It was early in the morning, and I rushed out of bed with excitement. There isn’t much room to move quietly in a hotel room, but I tried my best to tiptoe around my sleeping siblings, preparing for the rare opportunity to go on an outing with my father. During our biannual drive from halfway across America to visit family, he had promised me I could accompany him on his friend’s airplane, and I wasn’t about to squander that opportunity by being too lazy to be ready — after all, my dad wasn’t one to wait.
I must have impressed him, because as I stood in the bathroom with him, the mirror barely reflecting the room’s morning sun, he whispered out of the side of his mouth while continuing to get ready, “You know, you could be an apostle one day. In fact, you could be a prophet.” My father’s words came to me like a drink of water in the desert. Being barely 10 years old, I had already become far too acquainted with self-doubt and criticism. His words quenched my parched mouth and made me feel something I had never felt before: Pride.
It’s amazing how one conversation can change the course of your life, even as a child. Before being told that I could be a prophet by my father, I don’t know what my spirituality was like, but I sure knew what it was like afterward. Every waking moment was consumed by the church and a single-eyed vision of fulfilling my potential. I didn’t know that I would become a prophet, but being told that I could gave me an anchor for my self-worth as I grew older.