English professor James Walker, who is retiring at the end of spring term, told the BYU-Hawaii devotional audience on May 27 he has started over a number of times in his life and is looking forward to "both opportunities and obstacles in this transition."
The first time came when he enrolled at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1957. "The freedom to go where I wanted when I wanted, to study or play, to go to class or sleep in, proved a little more than I was ready for," he recalled, adding he was primarily at school as a member of the basketball team.
"In short, I did great on the basketball team but mediocre in the classroom. I was saved by my mission call when it finally came, and headed off to the Canadian Mission in Toronto under the leadership of President Monson."
Walker said, because the Ottawa Mormon Elders team had contended for the Canadian Senior Men's championship in basketball, he felt like he had been drafted; so he was surprised soon after he arrived to learn "there would no longer be a missionary basketball team. Missionaries were sent out to teach the gospel, not play basketball."
"I must have sulked for a week. I wouldn't call them my best two years, but perhaps they were two of my most valuable years. I learned how to study, how to deal with difficulty, how to talk to people, and how to keep commitments. When I returned to college after my mission, I was grateful for a second chance, and dug in with determination."
"Yes, I made the basketball team again, but now it wasn't what I lived for, "he said. "Being able to start over made all the difference and what I learned on my mission not only equipped me for life in the Church, but propelled me to success in graduate study."
Next, Walker clearly remembered sitting in his office at the University of Winnipeg in January 1978, when the temperature was 25-below-zero outside. He had received an unexpected letter asking "if I was interested in applying for a position here." Later that year he and his family arrived in Laie.
Their faculty house had roaches, a plugged sink and a broken refrigerator. "For someone starting over this was not a good beginning," he said. They thought of going back, but then decided "we had to genuinely start over —changing our attitudes, making the best of it, and determining to follow the' bloom where you are planted' advice we had heard from an influential speaker previously."
"We came to love the people, the community, and the school," Walker continued, stressing that looking forward to new experiences is perhaps the biggest importance of starting over.
"Many of you will end up going to new places to live and work. Some will face challenges to your testimonies and values in the course of these new beginnings."
He added, "Perhaps the key is to be prepared to face such challenges with the awareness that they often offer opportunity to prove our mettle, to test ourselves, to show what we are really made of. For what is really at stake here, when we individually encounter the confrontations involved with starting over is less what we discover waiting for us, and more the question of how to be: That is, what we will do and how we will conduct ourselves in the face of whatever we encounter."
"The Lord will doubtless watch us carefully to see what we do," Walker said. "At times we may stumble under such pressures, but if we are watchful and prayerful, dedicated and committed, we may avoid missteps. However, if we do encounter difficulty, it is critically important that we learn to face up to our shortcomings and get back up quickly should we ever slip."
"Above all, never, never let worldly pressures get between you and your testimony of the gospel," Walker continued. "Satan would love to drive a wedge right there that would dam up your spiritual progress. Recognize temptation for what it is and rise above it. Hold fast to eternal values rather than worldly ones. If you do fall, the Lord is always ready to give you a hand back up."
He cited the example of Jonah, who was "more or less forced to start over...but wouldn't it have been better for him to have made this decision on his own and returned in the full strength and commitment of his personal conscience rather than under duress?"
He also told of meeting long-haired roadies from the Bachman-Turner Overdrive group, who eventually joined the Church, who became "model priesthood holders who had the courage to change their lives and begin again, converted and committed to a higher set of values. This should remind us that we need to be supportive and not judgmental in response to others as they encounter the challenges of starting over."
"None of us will remain permanently on the campus of BYU-Hawaii," Walker said. "Virtually every one of us will be required to start over at least once in some future context and environment, and some of us many times. But starting over does not have to be limited to where we will live and what we will do there."
"We may have occasion to start over in terms of those principles of conduct that we know are lacking in our lives at any given moment, including right here and right now. Please take the Lord at his word. He is not your accuser, but it is imperative that if needed, you take the necessary steps to change...to live life differently than before."