LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

Promptings, Miracles, and a Second Chance at Life: Kaitlynn Smalley’s Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

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What would you do if you felt an undeniable prompting that could mean the difference between life and death?

In this episode of Latter-Day Lights, Kaitlynn Smalley shares how a series of quiet but urgent promptings guided her through a sudden life-threatening medical crisis that ultimately led to a miraculous liver transplant.

Through every challenge, she found herself led by an unseen hand—sometimes at the very last moment. Her story is a powerful reminder that God is always watching over us, even in our darkest hours.

Join us as Kaitlynn shares how these profound experiences have reshaped her faith, her perspective on life, and her calling to help others. Her testimony will inspire you to trust in the Lord’s timing, recognize the small miracles in your own life, and never ignore those quiet yet persistent promptings of the Spirit. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

*** Please SHARE Kaitlynn's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/OeZVvG4XdeA

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Scott Brandley:

Hi everyone, I'm Scott Brantley.

Alisha Coakley:

And I'm Alisha Coakley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode we're going to hear how a rare medical diagnosis and a series of miracles taught one woman to follow the promptings of the Spirit fully and immediately. Welcome to Latter-day lights. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of latter-day lights. We're so glad you're here with us today. We're really excited to introduce our special guest today, Kaitlynn Smalley, to the show. Welcome, Kaitlynn hello.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Thanks for having me.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, thank you so much for reaching out and offering to come share your story today. We always love I've said it before but we always love when we don't have to do the work. We always love when we just hear from people and we don't have to go find you on our own. It makes me smile too, because I love when people are brave, so thanks for being brave.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

It's taken. It's taken a little bit to get here, but yeah, I'm glad to be here.

Alisha Coakley:

Awesome.

Scott Brandley:

Awesome. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Kaitlynn?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I'm 24. I'll be 25 in June. I was born to my amazing parents as the miracle child. I was the baby that brought light during some of the darkest times for my parents. My dad's mom had just passed away and a few weeks later they had found out they were pregnant with me and I just just yeah, I'm the one that started it all. Um, I have five younger siblings, three sisters and two brothers, um, the youngest being eight. She'll be eight this year and then, because I've been the oldest of all of them, it's kind of brought on a caregiver role for me and, due to that, it's led me down the path of working in healthcare. I graduated high school with my CNA license and I've worked in a various amount of fields, from nursing to now I work OBGYN for a clinic. I spent most of my time working in the neonatal ICU and that was just a miracle of itself.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I want to start off by saying devastation kind of hit our family in December of 2018. My dad was in an accident while putting away Christmas decorations in our garage and he fell 30 feet headfirst into some concrete and because of that, it resulted in him having a permanent traumatic brain injury and that's kind of affected all of me and my siblings. I am married, I'll be. We come up on three years of marriage in May and I don't know, me and my husband the way that things brought us together, you know, short of a miracle itself.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, and kind of funny meeting my husband um, he was just finishing up nursing school and was working as an LPN over at the VA in Ogden and that's how we had met. And after the first date I my mom, had texted me and she was like I know him. And I was like wait, what you do? And she was like, yeah, he took care of your dad when he was in rehab. And yeah, as our families kind of became closer, we found out that his mom, who is a special ed assistant teacher, she's taught three of my siblings. Wow, yeah, our sisters went to high school together, knew each other, graduated together, and it's kind of funny. I was on my way home from work one morning and he texted me and he was like are you following me? And I was like what, why no? And he's like I swear you're following me and come to find out we lived about a couple of blocks apart from each other this whole time. Oh my gosh.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow, that is so cool.

Scott Brandley:

So is your husband in the medical field too, then yeah, he is.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

He's a registered nurse over at the er in layton and um at mckinney in infusion.

Alisha Coakley:

So oh my god, wow. Well, Kaitlynn, we, we want to. We want to just give you the floor, if that's okay. Um, it sounds like you're kind of starting to share more about your story, and so let's go ahead and switch views and we'll just let you continue on All right.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

So yeah kind of yeah back after my dad's accident, because of all the trauma that I had endured through that time, I made the decision to get on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. I trialed these on and off for about five-ish years. In June of 2022, I was placed on a medication called Lamotrigine in my primary care, called the Motrigine in my primary care. At the time we didn't know that there is a blood level that needs to be monitored while on this medication due to the chance of having elevated liver enzymes. I was on it for about six or seven weeks and I had gotten very sick on it. And I had gotten very sick on it. So I was taken off and, of course, at the time we didn't know anything about it or think anything of it.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

And then fast forward to December of 22. December 17th, I had gotten sick. I went into Instacare and got told that maybe I caught a nasty stomach bug or most appendicitis. At this time I was on Christmas break from nursing school and I didn't know that I was never going to go back. So after getting done at the Instacare, I had gone home. Um, I texted my husband, who was working at the time, and I told them. It's fine. If I get worse I'll let you know, um. He had about three ish hours left of his shift, um, and I was just going to plan on sleeping through it until he got home and then see how I felt after.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

A couple minutes later I had this feeling in my chest that I needed to go to the ER. I needed to get checked out. There was something wrong, and I kind of brushed it off. I called my mom, let her know what was going on and I said if I get worse, I'll call you and have you take me to the hospital. I went to go lay down again and again I felt that prompting in my chest I need to call my mom. And so I called her for what could have been the last time. I didn't want to inconvenience her as she was working, but she just so happened to be on her way home from work and she was working in Roy at the time and me and my husband were living in South Ogden, so not too far. She just hopped on the freeway, came up to get me and as soon as she opened the door to our apartment she knew something was wrong. I could not stand up on my own and her and my sister had to carry me down three flights of stairs to the car. To the car, wow, um, I again had told her hey, if you just want to wait with me for a couple hours while my husband gets home, cause again she's got five kids at home that she's got to make dinner for, get ready for school for the morning. Uh, and just by the look on her face she was like no, we need to go. Um, yeah, so she had carried me down three flights of stairs and we got to the ER. Um, they immediately pulled me back cause they knew something was going on. Um, I went to Layton hospitals ER and that's where my husband was working at the time.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

If you don't know the medical field, they're a very, very, very small hospital. Mckay D, for example, they're a trauma two center. We only have two trauma one centers in Utah, that being the University of Utah and Intermountain Medical down in Murray, and Layton Hospital was a trauma three. So they didn't really know what to do. So they had pulled me back to one of their trauma rooms and started running blood work. They ran every test possible.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Running blood work. They ran every test possible. The doctor also thought it was appendicitis because my white blood cell count was through the roof, which is a level that monitors inflammation and infection. They waited for some more of my levels to get back and we had found out that my liver enzymes were in the 2000s. Normal range is 150 to 200 at most. They ran the tests again to make sure they were seeing things right and between I want to say it was maybe 10 minutes give or take they had gone up to 4,000. And so at that point they had no idea what to do. They also noticed that my ammonia level was very high. It was in the 400s and many people fall into comas um, between 150 and 200.

Alisha Coakley:

So it was over double.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, it was over double and I was coherent, I knew where I was, I knew what was going on. Um, yeah, the entire staff had no idea where to turn, where to even begin treatment. So they had talked with the hepatology team down at Intermountain Medical and they decided that it was best to transfer me down there. In the 40-minute drive that it took for me to get from Layton to Murray, my levels had gone up to 8,000. And so they placed me into the trauma ICU.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I was put on several medications for like effect reversal medications, preventative medications. Like effect reversal medications, preventative medications Um, they at the time thought that, um, it was a Tylenol overdose, and so they were treating me for that. Um, I wasn't getting any better. Within a few hours I wasn't getting better, and so they, um, started me on dialysis to hopefully reverse and flush whatever they could out. I was on it until midnight and at midnight the hepatology team came in and told my family that they need to get things in order because they, at that point, had declared me in liver failure. Things in order, because they at that point had declared me in liver failure and that I wouldn't have made it to morning without needing a transplant, and so they put me on the list with the hopes that anywhere, somewhere could bring in a liver for me and for the hepatology team.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I was on the transplant list the shortest amount of time they've ever seen. I was only on it. I was listed as an A1, which is the top tier when it comes to transplant, meaning that anywhere in the country I come first, and I was on that list for 16 hours and they had gotten a call that they had found a liver. They didn't know the condition of the liver until it had gotten there and I was rushed into surgery, come to find out. Unfortunately, because of the circumstance I was in and where they needed to get some sort of liver in me to start whatever process to heal my body, the liver was scarred and it was damaged from the person that I had received it from.

Alisha Coakley:

Could they still use it, or they?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

could. And so, yeah, they had told my family. When the liver had gotten in, they gave me less, less than 5% chance of survival. Um, and I was in for I want to say it was six to eight hours, and when I came out they saw effects immediately. My numbers had gone all the way down into the, I want to say between 200 and 400, all the way from 8,000.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Um yeah, it was crazy. A couple weeks later, they got the biopsies back from my liver and it came back positive for the antidepressant I was on, which was so surprising because I was off of this medication from July all the way to December. They didn't know that it was still being pooled in my liver, my liver wasn't filtering it out. And then, as I started to recover, we found out that I am one in six people, I believe, to have had a liver transplant due to the side effects of that medication. Um, yeah, it's. It's not been easy.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Um May of 2023, I had started nursing school again, um, but after the first day, I became ill and we found out that I was going into liver rejection, which, again, they gave me less than 2% chance of survival at that rate. And it was again those promptings that I felt that I needed to be seen, I needed to be checked out there, something wasn't right. And, yeah, telling my husband that something wasn't right. He was again working at the time, so we were living with his parents because I couldn't be on my own for the first six months, and so that pushed us into having to move in with his family. Um, again, I went to the hospital and at that point they had live flighted me back down to Intermountain Medical um and I was put on a billion different medications again and I came out of it Again with less than 2% chance of survival At that time.

Scott Brandley:

Did your liver start working again?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, so I was on Tylenol for those first couple of months of recovery, and we found out that the new liver that was transplanted wasn't filtering out Tylenol either, and so that was a total overdose, and thankfully, when I had gotten to the hospital, they were able to get me on reversal medication for that, and I was able to recover from that um okay, again my journey's not been easy in the slightest.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Um, because of everything that went on, uh, my body endured an insane amount of trauma. Um, my stomach and intestinal system has shut down, and so I rely on a feeding tube and IV medications, iv nutrition and several other medications to just get through day to day life. But yeah, without having those promptings, I would not be here today. I yeah, divine intervention. That's what my mom says there's a reason I'm here.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

And yeah, there's there's a reason I'm here. And yeah, there's a reason I'm here. I'm thankful for all the medical technology that we have nowadays, because of everything I deal with already being on, like tube feeds and everything, I'm able to work as someone else would normally really, yeah, so is.

Alisha Coakley:

Is the um ivy and the um stomach issues and stuff that you're having from this? Are these like permanent issues? Are they ones that hopefully will be able to be rectified?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

we don't know right now. Um, as of right now, it does seem that things are pretty permanent. Um, but we do have the hope that one day my, my body will start working again. And I mean, if not again, there's always medical technology, there's all these blessings that have surrounded me and my family, yeah.

Alisha Coakley:

Oh my goodness, have you talked to anyone else who's had this experience where, like where, they too have either taken this medication and had this, you know?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

shutdown of their liver or Not that I know of. Um again, I was like one in six people and to have a transplant from this medication, um, but I was able to go back to my primary care and tell him hey, this is what happened, um, so now he um, whenever he prescribes those medications, he knows to monitor those blood levels in other people, so the same thing doesn't happen to them. But, yeah, it's been crazy. My life has been full of blessings, full of promptings and, yeah, divine intervention.

Alisha Coakley:

oh, my goodness, can I ask you? Like you know, you said you kind of felt it in your chest, like you just felt this feeling in your chest, but I, I feel like um, I speak for a lot of people when, when we get those promptings, even the strong, we have a tendency to rationalize right, like our, our almost always. The first go-to for me is oh, alisha, you're, you're just, you have an overactive imagination, like maybe you're being prompted, being that prompted, alisha, you know, like, did you, did you feel like that kind of battle or like, how can you describe a little bit more about, like how you really knew that that was just like as serious as it was?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I did feel that I am the type of person that will push off anything to the very, very last minute. Um, and yeah, at the time, again, my husband was working. I was not feeling great. Um, I told him I'm fine, I'm fine, it's okay. You know, it's probably the stomach flu, it's probably this, it's probably that. Um, and that was when I had gotten my first prompting to be seen, and that was when I had gone to Instacare and they didn't, they couldn't really rule out anything and their advice was to go to the ER as well.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I went back home, tried to sleep it off and again, I just got that feeling in my chest. It felt heavy, it felt. It's a feeling that I just it's. It's hard to describe, but my chest felt heavy and, yeah, me trying to go back to sleep, my chest was hurting so bad that I couldn't. Um, that was when I felt the need to text my mom. Hey, this is going on. I don't, I could probably wait it out. I could. I can wait it out until my husband gets home. He would know better than anybody if I would need to go to the ER or not. Um, and then, yeah, I tried to fall back asleep, to try and just sleep it off and again was prompted to to call her that time and tell her that I needed her.

Alisha Coakley:

And you mentioned when your mom saw you, like she knew too. Did you talk to her afterwards Like did she have any type of promptings or was it just kind of her?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

you know, just mom senses type of promptings or was it just kind of her? You know, just mom senses, I guess, or, uh, a little bit of both. Um, it's something that we're. We're trying to work through, the trauma of it all still to this day. Um, so it's not something we talk too much about, um, but she about um. But she, she knew when I had called her that I was, I was not doing good and, yeah, when she, she had her mom's senses and I feel, yeah, promptings herself, uh, instead of going straight home just taking the curve off the freeway to come up and get me yeah, um.

Scott Brandley:

So when you know you've talked a lot, I mean you've had a lot of difficult things happen but you continually talk about the blessings. So, um, how do you, how do you stay positive when, when all these things are happening around you and to you?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

um, I will say it's hard to stay positive, especially when you know I'm sitting in the doctor's office and they've got nothing but bad news to tell me, or, um, that they can't fix what's going on currently. Um, but I just look on the bright side of things. I, I'm here, I'm able to work, I'm able to help provide with my husband, I'm able to be with family again, um, I'm able to share my story with others and, yeah, I think that's how I stay positive through it all.

Alisha Coakley:

What kind of other blessings have you seen from this? I mean, we have the you know, the obvious big miracles of just having your mom be able to get off on time and then finding out what was going on and you, being close enough to you know a different hospital that you could go to to get the treatment you needed, and then, of course, finding a liver that quickly, even if it was scarred and not in the right condition. Like you have these really big miracles.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

But what are some of those blessings that you've seen since then? Again being able to go back to work and again be with my family, be with my husband, the potential of building a family in the future yeah, it's definitely all the little small things too.

Alisha Coakley:

Oh, my goodness, Kaitlynn, that's, it's scary. I mean, it scares me in a way, you know, because you just never know, like, how fast things can change. And the fact that, like I mean, you were predominantly healthy up until that point, right, like you didn't have any other signs other than maybe you just didn't feel good. Yeah, was it days or?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

uh, it was just overnight. I was in school a week prior, I was fine. And then, yeah, I wake up one morning and I just feel sick. I couldn't get out of bed. I slept on the bathroom floor because every movement I would make I would have the feeling of crap, I'm going to, I'm going to throw up again. And yeah, when it had gotten to the point where I needed to be seen by, yeah, instacare, um, I couldn't take a sip of water without throwing that up. And that was when I had decided to go and be seen and just to follow through on those promptings of hey, there's, there's something going on, there's something wrong, you need, you need to be seen, you need help, you need there's. Yeah, there's something wrong. And yeah, I was never really sick as a kid. Yeah, fairly healthy for most of my life so what?

Alisha Coakley:

what kind of, I guess, moving forward? What kind of things do you have to do because you you've had a transplant now, so I'm assuming that requires monitoring or or continued blood work, or something like what is? What does that look like for the next few years for you, or?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

um, so I follow my transplant team very, very closely. Um, I see them about every three-ish months. Um, in combination with my GI team, I see my GI team about every three months as well. Um, I at the beginning I was having to get blood work done um day and then it went to every week and then every other week and now I'm just to the point where it's once a month and it's mostly to monitor my liver numbers.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

I'm on a medication called tacrolimus and that's a level that needs to be followed as well, just to make sure I don't have too much of it in my body and my body is not processing it the same way the other medications did. I'm on anti-rejection medications for the rest of my life. I'm on tube feeds and IV nutrition, iv fluids, things like that for now. Hopefully in the future we can kind of start weaning off of some of the stuff. But, yeah, I follow many different teams of healthcare professionals. I see probably about every specialty possible it feels like. So, yeah, gi, cardiology, neurology. Yeah, hepatology. I also get followed through every once in a while with the kidney doctors that are with my transplant clinic as well, because some of the medications I am on can be hard on the kidneys. I'll probably kind of be on that course for the rest of my life, just following very closely with other other doctors, other professionals Did you get a chance at this point.

Scott Brandley:

I was just going to say you know, at this point in your life you've seen all these blessings and miracles happen. How does that affect how you look at life?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

That's a good question. Life, it can be taken away in a moment. It's something that you really have to, you have to embrace. I mean, even just going through everything I went through with my dad and his accident, um, he was very, very close to death and so me and him, we resonate with each other very well, um, and we just realize how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away.

Alisha Coakley:

Have you had a chance or, I guess, are you even interested in finding out about the person who donated their liver to you Like I don't know?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

what the rules are with that are with with that um. So there are rules, I know for the first year um, if we wanted to contact them, we contact them through my transplant team, so it'd be like I'd write a letter, they'd find them and they'd send that letter out. Um, okay, we've also looked into now that I'm over yeah, I'm over two years post-op. Um, we've looked into wanting to know more about them. Um, we know a couple things just from the, from the donor itself. Um, so we know that it was a male um, because of the size of the liver it was almost three times the size of my liver um, they know that he may have made not so great choices in his life that have led up to kind of the scarring that was on the liver.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Um but, yeah, we've definitely looked into wanting to find out more and wanting to thank their family personally, because it's not an easy thing to lose a child, lose a friend, lose a parent, but because of his choice to donate, it saved my life.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, oh gosh, I've always struggled. I remember back when I was a teenager and stuff, and they make you fill out that little yes or no, like do you want to be an organ donor thing. And I remember thinking back as a teenager I was like, oh, I'm never going to do that, because if I do and then I get an accident, then they're just going to want to take all my organs, like I genuinely believe this right. And then I had a friend in my, my twenties who told me they're like Alisha, that's not how it works. They're like they actually try everything possible to keep you alive and to keep you sustained in the event that if you did pass away, if it didn't work, um, that you would be able to be viable and to be an organ donor and everything like that.

Alisha Coakley:

And um, and I just thought about like how? So I I know this is kind of an unintended story, but I thought about that and I thought about how, like Christ is the ultimate life giver, you know, like he gave us all this opportunity to live again and to be resurrected, and and not only to like physically live again, but to spiritually live again, over and over through our trials and our hardships and our sins because of the atonement. And I thought, you know, if, if being an organ donor can give even one family an opportunity to have someone a little longer, then I feel like that's my responsibility. And so I've thus changed, you know, like now I am an organ donor, um, but I always, you know, in the back of my mind, I always think about that.

Alisha Coakley:

I always think about like oh gosh, like how difficult could that be? Because it's something that you're celebrating, obviously, like you being able to have that opportunity to live, but it also comes at a cost, like so great. You know that someone else is going to lose someone and and that in and of itself, can be a very traumatic thing to have to deal with and a different form of grief. And so I'm just, I was just curious, like to know you know where you're at with that process, but you're open to it. You're open to finding them and and seeing if you can say thank you, and yeah, I mean it's.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

It's the least I could do.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, oh, that's awesome. Oh, my goodness, I I'm just yeah.

Scott Brandley:

How has this affected your faith?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Um, it's definitely affected it greatly. Um, there are more. I will be honest. There are more days than I can count that I have hard days. Um, even something as simple as, oh, I've got to hook up my tube feeds for the night, or I've got to do a bag of fluids for me to make it through the next day, it's something that's challenged me greatly. There are times where I'm like, why, why did I go through all of this just to still be suffering? But then it just it's very hard, it's very hard to explain, but like that feeling um, but knowing that, yeah, again, christ, he, he suffered for everything that I'm going through, everything that you're going through, um, everything that I'm going through, everything that you're going through, um, I, I have the faith that you know I will be able to have a working body again. Um, whether that be in this life or the next, um, it's, yeah, definitely something that has grown my faith um, and has brought me closer to Christ.

Alisha Coakley:

Do you feel like your prayers have changed?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, oh yeah. I mean growing up, you know you have kind of like the little kids in a sacrament meeting that want to bear their testimonies and it's all the same for all of them. I kind of felt like that's how it was for a majority of my life. You know, grateful for this day, we're grateful for this, grateful for that, and now it's, it's changed for me personally to. I'm grateful for my life and everything that I go through, everything that I'm challenged with, um, everything to go from day to day. It's made me, yeah, very, very grateful for everything everything.

Scott Brandley:

I can imagine that. I mean, yeah, like you were saying, you have the, you have these struggles that you have to go through every day, but you also get to go through those struggle. I mean you, you're here, you're here today and you get to, you get to have today right, which is an incredible gift, even though you have to go through those those hard things. You're here.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Exactly.

Alisha Coakley:

Well, I assume too that it probably will make you an even better healthcare professional too. You know, like because now all of a sudden it it really matters Like it mattered anyway in the beginning when you were going through and you're learning about anatomy and the human body and medications and healthcare and all that kind of stuff. But now it's like you are getting to see it from a perspective of a patient as well, and like a very dramatic perspective of a patient not just. You know, oh, I broke a leg or something you know.

Alisha Coakley:

It's not like this little thing, this huge ongoing thing. Um, I know, when I got leukemia, same thing it was like all of a sudden, like anatomy mattered to me and and science mattered to me and medications mattered, and even like the word of wisdom, like I started thinking, like I really need to learn more about the word of wisdom, because I don't know how God designed my body, so I don't even know what to ask for for help to fix it.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, exactly, and I also feel it's made me more compassionate and more caring towards my patients, whether I see them one time or a million times over the course of months. It's definitely made me feel from a patient standpoint To say to somebody I know what you're going through. I've been there before. You'll make it through, you'll find what you need. You'll come across, you know, someone who will address your problems and will find what you need to help you get better.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, well, what are you going to do with?

Alisha Coakley:

this as you move forward help you get better. What are you going to do with this as you move forward? Let's say big picture 10 years out. Where do you see yourself and how do you see the growth? What kind of things do you want to do in the next 10 years?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Definitely wanting to grow a family and, um, kind of being how my mom was to me caring, and, no, being so close to the spirit that she knew there was something wrong as well, to the spirit that she knew there was something wrong as well, um, having faith to go through all the trials that we endure through this life. Um, yeah, just staying close to my faith and looking at life as at a different perspective is. It's not something that's just this simple plan. It's life is something that can be taken away in a moment and you really really have to just cherish every moment possible.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah.

Alisha Coakley:

Well, miss Kaitlynn, thank you so much. You know I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed this whole episode of yours and I I know it's it's a little shorter than what our normal episodes are, but I also feel like it was just so like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like you had so much stuff so fast happen, and and just the way that, like you've come through and where you're at right now, I, I'm really proud of you, for I don't even know you, but I'm really proud of you for just for just really trying hard to keep that eternal perspective in mind, despite the way that things look right now. They're not exactly the way that you had imagined or hoped for, but you're still here, you know, you still get to fight.

Alisha Coakley:

I um, there's a quote and I can't remember where I read it or heard it from. But, uh, they say, um, you know, life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you, and I know it's hard to to feel that sometimes, but I think you're a beautiful example of of just that. That life is happening for you, for you to be able to learn and to grow and to to develop your relationship more with the savior and to you know, really, just see the people, the models in your life that you want to to live the way that they've lived, you know to to follow their example and everything like that, and I just think that's, it's an amazing thing. So I really hope that you continue to find health and success and you know no more big, scary things. I don't want to.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Yeah, no more big scary things.

Alisha Coakley:

I don't want to ask you yeah, no more big, scary things.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

We're going to listen to you here bud.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, I agree with Alisha. I think your story is very inspiring Just the positive attitude that you have and the idea that you feel blessed, and you're constantly talking about being blessed and having all these blessings and miracles in your life, and I just very inspired by you and I think what you've gone through is going to inspire and bless a lot of people's lives, even though it is a challenge. I think it's going to. You're going just your personality.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

You're going to be able to bless a lot of people's lives because you've gone through this and even inspire them and give them hope I had texted my grandparents about all of this and I wanted to kind of get more of an outside perspective of you know just my life and everything that I've gone through. And my grandma said you're a missionary, you were born to be a missionary and here you are serving just as the Lord you would want, would want you to.

Alisha Coakley:

I love that. It's very charming. Ah well, Kaitlynn, thank you so much for coming on here today. We really appreciate you reaching out and sharing your story with us and with the rest of our listeners.

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Thanks for having me.

Scott Brandley:

Do you have any last thoughts you'd like to share before we wrap things up?

Kaitlynn Smalley:

Just follow the promptings of the spirit, follow that divine intervention. There's reasons we go through things, there's reasons that we get put into situations and scenarios. It's to grow our faith, grow our life and, yeah, have more faith in, in, our savior.

Scott Brandley:

I love it Awesome.

Alisha Coakley:

All right. Well, ms Kaitlynn, thank you again for coming on today. We really appreciate you, and thank you to all of our listeners as well for tuning in to Kaitlynn story. We just ask, like we do every Sunday guys, please make sure you do your five-second missionary work and share Kaitlynn story. You never know who needs to hear it and who can be inspired by it. To hear it and who can be inspired by it, and even something as big as maybe someone's life will be saved from it. You know, maybe they'll hear the story and it'll be the thing that clicks in their head when they need to follow the spirit and they're being stubborn like I do, and they, you know, keep trying to justify it. It's not that. So you just never know. Um, definitely share. Share Kaitlynn story and then just leave a little message for her and let her know what you guys thought was your favorite part of her story.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, and if you have a story of your own you'd like to share it, go to latterdaylights. com and let's have you on the show. So thanks again, Kaitlynn, for being on, and thanks everybody for tuning in to hear Kaitlynn story, and we will talk to you next week with another story from Latter Day Lights. Till then, take care, bye, bye.

People on this episode

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Scott Brandley

Host
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Alisha Coakley

Co-host