Eternal Laughter

Malia is the youngest of my children by a fairly sizable margin. She is 11 years younger than Daniel and 4 ½ younger than Matthew. As such, she often feels like she’s being left behind. And that’s a valid feeling. Daniel and Nathan no longer live at home and are only around for occasional visits. Now that Matthew is in high school, he is gone more and more often and when he gets his driver’s license next month, I fully expect his time away to increase. So she’s completely justified in feeling like she’s the lone child at home. There are advantages to that, but it also means that she spends a lot of time waiting to catch up with her brothers. 

Today was one of those days when she finally caught up. After years of patiently waiting, today was the first time she was able to go into the temple with us. We scheduled far in advance so that Daniel and Nathan were able to come down, and all six of us went to the baptistry together. I’ve said many times that I love being in the temple with my family, and today was very sweet indeed. All of my children together with Kev and I in the temple. We had expected to wait another year for this event since Nathan was originally slated to be in Texas until next year, but another tender mercy of his early homecoming was the fact that we were all together for Malia’s very first temple trip. It was a day of pure joy.

As a side note, today was also Nathan’s first meeting with the ASL Institute Council. As I mentioned before, the members are scattered all over the U.S., so the meetings are held via Zoom. Also remember that only two or three of the council are hearing. All the rest are deaf. The rest of us were working on our Saturday jobs while Nathan was having his meeting. It was Matthew’s turn to vacuum, but he was web browsing instead of vacuuming so like a diligent mother, I asked him why his job wasn’t done yet. He told me that he was waiting to do the vacuuming so he wouldn’t disrupt Nathan’s meeting. While that was thoughtful and all, my response was, “Ummm, Matthew, the meeting is in ASL. Running the vacuum won’t matter.” There was a huge “duh” moment and then he got out the vacuum. And I laughed. 😂

My family laughs kind of a lot. We chuckle, we giggle, we snicker, we chortle, and sometimes we outright guffaw. We honestly enjoy being together and that is reflected in the way we interact with one another. As such, it seems oddly appropriate that this post has ended up being a combination of a glorious afternoon spent in the temple with my eternal family and an occurrence at home that made me laugh. I know a lot of the world thinks of heaven as being a peaceful, serene place where we float around on clouds all day playing harps. But not me. My version of heaven is a joyful, happy place where my family and I are engaged in a rousing game of Phase 10 or And It Came to Pass. There will be laughter, and light, and endless quality family time. I hope to see you all there. And bring your favorite game. We’ll have lots of time to play!