Choosing Life When Life Feels Heavy

There is something tender to me about final words.

When people know their time speaking is coming to an end, they usually stop worrying about sounding impressive. They say what matters most. They bear their testimony or recap the truths they were trying to teach. And both Moses and Lehi, standing near the end of their lives, chose to speak about choices.

Not perfection.
Not performance.
Choices.

Moses taught the people that life and death, blessing and cursing, were set before them. Then he pleads almost like a loving parent, “choose life.”

I don’t think he was talking only about physical life. I think he was talking about spiritual life too.

Peace.

Hope.

Connection with God.

The kind of life that still breathes even in the middle of heartbreak.

Then Lehi expands the teaching even more beautifully when he reminds his family they are “free to choose liberty and eternal life.”

Free to choose.

I think sometimes we forget that.

There have been plenty of times in my life where circumstances felt so loud that I forgot I still had agency.

Times where grief sat heavy on my chest.

Times where I begged heaven for answers and all I heard was silence.

Times where I felt emotionally exhausted trying to run businesses, care for people, show up spiritually, and still somehow hold myself together.

And yet, even there, God quietly reminded me:

You still get to choose what direction your heart turns.

That truth has changed me.

Because sometimes “choosing life” does not look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like opening my scriptures instead of replaying fear in my mind. Sometimes it looks like going to the temple when I feel too tired to go. Sometimes it is choosing to pray honestly instead of pretending I’m fine. Sometimes it is getting out of bed. Trying again. Softening instead of hardening.

I used to think choosing life meant always feeling strong in faith.

Now I think it often means staying willing.

Willing to turn toward God again.
Willing to trust Him again.
Willing to believe there is still goodness ahead even when I cannot fully see it yet.

And maybe that is why I love these passages so much. Neither Moses nor Lehi spoke with shame. They spoke with invitation.

Like two men who knew how hard mortality could feel and still testified that God had made a way forward.

A way back to Him.
A way back to peace.
A way back to life.