Saturday, March 10, 2007

In a New York Minute

My thoughts are heavy this morning. I just learned that one of my friends in Texas lost her husband to leukemia this week. She isn't much older than I am and she just had a baby eight months ago--her third child. Her oldest daughter is still in primary I believe. In addition, my mother told me of a family in the ward I grew up in who just lost their father. He was in his mid-forties and they still had a child in kindergarten. They were the cute young family that all of the young women in my ward looked up to--we all wanted to be just like her with her three little boys impeccably dressed and her pregnant tummy.

Many of the experiences we have in our lives shape and mold us, but so much of what we spent time on it just fluff. You know, the stuff we must do to survive, but not really live. Or the things that waste our time but don't really make us better people. Our own trials sometimes seem so dramatic, when in reality they are just peripheral to our the true purpose of our mortal experience.

As I ponder on my friend and the loss of her husband this week I hope to draw my own family close, to seize and cherish the moments that matter. My thoughts are many and varied this morning. I hope that you have been able to catch the gist of what I am saying. Perhaps a feeling more than a written expression.

3 comments:

Christy said...

I am so with you. I couldn't help but cry at the service for him yesterday. I didn't know him very well and I have a certain testimony of life after death but one can't help but think of the seeminly long length she has left to go at it with out his support. That little baby will not have a memory of her father. I pray daily that she will feel angels bare her up.

Desmama said...

Moments like these indeed do seem "heavy." But perhaps this is just a sign that we are bearing one another's burdens, in a sense. I don't want to feel "heavy" forever as I think of a tragic passing, but I do want to empathize as much as I can. It may allow me the greatest opportunity to feel and love as the Savior did.

Rainie said...

I couldn't help but cry at the news of Gil's passing. The news of cancer was tragic but the news of the death was just so final, for this life anyway. Even though I know about being sealed for the eternities it can't replace the every day lonliness and not having a friend to talk to at night. It's to bad that it's these circumstances that remind us to love our husbands and kids more, and to care more about what really matters.