Emma Smith's story has always torn at my heartstrings. Like many other happy newlyweds, she and Joseph eagerly began planning for their future family. Emma became pregnant in the midst of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the era of the early 19th century, and her husband happened to be the prophet chosen by God to usher in this last-days dispensation, to gather in one all truths, priesthood powers, and ordinances of past dispensations. It wasn't a simple calling. He was no ordinary preacher, graduating from a seminary after years of preparation. Joseph didn't attend a seminary. He was tutored by God himself and by angels who ministered to him directly and gave him commandments from God.
Most people know that Emma and Joseph had a rough time becoming parents. They lost multiple children during pregnancy and some after birth. Each loss as gut-wrenching and painful as the first. But did you know that the first loss coincided with another great loss?
Most people know that Joseph Smith lost 116 pages of the earliest translation of the Book of Mormon, comprising the now lost Book of Lehi. We learned the story as primary children in Sunday School.
Joseph had accomplished an incredible feat. Through multiple scribes, he had transmitted the holy writ of ancient Hebrew-American prophets. It wasn't even close to done, but 116 written pages was nothing to sneeze at. One of the later scribes, Martin Harris, who was also helping to finance the translation process, asked Joseph to inquire of the Lord. He wanted to know if he could take the pages to prove to his family the validity of this work he'd been supporting financially. Martin's wife seemed skeptical, and others in his family were laughing at him, too. He knew Joseph was a prophet, not a fraud. He had seen the miraculous work of translation by the power of God with his own eyes and he knew Joseph's heavenly gifts were real. But he wanted to hush up his critics, maybe convert them in the process. Here, in these 116 pages, was proof. Joseph asked God, as Martin implored him to do. God said no.
This is the part where, in Sunday School, we focus on the lesson of accepting God's answers because Joseph fails to do this. At first, he goes to Martin and tells him no, but then Martin asks again. And again. Each time Joseph asks God, the answer is the same. Finally, Joseph asks God and he receives a conditional yes: Martin Harris must only show the pages to five specific people in his family, and he must keep them secure and locked away and he must return them at a certain date.
Martin doesn't keep his promise. He and his wife show the manuscript to people outside the five approved ones. The end result is that the 116 pages become lost. Martin Harris cannot find them. His wife claims not to know where they are, though the drawers they were locked within were owned by her and she had the key. Nobody knows what has become of the sacred and precious text that we will never read.
In Sunday School the lesson is clear. Don't ask God for something He has already forbidden. This is all I had really thought about when I heard the story thereafter. What a sad loss of precious, sacred knowledge!
But when you read Joseph's own words about this period of time, it becomes clear that Joseph and Emma were suffering much more than just one loss.
"To us, at least, the heavens seemed clothed with blackness, and the earth shrouded with gloom. I have often said within myself that if a continual punishment, as severe as that which we experienced on that occasion, were to be inflicted upon the most wicked characters who ever stood upon the footstool of the Almighty--if even their punishment were no greater than that, I should feel to pity their condition." (Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith)
Joseph was in the gall of bitterness. He believed his calling had ended, that his trust with God had been shattered, and that God wouldn't trust him with the rest of his mission. The heavens felt distant. The plates and the translators (special artifacts prepared to aid a seer in the process of spiritual translation) were taken by the angel.
What's worse, Joseph had nearly lost Emma when her pregnancy ended in a complicated birth and the death of their firstborn son, just before they learned of Martin's betrayal. As Joseph traveled back to Palmyra, he lost consciousness. The young couple were in stress, in grief, and in crisis. And it was during this period of grief that Martin was expected to return the papers that represented all their work on the Book of Mormon translation up to this point.
When Martin finally showed up, he was afraid to confront Joseph and tell him the awful news. When he did, Joseph cried, "All is lost! All is lost!"
For several months, about six, Joseph didn't translate anything except a rebuke from the Lord aimed directly at him.
As I reread this story for my Pearl of Great Price class at BYU, just over five months after Abigail came to us, I couldn't help but weep.
I knew what heavens clothed in blackness and shrouded with gloom felt like. I knew what the loss of a child means. I knew how grief could make one feel condemned, blamed, and punished by misfortunes.
I was able, this time, to picture Joseph and Emma, as the hopeful newlywed couple they were. The pains of the future were far off, and the hopes of a prosperous and God-led future filled their view. They were expecting their first child! And Joseph was making progress on his life's divinely called work! Everything was right with the world, except perhaps the constant state of poverty and needing help from family and friends. But imagine that sense of hope they must have felt. Bun in the oven, sacred book in the process of translation. It was a high time, a busy and hopeful time, a blessed time.
Then the unthinkable happened. The baby was lost. The pages were lost. His standing with God was in question. Had Joseph and Martin lost their souls, too? Was there forgiveness for what they had done?
Yes. By the fall of that year, the translation started again. God gave a school teacher named Oliver Cowdery a vision of the plates and sent him straight to Joseph's door. Through Oliver as scribe, the translation went faster than ever.
But the lost pages were never retranslated, as enemies had gotten hold of them, ready to find any flaw in Joseph's retranslation to prove he wasn't inspired. What was lost was lost. And the baby that had died was not brought miraculously back to life, either. What was loved was lost. It's easy to see why Joseph and Emma, who had suffered so much on their journey to try to fulfill God's purposes, would rejoice when later visions taught them of the eternal nature of families. Emma would rock that baby in a future time and place where death would no more come to separate parents and children.
Emma and Joseph suffered so much more loss than I have in my life. "Only five of Joseph and Emma's 11 children (including two adopted) lived beyond childhood." (Source) It didn't just happen to them once. Through sickness and mob actions, they lost other babies. The losses never got any easier. They were blessed to raise multiple children, including an adopted child, though that child's twin died of exposure because of a combination of illness and mob action. Later in life, long after Joseph's own untimely death, Emma would also raise the child of her second husband's mistress. Emma knew she would have her children, all of them, one day. She remained a faithful wife and mother until the end of her life on earth and I love to imagine her now, surrounded--just surrounded--by her children who are bonded to her in love.
The lesson of the lost 116 pages feels different to me now. In the context of what else was lost, I can almost--almost--feel the desperate and hopeless grief Joseph expressed when he cried, "All is lost! All is lost!"
I have made bad calls in my life--tons of them. Millions of them, maybe. And I have experienced separation from God because of that sin. I have also experienced the redeeming embrace of the atonement of Jesus Christ.
I know that God is love and God is good. As I've listened to Emily Freeman's beautiful book, Even This, I have come to believe that God truly is good all the time. There is only this small part that we see. We see death and sin and sorrow, but in that other place it becomes life and forgiveness and joy through Jesus Christ. This life is not the end. If it were, then tragedies would be permanent, as permanent as they actually feel to be when we are living through them. Because this is not truly the end, there is hope and the possibility of future joy.
I am learning that there can also be joy right now. Yesterday was a heavy grief day. In reading so much about Abraham and Isaac and Sarah; then Joseph and Emma Smith--I was swimming in deep water. I relived emotions that are so many months old now.
Less than six months ago, I was pregnant.
I was eagerly anticipating our first girl child. I was hoping, through the premonitions of trouble, that all would be well with us.
On the other side of those five months and change, Bill and I are thriving and struggling. Some moments we feel great and are accomplishing our work and loving our kids and each other. At other times, we ache. Those feelings manifest as pain or weakness or exhaustion in our bodies. We are less patient with one another and with our children.
But then, for me at least, I see a white butterfly in the shasta daisies of Abigail's garden, and I hear the wind rustle the leaves of some nearby trees, and I know she is not lost. She is here. I can't see her yet but she's here. I thank God for these people and stories that have given me perspective. I will probably write more on scriptural infant or child loss because it is strangely comforting to know that bad things happen to good people when those bad things have happened to you, too. What is your favorite scripture or history story about loss?
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