My husband loves old clocks. I’ll admit, it sounds romantic—but when he brought his first antique clock home, I was a little perplexed. The thing was beautiful: a mantel clock made of ebony hardwood, engraved with delicate filigree. Built around 1910, it required care in the form of weekly winding. He was instructed to turn two keys—one clockwise, the other counterclockwise. If he kept to a disciplined schedule, the clock kept remarkably good time and chimed faithfully on the hour. If he forgot to wind it, well… she sat uselessly on the piano where she was meant to mark the passage of time.
Aaron is disciplined, and he wound the clock regularly. On the rare occasions he forgot and the clock fell behind, he would patiently work the keys and gently move the hands back to where they belonged. One Sunday evening, Aaron went to wind the clock only to discover it was broken. The hands no longer responded to the turning of the keys. When we removed the back and exposed the inner workings, we found the problem: the coiled mainspring—an essential piece—had fractured. We had no idea how to fix it or where to find someone who could. Aaron was devastated. He was so proud of that clock and of the care he had taken to keep it running, and his disappointment made me deeply sad.
Eventually—by what means or after how long, I don’t know—Aaron found a repairman. The shop was tucked into a small, rust-colored brick building on a crowded corner of Main Street in Holiday, Utah. Inside, the space was filled with clocks of every kind: towering grandfather clocks, noisy cuckoo clocks, delicate pendulum clocks under fragile glass domes, and even a few whimsical Felix-the-Cat clocks with their tails swinging back and forth to keep time.
The clerk took our beautiful-but-broken mantel clock and warned us that repairs could take up to a year. “You have to understand,” she said, “we don’t have an owner’s manual for clocks this old. The clock will need to be completely taken apart and examined before we can even know what repairs it needs.”
Then she added, “And sometimes, we simply can’t find the parts. When that happens, the only option is to rebuild.”
In the art of clock repair, when instructions don’t exist, repairmen rely on what are called witness marks—tiny clues like faint scratches, screw holes, tool marks, or even missing pieces. Sometimes these marks are intentional, left by builders or previous repairmen. Other times they’re the result of damage. But to a trained eye, they tell a story. They guide the repair.
Through heart transplant surgery and thyroid cancer, surgeons have left plenty of visible witness marks on and within my body. Fifty years of living have left even more on my soul. I’ve been brought, many times, to what I believed were my breaking points. Life is full of them.
I don’t believe God gives us trials. I believe life is inherently hard—sometimes brutal, and for some, unspeakable. But I do believe that these hard, brutal, and unspeakable things can be used for good. They can become blessings.
In a recent conference talk by President Henry B. Eyring titled “Proved and Strengthened in Christ,” I was drawn to Philippians 4:13. Most of us know it by heart: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” What a beautiful promise.
But when I returned to the King James Version, I noticed something subtle yet profound:
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Which—not who.
That distinction matters.
I can’t count how many times I’ve felt so low, so devastated, that in the darkness I’ve wondered: Where is He now? If Christ is the one who strengthens me, why does He feel absent when I need Him most?
It is in those moments—when we feel alone—that we are given a choice: to turn away from Christ, or to turn toward Him. And in the act of turning, in the choice to believe, we find strength.
It is in the doing that faith is strengthened. It is believing still—choosing Christ again—that fortifies us. He is with us, always, inviting us: “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
This is the great initiation. This is the school where we learn to consecrate what feels entirely unholy into something redemptive. In trial—when we are stripped bare, opened up, and taken apart—we can be strengthened. Our grief can be met with love and wisdom.
And when Christ has healed us, like a master clock repairman, He will have left His witness mark.
Witness Marks 