Question
Gramps,
I sent this to my mom a while ago with this concern:
Mom, this is a large, spontaneous subject, but I need your help because it’s been bothering me and even making me cry for a long while. I’m concerned that if someone I loved were to die right now I wouldn’t be able to see them again. Not just see them but physically be able to touch and live with them as we do here. I’m concerned about the truthfulness of sealings.
Gracie
Answer
Hi Gracie,
I hope your mother responded to you and that you had a nice, long talk with her. This is the kind of issue that it’s very good to talk over with your parents.
Life is a miraculous gift! Everything is wonderful — eating, breathing, walking. One of my all-time favorite hymns is the Primary song My Heavenly Father Loves Me:
Whenever I hear the song of a bird or look at the blue, blue sky
Whenever I feel the rain on my face or the wind as it rushes by
Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by our lilac tree
I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for me.
Of the earthly gifts we enjoy from God, perhaps the greatest is the love and companionship of family. Growing up in a loving family with parents and siblings is a priceless blessing. Building a marriage with a loving spouse and children of your own adds inexpressible joy to our lives.
If we could enjoy those blessings only in mortality, we would still thank and praise God for having ever had the chance to experience them. But the promise of the gospel seems greater than we can hope for: We can live with our loved ones forever! And we can do so in a perfect state, with all the joy we feel now and more, and without the problems that vex us!
You feel the natural fear of loss of something precious. I encourage you to approach this positively, not negatively. We have been given a promise of joy literally beyond our ability to understand, and that includes the promise of living eternally with those we love and value, and who love and value us. Cling to that hope, and let it encourage you to become the type of person who can live such a life — a person of charity, tolerance, grace, and unbending faith.
We all fall short, Gracie. But your name should remind you why we have such great reason to hope and even rejoice. Christ redeems us! His grace is sufficient! And that means that all joy, all these wonderful things we fear most to lose, can be ours forever. All we need to do is reach out and take them. Have faith and confidence! And make sure you tell your mom how much you love her. (And your dad. Dads like to hear that kind of thing too.)
Gramps
