Remember Families Are Forever

It is a sad day when someone, especially a child, is taken before we think they should be. It is even harder when it is without warning and it seems that we are helpless to do anything but stand back and watch. Today, at around 3am, my friend's 16 year old brother was called to do work for our Lord and Savior on the other side of the veil. He had been fighting a staff infection, then he got the flu and because of the strain on his body the veins (particularly in the lining of his stomach) became weakened and bacteria escaped from his stomach into his bloodstream. His body was then attacked from all sides. He went into cardiac arrest twice, suffered kidney and liver failure and had to put on heart and lung bypasses just to keep him alive. At around 3am this morning, Heavenly Father decided that it was enough and called him home.

It is hard for everyone. It especially hard for the family, but it is difficult for those who know the family because everyone feels like all they can do is offer words. Empty phrases that will never fill the void; they will never bring Parker back. Many people would get angry and ask why? If He loved His children so much why would He cause them to grieve like this? So many people lose faith in the Gospel because of tragedies like this. They claim that if there really was a loving Father in Heaven he wouldn’t allows these kinds of things to happen. Yet I invite you, my dear readers, to consider some thing.

We experience this grief and this pain and this loss because we love, deeply and completely. God has blessed us with that emotion; to love, to give ourselves wholly to someone; to open ourselves up to them and allow them into our heart. To let them toy with our emotions for good or ill. God has given that ability to it because through that emotion stems the family. The love between spouses, the love between parents and their children, the love between siblings , friends and Church families. We grieve because we love. If we did not love we would not grieve and that my friends would be a wasted existence in my opinion. Those who claim that God does not love us because He took someone from us suffers from bitterness because they cared.

It is important to remember that we came from the presence of God and inevitably we will all return there. For some it will be too soon. For others it will be after a long life full of joys and sorrows, happiness and grief.  Forefront in my mind at the moment is found in 2 Nephi when Lehi, who is on his death bed is speaking to his son Jacob. He tells him “For it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things. If not so… righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness, nor misery neither good nor bad…” He goes on to say that if all opposition should cease then eventually God would cease to be God. But because He loves us so much He gives us the ability to choose and to love and to grieve. It is part of the mortal experience. It is  part of becoming like God.

Finally, remember that families are forever. It is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful doctrines of the LDS faith. That through proper covenants and ordinances established and performed under the right authority we have the opportunity to be with the ones we love most in this life forever. It is one of the many reasons I am serving a mission. I cannot wait to go teach the people of Panama that they can be with their loved ones forever. That especially in times of death and loss they can find peace, as the Allred family has, knowing that they will see and be with their loved ones again. It is beautiful and it is sweet. It is the good news of the Gospel and I love it with all my heart. May God bless you my dear readers, until you  read again.