Three Years

It's been three years since Mom passed away.  Seems like forever and seems like yesterday all at once.  I was reading in her journal and thought I'd share some words of wisdom she wrote:

"My thoughts continued to ponder on the adversity in life.  While I was laying down I remembered a talk someone gave me by Bruce Hafen called "When Do Angels Come?"  He reminds us of all the times angels have come to help people including Christ.  But the part I liked best is when he talked about angels ministering and nobody saw them.  Joseph Smith "saw the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb,...in foreign lands standing together in a circle, much fatigued, with their clothes in tatters and feet swollen, with their eyes cast downward, and Jesus standing in their midst, and they did not behold Him.  The Savior looked upon them and wept."  The Prophet also "saw Elder Brigham Young in a strange land, in a desert place, upon a rock in the midst of about a dozen hostile men.  He was preaching to them in their own tongue, and the angel of God standing above his head, with a drawn sword in his hand, protecting him, but he did not see it."  And so I wondered to myself if angels and Christ himself have been in my midst and I didn't know it.  I have learned that there are times in adversity when the Lord leaves us alone for a minute perhaps so when the light comes on we will see its brightness better.  Maybe I didn't have that quite right - he doesn't leave us, we just don't know He is there.  While I was laying there thinking about all this I picked up the Ensign (Sept 2009) and read Elder Holland's talk, Lessons from Liberty Jail.  He gave this talk last September and our family felt like he was giving the talk just for us.  He says that when we feel that God has abandoned us and doesn't hear our prayer that He DOES hear and He does LOVE us and He DOES see us.  "It is imperative that we remember He is right there with us - where He has always been!  We must continue to believe, continue to have faith, continue to plead with heaven, even if we feel for a time our prayers are not heard and that God has somehow gone away.  He IS there.  Our prayers are heard.  AND WHEN WE WEEP HE AND THE ANGELS OF HEAVEN WEEP WITH US!"  And so I found myself saying 'Remember, remember," how the Lord has carried you before just like all the prophets remind people through history about how Jehovah brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt.  I must remember and the family too about how we have always been saved and sustained especially in our deepest trial of losing Lindsey.  He carried us through those dark times and continues to comfort us.  Let us not forget.  and just as the prophets told their people to 'remember' this great thing, our Spjute family needs to always remember in our history that we were saved and sustained in our greatest time of need."

She was so wise.  I love reading her words and thought they were too good not to share.