OK, OK, so I haven't written on this blog in almost 4 months! I will admit that both 2022 and 2023 have been hard years, with health challenges that in turn produced low mood. And then the Fall semester, with my heaviest teaching load, is always a time when I always fall behind in everything, and having fallen behind, find it hard to start again.
But 2024 has started auspiciously, so I am starting to feel hopeful again. And with hope comes the strength to act. So here I am writing a new Crone post! Hope is really the most underrated of the three sisters of hope, faith, and charity. Hope is the beginning of every virtue.
So, anyway, 2024 feels like it is going to be a better year. Yes, I know we've got a train wreck of an election coming in November, and that worries me a lot. And yes, we have the potential for regional conflicts to widen in three areas of the world, and that troubles me, too. All right, maybe I shouldn't be hopeful. But I just feel hopeful . . . gotta go with it!
Today was a special day. For reasons too complicated to explain, it has not been possible to do my father's temple work until now. Indeed, I thought his work might only be able to be done after I was long gone. But a way was opened up, and my family was able to gather in the Provo Temple--which is very special to us, and which is about to be demolished and rebuilt--to do all my father's ordinance work. And then we had him sealed to his parents, sealed to my mother, and then I was able to be sealed--FINALLY--to my mother and father. All of our boys helped out with the ordinance work so we could get it all done in one day. And then in the sealing room, we were all together as a family. (The sealer was Kim Clark--yes, that Kim Clark!) Only our children who are not old enough to be endowed were missing. I like to think our daughter on the other side of the veil was there today, too.
My husband baptized one of my sons acting for my father, and says he felt a very, very strong positive feeling. He was so overcome with a feeling of joy that he couldn't say the prayer for almost 30 full seocnds. I acted as proxy for my grandmother when my father was sealed to his parents, and I could definitely feel her happiness. She loved that boy so much, and he broke her heart in two. My wish is that where my father is now, he has turned around, and has also turned towards the mother who loved and loves him so.
I myself didn't feel the presence of either my mother or my father, just that of my father's mother. My parents had so many challenges, most self-inflicted, that my relationship with them was troubled. I don't really have any bad feelings for them at this point, but also haven't quite gotten to the stage where I have positive feelings. Mostly, I am just glad that God knows everything about their circumstances and will offer them maximum mercy given those circumstances.
However, I do feel a feeling of renewed strength that comes from the knowledge that a major broken link in my family's sealing chain has now been forged. My children and I are now sealed to my parents, their parents, and their parents' parents (and on some lines, even further back than that). The shards of Narsil have been remade; the paths to walk in have been restored and made straight.
When I was younger and struggling so much with the legacy of dysfunction that my parents left, one scripture came to me as a lodestar, and I felt in my heart that this scripture summed up my mission in life. It's Isaiah 58:12:
"And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations: and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in."
Today is a day I could only dream of in the past, but it has come to pass. The breach has been repaired, and my children have a good path to dwell in. Today my soul is happy and strong that this day finally came. I feel that an important part of my mission in this life has been accomplished, and my soul can rest in peace on that fact.
So, yeah, feeling 2024 has the potential to be auspicious! :-)
Happy New Year to you all!