire him.

My Mother, my brothers, and sister and I were worried about him.  After all he has worked for would he give up?  Finally persevering for quite some time he started substitute teaching regularly for several of the computer teachers at the Davis Applied Technology College.  The teachers loved him and he worked very hard for them.  He applied for every teaching position that came up at the DATC with no luck.

Again we thought he would give up but he kept plugging along.  He loved working at the DATC and was willing to take any assignment they gave him.  After years of hoping and working he got some small contracts and eventually he became a full-fledged teacher of Business Technology.  He had not been a teacher for very long when his health caught up to him.  He had been in poor health for most my life; he had learned to live with Multiple Sclerosis and Diabetes, and a myriad of other health issues.  So we were taken back when, after he passed away from a pulmonary embolism, we were told he had been living with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Remembering what my Father endured, not to mention what my Mother endured seems to shrink my very real problems down and place them in perspective.  It helps to have a little insight into my Fathers mind knowing he to found comfort in “I am the gardener here…”  I can look up and wonder why my life isn’t going exactly how I planned and why my prideful outstretched braches needed to be pruned back so they can bear fruit. 

I realize my struggles are not nearly as pronounced as others.  I am forced to look outside myself to see that not only am I not being attacked from all around me, I am being blessed.  I have a wife and family that love and support me.  I have dear friends that cheer me up and buoy my soul.  I have colleagues and former colleagues that build me up.  And I have a ward that strengthens and serves me.  I have been given love.  And if the Beatles ever got it right they did when they sang, “All you need is love”.