life

just a few moments ago i received an email from a friend that i work with in relief society. she was supposed to be in utah, assisting her daughter who gave birth last week to her second daughter. instead she finds herself unexpectedly back in california offering her support to her parents and other extended family members.

you see her sister passed away, unexpectedly. she is the second friend within a week that this has happened to (only the other lost her brother to a motorcycle accident). which causes me to appreciate the frailty of this mortal existence.

life is odd that way. you expect one thing, you plan for it, and then before you know it something entirely different than what you had planned for happens. and when this type of thing happens we feel we are left to make sense out of something that just doesn't. we are left holding the proverbial bag; wondering what to do next, attempting to realize that this person is not on this earth at this time any longer. i remember when my dad passed away, feeling as though the world should just stop spinning, that people shouldn't go on living their lives, that laughter should cease to exist; because someone great and wonderful was gone...

however, life continued. i continued. our family continued.

and that is the wonder of this life. we can experience pain and sorrow unlike anything we have ever experienced before; yet we are able to continue, to live through it, to learn through it, to grow and to love through it.

not only am i grateful for life, i am grateful that this life is just a small (which sounds so insignificant, but it isn't) portion of what we are really living. we have the truth. we know the plan of salvation; we know that families are eternal. that is what i am most deeply grateful for...and that my friends know that also. we are blessed.