Oh the Sadness of the World!

I've been a mess the last week, crying almost every day.

A dear, dear friend of mine, Jeff Thompson is dying in the hospital. He was my seminary teacher for all 4 years. He has been giving me blessings since my adulthood because my Dad didn't feel like he could do it. I'm close with his family. I roomed with his daughter in college. His wife was my 'merry miss' teacher in primary and the Young Women's president for 3 years. Some of Jeff's grandchildren call me Aunt Becky. He will be fine in the spirit world. He has lived an amazing life full of gospel teaching and service. He has been a great husband and father and friend to many. But his family and many others will miss him considerably. It's hard to image life with out someone, with out them being physically there for the rest of one's life. But there is comfort and peace knowing that we will see one another again. He will know of our doing. We will one day all embrace and rejoice that, we knew each other in that fleeting moment called earth life.

Another dear friend of mine struggles with how her husband treats her. Seeing her hurt is terrible and I often think of scriptures of how Christ treats the Church, symbolic of how a husband treats his wife, of scriptures in Jacob chapter 2 about speaking consoling words to tender wives and God counting tears, due the wickedness of their husbands. I'm thankful for her Christ-like example of how to handle that and of knowledge of what I do not want and what I do want in a man.

Then I find out today that my brother has lost his job again. There are more struggles there besides just loosing a job. He's divorced. He is learning to overcome some mental health challenges.

I too have been struggling with my own feelings about difficult areas of my life. There are hard, hard things in this life. What is a person suppose to do?

I heard the words "I love you" on Saturday night, spoken by one man to a large group, and wept. I took it personally, as if he was speaking for the Lord himself. I tried to remember the last time I heard those words spoken to me. While my mother must have, and my friend spoken of above has said them and emailed them, it has not been the kind of love that I have needed. I didn't even now those were the words I needed to hear. I did know that I needed those consoling words. And I know that there are people, family even, that I have no desire to speak those words too and I know that is wrong.

One day Christ will make it all better and he weeps with us now, as he wept with Lazarus' sister's Mary and Martha. But oh sometimes I tire of the weeping.

Revelations 21: 4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain: for the former things are passed away.