During Education Week at BYU, Elder Bednar asked that we flood the internet with our testimonies. He said, “My beloved brothers and sisters, what has been accomplished thus far in this dispensation communicating gospel messages through social media channels is a good beginning—but only a small trickle. I now extend to you the invitation to help transform the trickle into a flood. Beginning at this place on this day, I exhort you to sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness and truth—messages that are authentic, edifying, and praiseworthy—and literally to sweep the earth as with a flood.”

So I am going to share my thoughts and testimony of Jesus Christ.

My name is Michelle Iverson. I am a wife, mother, teacher, writer, missionary, and disciple of Jesus Christ and I believe that love is a super power!

It is a power we use in everyday life as we care for our families and friends, serve others through our work and church callings, and share the gospel. But there are also those defining moments in life where we get to find out what we are made of and it is in those moments that we can call on love to help us make it through.

When I was a very little girl I was sexually abused by my grandfather. This was a very scary experience for me that continued on for many years. I felt confused because I really loved my grandpa and I loved myself, but what I was experiencing made me wonder if I should love either one.

Those early defining moments in my life created a wall around my heart. I no longer saw myself through eyes of love. In fact, I hated myself. When I looked in the mirror, I could never see who I really was. I saw something so far from the truth. I could only see a broken, ugly, and unlovable image looking back at me. I carried secrets and those secrets were heavy and dark.

As I grew up and started to date, I realized that I had some serious issues with trust and commitment. I saw men as untrustworthy, and so that is what I often attracted and experienced in my relationships. Several years after I returned from serving a mission, I met and married Tyler. A couple of years into our marriage, I discovered he was struggling with a pornography addiction. All of the fears and insecurities I had carried my whole life were unleashed again, and I was left wondering if there was a single man on the planet I could truly trust with my heart.

Here it was, another defining moment. I remember praying and venting all of my pain, loneliness, and anger to Heavenly Father one night. I laid next to Tyler and quietly cried in the dark. I was angry, but I knew that if I was ever going to heal my heart and the incorrect perceptions I had of myself, I had to learn how to love and it had to start with me.

Throughout my life, I have found that the overriding lesson here on earth is love. We are given many experience where we learn how to wield our superpower with faith and humility. True love, the kind that heals lives and changes hearts, comes from Christ. He is the source of our power and I have seen his grace and light work wonders in my life and literally “save the day” in the most heroic ways. Anything I have been able to overcome is only because of him. He has healed my heart, my children, and my husband.

My greatest desire is to love as he loves, and life is giving me many opportunities to practice. It is the difficult things we face that carve out a deeper reservoir of light within us and allow us to use our powers for good! I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I know that he lives! He is real, and when I look at myself now, I am looking for him.

Michelle Iverson is a wife, mother, author, speaker, teacher and follower of Jesus Christ. She loves to share her insights and experiences through her writing and teaching and seeks to restore well-being to the lives of those who suffer. After experiencing sexual abuse in her childhood, and sexual addiction in her marriage, she and her husband Tyler have become passionate about sharing their story. Michelle’s true passion is helping women overcome adversity through the “sacred art of self-nurture.”

The post #BecauseofHim — Healing from Abuse and a Spouse’s Addiction appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

At the impressionable age of nine, Emily witnessed the murder of her 13-year-old sister at the hands of their own mother. After hearing this one fact about Emily, probably much like you, I wanted to know more about her. Thankfully she has an open heart, even after all she has been through, and is willing to share it with us. However, this is not about relating the negative experiences that Emily had to endure as a child, it is about the healing that she has found since that time.

After growing up abused, and in foster care and adoptive homes Emily didn’t have a good attitude towards religion, families, or her own body. Emily was not a Mormon at this time of her life. She admits that she tends to think in a scientific way, needing evidence for belief. She was not looking for religion or change, but it came anyway. Her change of heart began with an interest in ballroom dance.

As she took ballroom dance lessons she learned many true principles that she had little experience with in her life before. Because of the physical abuse that Emily suffered she felt disconnected from her body, although she didn’t realize it. Through dance she was forced to think about her body, to feel it, to focus on how it helped her. The healing of  negative emotions associated with her body began on the dance floor. It taught her to be present in her body in a way that hadn’t happened before.

Through dance Emily began to learn the power of relationships- that when each person in the relationship does his or her part there is a wonderful reward. This would later lead to her comprehension of the importance of covenants.

Emily’s dance instructor was a positive influence in her changing life. She spent time with his family and it was an eye opening experience after the abnormal family situations she grew up in. Getting to know his family taught her entirely new ideas about families. She never felt the need for a father before, not the kind she had seen anyway. But now she saw a new type of father – loving, supportive, kind – maybe she could use that kind of Heavenly Father.

There is no doubt in Emily’s mind that without the lessons she learned in dance she would not have been able to understand, or have a heart soft enough, to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is something I haven’t told you about Emily that may surprise you. She is Deaf. That’s right, a ballroom dancer who is Deaf. Just chalk up another “Wow!” in her story. Keep reading, because there are more.

Emily’s dance instructor asked for her help in return one day. He was attending a job fair at church and found someone who was also Deaf who needed a job. He asked Emily if she had any leads. It impressed Emily that this church would provide interpreters for the Deaf, because they are so hard to come by at other congregations she’s attended, so she asked what church it was. She didn’t even know what the name of the church meant! Thank heavens for the internet because that’s where she found Mormonism – Mormon.org and then later LDS.org.

It was not an overnight process for Emily though. She doesn’t want anyone to think it was that easy. It took nine months from that first missionary contact until she was baptized just last week.

“I was like a broken glass that had to be slowly and patiently fused back together so that I would be present and whole and able to make that choice. If people had been disrespectful or pushy, it would have shattered me, and I would not have made the choice to convert.”

The process of investigating the gospel started with talking to the missionaries. Emily read the Book of Mormon many times. She focused on Moroni 10:

“Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” Moroni 10:3-5

As Emily’s studies went on she also made changes in her life. She had been living with a man she was not married to, so she moved out and into a tiny apartment at a financial loss. Her eating and drinking habits changed. Her wardrobe became more modest, due to her righteous desires, but also due to a mystery gift box of modest clothing. She learned to tithe and re-read the Bible with an increased understanding of her place in God’s plan.

Looking back the change seems huge to Emily, but really it wasn’t. It was a culmination of little steps, a progressive sequence. At any point her progress could have been stopped. Emily’s confidence that it has all unfolded as it should can give us all peace in troubled times.

This step-by-step process is similar to how she views her baptism. It is a large step to take in her life, but she knows it doesn’t mean she is perfect. It is just another step in the path to get closer to her Heavenly Father. It is another beginning.

Join us Thursday to see what Emily has been doing since her baptism.

The post Conversion Stories: Emily (part 1) appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.