The Poem

When I was a child, I found a poem on a page that had been torn from a pamphlet someone had ripped apart and strewn on the sidewalk. I grew up in public housing projects and was a loner, but I had three escapes: books, Elvis Presley movies, and poetry. I loved poetry. It spoke to a part of me I could not identify. There seemed to be no word to describe it. Curious about the poem, I picked it up and took it home.

I read that poem every day, sometimes several times a day, in the years that followed. Sitting in class, walking the halls to and from classes, sitting alone at recess, I would find parts of that poem coming to my mind. I had never memorized a poem before, but this one was different. There was something in it that spoke to me and touched me.

I always felt different from other children. I felt at times that there was another home somewhere, and if I really tried I could sort of remember it. The poem encouraged these feelings. From time to time I would remove it from my drawer and read it. I wondered how many people like me there were in the world and if I would ever meet any of them.

Imagine my surprise many years later when, as an investigator sitting in my first sacrament meeting, I opened the hymnbook to the page indicated and saw the poem I had found all those years ago. The arrangement was different from the one I had sung aloud to myself when I couldn’t sleep or when I would awaken in the middle of the night crying, but I recognized even the notes that sounded from the piano.

While everyone else sang “O My Father” (Hymns, no. 292), I could only sit and cry, knowing that God had placed that song in my path as a child.

As I sat in that sacrament meeting, listening to my poem being sung by the congregation, I knew I was on the right path. I knew that what the missionaries were teaching me was true. I knew that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the only true Church of God on earth. So when I knelt and asked God if it was right before Him that I be baptized and confirmed into the Church, I wasn’t surprised when the answer was yes.

After three weeks of lessons by Elder Walker and Elder Whittaker, I was lowered into the waters of baptism. I was washed clean, cleaner than I had ever felt and could ever imagine being. Accompanying these elders in the circle of priesthood holders who participated in confirming me a member was my first bishop, the man who answered the phone the day I called requesting that missionaries visit me.

I could hear the words of my beloved poem like a sweet refrain floating above and weaving itself between each person I met and each act that brought me into the Church—words that had touched an aching heart yearning to know once more its Eternal Father.