They Didn't Know How It Would End Either

By Crystal Virgin

"They didn't know how it would end either. They went anyway."

I've asked myself this question more than once: would I have been strong enough?

If I had lived in 1847 — if I had been asked to leave everything I knew, pack what I could carry, and walk across a continent on faith alone — would I have gone? Would my belief have been strong enough to put one foot in front of the other on the days when the ground was frozen and the end was nowhere in sight?

I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that the pioneers didn't know how it would end either. They didn't have a guaranteed outcome waiting for them at the end of the trail. They had a prophet's voice, a prompting in their hearts, and a choice to keep moving. That was it. And somehow, for most of them, it was enough.

I've been thinking about what that kind of faith actually looks like — not in 1847, but right now. In an ordinary life, on an ordinary Tuesday, when the unknowns are less dramatic but no less real.

Faith Has Never Come With a Map

We tend to romanticize the pioneer story from a distance. The handcarts, the hymns, the arrival in the valley — we know how it ends, so we read the story backward, with the destination already in view.

But they didn't have that. They were living it forward, the way we all do, with no guarantee that the sacrifice would be worth it or that the promised land would actually be there when they arrived.

That is faith in its purest form. Not certainty dressed up as belief — actual belief, held in the presence of actual uncertainty, chosen again every single morning.

I think about the women especially. The ones who buried children on the trail and kept walking. The ones who weren't sure what they believed but trusted the people beside them enough to go anyway. The ones who were exhausted and grieving and still put their boots on. They didn't know how it would end. They went anyway.

The Trail I'm Walking

I won't share the details of every hard season in my life — some of them aren't entirely my story to tell. But I will say this: there have been years of questions in my home. Years of uncertainty, of long conversations, of wondering what is real and why faith looks so different from one person to the next.

And through all of it, I have just kept going.

Not because I have all the answers. I don't. Not because every question has been resolved or every doubt has been quieted. They haven't. But because somewhere deep in my heart, underneath all the complexity, I just believe. I have received enough answers, felt enough moments of quiet confirmation, and seen enough of God's hand in my own life that I cannot unfeel what I have felt.

So I choose to believe. Every day, sometimes every hour, I choose it.

That is not so different from lacing up your boots on a cold morning and walking anyway. The trail looks different now. But the choice is the same.

What the Pioneers Are Still Teaching Us

Pioneer Day is a celebration, but I think it's also an invitation — to ask ourselves honestly what we would have done, and then to look at what we are actually doing right now.

Because most of us are on a trail of some kind. A hard marriage, a health crisis, a faith question that doesn't have a clean answer, a season of waiting that has gone on longer than we planned. The pioneering is not over. It just looks like modern life.

And the same qualities that carried those early Saints across the plains are the ones available to us now. Not superhuman faith — they weren't superhuman. Just ordinary people who chose, in the face of genuine uncertainty, to keep moving toward something they believed in.

The pioneers believed that God's promises were sure. They staked their lives on it. And the fact that we are here — that the Church is here, that the temples are here, that the covenant path is here — is evidence that they were right.

Strong Enough

I used to wonder if my faith would have been strong enough to walk the pioneer trail.

I think the more honest question is whether it's strong enough for the trail I'm actually on.

And on the days when I'm still praying through the uncertainty, still choosing to believe when belief is hard, still putting one foot in front of the other without a clear view of the end — I think maybe it is.

Not because I'm exceptional. Because I just keep going.

That's all the pioneers did too.