Light In Their Eyes

There is a story told of how a group of Latter-day Saint youth was going on a trip to Jerusalem. In order to gain access to the area the group needed to sign a form saying that they would not proselyte. During a meeting between the group leaders and their Israeli liaisons, one of the liaisons said that he was not worried about the students proselyting, but wondered about how to turn off the light in their eyes.

Last year, I discovered a way to do just that in myself. A series of unfortunate events led to an understandable state of despair. Feeling the walls enclosing and needing to breathe I set out for the highest place I had easy access to, the roof of my residence. I needed my mind to hearken back to a simpler time, a time where the cares I currently had could clear. I pulled out my phone and searched for a picture of the rising sun. After a bit of searching, I found it- a picture I had taken of a remarkable sunrise months before. That sun brought warmth to my soul. As I sat staring at this picture yearning for the light of that sun to permeate my life, it faded away and left behind in the spot where the sun had been was the reflection of my eye. The reflection had been there the whole time I stared at the screen; it was just filled with light before. As I sat there and stared into my own soul it was made clear, I must not lose the light that is in my eyes.

This voyage of discovery took me not only into a world where I learned how to lose the light in my eyes, but through a world where I learned how to gain it back.