Emma

A few weeks ago I watched a movie about Emma Smith, the wife of the prophet Joseph Smith. I was surprised by how many challenges Emma endured during her life:

*Emma was disowned by her father for marrying Joseph and joining the Church.

*Emma had 11 children. 6 of them died.

*Emma spent much time raising her children alone while Joseph Smith was unjustly imprisoned or away on church business.

*Emma endured persecution of her husband and family for the gospel's sake.

*Emma was forced by angry mobs to leave home after home.

*Emma was widowed at a young age when Joseph was martyred for his religious beliefs.

*Emma remarried a man who eventually had an affair with another woman. Emma later welcomed the resulting illegitimate child into her own home.

*Emma stood by her husband as church members criticized and denounced him.

*Emma watched her children suffer and desperately miss Joseph while he was away.

Despite all she was asked to endure, her beautiful letters to Joseph while he was incarcerated in Liberty Jail reveal her great strength. Below are some of my favorite passages.

Excerpt from letter to Joseph dated March 9, 1837:

The walls, bars, and bolts, rolling rivers, running streams, rising hills, sinking valleys, and spreading prairies that separate us and the cruel injustice that first cast you into prison and still holds you there, with many other considerations, places my feelings far beyond description...No one but God knows the reflections of my mind and the feelings of my heart when I left our house and home and almost all of everything that we possessed excepting our little children and took my journey out of the state of Missouri, leaving you shut up in that lonesome prison...[yet] I shall live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind heaven that I should...

Excerpt from letter to Joseph dated April 25, 1837:

...I still believe if we humble ourselves and are as faithful as we can be, we shall be delivered from every snare that may be laid for our feet.