Tag: faith

The Quickest Way to a Man’s Heart

 So, it turns out the quickest way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach after all. It’s through his neck—specifically, the internal jugular vein. Sometimes the groin, wrist, or upper arm will do. Ask me how I know. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had this done about 25 times.

The first time was when I was twenty years old. I had been diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia, and the doctor assured me he could fix it with a procedure called endocardial ablation. I was taken to the cardiac catheterization lab—the Cath lab—where they accessed my heart through the femoral artery in my groin. It was scary (they use only light sedation, not full anesthesia), uncomfortable (I had to lie flat with sandbags on my groin for hours to stop the bleeding), and deeply embarrassing (again, it was my groin). I’ve only had this done twice since. I do not recommend it—unless, of course, they’re trying to save your life. In that case, by all means, embrace your overpriced bikini shave administered by a nurse’s aide, likely male.

Over the years, they’ve also accessed my heart through my wrist (twice), my upper arm (truly awful), and even a tiny spot just below the xiphoid process of my sternum. But when it comes to heart transplants, the preferred route is through the neck, via the internal jugular vein. Post-transplant, this procedure—called a right heart catheterization—is used to monitor hemodynamics (the pressures within the heart) and to take biopsies of myocardial tissue to check for rejection. Since my transplant, I’ve had this done 19 times. No sedation—just a little lidocaine in the neck.

The University of Utah, where I receive my care, is a teaching hospital. Which means that at nearly every turn—every procedure, surgery, or appointment—there’s a student, resident, or fellow eager for a learning opportunity, and I am the willing (or sometimes unwilling) classroom. Over time, I’ve learned to advocate for myself. After a few botched attempts by fellows trying to access the tiny veins in my neck or upper arm, I started saying, “Attending only, please.” In other words, only the supervising physician—the one teaching the fellow—gets the honors. If I’m going to be awake and fully aware of every cut, pinch, push, pull, and squeeze, then I’d prefer the most experienced hands available. Thank you very much.

Then, one Sunday morning, I received a text from a leader in our church. We were hosting a regional conference, and a visiting church authority would be speaking. This authority, Hugo E. Martinez, and his wife, Nuria, were both retired physicians. He had played a key role in helping our son receive cardiovascular testing while serving a mission in Ghana, so he was already somewhat familiar with our situation. Since he was visiting our area, he wanted to check in with us.

After the meeting, we went to meet him. He was warm, kind, and genuinely interested in our family and my health. Then he offered a piece of advice: be patient with medical residents and fellows—let them learn from you.

I was caught off guard. How did he know I had been limiting who worked on me? It was probably just coincidence. Maybe divine inspiration. But from that day on, I loosened my grip a little on controlling who was allowed to practice their medical skills on me. And in doing so, I found myself feeling empowered in other, unexpected ways.

There is something uniquely healing—and even cathartic—about sharing your story and watching others learn from what you’ve been through.

Look, life is going to be hard. It just is. And if you’re going to experience the awful parts of living, why not take back some control by owning the narrative? Share your story. Share what you learned. Share how it shaped you. Share it with the people around you—or with the people who might benefit from hearing it. And there will be many.

I’ve had the opportunity to share my story more than a few times. I’ve even had the chance to teach others—yes, including doctors—through my experience. And I’ll say this: I feel stronger every single time I do.

That said, no student nurses may come at my veins to learn how to start IVs. I have to draw the line somewhere.

In the end, I’ve learned that the quickest way to a man’s heart isn’t a catheter or a scalpel—it’s vulnerability. It’s opening yourself up, telling the truth about what hurts, what healed, and what changed you along the way. When you share your own heart—carefully, honestly—you invite others to learn, to connect, and sometimes to heal right alongside you. And while I may still be selective about who gets access to my veins, my story is always open. After all, hearts were never meant to be guarded forever—they were meant to be shared.

Perhaps This is the Real Work

If the phrase “new year, new you” grates on your nerves like nails on a chalkboard, then welcome to the club. I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I endorse the practice of finding disciplines you actually enjoy, being intentional and consistent with them, and then watching how your life gradually changes for the better. That said, I’m not opposed to identifying areas of my life that could use some improvement.

For instance, I recently set out with the goal of running—er, completing—an organized 5K fun run. I know that in working toward this goal, I will inevitably bump up against setbacks—maybe many of them. At this stage of life, I don’t just expect setbacks; I plan for them. Contingencies are the name of the game. At this stage of life, if I didn’t accept the reality of setbacks and plan around them, I might never try anything at all.

I remember that early after my transplant, I came across an Instagram account belonging to a woman who had received a heart transplant due to ARVC just months before I did. Six months post-transplant, she was already running 10K races. I truly hoped that would be me. I genuinely tried. But despite my efforts, setbacks repeatedly thwarted my progress. For the most part, I’ve been okay with that. It’s all good. My story doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s—whether for better or worse.

Early into my health… crisis?… I often heard well-intended people use phrases like “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” or “everything happens for a reason.” And I remember thinking, My God doesn’t give me hard things to handle. Life does that. And sometimes, things happen for no reason at all. Sometimes, things just happen. Period. There is one universal truth in life: life is often hard. That’s it. There’s no explaining it away or justifying it for someone else. How a person deals with the hard in their life is entirely their own and dictated by no one else.

But I’m not the kind of person who is content to stop there. On a good day, I’d describe myself as introspective, hopeful, thoughtful, and deliberate. On a bad day, I’m stubborn, a bit pessimistic, and prone to avoidance. Still, at my core, I’m someone who tries to find meaning in life’s inevitable hardships. It’s not enough for me to simply let life happen. Rather than allowing life to wash over me, I feel compelled to find purpose in each turbulent wave—to search for the silver lining in every gathering cloud.

Several years ago, while sitting in church, I remember hearing—whether literally or spiritually, I’ll never know—a call to ask in prayer where I needed to improve. And that’s exactly what I did. Right there, in that moment, I silently prayed to know what I needed to work on, what I needed to learn. The answer was simple and direct: patience and long-suffering. Alright, I thought, I can do that.

At the time, there was no way I could have known what journey lay ahead.

Over the years, you could say I’ve become quite skilled in patience and long-suffering. And when I feel impatience rising within me, I remind myself: I prayed for this.

Earlier today, while studying the first chapter of Genesis in preparation for a Sunday School lesson I’m teaching, verses 26 and 27 stopped me in my tracks. We are created in the image of God. And suddenly, an epiphany formed as a simple thought: Open your view to greater purpose. If we are created in the image of our God, doesn’t that mean our lives carry a purpose beyond mere existence? Of course, I already believed that. But hearing it framed this way struck me deeply in the moment.

Open your view to greater purpose. Stop allowing life to simply happen to you. Let every experience—the good and the bad—teach you, shape you, and grow you into something better. When hardship crashes over you like waves at high tide, draw in close to your Creator. Close enough that He can hear your whispered fears, your aching questions, and your humble protestations. Close enough, too, that He can hear your quiet songs of praise, your breathless thank-yous, and your soft sighs of relief.

And perhaps that is the real work—not reinventing ourselves with the turn of a calendar, but steadily turning to the Savior to refine us through each season we’re given. Growth doesn’t always look dramatic or impressive. Sometimes it looks like endurance. Sometimes it looks like patience learned the hard way. And sometimes, it looks like simply staying close enough to hear His voice in the middle of it all.

The Quiet Joy of Beginning Again

The first official training run for my 5K goal is done. Did I last the full 3.1 miles? No. Did I run the entire time? Also no. But running the entire time is not the point. The point, for now, is solely and exclusively to eventually register for—and complete—an organized 5K. So this morning’s frosty 2.4-mile jog, chock-full of uphill walk breaks, was, in my mind, perfect.

I set out this morning knowing full well that I wouldn’t run the entire time. I planned a route with plenty of hills, focusing on running the downhill portions and briskly walking the uphill parts. It was bitterly cold, hovering right around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. My hands and ears became so numb that I momentarily worried I might do some kind of permanent damage (in packing for our week away, I forgot proper gloves and a hat for running in such cold temperatures).

Regardless of preparation—or lack thereof—slow pace, and shorter-than-ideal distance, I set out this morning to take the first step toward my goal, and I did it.

There was a time when running served primarily as a distraction. A distraction from responsibility, from emotions I didn’t want to confront, and from parts of myself I thought were ugly—not physically, though regular exercise certainly helps with that—but the internal parts of me, parts my personality, that I knew needed change or growth.

It’s true that during runs I often found myself in deep self-reflection. I would revisit interactions, recognize where I had been wrong, and consider what I could have done differently. Sometimes I would pray while running, sorting through hopes and fears, wrestling with mortality, and speaking with the One who could offer the sincerest help. But mostly, running gave me a distraction—albeit a healthy one.

In 2021, when that distraction was taken from me with a diagnosis of ARVC—or ACM, as the kids are calling it these days—I found myself adrift. Where could I turn for peace, sanctuary, or reflection? I had faith, yes, and my faith practices were—and still are—a great source of peace. But the higher forms of worship were not always available to me on demand. Running had been an easy, rewarding outlet, and it wasn’t easily replaced.

Throughout the eighteen months I spent waiting for a heart transplant, the six months leading up to my transplant listing, and the many months of recovery afterward, I turned to several other forms of distraction—some of which I’m not particularly proud.

I tried my hand at designing graphics for shirts and ended up selling sweatshirts with my designs to friends and family.

I explored certain subreddits on Reddit—mostly those centered on criticizing local social media influencers. This one I’m not proud of. Reddit can be a dark place, full of negativity and hatred. I do not, and cannot, recommend this distraction.

As a family, we took to driving around, seeing the sights, admiring mountain views, and exploring neighborhoods we had yet to visit.

We also adopted the pastime of visiting every Parade of Homes our state had to offer. While entertaining—if not exhausting—it led to feelings of emptiness, as our focus shifted toward what our own home lacked and what needed improvement. As such, this became another distraction I cannot fully recommend.

This is not an exhaustive list, but rather a snapshot of where my mind lived for nearly three years. What I learned during that time is this: our distractions become our habits, our habits become our lifestyle, and our lifestyle shapes our beliefs. Choose distractions that enhance and enrich your life—or that move you closer to the life you want.

If you’re in a season of waiting, grief, stress, or upheaval, it’s okay to hit pause. Sometimes moving forward feels too difficult, or even inappropriate. Sometimes simply standing still is the bravest option. And that is okay.

While we all want to shout for joy from the finish lines of our personal races, sometimes we find ourselves waiting apprehensively at the starting line, fully aware of the struggle ahead. There can be joy there too—a quieter joy, rooted in hope and faith, if we choose it. That same place can also become one of bitterness and envy, if we allow it.

Before my transplant—before my heart went haywire—I ran somewhere around twenty races. I may have placed in my age group a few times, but I never won a single race. Winning was never the point. The prize isn’t the trophy, after all.

The prize is who you become in the choosing, in the showing up, in the steady willingness to begin again—one imperfect step at a time. And this morning, in the cold, on tired legs and borrowed patience, I took that step.

What I Couldn’t Say Out Loud

Sometimes I find myself going quiet. When a thought hits me, I usually share it immediately—with my husband, my sister, my kids, or a friend. I’m an open book. I wear my emotions on my face.

But every now and then, a thought comes that feels almost sacred, and instead of speaking, I grow quiet. Sometimes I worry that what I have to say will be too much for some people—offensive to others, misunderstood, disrespected, or simply falling on ears unwilling to listen.

In my worry over what other people think, I pull inward, try to make myself small, and stop sharing.

That happened to me the other day at church—a place where I should feel safe sharing something sacred. Instead, I swallowed hard against the lump rising in my throat as I felt a quiet prompting, a solemn recognition of a promise I made two years ago.

We were talking about the importance of seeking validation vertically instead of horizontally—language I knew Keelie, my 20-year-old daughter with autism, wouldn’t be able to decode on her own. As I tried to explain it to her, I applied the idea to myself and was suddenly pulled into a moment of remembrance.

Two years ago, on December 13, 2023, I felt an undeniable prompting to pray differently—to ask for a miracle. Until then, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to pray for the heart transplant I needed. It felt too big, too profound. But I couldn’t ignore the prompting. So after everyone left for work and Keelie was dropped off at school, alone in the quiet of my home, I prayed.

I had prayed before—for answers, for healing, for peace. I had prayed for God’s plan and His timing to prevail. I was always careful to pray for what I felt prompted to pray for. This time was no different—except for one thing.

Just before closing that humble invocation, I added a pledge—something I couldn’t say out loud.

In a rushed whisper, I said, “Father, if you give me a miracle, I will never stop sharing it.”

And He delivered.

The very next day, at 9:17 a.m., I received the call—the one you hope for but never quite believe will come.

“Fiauna, we have the perfect heart for you. Are you ready to come into the hospital?”

I am painfully aware that not everyone in circumstances like mine receives such an obvious miracle. I know many feel their prayers go unheard or unanswered. I’ve been there myself—searching for the hand of a loving God and feeling utterly alone. And it does not escape me that my prayer for a miracle came at the exact moment another family, in another part of the country, was praying too. But instead of receiving the gift of life, they received grief—and a guardian angel. My heart breaks at the thought.

That is precisely why remembering that pledge matters so deeply to me.

I will not let that family’s sacrifice be in vain. I will not let their heartbreak be forgotten. I will show those who want to see that God still keeps His promises—and that He still performs miracles.

So as I type these humble words, I know not many people may read them. But I also know this: no amount of horizontal validation—though momentarily fulfilling—will ever bring the peace that vertical validation provides. Whether one person reads this or five million do, I am not seeking approval from the masses.

I am keeping my promise.

I will never stop sharing my miracle.

My Dad, A Fortune Cookie, and a New Beat

My stepdad was a man of simple abundance—and by abundance, I mean abundance. The man was a bit of a hoarder. He collected things. He loved tools, electronics, toys—anything anyone might possibly consider useful. If it existed, odds were it had a home somewhere in his collection.

He was also a connoisseur of little joys. He found pleasure in the simplest things. From him, I learned the satisfaction of an uncomplicated, unpretentious snack plate, assembled without fuss and shared with loved ones on a quiet Sunday evening at home.

He loved food—especially sharing it. He learned to cook at a young age and even taught cake-decorating classes for a time. He passed his collection (read: hoard) of cake pans along to me. Whenever I feel compelled to bake a cake shaped like, say, a rocking horse, I know I’ll find the perfect pan in his stash.

One of his favorite foods to share was Chinese food. Growing up, he’d hunt down the best Chinese restaurants, form friendships with the owners, and somehow negotiate his way into free meals for years. Because of him, Chinese food became a treasured, celebratory staple in our family.

After living a simple-yet-abundant life, my stepdad passed away in 2018. We would have celebrated his 86th birthday this year.

Just two days after my heart transplant, on December 17th, 2023—what would have been his 84th birthday—while I was hallucinating in the ICU, high as a kite on steroids and painkillers, a meal of Chinese food was delivered to my home. Only one fortune cookie came with the order. The message inside read: It’s time to dance to a new beat.

It was a simple message with layers of meaning. What was likely nothing more than a small act of kindness from someone (we still don’t know who) felt to our family like a message from the other side.

That little fortune cookie became, for us, a small miracle. What would have been a simple joy for my dad has become a quiet, yet profound, wonder for me and my family.

As naïve or trivial as it may sound, the ability to find solace and meaning in small joys is a sign of resilience—a healthy and powerful coping mechanism. In the midst of a challenge or crisis, recognizing simple joys and acknowledging small miracles can mean the difference between hope and healing—or grief, depression, and poor outcomes.

When we learn to find joy in simple things, and to see relevance and meaning in small miracles, we don’t diminish our lives—we enrich them. Finding satisfaction in simple abundance doesn’t make us foolish or weak; it shows we’re adaptable, strong, and resourceful.

In fifty years of living, I’ve learned to pivot, absolutely—but I’ve also learned to lean into simple joys and small miracles. Over time, I’ve realized that those big, theatrical scenes of miraculous events or perfect resolutions rarely come to fruition. In fact, when life feels heaviest, those grand solutions are often the least available. But what is available might be a cold can of Diet Coke, a funny movie, a brisk walk with friends to share gossip, or a fortune cookie delivered by a stranger with exactly the right message tucked inside.

Almost a year later, when I received a letter from my heart donor’s mother, she shared that Ella was a dancer. I love the thought that the steady rhythm of her dancer’s heart is now keeping me alive. What a blessing. What an absolute miracle. It’s time to dance to a new beat.

Looking for joy in simple things—finding connection and purpose in a simple-yet-abundant life—might not erase difficulty, but it will offer relief, belonging, and perspective. If I take one tool from my stepdad’s tool hoard, it’s this: the ability to find and savor the small, sustaining wonders quietly waiting all around us. After all, you find what you’re looking for.

A Story For Christmas

n the very cold, very brutal Pennsylvania winter of 1983, my parents found themselves looking for a new place for our little family to live. 

My stepdad had been working as a farm hand, repairing farm and milking equipment for an old couple that owned a dairy in the tiny town of Shippenville.  As part of his pay, we were allowed to live in a small, nearly dilapidated old house with a sagging roof and rotting porch that was next to the barnyard on their property.  As awful as the house sounds, it was charming to me. The surrounding countryside was nothing short of Idyllic in my childhood memory, with horses and cattle grazing in bucolic fields. My older sister and I helped out on the farm by assisting with the milking every morning and afternoon, tending to the chickens and turkeys and pulling weeds in the vegetable garden. We played for hours in the barn, jumping from the haylofts and playing hide-and-seek. We loved it there as children. We were sad to be leaving.

Unfortunately, earlier that fall, after a gloriously warm summer, we were awakened in the middle of the night by the bright glow of fire outside. The three-story barn was in flames—fully engulfed.  Despite the best efforts of the local fire department, the barn burned to the ground. The farmer had just finished hauling in all the hay and oats from the field. Despite warnings from my stepdad that the hay was wet and in the warmth should not be stored in the barn, the farmer loaded it into the barn anyway. Large fans ran on the crop day and night to keep it dry and to keep mold at bay. And it had been an electrical spark from one of the fans that ignited the fire that burned the barn and everything in it.

The crop of hay and oats, gone.

Left without a barn, the tools and crops it housed and the milking equipment adjacent to it, the old farmer had no way of making money. He was forced to sell the farm and land. Including the little house we lived in.

Finding housing in a crunch in such a rural community took great providence, and by December of that year, my parents felt providence was certainly not smiling on them. I am sure desperate prayers were said.

Finally, on the day before Christmas Eve that year, they found an apartment for rent in the neighboring town of Seneca. The apartment was on the second floor above a small factory that made cemetery vaults—not exactly home-sweet-home. But it was good enough for us, for a time.

The next hurdle that needed jumping was moving our family and all our belongings on the night before Christmas Eve. We had no family near us as western Pennsylvania was not our native home. My mom had moved my sister and I from Utah to Pennsylvania after her divorce 5 years earlier. And after she married our step-dad, we had basically lived like nomads, moving wherever there was work. While we had a church community, our congregation was small and geographically spread all over the area. We were poor, and nearly alone. And we only had one little car to our name. There was no U-haul rental nearby. We had access to neither truck, nor trailer.

To top it off, a storm had blown in. That area was prone to lake effect snow and brutal Canadian winds. The wind chill on that night was 60 below zero. 

It sure didn’t feel like Christmas time. And I remember being disappointed—worried even. We had no Christmas tree, no decorations, no tinsel, no gifts, and no angel on top of the tree to help us remember Christ. I feared there really would be no Christmas.

We spent the majority of that day boxing up our things, taking apart furniture, basically working and moving and moving and working and only pausing now and then to ponder how we were going to get everything to our new place with only our little car to take it all.

I’m not sure how this happened—being a child at the time, most things just seemed to miraculously come to pass. Now, through the lens of adulthood, I recognize my parents must have prayed and put out a call for help—and then prayed some more. But somehow, a decent number of farmers from the surrounding community, began pulling up unceremoniously in front of our little old farmhouse. They brought their trucks, trailers and hay wagons and, in the bitter cold of that night, loaded up our belongings and carried them to our tiny apartment in the neighboring town more than a 30 minute drive away. 

But they didn’t stop there. Despite the ice and cold, they then unloaded all the boxes and furnishings and carefully carried them up the long, narrow flight of stairs and placed them in our new home, before returning to their own homes and own families to finish their many chores and prepare for their Christmas celebrations.

And then, just to make the holiday a little more Christmas-like, someone, one of those blessed farmers, returned to our apartment with a Christmas tree. I still remember that tree. To me, with the recollection of a child, it was tall and fat, and sitting on the very top was the most beautiful angel smiling down on us, reminding me of heaven and the true meaning of Christmas. That tree and the angel on top magically drown out those feelings of worry and disappointment I had had earlier. The memory lasts to this day.

Even though Christmas two years ago—the year of my heart transplant—was truly miraculous for our family, filled with more service than we could ever hope to repay and forever sacred to us, the Christmas we spent in Seneca, Pennsylvania will always stand out. That was the year I learned that the greatest gifts are those that remind us what truly matters: hope, kindness, and the light of Christ we carry within.

In the words of Jeffery R. Holland, “Not all angels are from the other side of the veil. Some of them, we walk with and talk with—here, now, every day. … Indeed, Heaven never seems closer than when we see the love of God manifested in the kindness and devotion of people so good and so pure that angelic is the only word that comes to mind.”

May we each, this Christmas, be that angel for someone else. May we follow a prompting, answer a call, have the faith to say yes, and serve each other as Christ serves us.

Jars of Hearts and Fishing Line

Another day, another five-mile walk in the autumn sun. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what a privilege.

There was a time I would have taken that for granted—not just the walking, but the friendship and camaraderie that comes from spending miles in conversation with friends.

What seems like a lifetime ago, I was a runner. Running was solitary for me, exactly how I liked it. It gave me space for my thoughts. Pounding my burdens into the pavement became my therapy.

I began walking with friends after buying my first home and having a few kids. That’s when I discovered the joy of female companionship, and I learned that doing something hard together—especially something physically demanding like exercise—can strengthen relationships in ways words alone cannot.

But life grew noisy. The demands of motherhood and the endless “more important” tasks slowly edged out those near-daily walks with friends.

In 2012, I suffered a traumatizing miscarriage and fell into depression. Aaron gently suggested I find a hobby to help me recover. I decided to certify in group fitness and began teaching a Pilates-and-yoga-fusion class I called Mix Method. Later, I added High Fitness to reach a broader audience and bring a little cardio fun into the mix.

Putting myself out there wasn’t easy at first, but week by week, my class attendance grew. I had my regular ladies who came faithfully, and others who popped in when life allowed. We spent years sweating side by side, learning from one another, laughing, struggling, and celebrating our progress. I called them my friends, and I hoped they felt the same. Doing something difficult—especially something physical—has a way of bonding people.

But it all ended.

That cursed day in October 2021, my heart could take no more. With my ARVC diagnosis, it was no longer safe to teach fitness classes. I was a literal ticking time bomb. Teaching had been my social life, my way of connecting. Without it, I felt like I had no value outside providing classes.

At one point, I had to write an email to High Fitness to cancel my membership and close my instructor portal. I would never teach aerobics safely again; my heart was broken. I explained my situation—that I needed a heart transplant—and their response was, “That must be scary for you. Have fun in your next adventure!”

I wasn’t sure what response I had expected, but it certainly wasn’t that. I felt dropped like a wet brick by a community I thought I could rely on.

There have been times in the last four years when I felt deeply alone. That feeling is common for people who have gone through something as traumatic as a heart transplant—there are few who can relate, and some distance themselves out of discomfort or fear. I also noticed that my conversations often circled back to my health, which can be boring or isolating for others.

Almost exactly two years ago, I sat in my car, tucked inside the garage, feeling utterly destitute. My health was failing, and I knew my days of driving were coming to an end. That morning, while taking my daughter to school during a dizzy spell, I had driven directly into the path of a dump truck, narrowly avoiding disaster with the next turn. I had to admit: I was no longer safe behind the wheel. By that time, I had been waiting for a heart for more than a year. I realized that in order to get better, things were going to have to get so much worse. I needed a miracle. I cried. I prayed. I cried and prayed again.

And I felt so alone.

I asked God to send me someone, anyone, to help me—someone to ease my burden, to distract me from the crushing loneliness. The answer was clear: no.

Surprised? I was. It seemed like such a simple request. I wasn’t asking for an earth-shaking miracle. I wasn’t asking for the heart I needed. I was asking for someone to reach out and ease my loneliness.

The answer was no because I had lessons to learn—one of which was to notice and appreciate the ways people were already showing up, even in small ways.

This is one reason I collect heart-shaped rocks.

On my kitchen counter sits a jar of heart rocks. Most are collected from nature—small gifts from a loving Father in Heaven, reminders to see miracles every day. Some are gifts from people in my life, accompanied by notes that say, “I saw this rock and thought of you.”

My son, Aiden, served a mission in Ghana. Fishing is a big part of life there in Cape Coast. Fishermen take large nets from the beach and cast them into the ocean. At the end of the day, they pull the nets ashore to see what they’ve caught. The nets are huge, and they cannot be hauled in by one man alone—so others step in to help.

One day, Aiden and his companion came across such a scene. They began to help pull for an hour before two of the fishermen began arguing. To Aiden’s surprise, everyone else dropped the line and walked away. No fish were hauled in that day.

In life, we all have our own lines we’re pulling, our own responsibilities and messy challenges. At the same time, we are called to show up for others. We don’t have to haul in the nets alone.

Recognizing how people show up—big or small—makes a difference. A sincere, “How can I pray for you?” or “You’re in my prayers” goes a long way. Faith-filled prayer, followed by acting on promptings, is one of the most charitable things we can do. After all, in the final hours before His death, that is exactly what Christ did for all of us.

I am blessed to see these acts in my life: God’s angels taking up my line, helping me haul in my nets. Offering a prayer, silent or spoken. Noticing a heart-shaped rock, cloud, or even a Pringles chip. Sending a morning text: “Walk at 9?”—and then filling the miles with our words and laughter.

What a privilege.

Witness Marks

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.

What Happened In June

Over the next several weeks, I returned to the emergency department multiple times, each visit marked by being stuck in a slow ventricular tachycardia rhythm. Each time, the team adjusted my ICD/pacemaker settings to pace me out of the arrhythmia—lowering the threshold again and again—until it finally settled at 111 beats per minute. That meant any heart rate above 111 bpm would trigger therapeutic pacing.

As a result, my activity had to be extremely limited until the issue could be resolved—either through healing, additional ablations, or transplant.

On June 14, 2022, we had completed all of the pre-transplant evaluation testing and received insurance approval. The only thing left was officially being listed. I messaged Sarah, my transplant coordinator at the time, asking if there was any update. Within hours, she called to tell me I was officially listed for transplant.

It was a surreal moment. At first, I felt a flicker of excitement—we were one step closer to closing this chapter, I thought. But that feeling was quickly eclipsed by fear. How does one prepare for something like a heart transplant? Death is woven into the equation—the death of the donor, and the possibility of one’s own.

We decided to put it out of our minds for the day and drove down to Utah County to enjoy the Utah Valley Parade of Homes. But before we even made it into our first house, my phone rang again. It was Sarah.

“Fiauna, are you ready to come into the hospital? We can have a room ready for you by the end of the day.”

I wasn’t expecting that call—not at all—and I wasn’t sure what it meant or how to respond. I didn’t want to go back into the hospital, especially not for an indeterminate stay while waiting for a donor heart. And yet, if this was part of the process, I didn’t want to risk missing my perfect match. I told her yes and listened as she explained the next steps. I had a few hours to prepare while they readied a room. Once it was available, admitting would call and tell me to come in.

We toured a few homes before heading back to pack and wait. I called some family members to let them know, expecting to feel something—excitement, urgency, clarity. Instead, something felt off. With every phone call, my confidence wavered. I began to second-guess everything.

Around 5:30 that evening, the call finally came. We finished dinner and quietly, nervously drove up to the hospital. I had a pit in my stomach the entire way. I couldn’t quite articulate it, but something felt deeply wrong.

What followed over the next five days was one of the most emotionally wrenching experiences of my life. I wish I could say something transformative happened during that stay, but it didn’t—at least not immediately. The lessons would take another eighteen months to fully surface and take shape.

That first night, Aaron and I sat in my hospital room—fully expecting to stay there until transplant—and called another transplant recipient, someone who had already walked this road and could offer advice. She was kind, generous, and informative. Still, when the call ended, I felt even less certain. Maybe I didn’t need a transplant. Maybe the doctors were wrong. I went to sleep confused and deeply conflicted.

The next morning, a group from the heart failure and electrophysiology teams came into my room and asked me bluntly, “Why are you here?”

I was stunned. What did they mean? I had been told to come—by them.

I was then informed that there was no chance I would receive a transplant at that point. The electrophysiology team suggested trying different medications before moving forward with transplant. Then they left the room without a clear plan, leaving me to question everything.

Later that day, while Aaron stepped out to get some work done, the discharge planner came in and asked—again—why I was there and when I hoped to go home.

“I’m here for a heart transplant,” I said, increasingly confused. “I didn’t expect to go home until after that.”

She responded, “I don’t even think we do heart transplants anymore—not since COVID. We don’t get many viable donor hearts, and the hospital across town has an entire floor full of people waiting.”

When she left, I fell apart.

Aaron returned to find me inconsolable—crying, angry, and ashamed. I couldn’t understand why this was happening. I had followed instructions. I had shown up when told. And yet I felt as though I’d done something wrong, though I had no idea what—or how to fix it. That night, the sun seemed to set on my spirit. I felt confused, betrayed, and unsure of whom to trust. Aaron and I prayed for peace and guidance.

The next morning, the doctors returned—this time separately. Dr. Shah from the heart failure team sat with us and explained clearly that the likelihood of transplant happening anytime soon was slim. He recommended that I go home as Status 6, acknowledging that transplant at that status is rare. We appreciated his honesty.

Later, the electrophysiology team presented a new medication option—one that might control the VT with fewer side effects. The drugs were high-risk, but the hope was that they could stabilize me long enough for a suitable heart to become available. Again, we appreciated the clarity. After careful consideration, we agreed to the plan.

I would remain hospitalized for the rest of the week so they could monitor me for dangerous side effects. If all went well, I would go home to wait for transplant as Status 6.

For the next three days, I stayed on telemetry and had an EKG every twelve hours. My heart tolerated the new medication regimen well. I wish I could say I felt better on it. I told the doctors that I did—partly because I was still wrestling with anger, regret, and an unexpected sense of shame—but physically, I didn’t feel much different.

What I did feel was peace.

This was the right course of action. I would wait at home with my family for the perfect heart to become available—no matter how long it took.