A Modern Anti-Nephi-Lehi

So, I know that you all LOVE it when I post about serious things (#sarcasm, for those that missed it), but this one is actually going to be pretty cool.

Today for work, I went on a journey.  My supervisor called me the other day to ask me to go because five girls from our house would be going, so we would technically need two staff.  I agreed because it sounded like something that would be super cool.  I got to work around 8:30a and prepared a lunch.  I changed into a swimsuit, and at 9:00a, me and the girls left to join the larger group of girls that would be going on this journey.

Let me now say something about these girls.  All of them are addicted to something, something bad that is killing them.  Or was.  They all had varying states of sobriety, and we got the opportunity to celebrate each and every girl and her accomplishments, from 1.5 years of sobriety down to two days clean.  After we introduced everyone, we loaded up some food and stuff into two vans, jumped in, and we drove off.  No one but the man and woman running the group knew where we were going.  This, I learned, was actually a tactic to get us all to our most vulnerable state.  We needed to be vulnerable so that we could be real with each other and ourselves.  We needed to be vulnerable so that we would remember today.

After two hours of driving, we arrived at our destination:  Middle of Nowhere, Desert, Utah.  Actually, it has a name:  Delta.  You may have heard of that.  Anyway, we stopped at a museum and learned about the Japanese internment camp that was located near the town back during World War II.  On our way out of the museum, we were each allowed to pick up a black obsidian rock.  The man running the journey told us that these black rocks were to represent the dark parts of ourselves that we desired to get rid of.  Ideally, they were to be our addictions.  From that point on in my day, I thought about my addictions, my darkest secrets that few people know.  Stuff that has been a significant part of my life since high school.  I focused on those addictions and visualized pushing the darkness into the rock that I was squeezing in my hands.

Here comes the cool part.  We drove out of Delta to the real Middle of Nowhere, Desert, Utah.  We all had our rocks in hand.  We found a lone tree, and walked over to it.  The man running everything produced a shovel and told us we were going to dig a hole as deep as we felt it needed to go, and then we were going to throw our rocks in it.  My mind immediately jumped to the story of the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi in the Book of Mormon.  They had done this exact same thing!  They had dug a pit and then thrown their weapons of war into it because those weapons served as symbols.  They threw into that pit a part of their lives.  And here I was in the middle of the desert in Utah, standing in a circle around our pit, waiting for my turn to let go of my addictions and drop my rock in.

As it turns out, I went last.  I was finding it surprisingly difficult to want to throw that rock in.  Yet, at the same time, part of me was like, "LET ME GO!  I CAN'T WAIT TO BE RID OF THIS!!!!"  I stood at the edge and chose to let go of my addictions and bad tendencies because I was tired of those filthy chains binding me down.  And then, I threw my rock down to join the others.

We proceeded to bury them and make it look like nothing had been done.  We didn't want anyone to dig up what we had left behind.  It was a very emotional moment for everyone, myself included.  All I could think about was how happy and light I felt for making a solid, conscious decision to let go of my problems.

We drove down the highway for a little bit to a knoll, and there we started looking for sunstones.  They are these really cool rocks that look kind of like quartz, except they are completely see-through and tinted yellow, like the sun.  We needed to find them so that we could be reminded of our commitment to let go of our addictions and leave them in a hole in the desert.  I picked up quite a few and enjoyed working in the hot sun to find them.

The rest of the day was nice, but that was the part I wanted to focus on.  I didn't get back to work until 9:00p, but it was entirely worth it.  I am committed to leaving those parts of me in the desert where I will never find them again.  That's not to say that I won't have problems with my addictions in the future:  I will because I'm human.  But, something happened out there that has changed my perspective on it.  I have let go, and I don't plan on grabbing back on.