See How Much I Love You

See how much I love you.  That thought seems to keep going through my head.  General Conference.  Bryce Canyon.  Both experiences these past few days that have opened my eyes to God’s love.  Surrounded by nature’s beauty I have never been more awed.  We live here in one of God’s most beautiful places and I have never been to Bryce Canyon.  Jason has tried to get our family to go for years and finally this weekend we went.  It was so beautiful it almost seemed unreal.  At one point we saw a rock on the very top of a very tall formation and the way the sun hit it lit it almost to glowing.  Through the camera’s lens it seemed to have an unearthly glow.  The kids started calling it the “Holy Rock.”  We got to talking about all the people that came from all over the world to see Bryce Canyon.  At one point my little girl teasingly talked about all the religions that had come to the “Holy Rock.”  She mentioned Baptist and Catholics and Mormons and Christians.  At first I giggled and then I explained that Mormons are Christians, that anyone who believed and worshipped Christ was a Christian.

Isn’t it amazing how little moments bring big teaching moments?  Isn’t it amazing that nature seems to bring the spirit and with it those moments?  I feel peace so strongly when I am in nature almost saying to me, “See how much I love you.”

Luke comes home this Friday.  I know it has only been four months but that has felt as though it has been a lifetime.  When did I get so old?  My heart still feels young but I have a grown man now for a son.  But I can honestly say that I love the age that I am at and I so look forward to the years as they golden more.  I’m excited for the prospect of grandbabies and someday I pray that Jason and I will be healthy enough as we age to go on a mission.  When Luke comes home on Friday he will be at where I was nineteen years ago when I married my most amazing husband.  The choices that I made then determined the life that I have now and the eternity that I will live later.  Luke is so young, but then again I guess so was I.  Thank Heaven Heavenly Father had such a wonderful plan for me and thank Heaven that I was close enough to the spirit in my very young and naive youth to follow it.  I only pray that Luke can do so also.

                My mother went with us to Bryce.  It was so much fun to watch the kids with her. 

The first day we hiked down a steep canyon and at the bottom we could look straight up encircled by those tall red rock formations.  It was cool and slightly damp and shadowed from the sun.  Hundreds of people went ahead of us and hundreds behind, so many speaking languages that we didn’t recognize. 

Nan helped Stephanie down the narrow path turning her toward the inside around each curve, careful that she didn’t fall and launch herself down the steep ravine.  I held onto Sam, crazy Sam who so often in his hurry to get somewhere manages to trip and fall.

Jenny and Suzy in fashion to their free natured personalities rushed on ahead and my mother as the protective angel that she has always been followed us all to make sure that we were all safe.

 Which left Jason, several ledges above us, so that he could photograph every perfect memory. 

I worried that Jenny and Suzy would wander too far ahead and we would lose them as sometimes I do in life.  I rejoiced as I watched Nan protect her little sister as she seems to always do and I held on for dear life to my little Sam’s hands as he was so certain that he was big enough to do it on his own.

 

  And behind me was my mom encouraging me the whole way and above us all Jason making sure that every moment was happening and being remembered.

“See how much I love you.”

When the spirit talks whether it’s in those quiet moments that we take away from our crazy lives or the sweet whisperings through General Conference talks how can we not know that these are the times that God is trying to say “I love you!”  Just watching President’s Monson’s face light up as he speaks to us is a reflection of God’s love or watching President Uchtdorf’s beautiful accent roll of his tongue as he testifies of the truths that our Prophet speaks and prophets of old, calls my heart to know that God loves me.

President Uchtdorf said something that I hurried to write down that seemed to bring meaning to all that I have been feeling.  “Resolve to find happiness regardless of our circumstances,” he said in his Saturday morning talk and then he spoke of all the good all around us to find joy in.  We are meant to be happy because like a good parent God wants us to be happy as we want our own children to be.  Even in sorrow we can find joy if we look and I promise if we are observant it isn’t hard at all to find something, even a little something, to find joy in.

“See how much I love you.”  I don’t hear those words as a question anymore as I had so many years ago in the past but as a command.  I think now I am beginning to understand just what those words whispered in my head means.  God, my Heavenly Father, and Christ his son, my brother, are asking me to see just how much they love me.  And I am going to strive every day to do just that, see how much they love me.

 

“See how much I love you.”  Not a question but a statement in the beauty of every moment of our amazingly ordinary lives.