What is it you know about your children that they do not? What is it that you see in them that they cannot yet see in themselves?
You have watched them from the beginning. You saw them long before they were aware of themselves. You watched them take their first steps. You watched them fall, get up, and try again until they learned to walk. They followed the same process when learning to tie their shoes, and then again when they learned to ride a bike. This is the process of learning by experience.
Did you see them as failures or as someone in the process of becoming something?
Were you hard on them when they didn’t get things right the first time, or the second, or the millionth? Did you see them as they are, or as who they were becoming?
I often think about the boy I once was. If I could meet that boy, knowing what I know now, I would tell him he is not a failure. I would try to help him understand not just what he is, but what he is in the process of becoming. I would tell him his life has value, even if the path ahead feels hard, even if it feels like it is all uphill. And above all, I would tell him about Jesus.
What I once thought was something wrong with me- failure, weakness, not measuring up- I have come to see differently. I did not understand the process of becoming. I did not see that this is what it means to come into the light of Christ. It is not just my story. It is the story we all live. And we are not finished yet.
The Creation: In the Beginning
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:1–3).
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Let there be light.
When we begin our mortal journey, we are unaware of almost everything. Every need is provided for us. We receive light before we understand what it means. As we grow, we begin to receive greater light and understanding. Light is not given all at once; partial light is provided, just enough to illuminate the path immediately in front of us, not the whole journey ahead. We learn to walk before we learn to tie our shoes. We learn to speak before we learn what words mean. At this stage, we don’t have much experience. We have not yet been asked to carry the consequences of our choices.
In the beginning, life is simple, not because everything is understood, but because nothing has been tested.
The Fall: A Hard Recognition
That simplicity doesn’t last. At some point, everything changes.
By partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve entered a new condition. God declared that they would come to know good and evil by their own experience (Genesis 3:22; Moses 5:11). The path to the tree of life was no longer through innocence; it had to be reached through mortality (Alma 42:5–7).
We follow that same pattern. We begin to act on the partial light we have been given, but that light is not complete (1 Corinthians 13:9-10). We act without fully understanding, and then we live with the consequences.
Through this process, we become more aware that actions have consequences. The path ahead is illuminated ever so slightly to the realization of what we did not see before.
But not everything we experience is the result of our own choices. When the disciples asked who had sinned that a man was born blind, Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents” (John 9:1–3).
For a long time, I thought that something was wrong with me. Why didn’t I fit in? Why did I seem so different? Why did it take me so long to understand things? Why did it feel like I was always in a fog? Why did I always feel like I could never measure up? Some of what shaped me came from things I did not choose; wounds I did not cause, and circumstances I could not control.
But I’ve come to see things differently.
I wasn’t struggling because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I was living in a fallen world, facing things I didn’t cause and couldn’t fix on my own. I would need help to become what I was meant to be.
I was learning good and evil by my own experience. I was reaching for more light, but often did so imperfectly, trusting my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–7) and sometimes turning away from the very source of light itself (John 3:19).
I began to see that I was not starting from a neutral place. Not all of us begin in the same place. How we start is given, not earned (Doctrine & Covenants 38:26–28; Jacob 5), and it is not a measure of our worth. It is part of the condition of this life. Through this experience, I began to see something I hadn’t understood before: I could not be my own source of light.
This is where I found Christ. He came to me. I began to realize that He knew me, understood me perfectly, and was inviting me to come to Him. In a very real sense, I began to feel peace that has come in no other way. I began to realize that the path forward was not back to innocence. It is forward, through the fire of mortality. This is not a mistake in the plan. This is the plan.
Christ’s Atonement: Let There Be Light (Again), Redemption
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).
I could not return to innocence. That is exactly why Jesus Christ came. As the scriptures teach, “the Messiah cometh… that he may redeem the children of men from the fall” (2 Nephi 2:26). He does not take me back through innocence. He leads me forward toward redemption. What I cannot undo, He makes right. He is the light that shineth in darkness (John 1:5).
Through Him, this life is not just where I experience the Fall; it is where I receive light, again and again, as I turn to Him. The light I have now is not the light I began with. It is not innocence; it is redemption, and it is only possible because of Him.
“Let There Be Light” has happened over and over again in my life. It is because of Him.
Let there be light.
Let there be Jesus.