Come What May

"Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come" (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland).  I am so grateful for my mom—and my dad and my siblings and lots of other wonderful people; but for right now I’ll just focus on Mom because today is Mother’s day, which means we have all probably spent a little extra time thinking about our mothers!  Personally, I try to express appreciation and love to my parents more than once a year, but it is nice to have special holidays like these for some additional celebration.  Thank goodness for all of the dutiful, loving, and perhaps a little imperfect mothers that have blessed and impacted so many lives.  But not everyone gets to have their mom on Mother’s Day.  Some moms have been swept into heaven; some moms have chosen to leave their families; some moms are on their own struggling to make ends meet; some are still waiting for the opportu...

“For behold, are we all not all beggars?” (Mosiah 4:19). It has always been easier for me to offer service than it has been for me to receive it.  I don’t mean to say that I always serve whenever I can as cheerfully as I can without fail because that certainly isn’t true; I also don’t mean I am too proud to accept someone’s kindness because that isn’t true either!  I simply find that I would rather be in a position to give service than to receive it.  It is quite different to care for the needy than to be the needy. In high school I volunteered every Sunday at a local nursing home to play the piano.  Many of the residents suffered from various degrees of dementia.  I found myself among a very sweet collection of broken bodies and broken minds, though I sometimes failed to appreciate the fact. One afternoon I walked in to see an old, crippled man staring off into the distance while his son kissed him goodbye.  He didn’t move, he didn’t speak, he ju...