I was visiting my daughter and her family in Oklahoma to help out with childcare while she was working some extended hours for her job. Because of her and her husband’s schedule, there was going to be a problem with getting my grandson to school and picked up on time after school. So, grandma duty was activated.

After dropping my grandson off at school one morning, I headed to Oklahoma City to go to the temple. It was about a two-hour drive and I was looking forward to it as it was a beautiful day. ‘Should be pleasant,’ I thought. But about 10 minutes into the drive a rattling started somewhere behind the dashboard. As I got on Interstate 44 and the speed limit climbed to 75 then 80 mph so did the noise and intensity of the rattling.

At first, it was just an annoyance and I tried to ignore it. Then as time passed it became more and more irritating. I thought about possible causes: Something got dropped in a vent and was caught back there; maybe a fan or bolt came loose; or, maybe another component was loose. How could I fix it? ‘Probably can’t,’ I reasoned, ‘the garage will likely have to remove the whole dashboard to get to whatever it is and that’s going to cost a fortune.’ My options appeared to be pretty limited: endure the rattling or get it fixed. Getting it fixed while in Oklahoma wasn’t going to happen so the answer for right then was to endure it. I’m not proud of this but at one point during that drive I started pounding on the dashboard hoping to dislodge whatever might be loose if that was the problem. Didn’t work (surprise!).

I made it to the temple and after completing a session there got in the car to drive back to my daughter’s house. I remembered the rattle as I started toward the highway and pulled into a gas station to see if I could locate the cause of the rattle. After lifting the hood and checking the engine compartment, it was obvious that there was no way to get to where I thought the rattle was. After closing the hood, I rummaged around until I found something to poke through the vents in the car’s interior, but nothing was loose. So, it was back onto the highway for two more hours.

The rattling was even worse! Finally in desperation I turned on a podcast* about the scriptures to try drowning it out. It didn’t cover up much of the noise but it did help me focus on something more positive and uplifting, and helped to keep me from obsessing about the rattle.

We are surrounded with a cacophony of voices that becomes a constant kind of ‘rattling’ in our daily lives. The rattling is generated through social media, radio, music apps, television, magazines, newspapers, and books. It seems that the overwhelming majority of the voices encourage us to dabble in destructive and selfish behavior or to entertain thoughts that will undermine our mental health, emotional wellbeing and can destroy our most sacred relationships with Heavenly Father, our Savior, and our spouse and family.

All that noise, that cacophony, is irritating, annoying and at times infuriating. We try to ignore it. But the voices, like the rattle in my car, seem to increase, intensify, and bombard us. It may take a while, but eventually we realize we cannot  eliminate those voices or entirely stop them. The adversary has a very clear and specific agenda and he’s had millennia to perfect his delivery.  Recognizing what our limitations are (I couldn’t dismantle the dashboard if I wanted to) we can accept what we can do: we can limit our exposure to those influences and we can choose to give our attention to different voices.

Words have power: the power to move us emotionally, to challenge our thought processes, to push us to examine our faith and beliefs, to persuade us, to discourage us, to undermine our sense of self and our self-worth. Conversely, words can encourage us, lift us, strengthen our resolve, comfort us, impart wisdom and hope, and bolster our faith. The voices we choose to listen to will make a huge difference in our quality of daily life and in how we cope with the inevitable challenges that are part of this mortal experience.

President Russell M. Nelson has spoken of positive spiritual momentum (see April 2022 General Conference, The Power of Spiritual Momentum).  I believe that that movement in our lives begins with what we choose to focus on. The noise, the competing voices, will only continue and, possibly like my rattle, intensify. I encourage you to choose now which voices you will focus on so that you can endure and find peace and joy on this journey.

Praying you will find peace and joy through the Savior and His words,

Audrey

*Two podcasts I recommend for gaining a greater understanding of the scriptures are: Unshaken and The Scriptures are Real.