Beautiful Vistas

Aren't they cute? We were just sitting in our front room after Church on Sunday and I wanted to take a picture of how cute they were looking all festive.

It was all fun and games, until big brother had to steal the hat.

She was heartbroken. He was beside himself with enjoyment. Look at that smile!

I think that she may have just been tired. Here she is having fallen asleep reading books in her designer decorated room (ha! Not really designer. More like how do you fit three kids in a small room of an old house and not spend any additional money?)

Where is the joy in motherhood? It comes in moments throughout the day or the week. For me it comes everytime I hear my girl say the word music. She says it with such enthusiasm because she loves it and she pronounces it, "Musgit."

Last Saturday was another typical day at home while Mark was at the hospital all day with a couple of small, sweet moments. One of them that I keep remembering was a conversation I had with my boy. We were in our car on the way to Costco listening to Primary songs on the way. A song came on that brought a flood of memories from my own childhood.

Where love is, there God is also
Where love is, we want to be
Guide us, His truths to follow
Help us obey Him faithfully.

I remember hearing this when I was young, maybe 7 years old, after my mother died and feeling a special feeling when I learned and sang the words. I thought that the "love" that was mentioned in the song was my mother and that God was where "Love" was because my dead mother was in heaven with Him. When I sang the words as I child, "Where love is, we want to be," I remember singing it with all of the yearning that I had to be with my mother and every time that I said the word "love" I pictured her face.

When I heard that song again on Saturday I remembered the ache in my heart as a child and my yearning to be with her. Feeling those feelings again and remembering myself as a broken-hearted child made me start crying.

I... asked me why I was crying. The answer that came to my mind was that my mom died, but I anticipated that he wouldn't understand why I was crying now about something that happened so long ago. So, I tried to explain differently by saying, "You know how if you fall, scrape your knees, and really hurt yourself you might cry about it because it hurts? But you will never cry the next day about how it hurt. There are some hurts that you can have in this life that are so big that even 20 years later you cry about it. I am crying about my mom dying when I was a little girl, even though it happened almost 20 years ago, this song made me remember it and so I cried."

"Yah," he said. He says this in a very sweet, small voice. He says this if we are having a conversation about something special and he wants to hear more or if he is getting in trouble, knows it is justified, and knows he is going to hear more whether he likes it or not.

We thought about that for a second. I thought how true those words were. I thought about my family and the different hurts that those that I love most have had and how we each have experienced things that happened a while ago, but given the chance we cry again about it many years later. Thinking about these specific hurts that I know that my family has made we want to cry again. But imagining the day that those hurts would be gone filled me with comfort and hope. Then I said to my boy, "And that is why Jesus was born and came to Earth, was to take away that hurt."

My boy then asked, "But I don't understand why he would let that happen." Then he asked me what Jesus' birth had to do with my mom dying or how it helped.

I said, "The scriptures say that He will come and wipe all the tears from our eyes and that there will be no more sorrow (Rev. 21:4). One day I will be with my mother again. She will hug me and tell me that she thinks that I did a wonderful job as a mother. She will love you and love to hug you. And that sorrow will be gone from me. But, if Jesus had not come to Earth and died for us then death would be the end and we wouldn't be together again. There are some hurts in this life that are very big. It is when someone dies or when we sin. And Jesus came to take those away."

It was a very sweet conversation. What made it sweet is that we both felt the Spirit of the Lord together, we both felt that what I was saying was true, and we both felt connected to each other and love for each other.

This is the joy that I have experienced in motherhood. It comes in small moments amidst minutia and monotony. I feel willing to do the boring and the hard in order to have just one of those moments. Gordon B. Hinckley said it this way, "Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."