I Want to Be Belle!

I, along with 500,000 people in Utah Valley, was told the heroic story of Arabella (Belle) Smith by Elder Holland at our Regional Conference this weekend and I was blown away.

I have hiked up the Hole in the Rock where the pioneers traveled down with their wagons and horses and know how steep and how daunting it seemed to me just walking it, let alone trying to keep a wagon and a team of horses upright on such a treacherous trail.

Elder Holland described how Belle and her husband were the last in the line of a group of pioneers to go down this "hole."  Her husband, Stanford, had helped the others make it down all day and when he returned to the top to get his family and wagon ready, he found he had been left behind.  The rest of the group had already crossed the river below and had apparently forgotten about him.  Stanford figured they would have to give up.  He said, "I am afraid we can't make it."

And it was Belle's courage that blew me away.  She said, "We must make it."  He had done this before and knew how hard it was even for ten men to hold back the wagon.  He told her, "If we only had a few men to hold the wagon back we might make it, Belle."  And in the greatest courage and show of faith I have ever heard, she told him, "I'll do the holding back."

So she left her children at the top of that cliff (take a look at it again) on a blanket and grabbed the reins of the horse hitched to the back of the wagon and they started down the hole.  Elder Holland said she and the horse were catapulted forward from the huge weight of the wagon, but she dug in her heels and pulled even harder.  A jagged rock cut a gash in her leg from her heel to her hip.  The horse fell to his haunches and was dragged down most of the way.  She was bleeding, dirty, and torn when they reached the bottom, but she and her husband alone had accomplished the impossible.  The two of them had made it --working together with the miracles of heaven.  When the men (who had now recognized they had left the Smiths behind) returned, Stanford yelled to them, "Forget it, fellows. . . . My wife here is all the  help a fellow needs."  (See David E. Miller, Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1959, pp. 101–18.)


When I heard this story this weekend, I wanted to be Belle with all of my heart.  I wanted to be the kind of woman, the kind of wife, the kind of mother that says, "We must make it.  I'll do the holding back."  We must fight off the world, we must keep our home a sacred and safe place to be.  We must not give up on our children even though they have weaknesses and trials.  We must make it down--and we must make it down together.  And we will have to do some of it alone.  The ward will help, our friends will help, our cousins and aunts and grandparents will help, but ultimately it is what happens behind closed doors, in the day to day interactions that really influences and teaches children and we have to do that part alone as a husband and wife--with the miracles of the Lord.  
The horse falling to its haunches and literally acting as a dead weight surely helped.  I am sure there were angels there, too, pushing back on that wagon, keeping it from overturning on top of Stanford. But it wasn't easy.  The Lord didn't just pick up the wagon and place it safely down at the bottom of the cliff.  She still was cut hideously.  It was painful. That didn't mean it was wrong or that she shouldn't keep trying.  She had to pull even harder.  She and Stanford and the Lord had to save their family--and they did it together.


And so I'll do the holding back.  I'll work with my husband to ensure that my family is growing in their knowledge of the Lord, that we love each other and are kind. I'll hold back when I want to yell and be degrading.  I'll pull hard to cut out unnecessary distractions.  I'll hold back my fear that we aren't like everyone else and that we might up end up weird.  Elder Holland added at the end of his talk, "Pray more, read more.  Shut down the noise.  Enjoy quiet nights and stunningly beautiful mornings.  Enjoy nature  more."  


I'll do the holding back, because that is all the help a fellow needs.