When I was serving a mission in the 2000s, M. Russell Ballard’s 1993 memoir/missionary-tract Our Search for Happiness was still part of the very limited Official Missionary library, alongside Jesus the Christ and Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards, and Truth Restored by Gordon B. Hinkley. I have no idea which of those books are still part of the approved list now; the only one of the five I ever re-read was Jesus the Christ, and that was purely out of curiosity. (It didn’t occur to me as a 19-year-old how there was perhaps a slight conflict of interest in including two books by a still living General Authorities–but then, there were far worst books to have included.)

The only part of the book I remember is also the only story that most folks remember from it: that in the late 1950s, Ford Motor Company put the hard sell on him to become the first official dealer in Salt Lake City for their latest brand of vehicle. He prayed carefully about it, and felt a “clear impression” not to sign up; nevertheless, the extravagant promises that Ford made to him were so seductive, that he figured if even only half their sales projections were correct, he would be a fool to pass it up, so he signed up anyways.

The new vehicle was the Edsel, which for decades after became a hiss and a byword in the business world, the most notorious flop in American automotive history. Ford Motor Company lost $250 million from the debacle–roughly $2.7 billion today adjusted for inflation. Ballard himself incurred massive losses, causing “without doubt the darkest period” of his professional life.

I’ve always liked that story. Beyond the simple reminder to always follow my own impressions, I like it because it portrayed an apostle as human, as making very human mistakes. When I later became more familiar with the Church’s (shall we say) more colorful history, it helped me to handle all those harsh revelations better, because I already had a story I could casually fall back on, about how routinely the Apostles have made mistakes before, of how radically God Himself honors our Free Agency such that he allows even the “elect” to fail, and that quite regularly, for all things must fail.

I also liked that story cause it portrayed God as merciful; for even though Ballard ignored a prompting–even a very clear one–he wasn’t damned for it, but was still eventually blessed and honored of God. It reminded me that I could repent of my sins too, that our Heavenly Father loves me not in spite of my frail humanity, but because of it.

These were lessons I took for granted as a young missionary. I don’t take them for granted anymore. There’s that old joke, that faithful Catholics claim the Pope is infallible, but don’t really believe it; while faithful Mormons claim the Prophet is fallible, but don’t really believe it. Nowadays, though the Prophets and Apostles may occasionally speak in the abstract of their weakness, by and large they stick to the party line, and endlessly emphasize how we must all obey their voices and heed their words like Holy Scripture. (The fact that the sheer existence of the Book of Mormon presupposes that Holy Scripture is also humanly fallible doesn’t much come up.)

Indeed, some malcontents in the Bloggernacle have sometimes seized upon the story of Ballard and the Edsel as definitive proof that the Apostles are uninspired overall, that their words should be discounted. This approach strikes me as wrong-headed; we can’t exactly complain when the Brethren put up a front of infallibility, and then pounce all over them on those rare occasions when they drop their guard and confess their mistakes. We should be encouraging humility and humanity in our Apostles, not scaring them off. Ironically, those who attack Ballard for the Edsel story commit the same fallacy as those defend the Brethren as innately infallible.

But in the final tally, what makes the story of Ballard and the Edsel stand out the most is: that he placed a story of great personal frustration, loss, and self-berating failure into a book entitled “Our Search for Happiness.” In both title and content, it is a book which argues that happiness is something we have to search for, because we do not yet possess it in this life, if ever. The overall tone of the tome is much peppier than that, if I recall correctly; nevertheless, the implication that happiness is something not easily found or achieved remains an accurate one, almost in spite of himself.

Or maybe not in spite of himself. He was curiously, I recall, the only General Authority in October Conference 2018 to observe the centennial of D&C 138 (I thought for sure there would be more talks on this), Joseph F. Smith’s 1918 revelation on missionary work in the next life. In order to impress upon his audience how Joseph F. Smith had been prepared for this vision, Ballard spent much of his talk simply discussing how much of Smith’s life had been marred by tragedy–how “During his lifetime, President Smith lost his father, his mother, one brother, two sisters, two wives, and thirteen children. He was well acquainted with sorrow and losing loved ones,” how “When his son Albert Jesse died, Joseph F. wrote to his sister Martha Ann that he had pled with the Lord to save him and asked, ‘Why is it so? O. God why had it to be?'”, how “Despite his prayers at that time, Joseph F. received no answer on this matter.”

That is, the grand revelation he received just before succumbing to the Spanish Flu himself was only made possible by a lifetime of profound grief and despair. We can only find happiness after we pass through misery, and Ballard seemed to understand this too. These are also things we do not hear terribly often in Conference anymore, either (if we ever did to begin with). We shy away from it, try to promise each other an easy happiness, if only we follow the checklist. We all do. This too is a human frailty, the desire for an easy happiness; how rarely we like to acknowledge that someone can do everything right and still suffer. Perhaps that is why Ballard was the only one to note the centennial of section 138: he alone still knew how to acknowledge it.

And now that he is gone, let us go forth and remember to preach that Christ ascended above all things only because he first descended below all things; and that if we are to take up our cross and follow Him into Life Everlasting, then we too must become a people of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.